RawStory: US 'USING IRAQI GROUP' FOR IRAN INTELLIGENCE (using MEK)

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One of the operational assets being used by the Defense Department is a right-wing terrorist organization known as Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), which is being “run” in two southern regional areas of Iran, both bordering Pakistan. They are Balucistan, a Sunni stronghold, and Khuzestan, a Shia region where a series of recent attacks has left many dead and hundreds injured in the last three months.

One former counterintelligence official, who wished to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the information, describes the Pentagon as pushing MEK shortly after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The drive to use the insurgent group was said to have been advanced by the Pentagon under the influence of the Vice President’s office and opposed by the State Department, National Security Council and then-National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice.

“The MEK is run by a brother and sister who were given bases in northern Baghdad by Saddam,” the intelligence official told RAW STORY. “The US army secured a key MEK facility 60 miles northwest of Baghdad shortly after the 2003 invasion, but they did not secure the MEK and let them basically be because Wolfowitz was thinking ahead to Iran.”

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“These guys are nuts,” this intelligence source said. “Cambone and those guys made MEK members swear an oath to Democracy and resign from the MEK and then our guys incorporated them into their unit and trained them.”

One of the many hard questions about the war in Iraq is what the United States will do about something called the National Liberation Army. The NLA is a well-trained brigade of perhaps 15,000 men outfitted with heavy artillery, rockets, and tanks. Its troops are headquartered less than 30 miles west of Baghdad, though some recent news accounts say they have moved toward Kurdish areas in northern Iraq. Although the NLA soldiers are Iranians, they are avowed opponents of Iran's clerical rulers and have made common cause with Saddam Hussein. Indeed the NLA has served as part of Saddam's internal security operation and even helped him put down Kurdish and Shiite rebels.

They are also purportedly enemies of the United States. The State Department considers the NLA part of an international Iranian terrorist group that has killed Americans and thousands of civilians. That means fund raising for the NLA in the United States is just as likely to land you in prison as fund raising for, say, al-Qaida. Some press accounts say the NLA has recently helped Saddam hide weapons of mass destruction and may be ready to fight for him in the coming days. In short, these guys seem like prime candidates for a good carpet-bombing.

But wait, hold the MOABs! The NLA's parent organization—called the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK)—or "People's Holy Warriors"—is also a leading Iranian political opposition group, which has done the Bush administration some big favors lately. The pro-democracy MEK has undermined the rule of Iran's anti-American mullahs, and during the past few months has dished precious new details about Iran's alarmingly advanced nuclear weapons program. The group also has many defenders in Congress and even its own lobbying office in downtown Washington. In fact, on any given day it's often not clear whether the MEK are America's friends, its terrorist enemies—or both. The war with Iraq may finally force the Bush administration to decide. Well, I guess we know now.

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During the '90s, the MEK carried out hundreds of attacks, almost all of them aimed at Iranian government buildings and officials within Iran. In 1999, for instance, the MEK assassinated a top Iranian military leader. The next year, it fired mortars at the Iranian presidential palace, killing a civilian print-shop worker. The State Department says that MEK hit-and-run raids against Iranian government buildings along the Iran-Iraq border have become "commonplace" and that the group's attacks in Tehran "constitute the biggest security threat" to the regime. The State Department also says the MEK's soldiers helped Saddam suppress Kurdish and Shiite rebellions in 1991 and 1996.

The Neoconservatives have some sort of shadowy relationship with the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization or MEK. Presumably its leaders have secretly promised to recognize Israel if they ever succeed in overthrowing the ayatollahs in Iran. When the US recently categorized the MEK as a terrorist organization, there were howls of outrage from "scholars" associated with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (a wing of AIPAC), such as ex-Trotskyite Patrick Clawson and Daniel Pipes. MEK is a terrorist organization by any definition of the term, having blown up innocent people in the course of its struggle against the Khomeini government. (MEK is a cult-like mixture of Marx and Islam). The MEK had allied with Saddam, who gave them bases in Iraq from which to hit Iran. When the US overthrew Saddam, it raised the question of what to do with the MEK. The pro-Likud faction in the Pentagon wanted to go on developing their relationship with the MEK and using it against Tehran.

So it transpires that the Iranians were willing to give up 5 key al-Qaeda operatives, whom they had captured, in return for MEK members.

Franklin, Rhode and Ledeen conspired with Ghorbanifar and SISMI to stop that trade. It would have led to better US-Iran relations, which they wanted to forestall, and it would have damaged their proteges, the MEK.

Since high al-Qaeda operatives like Saif al-Adil and possibly even Saad Bin Laden might know about future operations, or the whereabouts of Bin Laden, for Franklin and Rhode to stop the trade grossly endangered the United States.

The FBI has evidence that Franklin passed a draft presidential directive on Iran to AIPAC, which then passed it to the Israelis. The FBI is construing these actions as espionage or something close to it. But that is like getting Al Capone on tax evasion. Franklin was not giving the directive to AIPAC in order to provide them with information. He was almost certainly seeking feedback from them on elements of it. He was asking, "Do you like this? Should it be changed in any way?" And, he might also have been prepping AIPAC for the lobbying campaign scheduled for early in 2005, when Congress will have to be convinced to authorize military action, or at least covert special operations, against Iran. AIPAC probably passed the directive over to Israel for the same reason--not to inform, but to seek input. That is, AIPAC and Israel were helping write US policy toward Iran, just as they had played a key role in fomenting the Iraq war.