At about 3 minutes into the TeeVee show tape linked below. the news host lets Hannah begin to talk about Iraq and then Iran. Hannah was Cheney's foreign policy staffer during the run up to Desert Storm. He worked for Libby who worked for Cheney. He was one of the architects of the war hungry strategy that led to that endless war, a war that has never really ended. Someone urged me to go talk to Hannah before Desert Storm. I went. We met in his closet sized office in the OEB. I am usually annoyed by people who talk to you from behind their desks but this space was tiny. He clearly had his mind made up about the wonderfulness of an invasion and wanted to talk about the size force to be used.
Our deliberate destruction of the existing social order in Iraq unleashed the forces of Sunni rebellion against the occupation and the Shia government that we created through our farcical purple thumb elections. These were held in the aftermath of the occupation government having openly stated to Sunni leaders that their time had ended. Now we have the Shia fighting each other over the division of power in Iraq. John Hannah said on this program that this is because some Shia (the "good" Shia?) are resisting the "control" of Iraq by the government of Iran.
Iran is the major theme of the rest of Hannah's statements to the interviewer. Hannah is upset at the prospect of "a land bridge" (road connection) from Iran to a Syrian port. To prevent such a connection the US keeps troops in Syria at al-Tanf just where Israel wants them. Hannah is upset because Iran "seeks regional hegemony" (to frustrate Israeli ambitions for the same thing?), etc., etc, ad nauseam. IMO this is tribalism at its worst.
IMO Hannah is merely a mouthpiece for Israeli policy. He is taken seriously as an AMERICAN policy talking head? He was one of the leading architects of the disastrous Iraq policy and war. This interview should call into question the basis for his advocacy of that war, a war which the Israelis urged the US to fight. pl
The Fifth Column controls the MSM, the think tanks and most of the press.
The public and the politicos are only going to see and hear Zionist Neocon propaganda for Israel.
https://www.irmep.org/11-3-2009AIPACFARA.pdf
Senator Fulbright 1963 Senate Hearings on ZOA propaganda in US.
FINDING: Israel’s payments to US academics, new media, and Israel lobby operatives in the three month sample filing were classified and not made available in the FARA section public files. This violated FARA’s disclosure mandate.
FINDING: During Senate investigations the American Zionist Council was found to be investing heavily in US media outreach and “think tanks” with Israeli government funding. This think tank and media influence effort has been renewed outside the purview of FARA from the AZC’s new shell organization, the AIPAC.
FINDING: AIPAC’s influence with the establishment media means that warranted law enforcement efforts or investigations are often quickly whipped into spurious allegations of anti‐Semitism, threats against freedom of speech, or any number of well framed public relations campaigns. The capability has been
built with clandestine Jewish Agency/Israeli government funding in the 1960’s and has reached maturity.
Transcripts of the Senate Hearings
https://www.israellobby.org/Senate/default.asp
''Between 1962-1963 the Senate Foreign Relations Committee subpoenaed internal reports of the American Zionist Council during its investigation into the activities of registered agents of foreign principals. They discovered that more than $5 million in tax exempt (and possibly overseas donations) had been laundered through the Jewish Agency's American Section into the American Zionist Council. The Jewish Agency functioned as a quasi-branch of the Israeli government, received Israeli government funding, and was able to review legislation before it went to the Knesset under its Covenant Agreement.
The following reports detail how the American Zionist Council used the funding in a sophisticated campaign to cajole and intimidate news media, subvert open debate about Israel and undermine reporting about key issues of the day such as Israel's Dimona nuclear weapons facility, operation Susannah terror attacks on the United States, and the return of Arab refugees to their homes. The AZC tracked and targeted professors and engaged in covert operations obliquely referred to in the following internal reports.
After the Justice Department ordered the American Zionist Council to register as a foreign agent in late 1962, it transferred responsibilities to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which refuses to register as a foreign agent of the Israeli government.''
Posted by: catherine | 09 November 2019 at 04:07 PM
I am afraid that connecting the dots between why US foreign policy is run for the benefit of an alien nation, how it got that way, and what is to be done about it is a bridge way WAY too far for most Americans, at least anyone over 50.
Yet I have been told repeatedly that the leadership of China and Russia (among others) see it clearly and pursue their own interests accordingly.
Posted by: Vegetius | 09 November 2019 at 04:46 PM
ED
you were surprised because you are prejudiced against non-communist soldiers.
Posted by: turcopolier | 09 November 2019 at 05:29 PM
Don’t know colonel. This guy looks like he couldn’t sell me a toaster. And yet...
Posted by: Charlie Wilson | 09 November 2019 at 06:46 PM
Col. Lang:
Ambassadors Ross and Indyk fit the bill as well, in my opinion.
Posted by: Babak Makkinejad | 09 November 2019 at 08:28 PM
Thanks for these links. They don't make 'em like Sen. Fulbright any more. Republic now defended by the old with memories, & young with eyes to see, & skin in the game.
Posted by: JerseyJeffersonian | 09 November 2019 at 10:45 PM
Elora Danan
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2007/10/colonel-w-patrick-lang-retired-us-military-intelligence/
This is actually a rather interesting article. Thanks for bringing it up. There is a lot more in it than the part you quote.
Posted by: turcopolier | 10 November 2019 at 12:15 AM
I worry more about the young people.
Catherine should have added Public schools and universities to the list of US institutions controlled by Fifth Column.
Posted by: artemesia | 10 November 2019 at 03:38 AM
Colonel,
John Hannah outside his NEOCON roles in the U.S. Government (i.e. Cheney, et. al.), Hannah used to be with Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), now he's a 'Senior Counselor' with The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
Hannah claims to be an xzert in Arab Politics, Gulf States, Iran, Iran Global Threat Network, Iran-backed Terrorism, Israel, Jihadism, Kurds, Military and Political Power, Syria, The Long War, Turkey, U.S. Defense Policy and Strategy. Hannah's 'projects' are Turkey Program, Center on Military and Political Power.
https://www.fdd.org/team/john-hannah/
Based on the above, it jumps right out that John Hannah is an Israeli Shill.
Posted by: J | 10 November 2019 at 06:03 AM
Some good news -- Iran has [finally] admitted that they have in their custody FBI Agent Robert Alan Levinson (still alive). Levinson was disavowed by the Agency, and also Levinson is in a position to send Hillary to prison with the knowledge he posses, when he testifys under oath.
Now will the Clinton/Deep State forces try to kill Levinson while he's still in Iranian custody, there is a very good bet they will attempt.
The best thing IMHO is for AG Barr to ASAP convince the Iranians to release Levinson to U.S. Custody, and Combat Applications Group take Levinson 'immediately' into 'their custody' (I personally do not trust anybody but Combat Applications Group to protect Levinson) and put him in a safe place until he can testify against Hillary and the Deep State.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/iran-makes-stunning-admission-regarding-fbi-agent-gone-missing-since-2007
Posted by: J | 10 November 2019 at 08:30 AM
> with the knowledge he posses
Have never paid much attention to the Levinson case and do not have the time to read up on it right now.
What knowledge is he said to possess?
Do we suppose the Iranians no also now posses this information, maybe in the form of recorded interrogations?
Posted by: Vegetius | 10 November 2019 at 10:59 AM
J,
The Iranians have denied the AP report. What I suspect they may be trying to suggest, in a roundabout way, is that the deal which Deripaska was negotiating is still on the table.
(See https://en.mehrnews.com/news/152131/Former-FBI-agent-Robert-Levinson-has-no-legal-or-criminal-case .)
I have long had a sneaking suspicion that, while Levinson is likely to be sitting in an Iranian jail somewhere, he is kept in perfectly tolerable conditions – with proper treatment for his diabetes – and the melodramatic photographs and statements were actually staged.
If in fact there would be any chance that, if released, he would be more of an embarrassment to Hillary than to the Iranians (and Russians), this would reinforce these suspicions.
It might also mean that those holding him would be at rather considerable pains, if they were going to release him, to ensure that he was delivered, safe and sound, to people who could be relied upon to ensure that he had a reasonable prospect of staying that way.
What is that you think he might say, were he to be returned, which would give Hillary, and others, cause for concern?
Posted by: David Habakkuk | 10 November 2019 at 11:01 AM
Yes, its a huge problem and Trump (or his handlers) made it worse with his appointment of Kenneth Marcus, who is a raging, fanatical Zionist He has promised to defund all universities and schools that don't teach about the holocaust and expel students guilty of anti semitism. He is reopening past cases against schools that Zionist lawsuits lost and retrying them.
Education Dept. Reopens Rutgers Case Charging ...
https://www.nytimes.com › politics › rutgers-jewish-education-civil-rights
Sep 11, 2018 - Kenneth L. Marcus, the Education Department official who reopened the ... a definition of anti-Semitism that targets opponents of Zionism, and it explicitly ... And it comes after the Trump administration moved the American
Posted by: catherine | 10 November 2019 at 06:06 PM
I doubt Levinson knows anything on Hillary. And he is not what most of the msm portrays him to be.
He was not a 'CIA Agent' ...he was a contractor seeking paid assignments from the CIA after his retirement from the FBI.
AP expose...
'Years would pass before the truth emerged that Levinson had been working for a CIA analytical unit that was making an end run around the espionage wing of the agency and had no business running amateur spies.
Levinson’s alleged experience in off-the-books intelligence collection came by degrees, according to the Associated Press report. His experience in tracking illicit financial networks attracted the attention of CIA analyst Anne Jablonski, who secretly sent him to work tracking drug money in Latin American countries. By the time Levinson expressed interest in Iran, the report says, Jablonski and a few colleagues were comfortable with what amounted to an unauthorized spying enterprise.
Returning from a June meeting at CIA headquarters, the ex-FBI agent had a bounce in his step, recalled his longtime friend Ira Silverman, a veteran journalist who had retired from NBC after an illustrious career with the network. With the new CIA contract, Levinson's money woes were behind him. "He looked buoyant again, like his old self," Meier writes.
It was Silverman who set Levinson up to meet with Iranian Salahuddin . Silverman had interviewed Salahuddin, the fugitive assassin, in Tehran and they had stayed in touch. The exile had been voicing signs of disaffection with the Iranian regime. Silverman thought Salalhuddi might be ready to cooperate.
The AP said in a statement that the public interest in exposing the botched, unauthorized operation, which was initially hidden from Congress and misleadingly described to the public, was ultimately compelling.''
The CIA fired Anne Jablonski and her crew and she's now a yoga teacher. And I have to say how dumb was it of Silverman to set up Levinson with a meeting with a Iranian wanted in the US....since it likely crossed his mind he might be the target of the US spy.
Posted by: catherine | 10 November 2019 at 06:48 PM
Just another silly case brought to us by the International Brother/Sisterhood of the Wicked Web Weavers...Virtute et Armis -NOT!!
Posted by: jd hawkins | 11 November 2019 at 02:47 AM
"What knowledge is he said to possess"?
The knowledge of his True sister/brotherhood.
Posted by: jd hawkins | 11 November 2019 at 02:50 AM
catherine,
The cover-up over Levinson’s activities did not end with the AP revelation that he had been on a covert mission on behalf of Anne Jablonski et al.
I summarised some relevant evidence in a post here in February last year, headlined ‘Habakkuk on “longtime” sources: Steele, Shvets, Levinson, Litvinenko and the “Billion Dollar Don”’, and the exchanges of comments that followed.
(See https://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2018/02/habakkuk-on-longtime-sources.html .)
In that post, I referred to material which had emerged in the 2016 study ‘Missing Man’ by the ‘New York Times’ journalist Barry Meier.
Unfortunately, at that time I was still relying on reviews of the study – the actual text was still winging its way across the Atlantic.
The book turned out, very clearly, to be part of the cover-up.
For example, the first mention of any interest on the part of Levinson in Mogilevich, and Firtash, comes in an account of how, as he ‘needed to find new private clients’, in the summer of 2006 he got a ‘juicy contract’ from the Soros backed group ‘Global Witness’, to investigate the gas trade to and through Ukraine.
When I last put ‘Mogilevich Levinson’ into Google, the fourth item was an ‘Observer’ preview of the December 1999 BBC ‘Panorama’ entitled ‘The Billion Dollar Don’, presented by Tom Mangold.
According to the – easily accessible – transcript, Levinson, who plays a central role, and who had left the FBI the previous year, ‘remains the determined Nemesis of Mogilevich, the man he’s hunted for ten years.’
So, according to Mangold, Levinson had begun investigating that figure in 1989, and he would have seemed to have been a major preoccupation during the intervening time, through the ‘Nineties, not only for a single agent but for the Agency.
Curiously, while Meier did not seem to think this part of his subject’s career worth mentioning, I recently came across a site which takes a different view.
At the outset of a series by a group calling themselves ‘Citjourno’, we find it explained that ‘It is there for all to see. Here it is. There is a man who controls out President. And his name is not Vladimir Putin.’
(See http://www.citjourno.org .)
The series goes on to explain that it is really Semyon Mogilevich who controls Trump, and that Levinson and Alexander Litvinenko were engaged in a heroic struggle against him.
A crucial paragraph, in the third page, reads:
‘For the purpose of this story – the story of the hunters who came before, we’d like to highlight one detail of Semion’s decades-long empire: SEMION TRADES IN NUCLEAR MATERIAL AND ARMS WITH IRAN (you can easily research this yourself, or find it in several sources of our bibliography under Semion himself).’
As it happens, I have seen no reliable evidence at all about Mogilevich’s supposed trafficking in nuclear material, but a great deal of ‘information operations’ material put out by figures linked to Berezovsky, like Litvinenko and Yuri Shvets, about whose links to Levinson there is interesting, but patently evasive, material in the Meier study.
Some of this is discussed in the February 2018 post.
So, ironically, although patent nonsense, and probably ‘information operations’ material, the ‘Cityjourno’ pages point to a crucial ‘backstory’ behind ‘Russiagate’, in relation to which Meier, like others, is providing only the most limited of ‘hangouts.’
It is of how very significant elements of the British and American intelligence, foreign affairs and law enforcement bureaucracies made a ‘devil’s pact’ with figures like Berezovsky and Khodorkovsky, and their hangers on, like Litvinenko and Shvets.
Much of this is discussed in the February 2018 post.
What the ‘Citijourno’ pages put into sharp relief is that one of the things which the Berezovsky ‘information operations’ people were feeding to figures who were both Russophobic and Zionist, like Levinson (and Vindman) was a version of the ‘return of Karla’ interpretation of the Putin ‘sistema.’
According to this, Putin and his ‘siloviki’ associates were using organised crime to equip ‘rogue states’ and jihadists with advanced modern weaponry and in particular WMD.
It is likely that the behind the scenes struggles within the U.S. intelligence apparatus, with the people in the Illicit Finance Group fighting a rearguard action against the conclusion reached by others in the CIA that the Iranians had not been actively pursuing nuclear weapons since the threat from Saddam disappeared, weres a key part of the background to Levinson’s disappearance.
Despite Meier’s book being a very ‘limited hangout’, it does contain a number of useful pointers.
Among them is the close involvement of Jonathan Winer in the ‘Illicit Finance Group’. Not only was he also linked to Khodorkovsky, but it turns out that Levinson was linked to that figure, through Robert Amsterdam, as well as the Berezovsky group, through Yuri Shvets.
It then becomes of rather great interest to look at how reports from Christopher Steele – who must have had a large hand in a 16 December 2006 BBC Radio programme which Meier uncritically endorses, in which a pack of lies by Shvets and Levinson about the background to Litvinenko’s death were uncritically recycled by Mangold – were disseminated by Winer and Nuland.
At that point, questions about what Levinson knows about activities in which Hillary was involved become interesting.
It would surprise me greatly, however, if he wanted to talk about them. But then, one never knows. If, as has been suggested, she sabotaged a viable deal which could have led to his release, he might be feeling talkative.
At the risk of pursuing a train of thought too far into speculation, however, a possible conclusion might be that in some circumstances Levinson might be safer staying in Iran.
Posted by: David Habakkuk | 11 November 2019 at 01:07 PM