18 June 2006

Spy who turned tide with Libya is brought back to target Teheran

BY TOBY HARNDEN in Washington

THE SPY who persuaded Libya to renounce its weapons of mass destruction is to return to the CIA and direct an aggressive programme of recruiting informants inside Iran to aid possible negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear capability.

Stephen Kappes, an imposing former US marine officer who resigned abruptly from the CIA after a clash with its then director Porter Goss, has been brought back into the fold from exile in London by President George W. Bush.

Iran will be top of his agenda. “He’s a remarkable guy, a talented leader and among the finest officers of his generation,” said Gary Berntsen, the CIA’s key commander during the invasion of Afghanistan and who has worked for Mr Kappes in the Middle East. “He knows the target [ Iran] intimately.”

The return to CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia of Mr Kappes, 54, has boosted flagging morale at the spy agency. A former CIA station chief in Moscow, he led successful efforts to penetrate the network of A.Q.Khan, the rogue Pakistani scientist who supplied both Iran and Libya with nuclear know-how.

He will occupy the CIA’s number two spot as deputy to General Michael Hayden, who took recently over from Goss and characterised his predecessor’s tenure as “amateur hour”. Mr Kappes is the first career undercover operative to ascend to this level for more than three decades.

The CIA’s first priority is to gather intelligence from inside Iran about the theocratic regime’s nuclear capabilities and intentions as well as locations of its secret weapons sites. Such information would be crucial to in planning direct talks - or to launching military strikes if negotiations collapsed.

Renowned as a consummate intelligence professional, Mr Kappes is a Farsi and Russian speaker who while stationed in Frankfurt in the late 1980s was in charge of collecting information about Ayatollah Khomeini’s regime and debriefing Iranian exiles.

Mr Kappes is understood to have told friends months ago that he favoured direct engagement with Iran, even suggesting there might be a case for diplomatic relations with the country be restored and the US embassy in Tehran, closed during the 1979 hostage crisis, reopened.

Since then, the Bush administration has made a volte face on Iran by proposing direct talks on the nuclear issue if Tehran suspended uranium enrichment. If negotiations ever take place, Mr Kappes – seen as a future CIA director - would be an ideal candidate to lead them.

But the potential for success in talks or effective military action could be hampered by lack of intelligence. Robert Baer, a former CIA agent handler in the Middle East”, said: “The CIA has a terrible track record in Iran. In the late 1980s they lost all their human resources [informants] after the Iranians got into the mail.”

In October 2003, Mr Kappes led a 15-strong American and British team, including senior members of MI6, that went into Libya to test an overture by President Muammar Gaddafi suggesting he might be willing to give up his weapons of mass destruction.

The information gathered by Mr Kappes, currently chief operating officer of the security company ArmorGroup in London, helped persuade the Libyans that the West had incontrovertible evidence of the military intent of their nuclear programme.

He dealt directly with Musa Kusa, the head of Libya’s intelligence service and a suspect in directing the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie in 1988 and Mr Gaddafi, personally briefing Mr Bush on progress.

Mr Baer said that a similar outcome would be difficult to achieve with Tehran while the US had poor intelligence-gathering capability in Iran and no lines of communication. “We have to open up a negotiating channel to Iran, if nothing else to figure out what they’re thinking.

“You have to bring them into the tent – you can’t do it through Switzerland or Pakistan. We tend to issue preconditions before talking but this goes against traditional diplomacy.”

John Brennan, a veteran CIA officer who headed the US National Counter-Terrorism Centre before retiring last year, said: “It always makes sense to have dialogue, even with countries you are at odds with. A lot of time has passed between 1979 and today.”

He added that while there were obvious intelligence-gathering advantages in having a US embassy – and therefore a CIA station – in Tehran there was huge symbolism involved in such a move. “It’s a very complex calculation.”

But Mr Berntsen said he believed that negotiations were unlikely to succeed and military action against Iranian nuclear sites would have to be taken. “Eventually they’ll miscalculate and we’re going to have to destroy their facilities.”

4 June 2006  

Haditha eclipses Marines' heroic reputation on streets of the US

FOR THE people of Ohio, in America’s industrial heartland, mention of Haditha still stirs up feelings of pride in the noble sacrifice of its Lima Company, a group of marine reservists who suffered the highest casualty rate in Iraq.

But with the scandal surrounding alleged war crimes by Lima’s successor unit growing by the day, relatives of Ohio’s dead now fear that “Haditha” could become a byword for national shame and eclipse the heroism of their loved ones.

“The mere fact that it’s Haditha will reflect on Lima Company,” said Bob Derga, whose son Cpl Dustin Derga, 24, was killed by an armour-piercing bullet last May. “It’s going to tarnish a lot of the accomplishments.”

In seven months in Haditha, in western Iraq, Lima Company’s 184 marines suffered 23 killed in action and 36 wounded. Their experience, immortalised in a harrowing two-hour A&E television documentary using jerky amateur footage taken by the marines themselves, has been seared on the American consciousness.

“It made it more personal because it was no longer just statistics or a name flashed on a television screen,” said Mr Derga. “It was people from their communities, not career marines – college kids, school teachers, policemen, firemen. All of a sudden, the war became real.”

One young marine, later killed, is shown eating 15 pizzas, to the mirth of his comrades. His friend, also now dead, strums the guitar and sings “Puff the Magic Dragon”. Yet another wishes his daughter, whom he will never see again, a happy sixth birthday.

When 14 from Lima died in a massive roadside bomb blast last August just two days after a six Ohio-based snipers attached to the unit had been killed, backing for the war in the rust-belt state was shaken.

“Up until then, Middle America was supporting the war but then you had 20 guys from the same 3/25 battalion killed in the space of 48 hours,” said Paul Schroeder, whose son L/Cpl Edward “Augie” Schroeder, 23, was one of the 14 killed.

“All of a sudden you had lifelong Republicans, Bush supporters, starting to question things. It was the tipping point when people started to go the other way. America woke up.”

When the remnants of Lima Company returned to its Columbus headquarters last October, however, more than 30,000 Ohioans turned out to give them a tumultuous welcome.

“They were a very special group of marines and that’s not just post-mortem glorification,” said Carole Hoffman, whose son Sgt Justin Hoffman, 27, was killed. “Our community really rallied together. The families are very close. We embrace each other as part of the same brotherhood that our sons experienced.”

President George W. Bush was re-elected to the White House in 2004 on the strength of a narrow victory in Ohio. Since then, his popularity has plummeted in the state. A University of Cincinnati opinion poll released last week gave him a 35 per cent approval rating, the lowest in Ohio for any president in the past 25 years.

With the military death toll in Iraq creeping inexorably towards 2,500, Mr Bush’s advisers fear that the Haditha incident, in which a number of marines from Kilo Company of 3/1 battalion are accused of shooting 24 innocents, could fatally undermine his presidency.

Mr Derga, 51, is a strong supporter of the Iraq war who became a leading member of Ohio Families United after his son was killed. Mr Schroeder, 57, founded an anti-war group called Families of the Fallen for Change that now boasts 1,200 members.

Both are united in grief – last week they hugged each other at a private showing of the film – but also in their belief that battle stress was probably a significant factor in the actions of Kilo Company of 3/1 battalion, accused of shooting 24 innocents in Haditha.

“I’m not surprised,” said Mr Schroeder. “They don’t know who they can trust. My son said that somebody who’s smiling at you in the day can be shooting you at night or vice versa. They don’t know where to turn.

“Add to that exhaustion and an atmosphere in which you are taught to hate the enemy. Hate gets in the way. That’s the tragedy of war.”

Mr Derga said: “I think back to Lima Company being over there and the pressure they were under. It could just have easily been them. The fact that that unit it was their third deployment you can’t help thinking they were getting a little battle weary.

“It’s a fine line trying to keep those emotions in check, the anger and the rage that must be there when they lose one of their brothers. I can see how they might snap. But that doesn’t make it right.”

Their sentiments are echoed by some of Lima’s marines. Struggling to control his emotions in an interview for the film, called “Combat Diary”, Sgt Guy Zierk described how he had nearly gone beserk and killed two women and a teenage boy cowering in a house.

“I’m so close to shooting them but I don’t,” he said haltingly as he relived the moment. “It’s not right. It’d make me no better than the people we were trying to fight over there.”

Digital cameras and laptops have brought the Iraq war home to Americans like no previous conflict. “Justin was a real computer nerd, always talking to a lot of people on Instant Message from Iraq,” said Mrs Hoffman. The A&E film shows battles raging and vehicles ablaze, all recorded by marines engaged in combat.

Mr Derga fears that American resolve might be wavering. “This war will be won not on the battleground of Iraq but in the hearts and minds of American people – whether we can be persistent and tough enough to stick it out.”

But Mr Schroeder advocates an immediate withdrawal and believes that Americans can now openly support the troops but not their Iraq mission without being accused of being unpatriotic.

“I feel my son’s life was wasted. What is so horrendous about this war is they’ve tried to do it on the cheap, with too few troops. Now we’re paying for it. And that is a higher criminal activity than anything marines did in Haditha.”

The Spectator, 3 June 2006

Why I asked Bush about his mistakes in Iraq

By Toby Harnden in Washington

Even on Memorial Day, when the fallen are honoured, it seemed impossible to comprehend the reality of Iraq in what Americans refer to reverentially as 'our nation's capital'. A wave of suicide bombs hit Baghdad, killing 40 and wounding dozens more. Among the victims were a CBS News team. A massive explosion killed the cameraman and soundman — both Britons — and left Kimberly Dozier, a familiar, reassuring on-screen face, fighting devastating injuries. The US army captain chaperoning them also died.

In the teeth of a political clamour for troop withdrawals, the Pentagon was announcing that an extra brigade would be moving north from Kuwait to Anbar province, where a full-scale war has been raging almost unabated for the past three years. Over all of this hung the pall of Haditha, as anonymous American officials briefed that murder charges would be brought against a handful of vengeful US marines who allegedly massacred 24 civilians in Anbar last November after one of their own number had been killed by a roadside bomb.

On the Thursday before Memorial Day, in what seemed another world, two altogether more composed US marines in dress uniforms, their white belts gleaming, marched smartly up to a pair of huge oak doors on a corridor off the White House's East Room and opened them. On cue and in step, the most powerful man in the world and his sidekick strode towards the world's press.

In his preamble, Bush alluded to errors over Iraq. His chastened tone was startlingly different from the swaggering confidence I had seen in 2003 at the end of my last stint in Washington. Having spent significant chunks of the intervening three years in places like Baghdad, Tikrit, Fallujah and Ramadi watching the mirage of a new Iraq seemingly disappearing in a bloody mist, I was aching to learn just what he thought had been got wrong.

Squeezing a question in at such press conferences is not easy. Invariably, on these occasions, the American reporters arrange with the White House who will pipe up and in what order. When it comes to the Brits, it's always the big beasts of broadcasting who go first. But this, I sensed, was a rare chance. Hardly any journalists had made the trip from London because Tony Blair had chosen to travel on a plane so conveniently small that it could not accommodate the fourth estate. There would thus be time for at least one newspaper reporter to ask a question.

My opportunity came at the end. As Blair hesitated and half looked at me, I grabbed the microphone from a White House aide. 'Mr President, you spoke about mis-steps and mistakes in Iraq, ' I said. 'Could I ask both of you which missteps and mistakes of your own you most regret?' The answers I got were to dominate the world headlines for the next 24 hours and beyond.

Although clearly irked, Bush — looking me dead in the eyes — explained that he regretted his Wild West rhetoric of 'bring it on' and 'wanted dead or alive'. He had learnt 'some lessons about expressing myself maybe in a little more sophisticated manner'. America's 'biggest mistake', he said, had been the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib.

For his part, Blair said that deBaathification had been crudely implemented and then offered a startling — though abstract enough to be ignored by much of the press afterwards — admission: 'We were always going to have to be prepared for the fall of Saddam not to be the rise of a democratic Iraq.'

I have little doubt that Bush's aides had prepared him for a question such as mine. With the US military death toll inexorably approaching 2,500, a civil war looming and the President's popularity rating hovering around 30 per cent, to pretend that everything was just hunky-dory would simply make him appear as out of touch as his father seemed in 1992. Americans, moreover, love a confession — Bill Clinton being the best political exponent. On the face of it, Bush made a pretty good fist of feeling the nation's pain.

He also made a decent stab at answering my question. But these sessions are always tricky, not least for reporters. My attempting something a little too complicated a few years back led to Robin Cook fixing me with a cock-eyed stare and a withering, 'I'm not quite sure I follow your syntax.' An overly aggressive or impertinent question can provoke an injudicious response, but the journalist often attracts opprobrium.

When I asked Mo Mowlam, on the eve of her Cabinet departure, how she felt about her spectacular fall from grace, her aide interrupted me by shouting, 'Disgraceful!' Furthermore, long questions seldom get good answers, because a politician has more scope to dodge. Vanity questions designed to make the journalist look clever or erudite invariably leave them looking pompous.

This is not, however, a consideration that bothers the great and the good of America's White House press corps. Dressed immaculately, their three-part questions honed and polished, these are men and women who are seldom accused of failing to take themselves or their calling seriously enough.

The high seriousness of American journalism is reflected in a plaque in Washington's National Press Club. It outlines the American Journalists' Creed, by which their work 'fears God and honours man . . . is profoundly patriotic while sincerely promoting international good will and cementing world-comradeship, is a journalism of humanity, of and for today's world'. No doubt many in the East Room could have recited the whole thing by heart.

At the press conference they were separated from the small collection of slightly grubby and somewhat grumpy British hacks (security honchos had dictated we pitch up three hours early). There was a dividing aisle between us and our illustrious American counterparts — as if our jaded cynicism might contaminate their noble principles. Still, the White House had very generously allowed the Brits 50 per cent of the questions, and that meant I was able to get my 15 seconds of fame.

In the past, Bush had been unwilling to address the issue of mistakes, never apologising, never explaining, but as mea culpas go, his performance last week was thin on substance. Bush regretted (there was in fact no apology) his cowboy style rather than any policy decision.

Few, of course, would hold Bush responsible for Abu Ghraib, disgraceful as it was, except in the most tenuously indirect sense. The messianic belief that Bush and Blair have in the moral rectitude of their Iraq project was as intense as ever as they stood together. Bush's contrite tone might ultimately serve only to unnerve those who previously admired his resoluteness — a quality that for many Americans trumps almost anything else in a war leader.

Yet even if the tactic buys Bush a few percentage points in the polls, a lot more will be needed from him if he is to prevent a disastrous showing for his Republican party in November's mid-terms. The loss of either or both Houses of Congress would render him a lame duck snared in a trap.

But the Iraq situation is desperate, and this was rammed home to me by Major General John Batiste, a distinguished combat commander of the US Army's 1st Infantry Division in Iraq until 2005. The last time I had seen him had been in Kirkuk just before last January's Iraqi elections — prematurely hyped (like the votes since) as an historic turning point. Having turned down promotion and retired in disgust over Iraq, in recent weeks he has become a potent critic of Donald Rumsfeld, Mr Bush's cocksure Pentagon chief.

'I'm as mad as hell, ' he told me over a coffee on Capitol Hill. The shortage of boots on the ground 'by a factor of twoand-a-half to three' meant that during his year in Iraq he had to 'lend' his troops to other sectors, leaving dangerous gaps and wrecking painstakingly achieved progress.

'When you pull a battalion commander out of his zone, you can hear the sucking chest wound, ' he said. 'His guys are gone and — guess what — the insurgents see that and they immediately move in.' Lack of protection on Humvees was such a 'big problem' that he had to take DIY measures. 'We took advantage of any number of Iraqi Arab and Kurdish workshops to fashion our own armour.' His voice breaking, this lifelong Republican, 9/11 Pentagon survivor and loyal military man explained how mismanagement of the war had led to the futile deaths of brave soldiers under his command.

As I reflected on General Batiste's words, the Beltway analysis of Bush's answer to my question seemed so much blather. In the view of some network commentators, Bush's response was a slick move that could boost his ratings. Others believed that it would give his opponents heart while demoralising his core supporters. Most said he had appeared sincerely contrite. A few branded it pure politics.

In the twisted logic of 24-hour television news and celebrity correspondents, the fact that Dozier has been critically injured puts more pressure on the White House than the deaths of a few dozen soldiers.

Out in Iraq, however, coalition troops and — in far greater numbers — Iraqi civilians are continuing to die. And at this juncture it is likely that almost nothing Bush or Blair can say about it, whether gung-ho or apologetic, will make any difference.

Blair watered down Iran speech for Bush

Toby Harnden in Washington and Patrick Hennessy

TONY BLAIR made significant changes to one of his most important foreign policy speeches after bowing to American objections, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.

The Prime Minister altered key passages on possible action against Iran, climate change, and a proposed shake-up of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Objections by President George W Bush's inner circle played a key role in the alterations, which were made just before Mr Blair delivered his landmark address at Georgetown University in Washington, on Friday, British sources have revealed.

Only three hours before the speech was delivered, Downing Street officials were briefing journalists that the Prime Minister would stress that "change should not be imposed'' on Iran, reflecting the British view that bombing or invading Iran is not a realistic option. American officials had insisted, however, that the possibility of military action remained "on the table'', arguing that this helped to exert maximum pressure on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

By the time he made his speech, Mr Blair had significantly bowed to the American position, claiming, "I am not saying we should impose change'' and leaving the door open for a military attack.

He also backed away from a planned demand for a change in the running of the world's biggest financial institutions, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The Prime Minister originally intended to spell out a plan for Europe and the United States to give up their exclusive rights to install their own nationals as heads of the bank and the IMF respectively.

This would help to persuade smaller nations to give up their effective right to choose the United Nations secretary general, in favour of a move to install a leading international figure. Instead, Mr Blair's speech glossed over the issues, merely citing a "powerful case for reform''.

Another planned section was intended to take a tough line on global warming and the Kyoto Treaty, which Washington still has not signed.

In the event, Mr Blair merely claimed: "We must act on climate change'', but did not go into detail. At this point in the speech, as a mobile telephone rang in the audience, he even made a joke about American interference.

"I hope that isn't the White House telling me they don't agree with that,'' he said. "They act very quickly, these guys.''

On Iran, most US officials privately support the British position and aides to both leaders concede that with their personal poll ratings plummeting neither has the political capital to attack Teheran.

There are signs that President Bush also recognises this. In response to a question from this newspaper during the joint press conference on Thursday night, Mr Bush struck an almost mournful tone and acknowledged for the first time that he had made "mistakes'' over Iraq.

He regretted "saying 'bring it on', kind of tough talk, you know, that sent the wrong signal to people. I learnt some lessons about expressing myself maybe in a little more sophisticated manner.

"You know, 'Wanted dead or alive', that kind of talk.

"I think in certain parts of the world it was misinterpreted, and so I learnt from that.'' Officials involved in discussions between Mr Blair and Mr Bush, who had dinner without aides present in the President's private White House quarters on Thursday, indicated that the American position on Iran had softened.

Mr Blair told Mr Bush that Russia and China were close to agreeing the need for a tough UN resolution combining both incentives and deterrents for Iran on the nuclear issue. "The Russians are moving towards agreeing the sticks and the Americans are moving towards agreeing the carrots,'' said a Western diplomat.

28 May 2006

Rebel US Army General Targets Rumsfeld Over Iraq
(full article unpublished)

By Toby Harnden in Washington

MAJOR GENERAL JOHN BATISTE fought in the Balkans and Gulf wars, survived the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon and until last year commanded an infantry division in Iraq.

But rather than salute smartly and accept yet another promotion, the career soldier abruptly resigned from the US Army and is now leading a determined offensive aimed at driving Donald Rumsfeld from office.

In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, he charged the Pentagon chief with causing the “unnecessary deaths” of US servicemen by “going to war [in Iraq] with the wrong plan” and committing “strategic blunders of enormous magnitude”.

Mr Rumsfeld, he said had a “contemptuous, arrogant and dismissive attitude” that meant he had never uttered words of regret for errors in Iraq as Tony Blair and President George W. Bush did last week.

Instead, he had continued to “ignore the advice of war fighters” and “tie the hands of commanders when they should have been leading and planning rather than managing shortages”.

The Pentagon chief, moreover, had “set the conditions for Abu Ghraib” and bore responsibility for what Mr Bush described in his surprise mea culpa as “the biggest mistake that’s happened so far.

One of a handful of former generals who recently called for Mr Rumsfeld to resign, Gen Batiste is now promising to be much more than an irritant who briefly spoke out and then settled back into a comfy retirement.

“I’m as mad as hell,” he said. “I’m not stopping. They can hand wave me off, dismiss me but I’m coming back. Again and again and again until there is some accountability.”

The transformation of this loyal soldier, who led the 1st Infantry Division with distinction during a bloody year in Iraq’s Sunni Triangle, into an angry rebel is a stark indicator of the growing disquiet at the heart of America’s military establishment.

“It’s starting to build,” said Gen Batiste, 53, who had just held a meeting with a congressman on Capitol Hill. “I’m seeing growing support on both sides of the aisle in Congress.”

The critique outlined by Gen Batiste, the son of a colonel who fought in the Second World War, Korea and Vietnam, is all the more potent because he was an aide in the Pentagon before seeing the effects of Mr Rumsfeld’s policies up close in Iraq.

As the senior military aide to Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy Pentagon chief, he experienced Mr Rumsfeld first hand. “You can’t tell that man anything because he knows it all.”

Echoing accusations that Mr Rumsfeld, 73, has surrounded himself only with senior officers prepared to do his bidding, he said: “He has systematically removed dissension.”

But it is the allegation from Gen Batiste, who led 22,000 troops in Iraq, 150 of whom were killed and 2,000 wounded, that Mr Rumsfeld has wasted the lives of soldiers that will hit home hardest.

“There were insufficient troops on the ground by a factor of two-and-a half to three,” he said. Commanders were starved of resources because of the Pentagon chief’s determination to prove that lean, light forces could do the job.

Gen Batiste said that lack of armour was such a “big problem” that he had to take DIY measures. “We took advantage of any number of Iraqi Arab and Kurdish workshops to fashion our own armour.”

The shortage of boots on the ground meant that during his year in Iraq he had to “lend” his troops to other sectors, leaving dangerous gaps and wrecking painstakingly-achieved progress.

“When you pull a battalion commander out of his zone, you can hear the sucking chest wound,” he said “His guys are gone and - guess what - the insurgents see that and they immediately move in.

“The Iraqis that were working with you are saying, ‘holy shit’. And then you’ve got to fight your way back in. That’s not the way to do this. There is a lack of the capability you need to be flexible.”

Mr Rumsfled, he said, failed to understand counter-insurgency operations and was fixated on al-Qa’eda foreign fighters in Iraq when the core of the “absolutely predicatble” insurgency was home-grown.

“I learned a lot of this was from the Brits in Bosnia. It’s all about relationships at every level. It’s about changing attitudes and giving people alternatives to the insurgency.”

Gen Batiste wrestled with his conscience when offered promotion to lieutenant-general and the second-highest ranking post in Iraq, overseeing 140,000 troops.

It was the spectre of Vietnam that tipped the balance. He was haunted, he said, by the story of Gen. Harold K. Johnson, the Army chief of staff during the Vietnam War.

“Johnson planned to go to the president, throw his stars on the table say to him, ‘You f--kd this up, violated the principles of war, took this country to war without mobilising it. I quit and I’m telling the press why.

“But he decided to try to fix it from within. On his deathbed he was asked if he had any regrets and he said, ‘I wish I’d had the moral courage that day to do the right thing.’”

This convinced Gen Batiste that he was “honour bound” to speak out, particularly because forces I Iraq continue to be “under-resourced”.

He maintains that he is supported by hundreds of serving officers who cannot break ranks and has the tacit backing of the top brass. “Nobody has called me to say, ‘John, please stop what you’re doing’.

“Rumsfeld and his inner circle imposed their will on the whole planning process and they got it wrong. They had one tragic flaw. They knew everything - except how to win this war.”