08/28/14 – Philip Giraldi – The Scott Horton Show

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Alright, you guys, welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Alright, next up, it's our friend Phil Giraldi again.
He's writing at unz.com.
That's U-N-Z, unz.com.
At the American Conservative Magazine.
And Phil, we got a lot of background noise there.
And he's also at the Council for the National Interest.
That's councilforthenationalinterest.org.
This one is at unz.com.
Billionaires make war on Iran.
Oh yeah, he's also a former CIA and former DIA officer as well.
Hey, welcome back.
How are you doing, Phil?
I'm fine, Scott.
How are you?
I'm doing good.
You know, I was just thinking during the break there while you were sitting on hold that, as is often relevant on this show, you're the one who broke the story back in December of 2011 that in the American Conservative Magazine and then also shortly thereafter in a follow-up for antiwar.com that Obama had signed these new findings authorizing covert action against Iran and Syria.
And right when it just makes no sense whatsoever from an American point of view for us to be siding with Mujahideen rebels against the Iranians when never even mind that Iran isn't really our enemy and these Mujahideen guys are cousins of the September 11th hijackers and all of that, but Obama even has a policy of trying to make peace with the Iranians by passing this damn nuclear deal.
And then here he is, you know, of course, keeping America on both sides of the regional civil war going on here.
So what's it all about, Phil?
Well, I think you summed it up, Scott.
It's not about anything logical.
I mean, right from the beginning, this whole concept that we were going to be supporting insurgents which nearly from day one were perceived at least as being part highly radical was a stupid policy.
As in the case of Saddam Hussein, Assad is not any poster boy for anything.
But at the same time, if you're worried about this, what happens to minorities in these countries and what the U.S. strategic interests are, you support the guy that gives you stability and is not out slaughtering his own people.
And, you know, it was totally insane, this policy, right from the beginning.
And now the fruit of it has come home.
I don't know what they're going to do.
I mean, the logical thing now to do is to team up with Iraq, with Iran, and with Syria to get rid of these guys.
But that's not going to happen.
Francois Hollande already announced today that he and the rest of the West would not be dealing with Syria.
I mean, what are they, crazy?
I mean, you know, if you consider ISIS to be a serious threat, as our government officials have been saying, then you do what you have to do.
And I just don't get it anymore.
It's like insanity has taken over the White House.
Well, I'm reading in the Associated Press where they're saying, you know, we would hate to give Assad any advantage here, so we're going to bomb Assad targets, Syrian state targets, at the same time as we target ISIS in eastern and northern Syria.
Yeah, yeah, I saw that.
I was thinking, you know, my God, can it get any crazier?
You know, if the United States really has an interest in doing something about ISIS, then you do something about ISIS, and you do whatever you have to do to do it.
And I think for a fact that the ISIS threat has been way overinflated, but the fact is this is a nasty group of people who are carrying out atrocities.
And so if we feel because we triggered this whole protest by invading Iraq, which is true, and we have some responsibility for trying to straighten it out, then you have to work with the parties that are local, because the United States can't do it.
It doesn't know how to do it.
Every time it goes into one of these situations, it just makes everything worse.
Yeah.
Although, I mean, a big part of the problem here is all our intervention in Iraq ultimately was on the side of these Iranian-backed parties, as we've discussed all this time, nine years running now, Phil.
And so, like you're saying, if you're going to lie with those who have the ability to really defeat these guys, that means Iran, the Shiite Baghdad government that Bush put in there, and Assad.
But then that just makes matters that much worse with these guys and dealing with the aftermath of that, because it just puts America back on the side of the Shiites and the Iranians in the regional civil war, maybe to no good end other than dispersing these ISIS guys to the wind, where they're going to blow back here.
Even worse than before.
Yeah, everything becomes worse.
That's the whole crisis in what's happened in the last ten years.
Basically, you started with a situation where we were, without a doubt, attacked, but we suddenly lashed out at people that had nothing to do with it.
We went into Afghanistan to get rid of the bad guys, which we did in fairly short order, and then we decided to stay for ten years.
It's like, who is designing these policies?
What are they thinking?
And if guys like you and me, who are not in the loop, really can figure these things out, why can't they figure it out?
Well, it's because of their, first of all, their narrow vision, but also their vested interests, right?
Well, let me ask you this way.
What was the CIA guys that you were talking to, whoever they were, whatever agency they were part of, Phil, who told you that Obama had signed this new finding back in 2011?
Did they pass word about whether they objected or that they were concerned that this was going to be a problem or not?
I mean, I did read a quote.
Patrick Coburn said that he talked to a high-level American official in 2012 and said to him the same thing Coburn's been telling me on this show and this audience all along, is that the Iraqi government officials, the Shiite government officials, are terrified that our support for the civil war in Syria is going to blow back bad on them and is already destabilizing the Sunni areas of Iraq, and that this official told Patrick Coburn, yeah, no, we're not worried about that, that this is going to become a problem in Iraq.
But I just wonder, what about the professional analyst types, the ones who are being actually ordered to do this?
They had to have known better.
I mean, Lou Rockwell said on this show back in 2005 or something, look at these lunatic neocons, they want to target Syria, the last place in the Middle East you can get a drink?
Really?
Is that what makes sense here?
After what's already happened in Iraq?
Yeah, yeah, I absolutely agree with you.
I mean, it's just that, you know, and when I talk with them, admittedly most of the people I talk to are retired agency people who still have connections, they still talk to people inside, that's kind of the nature of the beast.
But the fact is, you know, I don't know a single former officer, I'm talking about like Paul Pilar, Ray McGovern, people that I know you talk to also, who think this makes any sense.
And I would bet the people inside the building who are working on this thing probably believe the same thing, but their jobs are on the line, you see?
And that's the way it works.
If some guy on the seventh floor, which is the leadership floor at CIA, decides that, you know, well, the president's doing a great job and we have to support him on this, it goes all the way down the line and everybody's got to support him on this.
And occasionally you'll get a rebellion by analysts.
I've written about a couple of them where analysts just refuse to, as in the Iran threat reports to two NIEs, the analysts refuse to go along with basically saying that Iran had a nuclear program.
So it does happen, but the general thrust of things is that you've got to go with the flow because you're part of an organization and you want to get promoted.
Well, the CIA, of course, as an agency, has gone along with this whole project all along.
It's their job to do it and they have been, but at least, you know, another example of the rebellion, as you reported a year ago, was the almost attack a year ago where the White House had to put out a government assessment because the CIA refused to vouch for the accusation that Assad had done the gas attack, the pretext for we were going to be al-Qaeda's air force and bomb Assad a year ago.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
But, you know, the system is corrupted.
I mean, let's just accept that.
And basically we have people in Washington running these things that are constantly looking over their shoulders about, you know, who is saying what about them, what kind of pressure groups are piling up against them, and so on and so forth.
We don't have any sensible policies.
All we have is government in terms of response to intimidation.
And that's what goes on in Washington.
And that's the other side of this break.
Billionaires make war on Iran.
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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
I'm talking with Phil Giraldi, former CIA officer.
Now he writes for the American Conservative Magazine and for UNZ.com.
That's U-N-Z, UNZ.com.
This one is called Billionaires Make War on Iran.
Right when, at a time, I guess it all waxes and wanes back and forth around here depending on American policy and other factors, at a time where, right now, Iran's deadly enemies in the Islamic State are the major crisis, there are some billionaires in America who are determined to take out all their wrath on Iran no matter what.
So, what billionaires?
What's it all about, Phil?
Well, this is, you know, the usual suspects.
I mean, Sheldon Adelson and people like that who are essentially very closely tied to the Israel lobby and various aspects of AIPAC.
And this organization that I focused on for this story is the United Against Nuclear Iran, which is a smaller group that most of us have probably not heard of.
But the interesting fact is that they're involved in a lawsuit in New York City right now.
And they're being sued by a Greek billionaire who's also Jewish.
And this guy essentially is claiming that they defamed him last year.
They outed him, saying that he was illegally trading with Iran because they had business reasons to do that.
They were competitors.
And so he's claiming that.
But the other interesting aspect for me is that the U.S. government is trying to squash this whole lawsuit because this group, United Against Nuclear Iran, apparently has a lot of classified information.
And if you kind of think your way through it, the classified information must be Treasury Department and Justice Department, investigations of Americans and other people for suspicion of breaking sanctions with Iran.
So these are classified documents that are being given to a private entity that wants war with Iran.
And these documents are being used to make their case.
So I think it's quite incredible.
Yeah, well, of course, that's what the Trading With the Enemy Act is all about in the first place, right?
It's not just punishment if you do so.
It's a licensing procedure so that you may trade with the enemy if you're in on it with the Treasury.
But you're not allowed to go outside the lines.
That's the deal.
Yeah, that's right.
Especially if your competition is better connected than you are.
Yeah, but these guys are well connected.
That's clearly the case.
And essentially, whether the case that this guy was specifically defamed for business reasons or not turns out to be true, I don't know.
But if you read all the details of the article appeared in the New York Times, you would see that he has a pretty plausible case.
But as I say, to me, the amazing thing is the U.S. government collaboration with a group like this, while our president is claiming he wants to negotiate a peace deal with Iran, at the same time, they're feeding information to an organization which is going in the opposite direction.
So it's quite amazing.
Right.
Yeah, well, all these policies.
Very contradictory.
And now, you know, I don't know.
Well, let me ask you, where do you stand on the chances for a final nuclear deal at this point, Phil?
Because, in fact, earlier you reported that they had a pretty damn good deal worked out in Oman in the background while the rest of these clowns are parading around in front of the cameras that the actual professionals, you know, had a handshake going here.
Yeah, well, you know, everybody knows what the deal would be.
Iran has to have limited capability to enrich uranium with an inspections regime and so on and so forth.
Everybody knows what the deal is.
But the fact is, every time we're very close to a deal, these pressure groups, and the United States in particular, and the Israeli government, put pressure on the White House and we kind of back off a little bit from it.
And that's what's happening.
My feeling is it ain't going to happen.
There are more things that can go wrong that can go right on this.
I know you talk to Garrett Porter occasionally.
Garrett is the real expert on this.
I mean, he's got sources and he's really into the issue.
And he sort of feels it's all a lot of theater going on now and it will happen.
But I'm not so sure about that.
Yeah, well, and he's only just very recently switched to Optimist on this because it was after the Ayatollah gave a speech where he said, yeah, one day we'll have 90,000 centrifuges.
And instead of latching onto that and flipping out, Kerry said, yeah, yeah, yeah, we know that that's not really what they mean and that kind of thing.
We're going to keep talking anyway.
And how that was really to him the biggest indication that, oh, wow, they're not using that as a cheap excuse.
And of course, the Ayatollah is talking about decades from now in some totally different context, not anything near term, not anything contrary to the deal that they're working out now.
That's right.
That very well could have been a really bad talking point.
You know what I mean?
The way he said it.
Yeah, well, Garrett is kind of my expert on this because he really is close to the issue and knows what he's talking about.
But I'm pessimistic.
I just see the fact that this keeps dragging out and as it's dragging out, the people who are against this gain momentum because they constantly are saying the same thing.
Iran is a threat.
They pursue the same line.
And if you repeat it often enough, it becomes like it's a dogma.
And so I have a bad feeling about it.
Did you see the article on AIPAC in The New Yorker the other day?
Yeah, I did.
Because there's a lot of that, a lot of sort of, I mean, I don't know how true this is, but a lot of spin about just how unprecedented it is for the Prime Minister of Israel to work so contrary to the interests of the U.S. or at least, you know, I'm sure he would argue the U.S., this particular president and his particular policies where people are saying, you know, his advisors are telling him, man, you better back down.
He's just saying no.
He's going to do everything he can to stop America from making this deal.
So then I guess in D.C., everybody who prefers Netanyahu to Obama, which is apparently a lot of people, they just fall in line behind that.
If he has the chutzpah, then they do too.
Yeah, it's like we're living in an age where the truth no longer resonates because it doesn't exist anymore.
I'm doing a piece right now on ISIS, and some of the comments coming out of John McCain, Lindsey Graham, that clown from New York State, Peter King.
I mean, this stuff is incredible.
These people are so ill-informed and so stupid that you wonder how they could get elected to anything beyond dog catcher, and I certainly won't even want to give them that job.
It's absolutely astonishing.
We have clowns running our government, people who could care less about what happens to the country and what happens to the American people, and it's just, is there going to be a revolution next year?
I hope so.
How much longer can this go on?
Yeah.
Well, you know, Bill Moyers, who I disagree with on a hell of a lot of things, LBJ-style Democrat, I remember he said, you know, it used to be that there were always delusional types on all kinds of sides, not just both sides, but they were marginal, and now the delusional are at the center of the debate.
They're leading it, and people who are grounded in any kind of reason or factual basis or historical context are, you know, basically just crying in the wind.
Yeah, that's right.
I mean, the crazy has become the new normal, and it's not partisan.
It's Republican and Democrat.
I mean, the Republicans have admittedly come out with the really crazy stuff, but so what?
I mean, they're basically all on the same page when it comes to foreign policy and comes even to a lot of domestic policies.
I mean, how can anyone figure out immigration?
You have to reform the immigration program because it's killing us.
Anyway, that's a sidebar.
No, you're right.
I mean, there's a million of them, no doubt about that.
Well, so now, back to the Islamic State then for a minute and all of the different competing interests there.
I'm still predicting the worst.
The more Obama says no ground troops and keeps sending special forces, the more I think it's going to end up sending the Marine Corps.
I don't think it'll even wait for Hillary to do.
Not that I want that, but I just can't see any other way around it from the government's point of view at this point, but I wonder what you think about that.
I kind of agree with you.
I think they have this kind of way of doing things and then they wait a while and you don't hear anything and you assume everything is okay and then you suddenly realize, hey, we've got 400 ground troops in Iraq.
As part of this article I'm doing, I'm doing comparisons with Boko Haram in Africa.
We've got 600 advisors there and nobody even talks about them and we've had zero success in liberating any of those poor schoolgirls that were kidnapped.
It's like, who is thinking these things through and how do they keep getting away with it?
Yeah, well all they need is just the slimmest pretext and then it doesn't matter how bad it gets because the worse it gets, the more excuse for more intervention they've got.
They can just keep going until they've got a base, a lily pad here, there, and everywhere in every county on the planet.
That's right, that's right.
Except that we can't afford that, so it's kind of a race to see what blows up first, the economy or the nukes at this point.
Exactly, yeah.
Alright, Phil Giraldi, everybody.
UNZ.com.
Thanks, Phil.
Thanks, Scott.
What was the only interest group in D.C. pushing war with Syria last summer?
AIPAC and the Israel Lobby.
What's the only interest group in D.C. pushing to sabotage the nuclear deal with Iran right now?
AIPAC and the Israel Lobby.
Why doesn't the President force an end to the occupation of Palestine, a leading cause of terrorist attacks against the United States?
AIPAC and the Israel Lobby.
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