CIA Invents Hezbollah Threat

CIA Invents Hezbollah Threat

Kurt Nimmo
Monday Sept 3, 2007

As it turns out, the “threat” of terrorist attacks against the United States by Hezbollah, included in the latest National Intelligence Estimate, was casually thrown in, apparently to add some color.

“Speaking under condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, several intelligence officers asserted that the report was sloppy and lacked supporting evidence,” reports Larisa Alexandrovna for Raw Story. “The NIE seems... fiddled [with],” regarding Hezbollah, one high-ranking CIA official told Alexandrovna. “Whether it is or isn’t is not really the point. The point is that nobody is ready to believe it.” Nobody, that is, except a gullible American public, barraged 24-7 with idiotic tales of terrorists gone wild, ready to invade the homeland and convert Americans at gunpoint to Islamofascism. “As regards to the Hezbollah ‘threat,’” the official added, “they just threw that in. Nobody in CIA talks to Hezbollah, and they’re living off their assessments from back in the 80s, which they really never got right anyway.”

The CIA never got it right, preferring instead to regurgitate Israeli “assessments” formulated after the invasion of Lebanon. Fact is, Hezbollah was organized as a response to Israel’s invasion in 1982. Even the CFR admits as much. “Hezbollah was founded in 1982 in response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and subsumed members of the 1980s coalition of groups known as Islamic Jihad. It has close links to Iran and Syria,” same as the United States has “close links” with Israel, although the CFR does not bother to make such comparisons.

“Released last week, the NIE is a consensus view from all sixteen intelligence agencies and departments, compiled by the National Intelligence Council and signed off on by the agencies involved as well as by the Director for National Intelligence,” Alexandrovna continues. “The document represents the ‘official’ intelligence community view on any issue related to national security.” In other words, the NIE consists of made-up threats and should be considered a work of fiction, not an “estimate” of reality. “Intelligence officials would not confirm whether the classified version contained dissenting views. However, several expressed concern that parts of the report may have been politicized,” that is to say it is, at least in part, a Brothers Grimm fairy tale, designed to scare witless Americans. Director of National Intelligence Vanee Vines told Alexandrovna “the key judgments of the NIE speak for themselves,” sort of the same way Dr. Seuss’ poetic meters speak to children.

“The main analysis of the report focuses on the rise and resurgence of Al Qaeda in Pakistan. Most sources interviewed for this article agreed with the general assertion provided in the analysis—that Pakistan is harboring al Qaeda and has a record of support for terrorism.” Of course, there is scant evidence “al-Qaeda,” itself a creation of the CIA and Pakistan’s ISI, is on the rise in Pakistan, although it is certainly true the intelligence service of Pakistan “has a record of support for terrorism,” most notably in Jammu and Kashmir. Kashmiri militants are trained and supported the same way the “Afghan Arabs” were trained and supported, with the guiding hand—and a large infusion of U.S. taxpayer cash—of the CIA. Point is, the tribal area of South Waziristan is not directly under the control of Pakistan, as it was not fully under the control of the British Raj. It remains a wild card in need of domestication. Neolib loan sharks demand as much.

Edward Gistaro, key drafter of the NIE and the national intelligence expert for transnational threats at the National Intelligence Council, provided an excuse for the addition of Hezbollah to the NIE. The Hezbollah threat emerges “partly out of what we saw last summer in Lebanon where Hezbollah publicly said that they saw a U.S. hand in the conflict there,” a big time no-brainer, as the United States has provided Israel with an astounding $1.6 trillion in handouts since 1973. “Israel is the largest recipient of US foreign aid. It is already due to get $2.04 billion in military assistance and $720 million in economic aid in fiscal 2003. It has been getting $3 billion a year for years,” reports the Christian Science Monitor. “Many Americans would probably say it is money well spent to support a beleaguered democracy of some strategic interest,” never mind this “democracy” is restricted to people of Jewish ancestry and non-Jews in Palestine are not only victims of a pernicious form of apartheid but victims of frequent mass murder campaigns conducted with expensive high-tech tools provided by unobservant Americans. For the racist Israeli government, controlled by fanatical Jabotinskyite Likudniks, no doubt this is “money well spent,” or rather the money of other people well spent.

It is precisely these Israelis, in collaboration with American neocons—who are often more fanatical when it comes to slaughtering Muslims and Arabs than the Jabotinskyites—who are pushing the fantastical Hezbollah threat. “As bombing and missile attacks continue between Israel and Hezbollah, Israeli officials have warned their diplomats around the world about the threat of Hezbollah sleeper cells,” ABC News reported last July. “There is no credible intelligence pointing to an imminent Hezbollah attack on the United States, but sources say to ABC News that the group is capable of striking here,” same as properly motivated Greenlanders are “capable of striking here.”
As we know, U.S. foreign policy is currently in the clutches of a coven of criminally insane neocons, determined to launch “World War IV,” the war against Israel’s enemies. As should be expected, the kissing cousins of the neocons, the venal Wall Street neolibs, are on board with this noxious plan, as the “war on terror” is as much about squashing all resistance to loan sharking schemes and fire sales as it is the serial murder of all who would oppose Israeli hegemony.