McCain's ISIS weapons kill two American contractors, Fast and Furious Arab style..
Friends and Associates:
Today
"The Hill, "RT America," and "Al Jazeera" have opened a McCain
can-of-worms into how weapons are funneled into Syria for (not the
so-called rebels) but for ISIS.
Apparently,
the Turkish equivalent of the C.I.A., known as the G.I.D., receive
the U.S. weapons from CIA contractors which are then turned-over to
ISIS, via what media calls....the "Black Market." Now....if you think
Turkey is that careless, then why not try to buy the London Bridge at
Lake Havasu Arizona. Black Market??
I
don't think so....just a completed network of providing weapons to ISIS
to take-down Assad, which is in the best interests of the U.S., Turkey,
Israel, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. That proposed trans Arab pipeline from
Qatar to the Mediterranean hangs in the wind with Assad and Russia in
place.
McCain's (CIA) weapons have already killed two American contractors, according to the news story below.....
From The Desk of Capt. Dave Bertrand (Ret.)
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Bondsman / Fugitive Recovery Agent, DHS/HWW (Commercial Driver)
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AZ to MT. Basic Rural Survivalist & Prepper that believes in God
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Opinions
and discussion of today's hard hitting topics. If you wish to be
removed....reply within, or enlighten someone else by forwarding. I have
no sponsors and I sell nothing, no editor, but plenty on my mind. I
encourage everyone to network your thoughts and comments and don't worry
about grammar, especially mine. Those that bark the loudest, usually
have nothing more to say....
Weapons for Syrian rebels sold on Jordan's black market
CIA plan to arm Syrian rebels undermined by theft of weapons by Jordanian intelligence agents, officials say.
Ali Younes & Mark Mazzetti 26 Jun 2016 23:11 GMT
Amman, Jordan
- Weapons shipped into Jordan by the Central Intelligence Agency and
Saudi Arabia intended for Syrian rebels have been systematically stolen
by Jordanian intelligence operatives and sold to arms merchants on the
black market, according to American and Jordanian officials.
Some of the stolen weapons were used in a shooting
in November that killed two Americans and three others at a police
training facility in Amman, FBI officials believe after months of
investigating the attack, according to people familiar with the
investigation.
The existence of the weapons
theft, which ended only months ago after complaints by the US and Saudi
governments, is being reported for the first time following a joint
investigation by Al Jazeera and The New York Times.
The
theft, involving millions of dollars of weapons, highlights the messy,
unplanned consequences of programmes to arm and train rebels - the kind
of programme the CIA and Pentagon have conducted for decades - even
after the Obama administration had hoped to keep the training programme
in Jordan under tight control.
The Jordanian
officers who were part of the scheme reaped a windfall from the weapons
sales, using the money to buy expensive SUVs, iPhones and other luxury
items, Jordanian officials said.
The theft and
resale of the arms - including Kalashnikov assault rifles, mortars and
rocket-propelled grenades - have led to a flood of new weapons available
on the black arms market.
Investigators
do not know what became of most of them, but a disparate collection of
groups, including criminal networks and rural Jordanian tribes, use the
arms bazaars to build their arsenals. Weapons smugglers also buy weapons
in the arms bazaars to ship outside the country.
The FBI investigation into the Amman shooting, run by the bureau’s Washington field office, is continuing.
But
American and Jordanian officials said the investigators believed that
the weapons that a Jordanian police captain, Anwar Abu Zaid, used to gun
down two Jordanians, two American contractors and one South African had
originally arrived in Jordan intended for the Syrian rebel-training
programme.
The officials said this finding had come from tracing the serial numbers of the weapons.
Mohammad
H al-Momani, Jordan's minister of state for media affairs, said
allegations that Jordanian intelligence officers had been involved in
any weapons thefts were "absolutely incorrect".
"Weapons of our security institutions are concretely tracked, with the highest discipline," he said.
He
called the powerful Jordanian intelligence service, known as the
General Intelligence Directorate, or GID, "a world-class, reputable
institution known for its professional conduct and high degree of
cooperation among security agencies". In Jordan, the head of the GID is
considered the second most important man after the king.
Representatives of the CIA and FBI declined to comment.
The
US State Department did not address the allegations directly, but a
spokesman said that the US' relationship with Jordan remained solid.
"The
United States deeply values the long history of cooperation and
friendship with Jordan," said John Kirby, the spokesman. "We are
committed to the security of Jordan and to partnering closely with
Jordan to meet common security challenges."
The
training programme, which in 2013 began directly arming the rebels
under the code name Timber Sycamore, is run by the CIA and several Arab
intelligence services and aimed at building up forces opposing President
Bashar al-Assad of Syria.
The United States and Saudi Arabia are the biggest contributors, with the Saudis contributing both weapons and large sums of money,
and with CIA paramilitary operatives taking the lead in training the
rebels to use Kalashnikovs, mortars, antitank guided missiles and other
weapons.
The existence of the
programme is classified, as are all details about its budget. US
officials say that the CIA has trained thousands of rebels in the past
three years, and that the fighters made substantial advances on the
battlefield against Syrian government forces until Russian military
forces - launched last year in support of Assad - compelled them to
retreat.
The training programme is based in
Jordan because of the country's proximity to the Syrian battlefields.
From the beginning, the CIA and the Arab intelligence agencies relied on
Jordanian security services to transport the weapons, many bought in
bulk in the Balkans and elsewhere around Eastern Europe.
The
programme is separate from one that the Pentagon set up to train rebels
to combat fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL,
also known as ISIS), rather than the Syrian military. That programme was
shut down after it managed to train only a handful of Syrian rebels.
Jordanian
and American officials described the weapons theft and subsequent
investigation on the condition of anonymity because the Syrian rebel
training is classified in the United States and a government secret in
Jordan.
News of the weapons theft and eventual crackdown has been circulating inside Jordan's government for several months.
Husam
Abdallat, a senior aide to several past Jordanian prime ministers, said
he had heard about the scheme from current Jordanian officials. The GID
has some corrupt officers in its ranks, Abdallat said, but added that
the institution as a whole is not corrupt.
"The majority of its officers are patriotic and proud Jordanians who are the country's first line of defence," he said.
Jordanian
officials who described the operation said it had been run by a group
of GID logistics officers with direct access to the weapons once they
reached Jordan. The officers regularly siphoned truckloads of the
weapons from the stocks, before delivering the rest of the weapons to
designated drop-off points.
Then the officers
sold the weapons at several large arms markets in Jordan. The main arms
bazaars in Jordan are in Ma'an, in the southern part of the country; in
Sahab, outside Amman; and in the Jordan Valley.
It
is unclear whether the current head of the GID, General Faisal
al-Shoubaki, had knowledge of the theft of the CIA and Saudi weapons.
But several Jordanian intelligence officials said senior officers inside
the service had knowledge of the weapons scheme and provided cover for
the lower-ranking officers.
Word that
the weapons intended for the rebels were being bought and sold on the
black market leaked into Jordan government circles last year, when arms
dealers began bragging to their customers that they had large stocks of
US- and Saudi-provided weapons.
Jordanian
intelligence operatives monitoring the arms market - operatives not
involved in the weapons-diversion scheme - began sending reports to
headquarters about a proliferation of weapons in the market and of the
boasts of the arms dealers.
After the Americans
and Saudis complained about the theft, investigators at the GID
arrested several dozen officers involved in the scheme, among them a
lieutenant colonel running the operation. They were ultimately released
from detention and fired from the service, but were allowed to keep
their pensions and money they gained from the scheme, according to
Jordanian officials.
Jordan’s decision to host the CIA-led training programme is the latest episode in a long partnership.
Beginning
in the Eisenhower administration, the CIA made large payments to King
Hussein, who ruled Jordan from 1952 until his death in 1999, in exchange
for permission to run numerous intelligence operations on Jordanian
soil.
CIA money and expertise also helped the king establish the GID and put down internal and external threats to his government.
Since
the September 11, 2001, attacks, the United States has flooded Jordan
with money for various counterterrorism programmes. American and
Jordanian spies have run a joint counterterrorism centre outside Amman,
and a secret prison in Jordan housed prisoners the CIA captured in the
region.
In his 2006 book, State of Denial, the
journalist Bob Woodward recounted a 2003 conversation in which George J
Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, told Condoleezza Rice,
then the national security adviser, "We created the Jordanian
intelligence service, and now we own it".
It is a relationship
of mutual dependence, but Jordan has particular leverage because of its
location in the heart of the Middle East and its general tolerance to
be used as a base of US military and intelligence operations.
Jordan's
security services also have a long history of trying to infiltrate
armed groups, efforts that have yielded both success and failure.
In
2009, a Jordanian doctor - brought to the CIA by a GID officer after
the doctor said he had penetrated al-Qaeda's leadership - turned out to be a double agent
and blew himself up at a remote base in Afghanistan. Seven CIA
employees, as well as the GID officer, were killed in the attack.
Two
recent heads of the service, also known as the Mukhabarat, have been
sent to prison on charges including embezzlement, money laundering and
bank fraud.
One of them, General Samih
Battikhi, ran the GID from 1995 to 2000 and was convicted of being part
of scheme to obtain bank loans of around $600m for fake government
contracts and pocketing about $25m. He was sentenced to eight years in
prison, but the sentence was eventually reduced to four years that were
served in his villa in the seaside town of Aqaba.
General
Mohammad al-Dahabi, who ran the service from 2005 to 2008, was later
convicted of stealing millions of dollars that GID officers had seized
from Iraqi citizens crossing into Jordan in the years after the American
invasion of Iraq in 2003.
His trial showed
that he had also arranged for money to be smuggled in private cars from
Iraq into Jordan and had been involved in selling Jordanian citizenship
to Iraqi businessmen. He was sentenced to 13 years in prison and fined
tens of millions of dollars.
President Barack
Obama authorised the covert arming programme in April 2013, after more
than a year of debate inside the administration about the wisdom of
using the CIA to train rebels trying to oust Assad.
The
decision was made in part to try to gain control of a chaotic situation
in which Arab countries were funnelling arms into Syria for various
rebel groups with little coordination.
The
Qataris had paid to smuggle shipments of Chinese-made FN-6
shoulder-fired weapons over the border from Turkey, and Saudi Arabia
sent thousands of Kalashnikovs and millions of rounds of ammunition it
had bought, sometimes with the CIA's help.
By
late 2013, the CIA was working directly with Saudi Arabia, the United
Arab Emirates and other nations to arm and train small groups of rebels
and send them across the border into Syria.
The
specific motives behind the November shooting at the Amman police
training facility remain uncertain, and it is unclear when the FBI will
officially conclude its investigation.
This
year, the widows of the Americans killed in the attack sued Twitter,
alleging that it knowingly permitted ISIL to use its social media
platform to spread the group's violent message, recruiting and raising
funds.
Captain Abu Zaid, the gunman, was killed
almost immediately. His brother, Fadi Abu Zaid, said in an interview
that he still believed his brother was innocent and that he had given no
indications he was planning to carry out the shooting.
The
Jordanian government, he said, has denied him any answers about the
shooting, and has refused to release his brother's autopsy report.
Ali Younes reported from Amman, Washington and Doha, and Mark Mazzetti reported from Amman and Washington.
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