The Fallen | Marc Goldberg | Ops & Blogs | The Times of Israel:
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Tuesday, 24 April 2012
BBC News - MI6 man Gareth Williams not followed before death, inquest told
An incredibly strange case that just goes to show the world of the security services is every bit as murky as LeCarre would have us believe.
BBC News - MI6 man Gareth Williams not followed before death, inquest told:
'via Blog this'
BBC News - MI6 man Gareth Williams not followed before death, inquest told:
'via Blog this'
Monday, 23 April 2012
Sunday, 22 April 2012
Munich 40 Years On
The families and friends of the victims of the Black September massacre of Israeli Olympic athletes 40 years ago need to know that they’re relatives and friends did not die in vain. As they campaign for a minute’s silence at the 2012 London Olympics they should be aware of the fact that the security operation around the most major sporting championship in the world has been created specifically to ensure that there isn’t a repeat of the tragedy that took their loved ones.
They may not succeed in their campaign for a minute’s silence but security officials everywhere are painfully aware of the failure of the West German security forces in 1972 and have ensured that it will not be something easily repeated.
In the wake of Munich counter terror strategies became a crucial part of any government’s security policy. Counter measures such as the German GSG 9 and the British Counter Revolutionary Warfare wing of the SAS were developed and the British Police spent a great deal of time training up their own armed response forces for handling just such a situation. The US Delta force, local SWAT teams and the FBI Hostage Rescue Team spend their lives training to counter exactly the same kind of attack that succeeded so cruelly in targeting Israelis.
Terrorists became the victims of their own success as the tragedy of Munich gave way to the successes of security services in countering their activities. In the years that followed 1972 the SAS succeeded in killing the terrorists who took over the Iranian embassy, the nascent GSG 9 killed the terrorists who had hijacked a plane in Mogadishu and of course Operation Yonatan came a mere 4 years after the Munich Olympics and put terrorists on notice that there was no where in the world for them to hide.
These operations put terrorists on notice that it was no longer possible to blackmail governments or to use people as bargaining chips in a murderous game of extortion. Terrorists were left with the understanding that the chances are that they wouldn’t survive the attempt and they certainly wouldn’t achieve their objectives. Such was the horror of this terrorist atrocity that it has lived on in the minds of people everywhere, never to be forgotten regardless of whether the Olympic officials allow for a minute’s silence at the upcoming games or not.
Saturday, 21 April 2012
Thursday, 19 April 2012
The Holocaust
On this day of memorial I desperately wanted to write something beautiful in memory of the victims of the Holocaust, but the Holocaust was not beautiful, the Holocaust was death.
I tried instead to say something educational but the Holocaust was not school, the Holocaust was death.
I cannot begin to imagine the pain and suffering endured by those who suffered in death camps, concentration camps, slave labour camps, in ghettos, transit camps. The fear endured by Jew living in Europe when living as a Jew in Europe was a death sentence, when friends turned into enemies and the mere act of being alive was, in itself a crime.
So I shall not try to write something beautiful nor something educational I shall simply say never again shall we allow ourselves to be marched like lambs to the slaughter, never again shall we be powerless in the face of our enemies, never again shall we allow the world to grow deaf to our cries and never again shall we need to crawl on our knees to others in our hour of need.
With our backs to the sea and rifles in hand we say never again…and we mean it.
Wednesday, 18 April 2012
Thursday, 12 April 2012
Let Pollard Rot
It is disgraceful that the crank who lied his way into US Naval intelligence has come to be seen by so many people as a hero. It’s time to wake up and realize that Pollard was not a Zionist hero but a bumbling amateur looking for quick cash.
The Pollard affair damaged the relationship between Israel and the United States; even worse, it has consequences for any US Jews aspiring to a career in the world of intelligence. And from the moment Pollard claimed he had spied for Israel because he was a Jew everyone of the same faith working in intelligence would have become instantly suspect.
Now, recruiters to the CIA, Naval Intelligence and other US agencies will always ask themselves if the Jew sitting before them is going to end up being another Jonathan Pollard.
The commander of Naval Intelligence from 1978-82, Sumner Shapiro, summed up his frustrations with the attitude taken by Jewish organizations towards Pollard:
"We work so hard to establish ourselves and to get where we are, and to have somebody screw it up… and then to have Jewish organizations line up behind this guy and try to make him out a hero of the Jewish people, it bothers the hell out of me…"
The truth is that men like Shapiro are the true heroes, both of the Jewish people and the United States. Shapiro was a professional who worked hard to protect his country from enemies foreign and domestic. Instead of selling secrets to a foreign power he did his job to the best of his ability.
He chose the path of honour.
Shapiro met briefly with Pollard before he began spying for Israel, according to Shapiro, Pollard had a scheme that involved using South Africa as an intelligence back channel, the details haven't been made public but whatever it was shook Shapiro so much that he instantly ordered Pollard's security clearance to be reduced and that he be transferred.
This was by no means the only time that Pollard embarrassed himself, he refused to take the mandatory polygraph test when applying for the CIA, later claiming that his prolonged drug use would have been detected. The Office of Naval Intelligence had no polygraph requirement for applicants at the time.
Seymour Hersch has written a fantastic critique of the whole Pollard affair here included is an anecdote that sums the man up and is worth recounting in full;
In the early nineteen-eighties, Lieutenant Commander David G. Muller, Jr., who ran an analytical section at Suitland, had an opening on his staff and summoned Pollard for an interview. "I had respect for him," Muller recalled recently. "He knew a lot about Navy hardware and a lot about the Middle East." An early-Monday-morning interview was set up. "Jay blew in the first thing Monday," Muller recounted. "He looked as if he hadn't slept or shaved. He proceeded to tell me that on Friday evening his then fiancee, Anne Henderson, had been kidnapped by I.R.A. operatives in Washington, and he'd spent the weekend chasing the kidnappers." Pollard said that he had managed to rescue his fiancee "only in the wee hours of Monday morning" -- just before his appointment. Of course, Pollard did not get the job, Muller said, but he still wishes that he had warned others. "I ought to have gone to the security people," Muller, who is retired, told me, "and said, 'Hey, this guy's a wacko.' "
I can’t begin to imagine Shapiro's frustration when he watched a hero made out of this traitor. No country in the world (minus Israel) has been better to the Jews than the United States, and this is how he repaid that great country?
Pollard sold his country’s trusted secrets to a foreign power for cash and he got caught. He wasn’t a brave James Bondstein, and after receiving over $50,000 in cash and jewels over the period of 18 months he wasn’t working for love of Israel.
Perhaps there are those who think that the information he passed on was worth risking our relationship with our best friend in the international community; perhaps those same people believe that it is still worth risking that relationship in order to free this sick old man from prison.
Those people are wrong.
Pollard’s intelligence handlers were wrong to recruit him, and they realized it the instant he turned up at the embassy, seeking asylum, which is why they refused to let him through the door.
Spying is a dangerous game, and the stakes are always high. Pollard made his own bed, and it is not a comfortable one. But, then, the cost of betrayal is high. The trained agents of Israel’s security services are the ones protecting us in Israel; not those who see an opportunity to make money by selling national secrets to them.
Don’t feel bad for Pollard. He doesn’t deserve it.
Oh and for those of you arguing that those who have committed similar crimes have served lesser sentences, check your facts that simply isn't true.
The Pollard affair damaged the relationship between Israel and the United States; even worse, it has consequences for any US Jews aspiring to a career in the world of intelligence. And from the moment Pollard claimed he had spied for Israel because he was a Jew everyone of the same faith working in intelligence would have become instantly suspect.
Now, recruiters to the CIA, Naval Intelligence and other US agencies will always ask themselves if the Jew sitting before them is going to end up being another Jonathan Pollard.
The commander of Naval Intelligence from 1978-82, Sumner Shapiro, summed up his frustrations with the attitude taken by Jewish organizations towards Pollard:
"We work so hard to establish ourselves and to get where we are, and to have somebody screw it up… and then to have Jewish organizations line up behind this guy and try to make him out a hero of the Jewish people, it bothers the hell out of me…"
The truth is that men like Shapiro are the true heroes, both of the Jewish people and the United States. Shapiro was a professional who worked hard to protect his country from enemies foreign and domestic. Instead of selling secrets to a foreign power he did his job to the best of his ability.
He chose the path of honour.
Shapiro met briefly with Pollard before he began spying for Israel, according to Shapiro, Pollard had a scheme that involved using South Africa as an intelligence back channel, the details haven't been made public but whatever it was shook Shapiro so much that he instantly ordered Pollard's security clearance to be reduced and that he be transferred.
This was by no means the only time that Pollard embarrassed himself, he refused to take the mandatory polygraph test when applying for the CIA, later claiming that his prolonged drug use would have been detected. The Office of Naval Intelligence had no polygraph requirement for applicants at the time.
Seymour Hersch has written a fantastic critique of the whole Pollard affair here included is an anecdote that sums the man up and is worth recounting in full;
In the early nineteen-eighties, Lieutenant Commander David G. Muller, Jr., who ran an analytical section at Suitland, had an opening on his staff and summoned Pollard for an interview. "I had respect for him," Muller recalled recently. "He knew a lot about Navy hardware and a lot about the Middle East." An early-Monday-morning interview was set up. "Jay blew in the first thing Monday," Muller recounted. "He looked as if he hadn't slept or shaved. He proceeded to tell me that on Friday evening his then fiancee, Anne Henderson, had been kidnapped by I.R.A. operatives in Washington, and he'd spent the weekend chasing the kidnappers." Pollard said that he had managed to rescue his fiancee "only in the wee hours of Monday morning" -- just before his appointment. Of course, Pollard did not get the job, Muller said, but he still wishes that he had warned others. "I ought to have gone to the security people," Muller, who is retired, told me, "and said, 'Hey, this guy's a wacko.' "
I can’t begin to imagine Shapiro's frustration when he watched a hero made out of this traitor. No country in the world (minus Israel) has been better to the Jews than the United States, and this is how he repaid that great country?
Pollard sold his country’s trusted secrets to a foreign power for cash and he got caught. He wasn’t a brave James Bondstein, and after receiving over $50,000 in cash and jewels over the period of 18 months he wasn’t working for love of Israel.
Perhaps there are those who think that the information he passed on was worth risking our relationship with our best friend in the international community; perhaps those same people believe that it is still worth risking that relationship in order to free this sick old man from prison.
Those people are wrong.
Pollard’s intelligence handlers were wrong to recruit him, and they realized it the instant he turned up at the embassy, seeking asylum, which is why they refused to let him through the door.
Spying is a dangerous game, and the stakes are always high. Pollard made his own bed, and it is not a comfortable one. But, then, the cost of betrayal is high. The trained agents of Israel’s security services are the ones protecting us in Israel; not those who see an opportunity to make money by selling national secrets to them.
Don’t feel bad for Pollard. He doesn’t deserve it.
Oh and for those of you arguing that those who have committed similar crimes have served lesser sentences, check your facts that simply isn't true.
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