US Army Calls For ‘Military Support’ Of Israeli Energy Grab

Photo: An Egyptian man looks at flames rising from a pipeline that delivers gas to Israel and Jordan after it was hit by an explosion some 40 kilometres (25 miles) west of the town of Al-Arish in the north of the Sinai peninsula, early on 10 November, 2011 (AFP)

US Military Strategists Are Contemplating The Threat Of War To Redraw The Middle East’s Energy Architecture Around Israel

A new report by the US Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute emphasises the need for “US security and military support” to its key allies in the Eastern Mediterranean, particularly Israel, over access to recent vast discoveries of regional oil and gas.

The Army study, released earlier in December 2014, concludes that extensive US military involvement “may prove essential in managing possible future conflict” in case of “an eruption of natural resource conflict in the East Mediterranean,” due to huge gas discoveries in recent years.

Visible US engagement is also necessary to ward off the regional encroachment of “emerging powers and potential new peace brokers such as Russia - which already entertains a strong interest in East Mediterranean gas developments - and notably China.”

Fossil Fuel Bonanza In The Levant

Since 2000, the Levant basin - an area encompassing the offshore territories of Israel, Palestine, Cyprus, Turkey, Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon - has been estimated to hold as much as 1.7 bn barrels of oil and up to 122 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of natural gas. As much of the region’s potential resources remain undiscovered, geologists believe this could be just a third of the total quantities of fossil fuels in the Levant.

The new US Army report argues that these hydrocarbon discoveries are of “tremendous economic and geostrategic significance,” not just for its allies, but for the United States itself. Israel especially stands to “gain considerably from their newly discovered gas wealth” in terms of cost-effective energy for domestic consumption and revenues from gas exports.

But while the discoveries offer the prospect for closer regional cooperation, they also raise “the potential for conflict over these valuable resources.” The potential for resource conflicts over oil and gas relates directly to intractable border conflicts between Israel, the Palestinians, Lebanon and Syria, as well as the unresolved Cypriot question between Greece and Turkey. US interests are to minimise the risk of conflict between its core allies, while maximising their capacity to exploit these resources.

“Israel, Cyprus, and Turkey are key strategic US allies,” the report says. “Neighbouring Egypt, Syria and Lebanon play important roles from the European and US perspective, both as direct neighbours to Israel and the Palestinian Territories as well as because of their strategically important location as the geographic interconnection between Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.”

The new US Army report is authored by Mohammed al-Katiri and Laura al-Katiri. Mohammed al-Katiri was previously research director at the UK Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) Advanced Research and Assessment Group (ARAG), but now heads up two private intelligence consultancies, MENA Insight and the Conflict Studies Research Centre  (CSRC), both of which provide services to government and commercial sectors, including the oil and gas industry.

The Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) which published the report, calls itself an Army “think factory” for “commanders and civilian leaders.” SSI uses independent analysis to help “develop policy recommendations” for the US Army on national security and to “influence policy debate” across the military.

Advancing Israel’s Energy Empire

The SSI report on the risk of Middle East resource conflicts notes that Israel’s massive offshore gas discoveries “have yet to translate into proven gas reserves,” but that it’s total of 9.48 tcf of proven and 30 tcf estimated reserves, positions Israel “ahead of all East Mediterranean countries in terms of gas reserves and resource prospectivity.”

The Army report also reveals that Syria could hold significant offshore oil and gas potential. In 2007, before the outbreak of hostilities, President Bashar al-Assad launched a first bidding round to secure investment into new exploration efforts, and another in 2012 that was cancelled due to deteriorating security conditions.

“Once the Syria conflict is resolved, prospects for Syrian offshore production - provided commercial resources are found - are high,” observes the report.  Potential oil and gas resources can be developed “relatively smoothly once the political situation allows for any new exploration efforts in its offshore territories.”

The report also mentions significant gas finds in the offshore territories of Lebanon and Palestine, including the Gaza Marine, which holds over 1 tcf – production of which has been “obstruction by Israel over concerns regarding the flow of revenues to Palestinian stakeholders.” But in addition to the Gaza Marine, “Palestinian offshore territories near Gaza are believed to hold substantial hydrocarbon potential,” whose total quantities are still unknown because a lack of exploration there:

“Both Israel and Cyprus are key US allies and pillars of US foreign policy in the region: Israel, with its long history of close political ties with the United States, historically has stood at the heart of American efforts to secure regional peace; while Cyprus forms the most eastern part of Europe and is an important strategic location for both US and British military interests.”

Regional War

The region faces four main potential arcs of conflict. Firstly, in Israel-Palestine, the US Army study warns that “the presence of valuable natural resources in disputed territory may further feed the conflict.”

Secondly, rival claims between Israel and Lebanon over maritime boundaries could “complicate” the development of regional offshore hydrocarbon resources and result in military confrontation.

Thirdly, that risk has, in turn, delayed efforts to define Cypriot-Israeli and Cypriot-Lebanese exclusive economic maritime zones.

Fourthly, in 2013 Israel granted oil exploration licenses in the Syrian-claimed Golan Heights, spelling “potential for another armed conflict between the two parties should substantial hydrocarbon resources be discovered.” According to a report to the UN Security Council in early December, Israel has been in regular contact with Syrian rebels, including Islamic State fighters, raising the question of Israel’s role in supporting anti-Assad extremists to cement its control of Golan’s potential fossil fuel resources.

The US Army study highlights a real risk that tensions across these flashpoints could escalate into a wider regional conflict:

“In the case of an armed conflict between Israel and Lebanon, the security of the wider Levant region could once again be at stake, with a possible escalation of the conflict into neighbouring Syria and the Palestinian Territories, as well as (with historical precedents) Jordan and Egypt. In combination, the pre-existing political problems in all of these countries – Syria destabilizing into de facto civil war, Egypt in the midst of political instability, the Palestinians and Lebanese lacking stable political cores – the potential for a new, escalating regional war is a threatening scenario indeed.”

War For Peace (For Gas)

To stave off this disturbing prospect, the US report recommends that Israel and other Levant gas hubs like Lebanon and Cyprus play a key role in exporting Eastern Mediterranean gas to their Arab neighbours, such as Egypt, Turkey and Jordan, given that Middle East demand for gas is projected to rise dramatically in coming decades.

Further, the report highlights the possibility of Israel piping gas to Turkey, where it can be exported to European markets, making Turkey a regional gas transhipment hub. This would allow both Turkey and Europe to wean off their Russian gas dependence, and integrate instead into a “peaceful” US-Israeli dominated regional energy architecture.

As has been confirmed by Quartet Middle East envoy Tony Blair’s energy advisor, Ariel Ezrahi, Gaza’s offshore gas resources are seen as a potential bridge to overcome popular Arab public opposition to gas deals with Israel. “Israeli as well as Palestinian offshore hydrocarbon resources could play a significant role in facilitating mutual trust and the willingness to cooperate,” the US Army study suggests, “including between Israel and a few of its other Arab neighbours, Jordan and Egypt.”

But ultimately this architecture cannot be installed without extensive US intervention of some kind. “US diplomatic and military support has a pivotal role to play in the East Mediterranean’s complex geopolitical landscape, and its importance will only grow as the value of the natural resources at stake increases,” concludes the Army report:

“US security and military support for its main allies in the case of an eruption of natural resource conflict in the East Mediterranean may prove essential in managing possible future conflict.”

Diplomatically, the US could play a significant role in mediating between the various parties to facilitate successful oil and gas development projects across the East Mediterranean, not just for “Israel’s sake,” but also to shore-up allies like Jordan and Egypt with “low-cost Israeli gas,” contributing to regional economic and thus political stability:

“US support - diplomatic and, where necessary, military - can form a potentially powerful element in the safeguarding of these long-term economic benefits, at little cost in relative terms.”

If regional tensions escalate though, the report warns that “the United States also holds an important military position that could have an impact in securing the East Mediterranean,” including “military training and equipment support” to defend Cyprus and Israel from attacks on “their energy infrastructure and gas developments.”

This Orwellian document thus reveals that in the name of maintaining regional peace, a new Great Game is at play. To counter Russian and Chinese influence while cementing influence over its Arab allies, US military strategists are contemplating the threat of war to redraw the Middle East’s energy architecture around Israel.

 - Nafeez Ahmed PhD, is an investigative journalist, international security scholar and bestselling author who tracks what he calls the 'crisis of civilization.' He is a winner of the Project Censored Award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism for his Guardian reporting on the intersection of global ecological, energy and economic crises with regional geopolitics and conflicts. He has also written for The Independent, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Scotsman, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, Quartz, Prospect, New Statesman, Le Monde diplomatique, New Internationalist. His work on the root causes and covert operations linked to international terrorism officially contributed to the 9/11 Commission and the 7/7 Coroner’s Inquest.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

The Black Knight Transformer Drone

The military's newest drone is a hybrid "heli-truck." Called the Black Knight Transformer, the drone is capable of carrying more than 4,000 pounds in payload, is able to travel over land on truck wheels, and comes with an attachable boat hull. RT's Lindsay France takes a look at the new vehicle.

U S Army Tests Bio Weapons On US Citizens

Operation: Big City

Open-air testing takes research into deadly agents out of the laboratories in order to study their effectiveness, including their aerial dispersion patterns, and whether they actually infect and kill in field trials. 

Fort Detrick is the U.S. Army's biowarfare facility, founded in 1943. Frank Olson was one of the first scientists to work there. From the final years of World War II through the Korean War and up to the present time scientists at Fort Detrick developed biological weapons including anthrax....In November 1953 Olson attended a meeting of a group of CIA agents at a country retreat where they discussed their work. Olson was suspected by the CIA of being a security risk.

He was given a drink laced with '___' and when well under the influence of the drug he was subjected to interrogation using Artichoke techniques, probably a very unpleasant experience. 

A week later Olson was staying in Room 1018A at the Hotel Statler in New York City under the supervision of a CIA doctor, Richard Lashbrook. The manager of the hotel, Armond Pastore, heard a thump outside and went out to find Olson dying on the pavement, having fallen from the 13th floor. The manager later found that a phone call had been made from Room 1018A to a number in Long Island and the caller had said only, "Olson's gone." 

....A California history professor, Kathryn Olmstead, has discovered documents at the Gerald Ford library which were written by Cheney and Rumsfeld. 

They show how far the White House went to conceal information about Olson's death — and his role in preparing anthrax and other biological weapons. ... 

Cheney and Rumsfeld were given the task of covering up the details of Frank Olson's death. At the time, Rumsfeld was White House Chief of Staff to President Gerald Ford. Dick Cheney was a senior White House assistant. 

The documents uncovered by Professor Olmstead include one that states "Dr Olson's job was so sensitive that it is highly unlikely that we would submit relevant evidence". 

US Army Tests Mosquitoes, Fleas As Biological Weapons

A military attack with about 230,000 mosquitoes infected with yellow fever would be difficult to detect and would be impossible for a nation to react quickly with a mass-immunization program, the U.S. Army Chemical Corps believed in the 1950s.

The corps put its theory to a test in two locations - Savannah, Ga. and the Avon Park Air Force Range.

With tests called Operation Big Buzz, Operation Big Itch and Operation Drop Kick, the corps explored the feasibility of using fleas and mosquitoes as weapons.

Many online watchdog groups and other online posts make unsubstantiated claims that the U.S. military released mosquitoes infected with yellow fever over Savannah and Avon Park. After each test Army agents posed as public health officials to test the victims for effects, according to these accounts.

A Truthout story quoted an unidentified resident in 2010 who said the experiments resulted in at least six or seven deaths. The quote is from a story titled, "Florida Dengue Fever Outbreak Leads Back to CIA and Army Experiments."

Declassified government documents apparently show tests were conducted, but with uninfected mosquitoes.

"In 1956 the Corps released 600,000 uninfected mosquitoes from a plane at Avon Park Bombing Range, Florida. Within a day the mosquitoes had spread a distance of between one and two miles and had bitten many people," according to Summary of Major Events and Problems U.S. Army Chemical Corps, Fiscal Year 1959 - January 1960, from the corps historical office in Maryland.

"In 1958 further tests at Avon Park AFB, Florida, showed that mosquitoes could easily be disseminated from helicopters, would spread more than a mile in each direction and would enter all types of buildings," the corps report stated.

Longtime Avon Park resident Beatrice Peterson didn't know about mosquito releases, but she remembers that screwworm flies were released in the mid to late 1950s.

She was 14 years old in 1956 and attended the Hopewell Elementary/Junior High School.

"We know they released some flies, but what was the reason and why, I can't remember why because we were in school back in the 1950s," Peterson said. "Occasionally we would see them when they fly over and drop the little boxes out. Evidently the boxes were supposed to open up."

She said planes dropped the boxes, but she didn't remember specifically what type of planes.

"You know living in Avon Park and with the bombing range right out there, we would never look up to see, all we would say is 'that's coming from the bombing range,'" Peterson said. "You know what they say about the government - the government keeps a lot of secrets."

The corps report stated that tests showed that mosquitoes could be spread over areas of several square miles by means of devices dropped from planes or set up on the ground. And while the tests were made with uninfected mosquitoes, "it is a fairly safe assumption that infected mosquitoes could be spread equally well."

The Biological Warfare Laboratories at Fort Detrick established a program to study the aedes aegypti mosquito, which is a carrier of the yellow fever virus.

If a military attack were made with Aedes aegypti mosquito's it would be quite difficult to detect the fact, particularly if this type of mosquito ordinarily lived in the area, the corps report stated. "There is a yellow fever vaccine that has proven to be an effective prophylactic, but it would be impossible for a nation such as the U.S.S.R. to quickly undertake a mass-immunization program to protect millions of people."

The Avon Park mosquito testing is noted in a March 1981 U.S. Army report titled "An Evaluation of Entomological Warfare as a Potential Danger to the United States and European Nations."

"The feasibility of area coverage with aeded aegypti mosquitoes was based on the Avon Park, Florida mosquito trials," the report stated. About 223,000 infected female mosquitoes would be required for a hypothetical attack. The insects would be released from a helicopter 610 meters upwind of the target area.

A 2002 article by the Lakeland Ledger reported the release of some details of government biological tests in a 1977 Army report. 

Tests at Avon Park involved wheat fungus that apparently was part of the effort to develop weapons against the Soviet Union's food supply, according to the report and U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson.

Tests at Avon Park took place during 1954-1957, 1960, 1964 and in 1965, according to the 1977 report.

In 2002, Nelson pushed for the release of information about the military's biological and chemical weapons tests.

Efforts to declassify details of these tests do not appear to include tests conducted in the 1950s throughout the nation and at several sites in Florida, including the Avon Park Air Force Range, the Lakeland Ledger article stated.

(Marc Valero)

ALMOST EVERYTHING IN “DR. STRANGELOVE” WAS TRUE

POSTED BY ERIC SCHLOSSER

This month marks the fiftieth anniversary of Stanley Kubrick’s black comedy about nuclear weapons, “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.” Released on January 29, 1964, the film caused a good deal of controversy. Its plot suggested that a mentally deranged American general could order a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, without consulting the President. One reviewer described the film as “dangerous … an evil thing about an evil thing.” Another compared it to Soviet propaganda. Although “Strangelove” was clearly a farce, with the comedian Peter Sellers playing three roles, it was criticized for being implausible. An expert at the Institute for Strategic Studies called the events in the film “impossible on a dozen counts.” A former Deputy Secretary of Defense dismissed the idea that someone could authorize the use of a nuclear weapon without the President’s approval: “Nothing, in fact, could be further from the truth.” (See a compendium of clips from the film.) When “Fail-Safe”—a Hollywood thriller with a similar plot, directed by Sidney Lumet—opened, later that year, it was criticized in much the same way. “The incidents in ‘Fail-Safe’ are deliberate lies!” General Curtis LeMay, the Air Force chief of staff, said. “Nothing like that could happen.”

 The first casualty of every war is the truth—and the Cold War was no exception to that dictum. Half a century after Kubrick’s mad general, Jack D. Ripper, launched a nuclear strike on the Soviets to defend the purity of “our precious bodily fluids” from Communist subversion, we now know that American officers did indeed have the ability to start a Third World War on their own. And despite the introduction of rigorous safeguards in the years since then, the risk of an accidental or unauthorized nuclear detonation hasn’t been completely eliminated.

The command and control of nuclear weapons has long been plagued by an “always/never” dilemma. The administrative and technological systems that are necessary to insure that nuclear weapons are always available for use in wartime may be quite different from those necessary to guarantee that such weapons can never be used, without proper authorization, in peacetime. During the nineteen-fifties and sixties, the “always” in American war planning was given far greater precedence than the “never.” Through two terms in office, beginning in 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower struggled with this dilemma. He wanted to retain Presidential control of nuclear weapons while defending America and its allies from attack. But, in a crisis, those two goals might prove contradictory, raising all sorts of difficult questions. What if Soviet bombers were en route to the United States but the President somehow couldn’t be reached? What if Soviet tanks were rolling into West Germany but a communications breakdown prevented NATOofficers from contacting the White House? What if the President were killed during a surprise attack on Washington, D.C., along with the rest of the nation’s civilian leadership? Who would order a nuclear retaliation then?

With great reluctance, Eisenhower agreed to let American officers use their nuclear weapons, in an emergency, if there were no time or no means to contact the President. Air Force pilots were allowed to fire their nuclear anti-aircraft rockets to shoot down Soviet bombers heading toward the United States. And about half a dozen high-level American commanders were allowed to use far more powerful nuclear weapons, without contacting the White House first, when their forces were under attack and “the urgency of time and circumstances clearly does not permit a specific decision by the President, or other person empowered to act in his stead.” Eisenhower worried that providing that sort of authorization in advance could make it possible for someone to do “something foolish down the chain of command” and start an all-out nuclear war. But the alternative—allowing an attack on the United States to go unanswered or NATO forces to be overrun—seemed a lot worse. Aware that his decision might create public unease about who really controlled America’s nuclear arsenal, Eisenhower insisted that his delegation of Presidential authority be kept secret. At a meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he confessed to being “very fearful of having written papers on this matter.”

President John F. Kennedy was surprised to learn, just a few weeks after taking office, about this secret delegation of power. “A subordinate commander faced with a substantial military action,” Kennedy was told in a top-secret memo, “could start the thermonuclear holocaust on his own initiative if he could not reach you.” Kennedy and his national-security advisers were shocked not only by the wide latitude given to American officers but also by the loose custody of the roughly three thousand American nuclear weapons stored in Europe. Few of the weapons had locks on them. Anyone who got hold of them could detonate them. And there was little to prevent NATO officers from Turkey, Holland, Italy, Great Britain, and Germany from using them without the approval of the United States.

In December, 1960, fifteen members of Congress serving on the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy had toured NATO bases to investigate how American nuclear weapons were being deployed. They found that the weapons—some of them about a hundred times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima—were routinely guarded, transported, and handled by foreign military personnel. American control of the weapons was practically nonexistent. Harold Agnew, a Los Alamos physicist who accompanied the group, was especially concerned to see German pilots sitting in German planes that were decorated with Iron Crosses—and carrying American atomic bombs. Agnew, in his own words, “nearly wet his pants” when he realized that a lone American sentry with a rifle was all that prevented someone from taking off in one of those planes and bombing the Soviet Union.

* * *

The Kennedy Administration soon decided to put locking devices inside NATO’s nuclear weapons. The coded electromechanical switches, known as “permissive action links” (PALs), would be placed on the arming lines. The weapons would be inoperable without the proper code—and that code would be shared with NATO allies only when the White House was prepared to fight the Soviets. The American military didn’t like the idea of these coded switches, fearing that mechanical devices installed to improve weapon safety would diminish weapon reliability. A top-secret State Department memo summarized the view of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1961: “all is well with the atomic stockpile program and there is no need for any changes.”

After a crash program to develop the new control technology, during the mid-nineteen-sixties, permissive action links were finally placed inside most of the nuclear weapons deployed byNATO forces. But Kennedy’s directive applied only to the NATO arsenal. For years, the Air Force and the Navy blocked attempts to add coded switches to the weapons solely in their custody. During a national emergency, they argued, the consequences of not receiving the proper code from the White House might be disastrous. And locked weapons might play into the hands of Communist saboteurs. “The very existence of the lock capability,” a top Air Force general claimed, “would create a fail-disable potential for knowledgeable agents to ‘dud’ the entire Minuteman [missile] force.” The Joint Chiefs thought that strict military discipline was the best safeguard against an unauthorized nuclear strike. A two-man rule was instituted to make it more difficult for someone to use a nuclear weapon without permission. And a new screening program, the Human Reliability Program, was created to stop people with emotional, psychological, and substance-abuse problems from gaining access to nuclear weapons.

Despite public assurances that everything was fully under control, in the winter of 1964, while “Dr. Strangelove” was playing in theatres and being condemned as Soviet propaganda, there was nothing to prevent an American bomber crew or missile launch crew from using their weapons against the Soviets. Kubrick had researched the subject for years, consulted experts, and worked closely with a former R.A.F. pilot, Peter George, on the screenplay of the film. George’s novel about the risk of accidental nuclear war, “Red Alert,” was the source for most of “Strangelove” ’s plot. Unbeknownst to both Kubrick and George, a top official at the Department of Defense had already sent a copy of “Red Alert” to every member of the Pentagon’s Scientific Advisory Committee for Ballistic Missiles. At the Pentagon, the book was taken seriously as a cautionary tale about what might go wrong. Even Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara privately worried that an accident, a mistake, or a rogue American officer could start a nuclear war.

Coded switches to prevent the unauthorized use of nuclear weapons were finally added to the control systems of American missiles and bombers in the early nineteen-seventies. The Air Force was not pleased, and considered the new security measures to be an insult, a lack of confidence in its personnel. Although the Air Force now denies this claim, according to more than one source I contacted, the code necessary to launch a missile was set to be the same at every Minuteman site: 00000000.

* * *

The early permissive action links were rudimentary. Placed in NATO weapons during the nineteen-sixties and known as Category A PALs, the switches relied on a split four-digit code, with ten thousand possible combinations. If the United States went to war, two people would be necessary to unlock a nuclear weapon, each of them provided with half the code. Category APALs were useful mainly to delay unauthorized use, to buy time after a weapon had been taken or to thwart an individual psychotic hoping to cause a large explosion. A skilled technician could open a stolen weapon and unlock it within a few hours. Today’s Category D PALs, installed in the Air Force’s hydrogen bombs, are more sophisticated. They require a six-digit code, with a million possible combinations, and have a limited-try feature that disables a weapon when the wrong code is repeatedly entered.

The Air Force’s land-based Minuteman III missiles and the Navy’s submarine-based Trident II missiles now require an eight-digit code—which is no longer 00000000—in order to be launched. The Minuteman crews receive the code via underground cables or an aboveground radio antenna. Sending the launch code to submarines deep underwater presents a greater challenge. Trident submarines contain two safes. One holds the keys necessary to launch a missile; the other holds the combination to the safe with the keys; and the combination to the safe holding the combination must be transmitted to the sub by very-low-frequency or extremely-low-frequency radio. In a pinch, if Washington, D.C., has been destroyed and the launch code doesn’t arrive, the sub’s crew can open the safes with a blowtorch.

The security measures now used to control America’s nuclear weapons are a vast improvement over those of 1964. But, like all human endeavors, they are inherently flawed. The Department of Defense’s Personnel Reliability Program is supposed to keep people with serious emotional or psychological issues away from nuclear weapons—and yet two of the nation’s top nuclear commanders were recently removed from their posts. Neither appears to be the sort of calm, stable person you want with a finger on the button. In fact, their misbehavior seems straight out of “Strangelove.”

Vice Admiral Tim Giardina, the second-highest-ranking officer at the U.S. Strategic Command—the organization responsible for all of America’s nuclear forces—-was investigated last summer for allegedly using counterfeit gambling chips at the Horseshoe Casino in Council Bluffs, Iowa. According to the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, “a significant monetary amount” of counterfeit chips was involved. Giardina was relieved of his command on October 3, 2013. A few days later, Major General Michael Carey, the Air Force commander in charge of America’s intercontinental ballistic missiles, was fired for conduct “unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.”According to a report by the Inspector General of the Air Force, Carey had consumed too much alcohol during an official trip to Russia, behaved rudely toward Russian officers, spent time with “suspect” young foreign women in Moscow, loudly discussed sensitive information in a public hotel lounge there, and drunkenly pleaded to get onstage and sing with a Beatles cover band at La Cantina, a Mexican restaurant near Red Square. Despite his requests, the band wouldn’t let Carey onstage to sing or to play the guitar.

While drinking beer in the executive lounge at Moscow’s Marriott Aurora during that visit, General Carey made an admission with serious public-policy implications. He off-handedly told a delegation of U.S. national-security officials that his missile-launch officers have the “worst morale in the Air Force.” Recent events suggest that may be true. In the spring of 2013, nineteen launch officers at Minot Air Force base in North Dakota were decertified for violating safety rules and poor discipline. In August, 2013, the entire missile wing at Malmstrom Air Force base in Montana failed its safety inspection. Last week, the Air Force revealed that thirty-four launch officers at Malmstrom had been decertified for cheating on proficiency exams—and that at least three launch officers are being investigated for illegal drug use. The findings of a report by the RAND Corporation, leaked to the A.P., were equally disturbing. The study found that the rates of spousal abuse and court martials among Air Force personnel with nuclear responsibilities are much higher than those among people with other jobs in the Air Force. “We don’t care if things go properly,” a launch officer told RAND. “We just don’t want to get in trouble.”

The most unlikely and absurd plot element in “Strangelove” is the existence of a Soviet “Doomsday Machine.” The device would trigger itself, automatically, if the Soviet Union were attacked with nuclear weapons. It was meant to be the ultimate deterrent, a threat to destroy the world in order to prevent an American nuclear strike. But the failure of the Soviets to tell the United States about the contraption defeats its purpose and, at the end of the film, inadvertently causes a nuclear Armageddon. “The whole point of the Doomsday Machine is lost,” Dr. Strangelove, the President’s science adviser, explains to the Soviet Ambassador, “if you keep it a secret!”

A decade after the release of “Strangelove,” the Soviet Union began work on the Perimeter system—-a network of sensors and computers that could allow junior military officials to launch missiles without oversight from the Soviet leadership. Perhaps nobody at the Kremlin had seen the film. Completed in 1985, the system was known as the Dead Hand. Once it was activated, Perimeter would order the launch of long-range missiles at the United States if it detected nuclear detonations on Soviet soil and Soviet leaders couldn’t be reached. Like the Doomsday Machine in “Strangelove,” Perimeter was kept secret from the United States; its existence was not revealed until years after the Cold War ended.

In retrospect, Kubrick’s black comedy provided a far more accurate description of the dangers inherent in nuclear command-and-control systems than the ones that the American people got from the White House, the Pentagon, and the mainstream media.

“This is absolute madness, Ambassador,” President Merkin Muffley says in the film, after being told about the Soviets’ automated retaliatory system. “Why should you build such a thing?” Fifty years later, that question remains unanswered, and “Strangelove” seems all the more brilliant, bleak, and terrifyingly on the mark.

Big Safari: The Air Force’s Top-Secret Spy Agency

The man on the other line didn’t seem happy. “We are a secretive and shadowy organization that has been in existence for over 60 years,” he said.

The man’s name is Col. Edward Topps. He’s the leader of a mysterious Air Force agency known as “Big Safari.” Last month, he called me out of the blue, after I’d written a story about a top-secret spy plane mission. Topps’ unit had paid Sierra Nevada Corporation—a major private defense firm—tens of millions of dollars to gather intel on Mexico’s most notorious drug cartels.

There had been no bidding process for the contract, which is a red flag, given the Pentagon’s history of how it spends taxpayer money. So I decided to take a closer look.

“They are huge,” a source tells me about Topps’ agency. “It’s the good old boy Air Force thing. They’ve got so many ‘black’ projects it’s not even funny.”

MQ9 Reaper drone (USAF)

Known for its spy work, Big Safari is the agency that helped the United States perfect its killer drones. It works with a number of major defense firms, and some 10 percent of its business has gone to Sierra Nevada. Over the past seven years, Topps’ unit has steered $3.5 billion worth of contracts to the Reno-based company without allowing others to compete for the deals, according to a federal contracting database. As one source puts it, Big Safari and Sierra Nevada “are so close they share rubbers.”

To find out more about their relationship, I filed a Freedom of Information Act request. Topps had seen the FOIA and read my story. He tried to reach out to me on Twitter, and later called me on my cell. I called him back later that day. “We work some of the departments’ most sensitive projects,” he told me, “and they are all along the lines of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations.”

I knew much of this from hearsay, but was surprised he was being so blunt. I stopped him before he continued. There was no point, I thought, in the colonel getting in trouble.

“You don’t want me to quote everything you are saying, I assume?”

He brushed me off. “I don’t have a problem,” he said, and kept talking.

*

Sierra Nevada is owned by Fatih Ozmen and his wife, Eren. They were born in Turkey and have been praised for their self-made success. Fatih Ozmen, I’ve heard, is a generous man. Once, in a celebratory mood, he apparently bought the entire house drinks at Siné, a popular bar in Pentagon City.

(Eren Ozman/Facebook)

The Ozmens have friends in high places. One of the largest recipients of their largess is Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat and Senate majority leader. On Eren Ozmen’s Facebook page, there’s also a photo of her with an arm around Barbara Mikulski, the Maryland Democrat and member of the powerful Senate Intelligence committee. And like many of its competitors, Sierra Nevada hires plenty of former high-ranking military officials, including some who have previously worked for the Air Force.

SCANDAL IN NEVADA

About 10 years ago, the Ozmens had a brush with scandal after Sierra Nevada hired the wife of Republican congressman Jim Gibbons as a consultant. Gibbons eventually went on to become the governor of Nevada. But while on Capitol Hill, he reportedly pushed to award Sierra Nevada contracts without disclosing his wife's connection to the firm.

Over the past seven years, the company’s business with the federal government has grown rapidly—from $100 million in 2005 to $1 billion in 2012, according to a federal contracting database. That’s a 1,000 percent increase, which coincided with Sierra Nevada’s growing lobbying efforts. Since 1997, the couple has donated about $424,000 to both parties in Washington, and they’ve steadily upped their annual donations, according to Federal Election Commission records. The company’s political action committee has given another $700,000 since 2002.

(Eren Ozman/Facebook)

I called Sierra Nevada several times and the firm declined to comment.

*

Though it recently branched out into aerospace, Sierra Nevada is primarily known for its intelligence work. The company’s spy plane ops go well beyond Mexico. Big Safari hired the firm to run a similar mission in Africa. Sources say the project, known as Atlas, involved sending manned, private spy planes over the Sahara desert in Mali. Like most of Sierra Nevada’s contracts with Big Safari, these surveillance projects were offered without competitive bidding.

CAMERAS AND DRONES

Sierra Nevada has integrated cameras on killer drones. One drone-based camera can monitor an area roughly the size of an entire city.

Sole source contracts have a long and shady history in Washington. That’s why in 1984, Congress passed a law mandating competitive bidding, except in rare cases, for government agencies looking to spend taxpayer money. “The reason for competition,” says Charles Tiefer, a contracting expert at Baltimore University School of Law, “is that it lowers price, it provides equal opportunity, and it combats corruption.”

Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser spaceship (NASA/Sierra Nevada)

Efforts to skirt the law have led to a number of high profile scandals. During the second Iraq War, for instance, Halliburton, the oilfield services firm once headed by Dick Cheney, rang up $1.4 billion in questionable charges, according to Congress.

The incident led to considerable backlash on Capitol Hill. But Big Safari’s habit of offering no bid contracts to major defense firms has largely gone unnoticed. Since 2005, the organization Topps works for has handed out $31 billion to a handful of companies; 96 percent of the money was awarded without competition. (Big Safari won’t comment on these numbers because of “operational security.”)

The locations of Sierra Nevada's offices in the US. (Sierra Nevada)

During our brief phone conversation in September, Topps confirmed that his office shuns competitive bidding. “We have used the same contracting procedures for the past 61 years,” he added.

But everything Big Safari does, according to Topps, is within the confines of the law. There are legal exemptions, he told me, “that allow us to do things quick and secretively so that we can make sure that our enemies [don’t find out about it].”

For years, Tiefer, the Baltimore law professor, has worked on contracting issues with Congress. But when I told him about my conversation with the colonel, he was surprised. Big Safari, he says, “sounds like a rogue agency. They think none of the laws apply to them.”

There is no group in government, Tiefer says, that has blanket exemptions from the law. They just have to engage in a bidding process in a secretive way. The exemptions, he says, even for national security reasons, are supposed to be made case-by-case. “The head of this agency is a one-man wrecking crew,” he says, “for the federal system of competitive contracting.”

*

Wreckage of the plane crash in Colombia (Noticias RCN)

As we continued talking on the phone, Topps was pleasant. But he made sure to stress that he wasn’t going to make it easy for me learn more about Sierra Nevada or its contracts. “Don’t be angry or upset when your FOIA request is turned down,” he said. “That’s just the way we do business here at Big Safari.”

His biggest concern: In my Mexico story, I had included the names of contractors. That, he said, was already making it hard to do business. Mentioning the Ozmens, he indicated, was also a bad move. “When you put out individual names of people it immediately puts their lives at risk, whether you are talking at terrorists in the Middle East or drug lords in Mexico.”

I pointed out that the company is a major defense firm, and that part of my job was letting people know how government money is spent. Besides, the names of the contractors aren’t classified.

Despite his irritation, Topps offered me a unique opportunity. He invited me to Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, to meet him for a longer, on-the-record interview. He was willing to take his secretive agency out of the shadows, but he wanted the chance to persuade me to be sensitive to his security needs.

It never happened. I was all set to go when two weeks later, a Sierra Nevada spy plane crashed in Colombia, killing three Americans and one Panamanian. The mission, I quickly learned, was another Big Safari op. The agency had hired Sierra Nevada to spy on Colombian drug boats.

When I wrote the story in early October, I once again named names. No matter how much I wanted access, it was more important to let readers know what that plane was doing and how taxpayer money was being spent.

Topps apparently didn’t agree. After reading my story, he cancelled the trip. “It seems to me you are trying to smear individual leaders,” he wrote in an email. “I won’t be a part of your stories any longer.”

The Pentagon's "Orthorectified Image Skin"

By Ray Locker

Future military operations may use a constantly updated digital "image skin" for a comprehensive map of the world under development by the Pentagon's National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA).

This week, the NGA sought information from potential contractors to help develop the "orthorectified image skin" that would provide the base layer for the world map. Such a map would give the military a clearer picture of any potential trouble spot where troops would have to operate.

The U.S. Geological Survey defines orthoimagery as "high resolution aerial images that combine the visual attributes of an aerial photograph with the spatial accuracy and reliability" of a traditional map.

"A key element necessary to support global readiness is the availability of a current and accurate worldwide image base to ensure a common operational picture for all users," the NGA document says.

In March, the NGA issued its first request for potential contractors for the orthoimaging for the map. The image skin will provide the foundation for the map and consist of images from multiple sources, including "commercial and government sources from satellite or airborne," a March NGA document shows. "Sensors have included Electro Optical, Multi Sensor Imagery, Light Detection and Ranging, Synthetic Aperture Radar and Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar."

The images for the map, according to the NGA, must be updated electronically "with multiple updates expected each week."

NGA officials in charge of the map of the world project were scheduled to attend a geospatial intelligence symposium this month in Tampa, home to U.S. Central and Special Operations commands. The event was postponed until next spring because the government shutdown prevented government officials from traveling.

Images and maps from the NGA provide vital intelligence for military missions around the world, including the raid in 2011 by Navy SEALs that killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. Using a variety of sources, the NGA provides a comprehensive visual picture for troops on the ground and for aerial attacks.

Effective imaging and mapping can mean the difference between success and failure for any military mission. Troops on the ground need to know if a wall they may be forced to scale is 10 feet high instead of 20, for example, then they can adjust their tactics accordingly.

Other recent NGA programs include the digital mapping of large sections of the ocean floor, particularly in Asia, where the Obama administration has called for an increased military focus.

“Closing” Guantanamo Doesn’t Mean What You Think

The interior of a cell from a disciplinary block known as Five Echo, at the detention complex at the U.S. Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay. (Credit: AP/Mc2 Kilho Park)



... let’s not get confused: closing down the prison has little to do with releasing the remaining prisoners, some of whom have been held there for nearly 12 years—almost none of them ever charged with a crime.

In fact, closing down the prison doesn’t clear up the issue of what will happen to the 164 prisoners, all of whom are foreign nationals, except that they will be “transferred,” a term that can mean whatever the President wants it to mean: relocating prisoners to another prison, releasing them to the custody of their home governments, placing them in “rehabilitation” facilities, or just simply: get them off the base.

The ACLU, surprisingly, didn’t speak to that distinction when it showcased the costs of keeping Guantánamo open over the last decade. They pointed out the millions that could be allocated to other important programs by “transferring detainees” out of Guantanamo: keeping down healthcare costs for military families, fully funding assistance in transitioning U.S. veterans to civilian life, covering the military’s body armor budget, funding prosthetics research (presumably for vets who lost limbs).

To be fair, the confusion can be partly attributed to the President’s waffling on the issue. He has offered several renditions of  “closing down” Guantánamo: Shortly after he took office in his first term, he conceded that some of the prisoners, despite lack of sufficient evidence or due to “contaminated” evidence, could never be tried. By implication, they could never be released.  Sometime after that, he toyed with the idea of relocating them to a new prison in Illinois. That plan would have allowed him, technically, to keep his promise to close Gitmo. Protests from various corners of the U.S. quickly put a kibosh on that idea.

More recently, the Obama Administration has been in talks with the Yemeni government to transfer somewhere between 55 to 80 Yemeni prisoners to Sana’a, on the condition of a new Guantanamo prison rehabilitation facility of some sort being built there. It would be funded by anyone but the U.S. — most likely the Saudis, who according to the LA Times, have had a successful track record of “rehabilitating” terrorists, presumably so that they will not fight back (against governments who’ve done them harm). The U.S. has promised that the “rehab” would include “counseling, instruction in a peaceful form of Islam, and job training in Yemen before any decision on freeing them.”  

Still, I shudder to think which other tactics will be used. See this recent clip, which shows torture being inflicted under the watchful eye of American military personnel in Afghanistan (warning: it is extremely violent). Is it unreasonable to anticipate that that the transfer of Yemeni detainees to Sana’a will be accompanied by the transfer of torture, death, and harm to their families?

Given its own track record, the Yemeni government hardly inspires confidence in the promise of ethical treatment: at times, it purports to represent the interests of the families of the Gitmo prisoners; in the same breath, it reveals itself to be a faithful servant of the U.S. by justifying or covering up U.S. drone attacks into Yemen. And now, it is engaging in negotiations with the U.S. to build a prison/halfway house to house the as-of-yet uncharged Yemenis, going so far as to offer to pay for it before rescinding its offer due to a tight government budget. It is noteworthy that the home-governments of other Gitmo prisoners have refused to imprison them again upon “transfer,” on the grounds that they have not been convicted of any crimes.

Like me, Sen. Saxby Chambliss also thinks transferring prisoners to a prison in Yemen is a bad idea, but for different reasons. Chambliss believes that the Yemenis, at least 20 of whom have been deemed “low-risk” detainees, would be a danger to the U.S. even if they were not released but transferred to a Yemeni prison. Chambliss’ logic makes sense, and could even construed be an implicit acknowledgment that the U.S. has treated these prisoners abominably. After all, if the agents of a foreign government kidnapped and tortured you, threatened to hurt your family, locked you up in a tiny cage for twelve years while guards disciplined and humiliated you, mashed up your Bible, periodically beat you for having the temerity to be unsatisfied with the arrangement, and challenged your ability to hunger strike by violently forcing a tube up your nose three times a day— all without ever charging you with a crime or showing evidence of wrongdoing — you’d be angry enough to dream of ways of getting back at that government and its officials if you were ever released.  Thomas Jefferson suspected as much back in 1781, when he suggested that after emancipation, ex-slaves should be expelled for fear of retaliation against their former owners for the inhuman treatment they had received.

But Chambliss’ fears are not substantiated. As Adam Hudson cites in a brilliant analysis of the supposedly concluded Gitmo hunger strikes, the “recidivism rate” for released Guantanamo prisoners is 4 percent. That low rate suggests that these men, if they ever were prone to violence (which we can’t determine, given the lack of evidence) are remarkably forgiving of those who have inflicted serious violence and other wrongdoing on them.

There are other reasons to oppose “transferring,” rather than releasing prisoners. Relocating human beings who’ve been caged for 11 or more years— despite any public evidence of wrongdoing–to a prison in another country is yet another feature of the quest for global hegemony by the U.S. empire.  The Post-Human Rights State, we might call it.

In this instance, U.S. imperial power, disguised as a liberal polity concerned with protecting the freedom and rights of all human beings, is revealed when it selectively showcases certain human rights that support the destructive actions planned by the state. WMD’s in Iraq.  Women’s rights in Afghanistan. Such “principles” are clearly exhorted almost exclusively to enable voters to support otherwise dubious or indefensible policies.

The issue here is one of principle as well as of realpolitik. Under the Bush Administration and its minions, heinous and unconstitutional actions were undertaken in the name of national security. Those minions, as we know, included plenty of Democrats, like Senators Feinstein, Kerry, and Clinton, who approved and supported those actions. Counter-terrorism, as we now understand it, is about exchanging sacrificing selling out human rights principles in the name of American security while chiseling away at the rights long claimed by American citizens and residents: free speech, privacy, dissent, knowing the charges that warrant my arrest, fair trials before an impartial judge, publicly shared evidence in order to convict.

The Obama Administration unabashedly continues the destruction that the Bush Administration began in 2001 in the name of national security.  Highlights include pushing for NDAA 2012; winning back on appeal (in the lawsuit filed by Chris Hedges, Alexa O’Brien and others) the right to detain people infinitely (sic) with impunity; wiretapping Americans, foreigners, the press, and heads of state alike; and persecutingwhistleblowers through dubious laws and the revocationof passports, and in collusion with foreign governments.

It is not possible to continue to violate the freedom and bodies of so many people — American or foreign, citizens or otherwise — without confronting the inevitability that those chickens will come home to roost. I don’t mean revenge. History has disproven Jefferson’s fears wrong, despite the continued persecution and mass imprisonment of Black Americans up to this day. I mean the disintegration of a society that claims to respect the bodily and psychic integrity of human beings to live and speak without fear of despotic retribution. Consequently, the United States can no longer credibly claim to be a beacon of democracy or protector of rights without hearing the loud, widespread, jeers of derision and contempt from the victims of the US’s unceasing violence: the families of droned Pakistanis and Yemenis as well as those of Gitmo detainees who have already ended their own lives; the family and friends of Aaron Swartz, as well as those of Chelsea Manning, Barrett Brown, John Kiriakou and many others. The list is long, too long.

In the face of this knowledge, closing Guantanamo and releasing its uncharged prisoners may be a trivial act. But it would constitute one step in the right direction — of trying to observe human rights principles while beginning to forge international relationships on a basis other than the force embodied in the long reach of destructive weapons and aggressive, unchecked, despotism. Perhaps then, we might be able to look forward to reclaiming the US’s integrity as a champion, rather than the destroyer, of human rights.

Falguni A. Sheth, a professor of philosophy and political theory at Hampshire College