Ben Griffin - Former SAS Trooper Speaks Out!

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Ben Griffin - Former SAS Trooper SpeaksOut!

Monday, April 09, 2012

From The DeskLloyd T Vance &Cathy BellNews Today 4 UDarwin NT Australia

Greetings Fellow Australians

We would like to pay tribute tothis young Ex – British SAS Trooper for having the courage tospeak out about Right vs Wrong.

Good vs Bad

And for not being used for United Snakes of America ForeignPolicy = “Working for The Corporations”, selling your soulto a Fascist – Nazi system.

And if any Americans read this and want to play their stupidbrainwashed games of arguing Democrat vs Republican whois the better party.

Well you better read the following and hope to God younever become unemployed, homeless because the followingis just around the corner of happening to you.

10 Unbelievably Sh**ty Things AmericaDoes to Homeless People

http://www.alternet.org/rights/154830/10_Unbelievably_Sh**ty_Things_America_Does_to_Homeless_People/



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Feeding The Homeless BANNED In MajorCities All Over America

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/feeding-the-

homeless-banned-in-major-cities-all-over-america

Back to the story folks

Young Ben Griffin live long and well, my young friendand thank you for your courage of speaking out.

As for the Australians?

Australian Troops, Australian Federal Police, ASIO, ASISand all the rest of the “Treasonous” – “Traitorous” murdering lying dogs.

Pack of gutless – weak things

Not one of these gutless mongrels have spoken out

about the Illegal Wars of USA, England, NATO andAustralia invading other countries, murdering theircitizens, bombing their homes, towns and cities backto the stone age.

Not one of these gutless mongrels have spoken outabout all these Terrorist Attacks (CIA, Mossad, MI6) arecarrying out about the World upon citizens.

Not one of these gutless mongrels have spoken outabout the US Pentagon hiring “Blackwater” to carryout Terrorist Attacks.

See report at the back: -



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Not one of these gutless mongrels have spoken outabout how the CIA & US Military bring “Terrorist

Groups” to America and train them, then send themover to other countries to over throw other

Governments.

See report at the end: -

What a shame in Australia we don’t have fine upstanding guys like Ben Griffin, all we have is sell out,traitor mongrel dogs working in the AustralianMilitary, Australian Federal Police, ASIO, ASIS etc.

The joke is on your people when you see what isinstalled for you, your wives and children and isalready underway in Australia.

See report at the end: -

You “Rock Ben” Live long and well………………

Ben Griffin - Former SAS Trooper SpeaksOut!

'I didn't join the British Army to conduct Americanforeign policy'

As a trooper in the Special Air Service's counter-

terrorist team - the black-clad force that came to theworld's attention during the Iranian Embassy siege in1980 - Ben Griffin was at the pinnacle of his militarycareer.



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He had already served in Northern Ireland, Macedoniaand Afghanistan as a member of the ParachuteRegiment, and his sharp mind, natural fitness andability to cope with the stress of military operations

had singled him out as ideal special forces material.Born in London but brought up in Wales, Mr Griffinleft school at 18 with two A-levels and six GCSEs and,although he could have become an officer, hepreferred life in the ranks.

Within a year of joining the elite force in early 2004and serving as a trooper in the SAS's G-Squadron, he

learnt that his unit was being posted to Baghdad,where it would be working alongside its Americanequivalent, Delta Force, targeting al-Qaeda cells andinsurgent units.

Unknown to any of his SAS colleagues at theirHereford-based unit, however, Mr Griffin, then 25,had been harbouring doubts over the "legality" of

the war.

Despite recognising that Saddam Hussein was a brutaldictator and posed a threat, albeit a small one, to theWest, he did not believe that the case for war hadbeen made.

The events he witnessed during his three-month tourin Baghdad, and especially the conduct of the

American troops, would force him into making themost difficult decision of his life.

During a week's leave in March 2005 he told hiscommanding officer in a formal interview that hehad no intention of returning to Iraq because hebelieved that the war was morally wrong.



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Moreover, he said he believed that Tony Blair and theGovernment had lied to the country and haddeceived every British serviceman and womanserving in Iraq.

Mr Griffin expected to be placed under arrest,labelled a coward, court-martialed and imprisonedfor daring to air such views.

Instead, however, he was allowed to leave the Armywith his exemplary military record intact and with aglowing testimonial from his commanding officer,who described him as a "balanced and honest soldier

who possesses the strength and character togenuinely have the courage of his convictions".

In his first interview since being discharged from theSAS in June last year, Mr Griffin explained why he hasdecided to speak out about the war.

He said: "I saw a lot of things in Baghdad that wereillegal or just wrong.

I knew, so others must have known, that this was notthe way to conduct operations if you wanted to winthe hearts and minds of the local population.

And if you don't win the hearts and minds of thepeople, you can't win the war.

"If we were on a joint counter-terrorist operation, forexample, we would radio back to our headquartersthat we were not going to detain certain peoplebecause, as far as we were concerned, they were nota threat because they were old men or obviouslyfarmers, but the Americans would say 'no, bringthem back'.



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"The Americans had this catch-all approach to liftingsuspects.

The tactics were draconian and completelyineffective.

The Americans were doing things like chuckingfarmers into Abu Ghraib [the notorious prison inBaghdad where US troops abused and tortured Iraqidetainees] or handing them over to the Iraqiauthorities, knowing full well they were going to betortured.

"The Americans had a well-deserved reputation forbeing trigger happy.

In the three months that I was in Iraq, the soldiers Iserved with never shot anybody.

When you asked the Americans why they killedpeople, they would say 'we were up against thetough foreign fighters'.

I didn't see any foreign fighters in the time I was overthere.

"I can remember coming in off one operation whichtook place outside Baghdad, where we had detainedsome civilians who were clearly not insurgents, theywere innocent people.

I couldn't understand why we had done this, so I saidto my troop commander 'would we have behaved inthe same way in the Balkans or Northern Ireland?'

He shrugged his shoulders and said 'this is Iraq', and Ithought 'and that makes it all right?'



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"As far as I was concerned that meant that becausethese people were a different colour or a differentreligion, they didn't count as much.

You can not invade a country pretending to promote

democracy and behave like that."

On another operation, Mr Griffin recalls his and othersoldiers' frustration at being ordered to detain agroup of men living on a farm.

He said: "After you have been on a few operations,experience tells you when you are dealing with

insurgents or just civilians and we knew the peoplewe had detained were not a threat.

"One of them was a disabled man who had a legmissing but the Americans still ordered us to loadthem on the helicopters and bring them back totheir base.

A few hours later we were told to return half of them

and fly back to the farm in daylight.

It was a ridiculous order and we ran the risk of beingshot down or ambushed, but we still had to do it.

The Americans were risking our lives because theyrefused to listen to our advice the night before.

It was typical of their behaviour."

Mr Griffin said he believed that the Americanssoldiers viewed the Iraqis in the same way as theNazis viewed Russians, Jews and eastern Europeans inthe Second World War, when they labelled them"untermenschen".



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"As far as the Americans were concerned, the Iraqipeople were sub-human, untermenschen.

You could almost split the Americans into two groupsones who were complete crusaders, intent on killing

Iraqis, and the others who were in Iraq because theArmy was going to pay their college fees.

They had no understanding or interest in the Arabculture.

The Americans would talk to the Iraqis as if they werestupid and these weren't isolated cases, this was from

the top down.

There might be one or two enlightened officers whounderstood the situation a bit better but on thewhole that was their general attitude.

Their attitude fuelled the insurgency.

I think the Iraqis detested them."

Although Mr Griffin has the utmost respect for hisformer colleagues and remains fiercely loyal to theregiment, he believes that the reputation of theArmy has been damaged by its association with theAmerican forces.

"I had reservations about going out to Iraq before Iwent, but as a soldier you just get on with what you

are ordered to do.

But I found that when I was out in Iraq that I couldn'tkeep my views separate from my work withoutcompromising my role as a soldier.



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"It was at that stage that I knew I couldn't carry on. Iwas very angry, and still am, at the way the politiciansin this country and America have lied to the Britishpublic about the war.

But most importantly, I didn't join the British Army toconduct American foreign policy."

Mr Griffin said that although he was angered by manyof the events he witnessed in Iraq, he waited until hereturned to Britain on leave before making his viewsclear to his commanders.

"I didn't want to say anything when I was in Baghdadbecause I still have great respect and loyalty for thesoldiers I served with.

I didn't want to cause any unnecessary pressure ordiscomfort by voicing my opinions.

"When I returned to the UK for a week's leave I askedfor an interview with my commanding officer and

told him that what I thought was going on in Iraq waswrong, not just legally but operationally as well.

"Initially, he suspected that I had been offered a jobby a private military company in Iraq but when itbecame clear that was not the case he was veryunderstanding. It was a big decision for me.

I put a lot of effort getting into the SAS, so thiswasn't a decision I made on a whim.

"He understood my point of view and his attitudewas brilliant, in fact everyone was brilliant about it.

I didn't know what was going to happen.



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I thought I might be charged or end up in Colchester[the military prison] for refusing to soldier."

Mr Griffin, who lives in London, denies being a peaceactivist or a member of any political party, or having

an agenda designed to bring down the Government.

But he said: "I do believe passionately in democracyand I will speak out about things which I think aremorally wrong.

I think the war in Iraq is a war of aggression and ismorally wrong and, more importantly, we are making

the situation in the Middle East more unstable.It's not just wrong, it's a major military disaster.

There was no plan for what was to happen afterSaddam went, no end-game."

Blackwater / XE behind Terrorist bombingsin Asia and Africa?

WMR’s intelligence sources in Asia and Europe arereporting that the CIA contractor firm XE Services,formerly Blackwater, has been carrying out “FalseFlag” Terrorist Attacks in Afghanistan, Somalia, theSinkiang region of China, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq, insome cases with the assistance of Israeli Mossad andIndian Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) personnel.

Fingers are being pointed at Blackwater/XE andMossad operatives for the motorbike bomb in Tehranthat killed Tehran University nuclear physicist Dr.Moussad Ali-Mohammadi.



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On January 12, a bomb attached to a motorbikeoutside of Ali-Mohammadi’s house went off while theprofessor was leaving for work.

The bomb, which instantly killed pro-reform Ali-

Mohammadi, was remotely triggered by a team thatwas later linked to a U.S.-base group called the IranMonarchy Association, which favors restoring the sonof the late Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi II, to Iran’s“Peacock Throne.”

The Iran Monarchy Association is believed to be a CIAfront organization.

There are also reports that Blackwater/XE personnelare in Somalia and have carried out terroristbombings in Mogadishu that have been blamed bythe United States and the puppet transitionalgovernment of Somalia on the Al-Shabab Islamicirregular forces as a pretext for a wider Blackwaterrole in the country.

Blackwater is also believed to be transiting betweenSomalia, the breakaway republic of Somaliland, andYemen.

WMR has learned of Blackwater counter-insurgencypersonnel working alongside Yemeni security forcesin joint operations against Huthi rebels in thepredominantly-Shi’a region of northern Yemen.

U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral MichaelMullen recently stated that there were no plans tostation U.S. troops in Yemen but he studiouslyavoided mentioning a counter-insurgency role forU.S. private military contractors.



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Blackwater maritime security personnel have alsobeen active in the Gulf of Aden region against so-called Somali “pirates,” who are, in reality, Somalifishermen who are exacting tribute because of over-

fishing of Somali waters by foreign fishing fleets andthe dumping of toxic waste in Somali waters.

A number of terrorist bombings in Pakistan havebeen blamed by Pakistani Islamic leaders onBlackwater, Mossad, and RAW.

Blackwater has been accused of hiring youngPakistanis in Peshawar to carry out false flag

bombings that are later blamed on the PakistaniTaliban, also known as Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan.

One such bombing took place during the Ashuraprocession in Karachi last month.

The terrorist attacks allegedly are carried out by asecret Blackwater-XE/CIA/Joint Special OperationsCommand forward operating base in Karachi.

The XE Services component was formerly known asBlackwater Select, yet another subsidiary in abyzantine network of shell and linked companies runby Blackwater/Xe on behalf of the CIA and thePentagon.

On December 3, 2009, the Pakistani newspaper Nawa-

i-Waqt reported: “Vast land near the Tarbela dam hasalso been given to the Americans where they haveestablished bases for their army and air forces.

There, the Indian RAW [Research and Analysis Wing]and Israeli Mosad are working in collaboration withthe CIA to carry out extremist activities in Pakistan.”



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Blackwater/XE is also thought to be carrying outterrorist roadside bombings in Algeria, once theexclusive domain of the mercenary French ForeignLegion, to justify a greater American security

presence in Algeria, ostensibly to protect natural gaspipelines in the country.

Blackwater/XE and agents of the Mossad and RAW arealso reportedly active in sponsoring Islamist terroristgroups active in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and theXinjiang-Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) of Chinafor a variety of reasons.

For the United States, the operations are to ensurethose nation’s support for the U.S. “counter-terrorism” operations in central Asia.

For India, there is a desire to pin blame for supportfor Uighur and other central Asian Islamist guerrillamovements on Pakistan in order to drive a wedgebetween Beijing and Islamabad.

For Israel, the support helps in continuing closesecurity relationships between Tel Aviv and Beijingand the Muslim Central Asian “stans.”

RAW has also been smuggling radical Islamic literatureto Uighurs in Xinjiang.

All of the literaure has the imprimatur of Pakistan.

RAW uses Indian consulates in Jalalabad and Kandaharin Afghanistan to help U.S. covert teams to carry outbombings that are blamed on the Taliban andPakistani Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) interlocutors.



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Blackwater/XE personnel based in Quetta, the capitalof Pakistan’s Baluchistan province, have also beenactive in supporting cross-border raids by an IranianBaluchi terrorist group called Jundullah.

Nawa-i Waqt also reported that two Baluchi separatistgroups, the Baluch Liberation Front and the BaluchLiberation Army, “have their headquarters in Londonand Israel respectively.”

Dumb Ass Australian Troops, Federal Police,ASIO, ASIS

The joke is on you people, gutless – weak, piss poorbrainwashed, MK Ultra minons.

This evilness is coming home to your wives, kids,family members, friends.

Look What Your Fascist – Nazi Governmentis Forcing Upon Your Loved Ones?

Inject children or lose money

Nicola Roxon says: - THE

Federal Government will withhold more than $2100 in tax

benefits for families who refuse to vaccinate their children.



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Biological Terrorist Attack AgainstAustralian Kids, 1 Killed,300 Left Sick.

Recently some State Health Depts on the advise of

their State Chief Medical Officers have suspended Flushot vaccines for children under 5 years old.

Why Many Vitamin Studies are AbsolutelyWorthless

Vaccines Continue Killing People, But TheMedia Won’t Report It

You can always count on the mainstream media to lieabout vaccines.

But while they lie, people die, and 2011 was nodifferent.

Vaccine-Induced Disease Epidemic

Outbreaks

THE SPANISH INFLUENZA EPIDEMIC OF 1918WAS CAUSED BY VACCINATIONS

Taking an aspirin a day will cause cancer,

not prevent it



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Study - Combination Tetanus, WhoopingCough Vaccine Linked To Seizures In Babies

If you choose to have your baby vaccinated with the

combination diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough(pertussis), polio and Haemophilus influenzae type 2vaccine, a mega-jab collectively known as the DTap-IPV-Hib, your child may be at an increased risk ofhaving a vaccine-induced seizure.

A new study published in the Journal of the AmericanMedical Association has identified a clear link

between the vaccine and the onset of fever-relatedseizures.

Judicial Watch Investigates Side-Effects ofHPV Vaccine

"The FDA adverse event reports on the HPV vaccineread like a catalog of horrors. Any state or local

government now beset by Merck’s lobbyingcampaigns to mandate this HPV vaccine for younggirls ought to take a look at these adverse healthreports."

Hep B Vaccine Damages The Liver It IsSupposed To Protect

Institute of medicine safety reportconfirms vaccine dangers



17

Gardasil HPV Vaccines Found ContaminatedWith Recombinant DNA That Persists InHuman Blood

In seeking answers to why adolescent girls aresuffering devastating health damage after beinginjected with HPV vaccines, SANE Vax, Inc decided tohave vials of Gardasil tested in a laboratory.

There, they found over a dozen Gardasil vaccine vialsto be contaminated with rDNA of the Human

Papillomavirus (HPV).

Exposed: Deadly Cancer Drugs Make CancerWorse and Kill Patients More Quickly

Cancer drugs, pushed by many drug companies asthe only ‘scientific’ method of combating canceralongside chemotherapy, have been foundto actually make cancer worse and kill patients

more quickly.

The findings come after research was conducted onthe cancer drugs at the Beth Israel Deaconess MedicalCenter in Boston.

Sold at a premium price to cancer sufferers, it turnsout these drugs are not only ineffective but highlydangerous

Something known as anti-antiogenesis is the primaryfunction behind many such widely-used cancer drugsthat were analyzed in the study.



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Researchers examined drugs such as imatanib (aleukemia drug that goes by the brand name Gleevec)and sunitinib (a drug for gastrointestinal tumors —brand name Sutent), finding that these drugs may

initially reduce tumor size but afterwards causetumors to ‘metasize’ aggressively.

This means that the tumors come back muchstronger and grow much larger than their originalsize.

Cancer Research Fraud Destroys MainstreamMedical Cancer Industry

It’s fairly evident that corruption pervades manyfacets of our society in this day and age, with profitsdriving major pharmaceutical companies and variouspolitical objectives.

But just how far does this type of fraud reach?

It seems that it extends as far as cancer research,with monetary incentives and smudged scientificresults shaking the very foundation of cancerresearch.

Recently, the Mayo Clinic determined that ten years

worth of cancer research has been made useless

due to such fraud.

ALL the Vaccines Are Contaminated - EveryLast One of Them



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"The chief, if not the sole, cause of the monstrousincrease in cancer has been vaccination" - Dr. RobertBell, once Vice President International Society forCancer Research at the British Cancer Hospital.

Big Pharma researcher admits to fakingdozens of research studies for Pfizer,Merck

It's being called the largest research fraud in medicalhistory.

Dr. Scott Reuben, a former member of Pfizer'sspeakers' bureau, has agreed to plead guilty to fakingdozens of research studies that were published inmedical journals.

U.S. Trained Terror Group

When the U.S. wants to fund, train, arm or otherwisealign itself with a Terrorist group or state sponsor ofTerror — as it often does — it at least usually has thetact to first remove them from its formal terrorist list(as the U.S. did when it wanted to support Saddam in1982 and work with Libya in 2006), or it just keepsthem off the list altogether despite what formerCouncil on Foreign Relations writer Lionel Beehnerdescribed as “mounds of evidence that [they] at onetime or another abetted terrorists” (as it has donewith close U.S. allies in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan,along with the El Salvadoran death squads andNicaraguan contras armed and funded in the 1980sby the Reagan administration).



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But according to a new, multi-sourced report fromThe New Yorker‘ s Seymour Hersh, the U.S. did noteven bother going through those motions when,during the Bush years, it trained the Iranian dissident

group Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) at a secretiveDepartment of Energy site in Nevada.

It was here that the Joint Special OperationsCommand (JSOC) conducted training, beginning in

2005, for members of the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, adissident Iranian opposition group known in the Westas the M.E.K. . . . .

The M.E.K.’s ties with Western intelligence deepenedafter the fall of the Iraqi regime in 2003,and JSOC began operating inside Iran in an effort tosubstantiate the Bush Administration’s fears that Iranwas building the bomb at one or more secretunderground locations.

Funds were covertly passed to a number of dissident

organizations, for intelligence collection and,ultimately, for anti-regime terrorist activities.

Directly, or indirectly, the M.E.K. ended up withresources like arms and intelligence.

Some American-supported covert operations

continue in Iran today, according to past andpresent intelligence officials and military consultants.

Despite the growing ties, and a much-intensifiedlobbying effort organized by its advocates, M.E.K.

has remained on the State Department’s list of

foreign terrorist organizations – which meant thatsecrecy was essential in the Nevada training.



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”We did train them here, and washed them throughthe Energy Department because the D.O.E. owns allthis land in southern Nevada,” a former seniorAmerican intelligence official told me.

“We were deploying them over long distances in thedesert and mountains, and building their capacity incommunications — coördinating commo is a bigdeal.”

A JSOC spokesman told Hersh that ”U.S. SpecialOperations Forces were neither aware of norinvolved in the training of M.E.K. members,” but aMEK lawyer refused to confirm or deny the report,arguing that any such training would undercut theU.S. Government’s claims that MEK belongs on theTerrorist list.

In February, NBC News‘

Richard Engel and RobertWindrem reported, based on two anonymous “seniorU.S. officials,” that MEK was the group perpetrating aseries of “sophisticated” assassinations of Iraniannuclear scientists (using bombs and rifles).

NBC also reported that Israel — specifically its Mossadintelligence service — is “ financing, training and

arming” MEK: in other words, that Israel is a statesponsor of this designated Terrorist group.

Various reports have also indicated that the MEK,with Israeli support, was responsible for a string ofexplosions on Iranian soil.



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Hersh obtained independent confirmation of allthese claims:

The former senior intelligence official I spoke withseconded the NBC report that the Israelis were

working with the M.E.K., adding that the

operations benefitted from American

intelligence.

He said that the targets were not “Einsteins”; “Thegoal is to affect Iranian psychology and morale,”he said, and to “demoralize the whole system —nuclear delivery vehicles, nuclear enrichment

facilities, power plants.”

Attacks have also been carried out on pipelines.

He added that the operations are “primarily being

done by M.E.K. through liaison with the Israelis,

but the United States is now providing the

intelligence.”

An adviser to the special-operations community toldme that the links between the United States andM.E.K. activities inside Iran had been long-standing.“Everything being done inside Iran now is being donewith surrogates,” he said.

So let’s review what we have here. If this report istrue, it means the U.S. Government actively trained a

group that the U.S. Government itself legallycategorizes as a “foreign terrorist organization,” aclear felony under U.S. law:



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Whoever knowingly provides material support orresources to a foreign terrorist organization, orattempts or conspires to do so, shall be fined underthis title or imprisoned not more than 15 years, or

both, and, if the death of any person results, shall beimprisoned for any term of years or for life.

That alone compels serious DOJ and Congressionalinvestigations into these claims.

Worse, this reportedly happened at the very sametime that the U.S. aggressively prosecuted andimprisoned numerous Muslims for providing materialsupport for groups on that list even though many ofthose prosecuted provided support that was far, farless than what the U.S. Government itself wasproviding to MEK.

Meanwhile, right at this moment, America’s closestally — Israel — is clearly a state sponsor of thisdesignated Terrorist organization, providing training,funding and arms to it, and the U.S. may very well beas well (independent of all else, given that Israel is thelargest recipient of U.S. aid, the U.S., at the very least,is financing a state sponsor of Terror).

At the same time, a glittering bipartisan cast offormer Washington officials is receiving largepayments from this designated Terrorist group,meeting with its leaders, and then advocating on itsbehalf — again, providing far more material supportthan many powerless, marginalized Muslims whohave been and continue to be prosecuted under thislaw.



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All of this appears to be clearly criminal regardless ofwhether MEK belongs on the list — once a group isplaced by the State Department on the list, whether

justifiably or not, it is a felony to provide material

support to it — but MEK appears to be doing exactlythat which is typically considered Terrorism

Assassinating civilian scientists (and severelywounding their wives) with bombs and causing othercivilian-killing explosions on Iranian soil in order toinduce fear.

In the above-linked LA Times Op-Ed by CFR’s LionelBeehner, he derides the U.S. list of state sponsors ofterrorism as ”one of the biggest farces of U.S. foreignpolicy.”

Indeed it is, but that’s equally true of the pervasive,righteous use of the term “terrorist” or “terrorismsupporter” in our political and media discourse

generally.

Anyone in government, media and think tank circleswho routinely and angrily accuse others of being“terrorists” or “supporters of terrorism” withoutrecognizing that the U.S. and its closest allies areplainly and routinely guilty of that is just a rankpropagandist.

That the U.S., in the midst of its vaunted War onTerror, directly trained a group on its own Terroristlist — while its closest ally and Washington’svenerated former officials continue to provide amplesupport to that group even as it escalates its violent



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acts – is about as conclusive a demonstration of thatfact as one could have conjured.

UPDATE: The law that criminalies the providing of

“material support” to a designated terroristorganization explicitly includes

In its definition section exactly that which The NewYorker reports the U.S. gave and perhaps continuesto give to MEK:

(b) Definitions.— As used in this section—

(1) the term “material support or resources” meansany property, tangible or intangible, or service,including currency or monetary instruments orfinancial securities, financial services, lodging,

training, expert advice or assistance . . .

(2) the term “training” means instruction or

teaching designed to impart a specific skill, as

opposed to general knowledge; and

(3) the term “expert advice or assistance” meansadvice or assistance derived from scientific, technicalor other specialized knowledge.

U.S. government officials — whether current orformer — are no more entitled to commit feloniesand violate U.S. statutes than any other citizens are.



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Our Men in Iran?

From the air, the terrain of the Department of

Energy’s Nevada National Security Site, with its aridhigh plains and remote mountain peaks, has the lookof northwest Iran.

The site, some sixty-five miles northwest of Las Vegas,was once used for nuclear testing, and now includesa counterintelligence training facility and a privateairport capable of handling Boeing 737 aircraft.

It’s a restricted area, and inhospitable—in certainsections, the curious are warned that the site’ssecurity personnel are authorized to use deadlyforce, if necessary, against intruders.

It was here that the Joint Special OperationsCommand (JSOC) conducted training, beginning in2005, for members of the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, a

dissident Iranian opposition group known in the Westas the M.E.K.

The M.E.K. had its beginnings as a Marxist-Islamiststudent-led group and, in the nineteen-seventies, itwas linked to the assassination of six Americancitizens.

It was initially part of the broad-based revolution that

led to the 1979 overthrow of the Shah of Iran.

But, within a few years, the group was waging abloody internal war with the ruling clerics, and, in1997, it was listed as a foreign terrorist organizationby the State Department.



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In 2002, the M.E.K. earned some internationalcredibility by publicly revealing—accurately—thatIran had begun enriching uranium at a secretunderground location.

Mohamed ElBaradei, who at the time was thedirector general of the International Atomic EnergyAgency, the United Nations’ nuclear monitoringagency, told me later that he had been informed thatthe information was supplied by the Mossad.

The M.E.K.’s ties with Western intelligence deepenedafter the fall of the Iraqi regime in 2003, and JSOC

began operating inside Iran in an effort tosubstantiate the Bush Administration’s fears that Iranwas building the bomb at one or more secretunderground locations.

Funds were covertly passed to a number of dissidentorganizations, for intelligence collection and,ultimately, for anti-regime terrorist activities.

Directly, or indirectly, the M.E.K. ended up withresources like arms and intelligence.

Some American-supported covert operationscontinue in Iran today, according to past and presentintelligence officials and military consultants.

Despite the growing ties, and a much-intensified

lobbying effort organized by its advocates, M.E.K. hasremained on the State Department’s list of foreignterrorist organizations—which meant that secrecywas essential in the Nevada training.



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“We did train them here, and washed them throughthe Energy Department because the D.O.E. owns allthis land in southern Nevada,” a former seniorAmerican intelligence official told me.

“We were deploying them over long distances in thedesert and mountains, and building their capacity incommunications—coördinating commo is a big deal.”

(A spokesman for J.S.O.C. said that “U.S. SpecialOperations Forces were neither aware of norinvolved in the training of M.E.K. members.”)

The training ended sometime before PresidentObama took office, the former official said.

In a separate interview, a retired four-star general,who has advised the Bush and ObamaAdministrations on national-security issues, said thathe had been privately briefed in 2005 about thetraining of Iranians associated with the M.E.K. in

Nevada by an American involved in the program.

They got “the standard training,” he said, “in commo,crypto [cryptography], small-unit tactics, andweaponry—that went on for six months,” the retiredgeneral said.

“They were kept in little pods.”

He also was told, he said, that the men doing thetraining were from JSOC, which, by 2005, had becomea major instrument in the Bush Administration’sglobal war on terror.



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“The JSOC trainers were not front-line guys who hadbeen in the field, but second- and third-tier guys—trainers and the like—and they started going off thereservation.

‘If we’re going to teach you tactics, let me show yousome really sexy stuff…’ ”

It was the ad-hoc training that provoked the worriedtelephone calls to him, the former general said. “Itold one of the guys who called me that they were allin over their heads, and all of them could end uptrouble unless they got something in writing.

The Iranians are very, very good atcounterintelligence, and stuff like this is just too hardto contain.”

The site in Nevada was being utilized at the sametime, he said, for advanced training of élite Iraqicombat units.

(The retired general said he only knew of the oneM.E.K.-affiliated group that went though the trainingcourse the former senior intelligence official saidthat he was aware of training that went on through2007.)

Allan Gerson, a Washington attorney for the M.E.K.,notes that the M.E.K. has publicly and repeatedly

renounced terror.

Gerson said he would not comment on the allegedtraining in Nevada.



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But such training, if true, he said, would be“especially incongruent with the State Department’sdecision to continue to maintain the M.E.K. on theterrorist list.

How can the U.S. train those on State’s foreignterrorist list, when others face criminal penalties forproviding a nickel to the same organization?”

Robert Baer, a retired C.I.A. agent who is fluent inArabic and had worked under cover in Kurdistan andthroughout the Middle East in his career, initially hadtold me in early 2004 of being recruited by a private

American company—working, so he believed, onbehalf of the Bush Administration—to return to Iraq.

“They wanted me to help the M.E.K. collectintelligence on Iran’s nuclear program,” Baer recalled.

“They thought I knew Farsi, which I did not. I said I’dget back to them, but never did.”

Baer, now living in California, recalled that it wasmade clear to him at the time that the operation was“a long-term thing—not just a one-shot deal.”

Massoud Khodabandeh, an I.T. expert now living inEngland who consults for the Iraqi government, wasan official with the M.E.K. before defecting in 1996.

In a telephone interview, he acknowledged that he isan avowed enemy of the M.E.K., and has advocatedagainst the group.



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Khodabandeh said that he had been with the groupsince before the fall of the Shah and, as a computerexpert, was deeply involved in intelligence activitiesas well as providing security for the M.E.K. leadership.

For the past decade, he and his English wife have runa support program for other defectors.Khodabandeh told me that he had heard from morerecent defectors about the training in Nevada.

He was told that the communications training inNevada involved more than teaching how to keep incontact during attacks—it also involved

communication intercepts.

The United States, he said, at one point found a wayto penetrate some major Iranian communicationssystems.

At the time, he said, the U.S. provided M.E.K.operatives with the ability to intercept telephonecalls and text messages inside Iran—which M.E.K.operatives translated and shared with Americansignals intelligence experts. He does not knowwhether this activity is ongoing.

Five Iranian nuclear scientists have been assassinatedsince 2007.

M.E.K. spokesmen have denied any involvement in

the killings, but early last month NBC News quotedtwo senior Obama Administration officials asconfirming that the attacks were carried out byM.E.K. units that were financed and trained byMossad, the Israeli secret service.



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NBC further quoted the Administration officials asdenying any American involvement in the M.E.K.activities.

The former senior intelligence official I spoke with

seconded the NBC report that the Israelis wereworking with the M.E.K., adding that the operationsbenefitted from American intelligence.

He said that the targets were not “Einsteins”

“The goal is to affect Iranian psychology and morale,”he said, and to “demoralize the whole system—

nuclear delivery vehicles, nuclear enrichmentfacilities, power plants.”

Attacks have also been carried out on pipelines.

He added that the operations are “primarily beingdone by M.E.K. through liaison with the Israelis, butthe United States is now providing the intelligence.”

An adviser to the special-operations community toldme that the links between the United States andM.E.K. activities inside Iran had been long-standing.“Everything being done inside Iran now is being donewith surrogates,” he said.

The sources I spoke to were unable to say whetherthe people trained in Nevada were now involved inoperations in Iran or elsewhere.

But they pointed to the general benefit of Americansupport.



“The M.E.K. was a total joke,” the senior Pentagonconsultant said, “and now it’s a real network insideIran.

How did the M.E.K. get so much more efficient?” he

asked rhetorically.

Part of it is the training in Nevada.

Part of it is logistical support in Kurdistan, and part ofit is inside Iran.

M.E.K. now has a capacity for efficient operationsthan it never had before.”

In mid-January, a few days after an assassination bycar bomb of an Iranian nuclear scientist in Tehran,Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, at a town-hallmeeting of soldiers at Fort Bliss, Texas, acknowledgedthat the U.S. government has “some ideas as to whomight be involved, but we don’t know exactly whowas involved.”

He added, “But I can tell you one thing: the UnitedStates was not involved in that kind of effort. That’snot what the United States does.”

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Ben Griffin - Former SAS Trooper Speaks Out!