HARPER: IS JOHN BRENNAN A SAUDI ASSET?

 

Michael Scheuer, who headed the CIA's Osama Bin-Laden task force for many years, has had more direct experience butting heads with John Brennan than most people in the intelligence community.  His commentary in Foreign Policy, posted below, is clearly worth reading carefully by every member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, before they vote on whether to confirm John Brennan as Director of the CIA.  If even half of what Dr. Scheuer recounts from his own personal dealings with Brennan is true, not only should there be very serious reservations about President Obama's nomination of Brennan to head the CIA.  There should be a serious inquiry into whether Brennan, in effect, has been an asset of Saudi intelligence. 

 

 
 
The issue goes beyond Brennan's apparent repeated interventions to block CIA operations from being launched to kill or capture Bin-Laden.  There is a much larger, lingering question about the role of Saudi intelligence in the overall Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.  Sen. Bob Graham and the Congressional select committee that he chaired had serious questions about the role of a number of Saudi intelligence officers in facilitating the 9/11 attacks.  A 28-page chapter from their final report raised questions about Saudi funding of at least two of the 9/11 hijackers, and even cited money flows from the accounts of then-Saudi Ambassador to the United States Prince Bandar Bin-Sultan.  That 28-page chapter was blacked out of the Congressional report, and remains under wraps to this day, despite the fact that some of the factual basis for the chapter have been made public by Sen. Graham and others. 
 
During his 2008 campaign for President, Barack Obama pledged to the families of the 9/11 victims that he would declassify the 28 pages.  He even met with representatives of the families in the Oval Office in his first month in office in February 2009.  Abruptly, he reversed himself and has maintained the Bush era lid ever since, even tightening it. 
 
After reading the Michael Scheuer account of his unfortunate dealings with John Brennan, I can't help but wonder whether Brennan had a hand in convincing President Obama to maintain the suppression of these revealing pages.  I certainly hope that someone on the Senate Intelligence Committee will use the occasion of the closed-door hearings on Feb. 12 to grill Mr. Brennan on this incident and his many deep and binding ties to the Saudi intelligence service--ties that Dr. Scheuer described as "this ludicrous reliance on the thoroughly unhelpful and often obstructive Saudis."
 
A friend in the intelligence community told me that Brennan has had closer ties to Saudi intelligence than anyone currently active in the U.S. government, and that he jealously has protected those ties, even when there was clear evidence that the Saudis were providing financing to Jihadists who were carrying out direct terrorist operations against American targets.  I understand the tendency to protect "sources," but this goes way beyond anything I have seen or heard before.
 
http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2013/02/06/john-brennan-as-cia-chief-would-serve-his-own-interests-not-americas/

Comments

[Frabjous]

Does Scheuer have an axe to grind with Brenner? Brenner’s certainly not the only one in the US gov’t with ties to KSA but to say that he’s supported the growth of Islamists in Africa seems extreme…AFAIK, which is not very far.

[Frabjous]

Brennen, not Brenner, sorry

[Fred]

Michael Scheuer mentions

"the Hadith—the verified collection of the Prophet Mohammad’s sayings and practices"

Verified by whom? As to the inner CIA intrigue perhaps some truth to that, it should certainly be looked at. But he sounds like a many with a couple of axes to grind and allot of guilt; especially in regards to the attack at Camp Chapman, which got discussed here a couple of years ago.

[turcopolier]

Fred

Scheuer is a typical CIA analyst. He probably does not know how many versions of hadith there are. pl

[Alba Etie]

Col Lang
Little bit off topic -But Senator Lindsay Graham says he will put a 'hold ' on the Hagel nomination until more answers about Benghazi are forthcoming . Any thoughts . I personally do not believe Grahams petulance will derail Sen Hagel's bcoming Secretary of Defense .

[mbrenner]

I suggest maximum caution in considering anything Scheuer says. A year or two ago, he wrote that I should cut my throat in shamed recognition that I was a traitor to the US. This becaus of some commentary in the National Journal blog (now defunct)to which we both contributed. He is evidently emotionally unstable.

I believe the same of Brennan. After all, he instinctively concocted in public a graphic account of OBL shooting it out with the Seals while using his young wife as a shield that he offered as Gospel truth. This the day after. He also is the man who testified that not one innocent had been kiled by drone strikes. Do we really want as CIA Director a man who confuses reality with his wet dreams?

Also, look at current photographs of the man. His level of agitation and unfocused expression is that of a disturbed man.

[Eliot]

Scheuer always struck me as pretty paranoid. It's hard to take him seriously.

[William R. Cumming]

Is emotional instability a factor in recruitment to the CIA?

There are some indications that over 40% of adult population in USA on some form of psychotropic medication!

Should all personnel security polygraphs start with the question why prescribed drugs do you take? And then what non-prescribed drugs do you consume?

[MRW]

I agree with mbrenner and Eliot. I'm not sold.

[Abu Sinan]

In talking about hadith it gets very complicated. One cannot say that there is an entire "verified collection" of them. Some small amount are universally accepted, in the dozens, not hundreds. Some school (madhab) accept some Hadith, others reject them. There is an entire "science" built around Hadith, lines of transmission, ect. Some are weak, some are strong. There are literally hundreds of thousands of Hadith. Historically, often "new Hadith" would arise when a given leader, at a given time, wanted to change a particular practice or lend his actions some sort of legitamacy.

Shi'a, on the whole, do not look at Hadith in the same manner as Sunnis and reject Hadith narrated by certain peoples.

[JohnH]

Early Muslims had a rigorous and logical process for verifying the Hadith.

The mainstream media could learn a lot by studying it. Maybe then so much crap wouldn't be served up as news...

[harry]

The Haddith comments have soured me to Michael Scheuer's other points even though they may well be valid. I dont believe he is well briefed on Islam, and yet he has no hesitation in publishing his thoughts in FP. This seems poor judgement to me. Clearly he has a axe. That doesnt mean any of his other comments are incorrect.

I have a bad impression of Mr. Brennan. I dont have a good impression of Mr. Scheuer.

[Lars]

It may be a case of mistaken identity. Mr. Brennen may have thought that he was talking to Michelle Bachmann instead of Mr. Scheuer.

[Medicine Man]

And so has Jim Inhofe, on grounds that Hagel is "anti-Israel". The clown show on this is astonishing.

[MDrew]

"Foreign Policy Journal" (".com"), not "Foreign Policy" magazine.

[turcopolier]

All

Put Brennan on "the box" for a couple of days on this subject. Let the FBI do it. They would love that. pl

[Jake]

Says it all!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XK3Nh8N88A&feature=youtube_gdata_player

[CK]

Asset: Something one purchases in the expectation of gaining more from it than it cost to acquire. There are many available for purchase assets in DC and its surrounds.

[turcopolier]

jake

That tape is incredible. i would ask one of the guest authors to make it into a post. I have already spent too much time here today. pl

[Alba Etie]

We could put FBI interrogator Ali Soufan in the lead .Mr Soufan is a great critic of the torture program run by the Bushies .

[The beaver]

OT:
http://www.jpost.com/Headlines/Article.aspx?id=302849

Some are willing to kill US citizens without due process but some are ready to close their eyes on US citizens who have betrayed the country.

Goes to show !!!

[Medicine Man]

That was priceless: Senator Hagel -- "Do I even need to be here?"

[Clifford Kiracofe]

Harper,

If I have the drift of your comment right, US policy is to work with the Saudis and their terrorist/fundamentalist Wahhabintern for a variety of purposes. Brennan is in the center of this "arrangement" and thus protects it. In turn he is protected by the White House which has been sold a bill of goods on the "arrangement". Obama has continued Bush43 policy in this regard. Senator Graham seems to be indicating that the 28 pages you mention if released to the public would hamper continuation of the "arrangenment" by exposing the contradictions.

What would be the British role in all this? Is the "arrangement" with the House of Saud and the Wahhabintern something they helped sell to the White House given the relationship between the British and Saudi crowns? Just curious. Does not seem like a particularly bright idea to me.

[Harper]

One of the major features of the Cold War was that the British intelligence services played the "Islamic Card" against the Godless Soviet Union. The Muslim Brotherhood, the best organized and most sophisticated movement within political Islam was frequently allied with MI-6, and over time, with the CIA, in various Cold War intelligence programs. While it was often a marriage of convenience, the ties were historic and deep. Said Ramadan, the son-in-law of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, was on file as being on both MI-6 and CIA payroll from the 1950s, when he established a Muslim Brotherhood beach head in Europe. He was in Saudi Arabia in 1961 for the founding of the Muslim World League, which launched the project to expand Saudi Wahhabism around the Islamic world. There are two excellent accounts of this long-standing relationship: A Mosque in Munich by Ian Johnson and Secret Affairs--Britain's Collusion with Radical Islam by Mark Curtis. Both books are largely based on declassified US and British intelligence and foreign service documents. They provide a depth of background to the current developments, from 9/11 to Banghazi and the unfolding events in Egypt, Tunisia and Syria, to name just the most obvious cases. The Curtis book also provides a historical context for the more recent Al Yamamah deal involving the creation of a joint British-Saudi offshore slush fund for fighting communism around the world from the 1980s.

[Clifford Kiracofe]

eureka,

Thank you for the data and book references. Will look for them.

Al Afghani was reputed to be in the service/pay of several intelligence services --British, French and what not. Also his lodge affiliations are of interest.

My sense has been that the British and French in particular worked behind the scenes to manipulate, influence, "control", direct or whatever various Islamic currents from the late 19th century.

About 1935, I believe it was, the Muslim Brotherhood of Rida etal. linked to the House of Saud. The ideas seems to have been (and still is) that Wahhabism should control world Islam to keep Muslims in line. Thus Shiism and Sufism are targets also. We just saw the destruction of over 300 Sufi shrines in Mali, for example, and who knows what has happened in Syria.

It might time for Washington to undertake an "agonizing reappraisal" of its Middle East policy to include Saudi/Wahhabintern and Israel/Zionism. Particularly in light of the new technology of oil and gas extraction coming online in the US and its implications for the US energy sector and national strategy.