Seymour Hersh‘s articles on the Abu Ghraib scandal are the stuff of Pulitzer Prizes. Here is his latest article in which he implicates the top Pentagon brass in the interrogation techniques that led to the abuse of prisoners at the prison. His earlier articles on the prison are here and here.
Joel Mowbray in this FrontPageMagazine.com piece provides a counterbalance to Mr. Hersh’s pieces. This John Miller profile of Hersh is along the same lines.
Read all and decide for yourself.
Daily Archives: May 17, 2004
Richard Chesnoff on Iran’s support of radical Islamic fascists
As noted in this earlier post, Richard Z. Chesnoff has long been one of America’s most prominent reporters on foreign affairs. In this NY Daily News op-ed, Mr. Chesnoff reports on Iran’s systematic support for the radical Islamic fascists who are waging war against the United States. As Mr. Chesnoff notes:
Tehran’s mad mullahs have thrown their support behind select Islamic extremists for many years. But a top-secret report prepared by senior Mideast intelligence sources says Iran has recently stepped up its efforts to train and arm a widening range of terrorists, many of whom pose direct threats to Western targets, including in Iraq.
Iran’s protÈgÈs, new and old, are both Sunni and Shiite Muslims, and they hail from all across the Middle East: Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and Lebanon. Many are already ensconced in Iranian training camps.
Most of these Iranian-fostered groups are violently anti-American. Some, like Lebanon’s Usbat al-Ansar and Iraq’s Ansar al-Islam, have direct ties to Al Qaeda.
Mr. Chesnoff also points out the ominous implications of this Iranian support of the enemy for the war effort in Iraq:
Most frightening of all, my sources say there are indications Hamas is helping Ansar al-Islam develop short-range rockets with which to attack coalition troops in Iraq. These are the same type of Qassem rockets that Hamas has been producing in Gaza and firing at Israeli settlements and towns.
“The coalition’s abundance of defensive armor in Iraq,” says one source, “has made it increasingly difficult for Ansar al-Islam to attack stationary targets.”
Qassem-style rockets would help our enemies overcome that difficulty.
A Hamas-financed Qassem workshop, I’m told, has been set up in Iran under the supervision of a Hamas cell leader named Abu Husam, who is a qualified engineer.
Needless to say, Iran is eager not to leave any traces of its involvement in attacks against the U.S.
But Iranian intelligence has quietly helped its terrorist protÈgÈs cross over into the United Arab Emirates and return with materials for the rocket project through the Iranian military port of Bandar Abbas.
“According to the Hamas-Al Qaeda plan,” says an intelligence source, “the first rockets are to become operative in Iraq in early June, just before rule is transferred to the Iraqi interim government.”
And Mr. Chesnoff concludes by asking the $64 question:
What was that we were being told recently about the Iranian government’s “moderating” its positions?
Internal or criminal investigations?
This NY Times article reports on the Justice Department’s aggressive use of obstruction of justice laws in its investigation of accounting irregulaties at the giant software company, Computer Associates.
John F. Savarese, a former federal prosecutor who also represented Martha Stewart before her trial this year, led a team from Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, the prominent New York law firm that the company hired to investigate the charges in an internal probe. Savarese and Wachtell turned over information regarding the probe to the Justice Department. On April 9, three former executives of Computer Associates pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice charges that were not tied to statements told to federal investigators, but to statements made to Wachtell during the company’s internal investigation.
The executives were never accused of lying directly to federal investigators or a grand jury. Their guilty pleas were based on the theory that, in lying to Wachtell, they had in effect misled federal officials because Wachtell passed their lies on to the Justice Department.
As the story relates, the Justice Department’s use of the company’s law firm represents a serious extension of Justice’s use of obstruction of justice laws. Usually, obstruction charges cover behavior such as destroying documents, pressuring witnesses not to testify, or lying to federal officials. Inasmuch as an employee can be fired for asserting the privilege against self-incrimination in an internal company probe, this new Justice Department policy may actually hinder such internal probes. Lower level company employees will now be less willing to discuss matters with the company’s investigators, which will make it more difficult to implicate higher level company executives in the alleged wrongdoing.
This is yet another example of the unhealthy criminalization of business that is occurring under the Bush Administration’s Justice Department. And the Republican Party is supposed to be business-friendly?