Air Force refused to fly weapons (nukes) to Middle East theater

Air Force refused to fly weapons (nukes) to Middle East theater

By Wayne Madsen

Sept. 24, 2007

Author's website

WMR has learned from U.S. and foreign intelligence sources that the

B-52 transporting six stealth AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missiles, each

armed with a W-80-1 nuclear warhead, on August 30, were destined for

the Middle East via Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.

However, elements of the Air Force, supported by U.S. intelligence

agency personnel, successfully revealed the ultimate destination of

the nuclear weapons and the mission was aborted due to internal

opposition within the Air Force and U.S. Intelligence Community.

Yesterday, the /Washington Post/ attempted to explain away the fact

that America's nuclear command and control system broke down in an

unprecedented manner by reporting that it was the result of "security

failures at multiple levels." It is now apparent that the command and

control breakdown, reported as a BENT SPEAR incident to the Secretary

of Defense and White House, was not the result of a command and

control chain-of-command "failures" but the result of a revolt and

push back by various echelons within the Air Force and intelligence

agencies against a planned U.S. attack on Iran using nuclear and

conventional

weapons.

The /Washington Post/ story on BENT SPEAR may have actually been an

effort in damage control by the Bush administration. WMR has been

informed by a knowledgeable source that one of the six nuclear-armed

cruise missiles was, and may still be, unaccounted for. In that case,

the nuclear reporting incident would have gone far beyond BENT SPEAR

to a National Command Authority alert known as EMPTY QUIVER, with the

special classification of PINNACLE.

Just as this report was being prepared, /Newsweek/ reported that Vice

President Dick Cheney's recently-departed Middle East adviser, David

Wurmser, told a small group of advisers some months ago that Cheney

had considered asking Israel to launch a missile attack on the Iranian

nuclear site at Natanz. Cheney reasoned that after an Iranian

retaliatory strike, the United States would have ample reasons to

launch its own massive attack on Iran. However, plans for Israel to

attack Iran directly were altered to an Israeli attack on a supposed

Syrian-Iranian-North Korean nuclear installation in northern Syria.

WMR has learned that a U.S. attack on Iran using nuclear and

conventional weapons was scheduled to coincide with Israel's September

6 air attack on a reputed Syrian nuclear facility in Dayr az-Zwar,

near the village of Tal Abyad, in northern Syria, near the Turkish

border. Israel's attack, code named OPERATION ORCHARD, was to provide

a reason for the U.S. to strike Iran. The neo-conservative propaganda

onslaught was to cite the cooperation of the George Bush's three

remaining "Axis of Evil" states -- Syria, Iran, and North Korea -- to

justify a sustained Israeli attack on Syria and a massive U.S.

military attack on Iran.

WMR has learned from military sources on both sides of the Atlantic

that there was a definite connection between Israel's OPERATION

ORCHARD and BENT SPEAR involving the B-52 that flew the six nuclear-

armed cruise missiles from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to

Barksdale. There is also a connection between these two events as the

Pentagon's highly-classified PROJECT CHECKMATE, a compartmented U.S.

Air Force program that has been working on an attack plan for Iran

since June 2007, around the same time that Cheney was working on the

joint Israeli-U.S. attack scenario on Iran.

PROJECT CHECKMATE was leaked in an article by military analyst Eric

Margolis in the Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper, the /Times of London/,

is a program that involves over two dozen Air Force officers and is

headed by Brig. Gen. Lawrence Stutzriem and his chief civilian

adviser, Dr. Lani Kass, a former Israeli military intelligence officer

who, astoundingly, is now involved in planning a joint U.S.-Israeli

massive military attack on Iran that involves a "decapitating" blow on

Iran by hitting between three to four thousand targets in the country.

Stutzriem and Kass report directly to the Air Force Chief of Staff,

General Michael Moseley, who has also been charged with preparing a

report on the B-52/nuclear weapons incident.

Kass' area of speciality is cyber-warfare, which includes ensuring

"information blockades," such as that imposed by the Israeli

government on the Israeli media regarding the Syrian air attack on the

alleged Syrian "nuclear installation." British intelligence sources

have reported that the Israeli attack on Syria was a "true flag"

attack originally designed to foreshadow a U.S. attack on Iran. After

the U.S. Air Force push back against transporting the six cruise

nuclear-armed AGM-129s to the Middle East, Israel went ahead with its

attack on Syria in order to help ratchet up tensions between

Washington on one side and Damascus, Tehran, and Pyongyang on the

other.

The other part of CHECKMATE's brief is to ensure that a media

"perception management" is waged against Syria, Iran, and North Korea.

This involves articles such as that which appeared with Joby Warrick's

and Walter Pincus' bylines in yesterdays /Washington Post/. The

article, titled "The Saga of a Bent Spear," quotes a number of

seasoned Air Force nuclear weapons experts as saying that such an

incident is unprecedented in the history of the Air Force. For

example, Retired Air Force General Eugene Habiger, the former chief of

the U.S. Strategic Command, said he has been in the "nuclear business"

since 1966 and has never been aware of an incident "more disturbing."

Command and control breakdowns involving U.S. nuclear weapons are

unprecedented, except for that fact that the U.S. military is now

waging an internal war against neo-cons who are embedded in the U.S.

government and military chain of command who are intent on using

nuclear weapons in a pre-emptive war with Iran.

CHECKMATE and OPERATION ORCHARD would have provided the cover for a

pre-emptive U.S. and Israeli attack on Iran had it not been for BENT

SPEAR involving the B-52. In on the plan to launch a pre-emptive

attack on Iran involving nuclear weapons were, according to our

sources, Cheney, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley; members of

the CHECKMATE team at the Pentagon, who have close connections to

Israeli intelligence and pro-Israeli think tanks in Washington,

including the Hudson Institute; British Foreign Secretary David

Miliband, a political adviser to Tony Blair prior to becoming a Member

of Parliament; Israeli political leaders like Prime Minister Ehud

Olmert and Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu; and French Foreign

Minister Bernard Kouchner, who did his part last week to ratchet up

tensions with Iran by suggesting that war with Iran was a probability.

Kouchner retracted his statement after the U.S. plans for Iran were

delayed.

Although the Air Force tried to keep the B-52 nuclear incident from

the media, anonymous Air Force personnel leaked the story to /Military

Times/ on September 5, the day before the Israelis attacked the

alleged nuclear installation in Syria and the day planned for the

simultaneous U.S. attack on Iran. The leaking of classified

information on U.S. nuclear weapons disposition or movement to the

media, is, itself, unprecedented. Air Force regulations require the

sending of classified BEELINE reports to higher Air Force authorities

on the disclosure of classified Air Force information to the media.

In another highly unusual move, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has

asked an outside inquiry board to look into BENT SPEAR, even before

the Air Force has completed its own investigation, a virtual vote of

no confidence in the official investigation being conducted by Major

General Douglas Raaberg, chief of air and space operations at the Air

Combat Command.

Gates asked former Air Force Chief of Staff, retired General Larry

Welch, to lead a Defense Science Board task force that will also look

into the BENT SPEAR incident. The official Air Force investigation has

reportedly been delayed for unknown reasons. Welch is President and

CEO of the Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA), a federally-funded

research contractor that operates three research centers, including

one for Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive

Office of the President and another for the National Security Agency.

One of the board members of IDA is Dr. Suzanne H. Woolsey of the

Paladin Capital Group and wife of former CIA director and arch-neocon

James Woolsey.

WMR has learned that neither the upper echelons of the State

Department nor the British Foreign Office were privy to OPERATION

ORCHARD, although Hadley briefed President Bush on Israeli spy

satellite intelligence that showed the Syrian installation was a joint

nuclear facility built with North Korean and Iranian assistance.

However, it is puzzling why Hadley would rely on Israeli imagery

intelligence (IMINT) from its OFEK (Horizon) 7 satellite when

considering that U.S. IMINT satellites have greater capabilities.

The Air Force's "information warfare" campaign against media reports

on CHECKMATE and OPERATION ORCHARD also affected international

reporting of the recent International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)

resolution asking Israel to place its nuclear weapons program under

IAEA controls, similar to those that the United States wants imposed

on Iran and North Korea. The resolution also called for a nuclear-free

zone throughout the Middle East. The IAEA's resolution, titled

"Application of IAEA Safeguards in the Middle East," was passed by the

144-member IAEA General Meeting on September 20 by a vote of 53 to 2,

with 47 abstentions. The only two countries to vote against were

Israel and the United States. However, the story carried from the IAEA

meeting in Vienna by Reuters, the Associated Press, and Agence France

Press, was that it was Arab and Islamic nations that voted for the

resolution.

This was yet more perception management carried out by CHECKMATE, the

White House, and their allies in Europe and Israel with the connivance

of the media. In fact, among the 53 nations that voted for the

resolution were China, Russia, India, Ireland, and Japan. The 47

abstentions were described as votes "against" the resolution even

though an abstention is neither a vote for nor against a measure.

America's close allies, including Britain, France, Australia, Canada,

and Georgia, all abstained.

Suspiciously, the IAEA carried only a brief item on the resolution

concerning Israel's nuclear program and a roll call vote was not

available either at the IAEA's web site -- http://www.iaea.org -- or in the

media.

The perception management campaign by the neocon operational cells in

the Bush administration, Israel and Europe was designed to keep a

focus on Iran's nuclear program, not on Israel's. Any international

examination of Israel's nuclear weapons program would likely bring up

Israeli nuclear scientist Mordechai Vanunu, a covert from Judaism to

Christianity, who was kidnapped in Rome by a Mossad "honey trap" named

Cheryl Bentov (aka, Cindy) and a Mossad team in 1986 and held against

his will in Israel ever since.

Vanunu's knowledge of the Israeli nuclear weapons program would focus

on the country's own role in nuclear proliferation, including its

program to share nuclear weapons technology with apartheid South

Africa and Taiwan in the late 1970s and 1980s. The role of Ronald

Reagan's Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency Ken

Adelman in Israeli's nuclear proliferation during the time frame

1983-1987 would also come under scrutiny. Adelman, a member of the

Reagan-Bush transition State Department team from November 1980 to

January 1981, voiced his understanding for the nuclear weapons

programs of Israel, South Africa, and Taiwan in a June 28, 1981 /New

York Times/ article titled, "3 Nations Widening Nuclear Contacts." The

journalist who wrote the article was Judith Miller. Adelman felt that

the three countries wanted nuclear weapons because of their ostracism

from the West, the third world, and the hostility from the Communist

countries. Of course, today, the same argument can be used by Iran,

North Korea, and other "Axis of Evil" nations so designated by the

neocons in the Bush administration and other governments.

There are also news reports that suggest an intelligence relationship

between Israel and North Korea. On July 21, 2004, New Zealand's /

Dominion Post/ reported that three Mossad agents were involved in

espionage in New Zealand. Two of the Mossad agents, Uriel Kelman and

Elisha Cara (aka Kra), were arrested and imprisoned by New Zealand

police (an Israeli diplomat in Canberra, Amir Lati, was expelled by

Australia and New Zealand intelligence identified a fourth Mossad

agent involved in the New Zealand espionage operation in Singapore).

The third Mossad agent in New Zealand, Zev William Barkan (aka Lev

Bruckenstein), fled New Zealand -- for North Korea.

New Zealand Foreign Minister Phil Goff revealed that Barkan, a former

Israeli Navy diver, had previously worked at the Israeli embassy in

Vienna, which is also the headquarters of the IAEA. He was cited by

the /Sydney Morning Herald/ as trafficking in passports stolen from

foreign tourists in Thailand, Myanmar,

Laos, and Cambodia. New Zealand's One News reported that Barkan was in

North Korea to help the nation build a wall to keep its citizens from

leaving.

The nuclear brinkmanship involving the United States and Israel and

the breakdown in America's command and control systems have every

major capital around the world wondering about the Bush

administration's true intentions.

NOTE: WMR understands the risks to informed individuals in reporting

the events of August 29/30, to the present time, that concern the

discord within the U.S. Air Force, U.S. intelligence agencies, and

other military services. Any source with relevant information and who

wishes to contact us anonymously may drop off sealed correspondence at

or send mail via the Postal Service to: Wayne Madsen, c/o The Front

Desk, National Press Club, 13th Floor, 529 14th St., NW, Washington,

DC, 20045.

http://earthboppin. net/talkshop/ national/ messages/ 59386.html

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'Newsweek' piece that mentioned Cheney and Wursmer:

http://tinyurl.com/2e585v

Secret US air force team to perfect plan for Iran strike

http://tinyurl.com/yu5frj

What World War III

May Look Like

http://tinyurl.com/yqpapa

British forces could also be involved in triggering the coming war

with Iran as the London Independent piece conveys as it is referenced

below the UK Guardian piece at: http://tinyurl.com/2e585v :

Iran expert Ervand Abrahamian says US will strike Iran

http://tinyurl.com/23nj5d

CNN: We are already at war with Iran:

http://tinyurl.com/2fp4d6