SHADOW WAR
Deconstructing a Mossad dirty tricks campaign and how the media spin it
Editor's note: Some important hints are dropped in this New York Times blog report, beginning with its revealing title. In the corpus of the article we have highlighted in boldface the passages which cumulatively constitute a Twilight Language revelation. See our Afterword (below). --Michael Hoffman
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Claim and Counter-Claim in a Shadow War
LONDON — In war, truth is proverbially the first casualty. The maxim also holds true for shadow wars, like the one currently being waged between Iran and its enemies.
Anyone trying to make sense of the escalating tensions over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions is faced with a bewildering array of claims and counter-claims, none of which would it be wise to take at face value.
This week saw Iran and Israel accusing each other of mounting bomb attacks in three countries — India, Georgia and Thailand — that were aimed at Israeli targets.
The identity of the victims and intended victims establishes one element of a strong prima facie case against Iran: motive. It is logical to assume Iran was striking back for a series of assassinations of its nuclear scientists and unexplained explosions at military facilities, which Tehran has blamed on the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad.
The nub of Iranian allegations after this week’s attacks abroad is that Mossad was prepared to put its fellow citizens in harm’s way in order to damage Tehran’s relations with the friendly governments of the countries where the bombings took place.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran regards the Zionist regime’s agents as perpetrators of such terrorist actions with criminal and hidden purposes,” an indignant Ramin Mehmanparast, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, told the press on Tuesday.
Mr. Mehmanparast’s allegations of a Mossad dirty tricks campaign were somewhat undermined when Thai authorities identified two arrested suspects as Iranians. A third Iranian man was detained in Malaysia and a female Iranian suspect was being sought. Thai police said the group’s intended targets were Israeli diplomats.
Mr. Mehmanparast will be placed in a quandary if investigations in Thailand link the suspects directly to Iranian intelligence. The only logical way to maintain the charge of Israeli responsibility then would be to assert that Mossad had somehow duped the Iranians into mounting a series of bombing operations only to have Iranian involvement exposed.
It is far-fetched, but not impossible. As every reader of the spy novels of John le Carré or Robert Ludlum knows, the machinations and motivations of undercover warriors are never straightforward. Some decades ago, Mossad set up a Palestinian “terrorist” in a London flat as part of some nefarious black op, according to former British officials familiar with the case. The Israeli agency’s failure to inform their British counterparts put relations between the two services into deep freeze for years. Spies are not above deceiving one another, even when they are ostensibly on the same side.
In the recent chain of events, however, it is difficult not to reach the conclusion presented by Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, that either Iran or its Lebanese ally Hezbollah was responsible. As my colleagues Scott Shane and Robert F. Worth write, the latest outrages fit into a pattern of aggressive behavior by an Iranian regime under pressure.
As for Hezbollah, its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah contradicted received Western wisdom this month by saying Tehran would not ask his movement to do anything if Iran were attacked. Hezbollah, for its part, would have to sit and think about it.
What was his game? Was he warning Iran it would be on its own? If so, why the public statement rather than a private message? Was it a trick to put their mutual enemies off the scent? In the shady undercover war, you might need a John le Carré to decipher the answer.
Hoffman's Afterword:
Harvey Morris of the New York Times opines that it is "logical" to assume and a "prima facie" case can be made that Iran was behind the Asian bombings because it wanted revenge for bombings in Tehran by Mossad. Au contraire, there is nothing "logical" in attacking nations that are Iran's allies like India, or a supplier, like Thailand.
Equally obtuse is the claim by Morris that "... allegations of a Mossad dirty tricks campaign were somewhat undermined when Thai authorities identified two arrested suspects as Iranians."
Morris never heard of patsies? Can he really believe that Mossad operations are only perpetrated by Israelis carrying Israeli passports and with a "Star of David" pinned on their back?
False flag operations use foreign nationals; that's axiomatic. Morris pretends he isn't aware of that. But wait -- he is aware of it! -- he admits that "decades ago" the Israelis "set up" a "Palestinian" in London as part of a "black op." He just can't believe they'd do anything like that in Thailand. Ha.
Morris: "...it is difficult not to reach the conclusion presented by Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, that either Iran or its Lebanese ally Hezbollah was responsible."
Now the picture is becoming a little clearer. The media up to this point in the Asian "Iranian" bombings story have been presenting a simplistic black hats/white hats dichotomy of terror in which Israeli secret services play fair and act like Boy Scouts, while the Iranians are behind most every wickedness in the world. This tale has obviously failed to gain believers. To maintain the media's credibility, Morris penned his blog with Revelation-of-the-Method hints sprinkled throughout a report wherein he concludes, on specious grounds that undercut the tenor of his own writing, that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who even Sarkozy of France calls a liar, is telling the truth.
The fact is, a case of criminal terror can't be decided on the editorial page or in a blog essay. It takes investigative reporting like that of the late, great Don Bolles of Arizona who specialized in (and was assassinated because of) sticking his ballpoint pen in the darkest corners of the rich and powerful. Mr. Bolles engaged in the type of reporting the television news networks and the print media undertook when the US government was in the hands of Richard Nixon, for whom the Establishment harbored a residual fear, and the Vietnam War was raging. Now that Washington D.C. is firmly in the grip of ZOG (the Zionist Occupation Government), contrarian Leftist frogs have become the government’s handsome prince mouthpieces.
In the preceding piece, Morris departs from the script slightly, with the System's blessing of course, to both affirm and deny the Israeli account of the recent bombings. This paradoxical approach gives the American public a vague and nebulous impression that the media are perhaps not Mossad mouthpieces after all —they are just as puzzled and befuddled as the rest of us.
Morris is assuaging nagging anxieties in the minds of savvy Americans over the "weird coincidence" of India recently agreeing to defy the West's embargo and buy Iranian oil, and then being almost immediately bombed by "Iranian government agents."
To maintain faith in Mossad's cover story, we are supposed to believe that the Iranians are that stupid. Few people outside John Hagee's revival tent are swallowing it, however. Enter the New York Times and their blogger Harvey Morris.
Notice how Mr. Morris concludes his essay not with a rally-round-the-Mossad cheer, but a somewhat spine-tingling repeat of the counter-thread he has weaved throughout his writing: the issue is shady and if we want an "answer" it requires a pattern-detection oracle (John le Carré) to decipher what still is a mystery.
Morris is undercutting his own thesis and signaling that he has not actually reached a conclusion that provides any answers. Talk about the "fog of war," this is the fog of journalism, intended to befuddle, while revealing the extent of our befuddlement and then subtly spicing it with Netanyahu's spin.
When the Times publishes checkerboard material like this, it's an indication that the Israelis have not yet convinced the American people of their innocence.
That fact, in turn, signals that independent Internet journalists with high audience numbers should strike now in order to crack the facade and cast further doubt on Mossad and the truthfulness of "our ally Israel," by publishing reports such as we put together for your benefit earlier this week —
Those "Iranian" Bombings (
read it here).
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We are living in interesting times. The big question is whether we can summon the will power, organization and wisdom to rise to the challenge our adversaries have put before us.
Michael Hoffman is a former reporter for the New York Bureau of the Associated Press. He has investigated the Double Initial murders in Rochester, N.Y.; the Son of Sam killings in New York City; the Unabomber in Montana and the role of actor Woody Harrelson's father, Charles, in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Many of these cases and others Hoffman has reported are recounted in his book, Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare. He publishes a hard copy bi-monthly newsletter. His latest book is Judaism's Strange Gods, published in October. His next book, if funds become available, is a Christian history of the rise of the Money Power in the West -- "Usury: The Mortal Sin that Was and Now Is Not."
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