08/10/12 – Philip Giraldi – The Scott Horton Show

All right, welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton.
Next guest on the show today is Phil Giraldi, former CIA and DIA officer, executive director of the Council for the National Interest, and contributing editor at the American Conservative Magazine, as well as regular writer at Antiwar.com.
Welcome back to the show, Phil.
How the hell are you?
Okay, Scott.
How about you?
I'm doing pretty good.
Appreciate you joining us today.
All right, so Ehud Barak, the former prime minister of Israel, and now, I guess, he's the labor leader and defense minister in the Netanyahu coalition there.
He says there's a new American government intelligence report that revises the opinion of the 2007 and 2010 national intelligence estimates, which say that the Iranians have not made a decision to begin to create a nuclear weapons program, and so I wonder what you know about it.
Well, actually, he said it was a national intelligence estimate, which is a consensus report that's issued by all of the intelligence agencies in the United States.
Whatever he's talking about is not that.
There isn't a new NIE on Iran.
I suspect that what he's talking about is one of the intelligence reports that countries routinely exchange between themselves or among themselves, and he's probably received a finished intelligence report that indicates that Iran has been taking some steps that are consistent with weaponization or consistent with developing a nuclear device or something like this.
I suspect that's what it is.
Now, what he's doing is he's hyping it, basically.
He's saying this is significant new intelligence.
It probably is not, and he's also broken one of the cardinal rules by revealing an intelligence document that was given to him in confidence by the United States.
Yeah, well, I'm not so much concerned about that, just the way they use it, you know?
Yeah, he's using this for a political purpose.
But what's going to happen now is that people in the CIA and maybe even in the White House are going to get really pissed off about this, and they're going to say, well, let's restrict what we give them from now on.
I would like to see that be the result, and that could well happen.
That could well happen?
Come on.
Phil Giraldi, Sony optimist, welcome to the show.
I guess I am being a bit optimistic.
Well, you know, we'll see.
I can certainly understand that one powerful constituency in D.C. is the intelligence community itself, and they made themselves known on Jonathan Pollard in the late 90s and overruled the Israel lobby on that one.
So I guess if they're really kind of one voice of anger about something like that, maybe it could make a difference.
Well, a lot of this stuff is circular anyway.
I mean, some of the information that went into the U.S. report, it appears actually came from the Israelis, and also some of it came from the Mujahedini calque, which is far from being a reliable source of information.
So, you know, I would suggest that this report was probably something kind of speculative, saying there are some indications that we've received from liaison services and from others that indicates the following.
And I would suspect it's nothing more than that.
In fact, the White House today said that there was no indication that there is no indication that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon, and there is no indication that they've made the political decision to do so.
Yeah, in fact, I really appreciate that.
Barack, in this case, seems to have really overplayed his hand.
He just provoked the White House into officially, right?
They didn't just, you know, sick Rice and on them to put a piece in the Times talking with, you know, high level but not highest level intelligence types.
Now they actually got the National Security Council at the White House to officially say, no, that's wrong, they're not making nukes, which I think is the best they've ever done, right?
Before that, the best we had was the Director of National Intelligence or anyone lower than him.
Yeah, that's right.
You know, there's obviously a lot of politics in this.
The Israelis want to provoke the United States into attacking Iran.
And Obama, I don't know what he really believes, but the fact is that he must recognize that to start a new war at this point, just before elections, could be a real bad move.
So I think he's disinclined to want to go in that direction.
What he'll want to do after November, who knows.
But the fact is that, you know, so they're pushing it two directions here, and Obama is looking very carefully over his shoulder because if a war were to start and to suddenly start going in the wrong direction, he will lose.
Yeah, well, you know, I sure hope that that's true.
And really I guess I ought to pretend that I'm as certain as you because I would hate to imply otherwise and have him hear me.
But yeah, it seems like it obviously should be a deal killer.
He probably has the FBI listening to you right now anyway.
Yeah, yeah, I'm so freaking scared.
But I have no idea what the hell I was going to say.
I'll tell you this.
I talked with Mohamed Sahimi on the show yesterday, and he was talking about the effect of the sanctions already.
Maybe you saw his piece at antiwar.com.
Yeah, I did.
And, you know, he said he's got family that are pharmacists there talking about the massive shortages because of the sanctions on the Central Bank.
It makes it real hard to do international exchanges.
It's already having widespread effects and, of course, on the weakest, right?
In this case, hemophiliacs are first on the list of people who can't get their needed medicine.
Them and cancer patients can't get their chemotherapy.
That's the dawn of another invisible war, as Joy Gordon called the war against Iraq in the 1990s.
Well, you know, the problem is that sanctions, there are two things that are wrong about sanctions.
First of all, they never work.
And secondly, they punish the part of the population that is weakest and is least involved in the policies that people who are instituting the sanctions want to change.
So it's a vicious weapon that serves no effect, and it's just a way of punishing people, and we're seeing altogether too much of that.
I mean, some of the stuff going on about Syria now is frankly ridiculous, too.
I mean, there was an NPR yesterday.
I don't know if you heard this guy.
He represents the Syrian Something Front, which is now a charity in the United States, raising money to buy weapons for the Free Syrian Army.
Oh, there's my business model I need to work on.
Exactly.
I just need to start backing an al-Qaeda group somewhere in the Middle East, and I can get government money for it.
Yeah, so I would recommend your listeners, you know, check out National Public Radio and type in Free Syrian Army, and this interview will come up.
You're reading it, and it's like you're transported into some alternative universe.
It's just amazing.
All right, now, when I talked with Ray McGovern the other day, see, I don't know.
I've got to tell you, I'm not, you know, compared to say 2007 or something, I'm not that worried about a war breaking out with Iran in the near term, although they sure seem to be pushing hardcore for escalation in Syria, which could very well lead to a war with Iran.
But, you know, like Sheldon Richman was saying on the show, it doesn't feel like they're trying to get us into a war right now.
But then I talked to Ray McGovern, and he said that one of y'all's veteran intelligence professionals for sanity didn't sign the please install a hotline, President Obama, letter, because she said forget it, it's too late, the weapons are in place, they're doing it.
They're escalating the naval presence in the Persian Gulf like mad, and I guess in Bahrain, and they're installing anti-missile missiles everywhere, and they're getting ready to do this.
I don't know if she, anyway, I don't know if you read that response or what, but now the friggin' music's playing, Phil, so I've got to get your answer on the other side of this break.
The actual likelihood that the Israelis are going to pick this fight, that the Americans will.
Phil Giraldi, right after this.
We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri, is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
Hamas is now supporting the opposition.
Are we supporting Hamas in Syria?
That's a really good question, Secretary of State, Madam Secretary of State.
Phil Giraldi, what do you say?
Is America backing Al-Qaeda and Hamas in Syria?
How did she answer?
Well, this is her excuse for why we're going slow, but apparently it's all confirmed in the Washington Post, in the New York Times, and the Reuters now, that what you reported at the beginning of December, that there's a finding that authorizes the CIA and whatever other agencies to coordinate in Turkey with the Saudis and the Qataris and, of course, the Turks in their intervention in Syria and their support for the Free Syrian Army, which includes some number of veterans of Al-Qaeda in Iraq or at least the Sunni-based insurgency in Iraq, who travel now to Syria to fight and are receiving weapons because nobody knows who's getting the weapons.
That's the best I know, you tell me, CIA guy.
Well, I would tell you this.
The problem is that once you kind of open up Pandora's box, as they've done in Syria, all kinds of things come out and go in.
And what you're seeing here is they keep talking about the Free Syrian Army as if that is the insurgency.
It's not.
In fact, by some estimates, it might only be a very tiny part of the insurgency.
So they're saying, oh, these people are organized, they're disciplined, they're pro-Western, they speak good English, you know, the usual crap.
But there are a lot of other dudes out there that have picked up guns that are involved in this process that perhaps aren't operating under the same rules.
The problem that I have with Clinton is that she kind of thinks because she's talking to somebody that there's not somebody else there talking to other people and delivering a much different message.
So I would say that they've basically unleashed a genie and terrible things are going to happen in Syria or are happening already, and they don't even know what's going on.
Yeah, and how could they?
I mean, if they had a squadron of Bob Bears over there running around, maybe they'd know, but otherwise they just don't.
Yeah, that's right.
I mean, they have no effective network on the ground to tell them what's going on.
They're relying extensively on the usual stuff that American intelligence is good at, which is intercepting phone calls, taking pictures from satellites and stuff like that.
They have complete ignorance about what politically this insurgency is all about.
Clausewitz said that basically the political aspect of war was the most important aspect and that the fighting and the killing is actually secondary, and this is something we Americans have never quite figured out.
I don't know whether we have an attention span that doesn't run long enough to work through that or what the problem is, but you listen to Clinton and you swear, I want to jump out the window.
And I haven't done it yet, but it probably happened before too long.
But it's awful listening to these people.
Yeah.
Well, you know, and that's the thing, though, is during the Bush years, it's just the blind leading the deaf and stupid, or however it was Paul O'Neill put it, where they're planning on war and there's not even anybody in the room who knows what the hell he's talking about for the others to tell to shut up or anything.
But in this case, I've got to give some credit to Hillary Clinton as an educated woman.
I remember her, I'm not saying I agree with her on a single thing or anything like that, but at her confirmation hearing, she displayed an IQ better than, I don't know, 110 or something.
She ought to be able to, her and Obama ought to be able to talk about it.
And she said in public a few times, we've got to be really careful who we may accidentally end up backing here, implying there's such a thing as consequences in the world.
And I'm thinking, they have to be discussing this, and so what's their plan?
Are they really having a conversation that ends with yes, we'll back the Sunni radicals up to a point and then we'll try to undo that and is that what they think they're doing here?
What do they think they're doing?
Or is it really as bad as the Bush years where Hadley's the smartest one you've got and he's a complete moron?
Well, I think what we're seeing here is that there are other players in this, and the other players, the Saudis and the Qataris and the Turks, are all doing different things that are not necessarily what the United States would be doing if it were acting independently.
And so there's definitely most of the weapons and money for the insurgency is coming from the Saudis.
Well, but if Obama was telling them, hey, stop it, we don't want that to happen, not this way, not right now anyway, or whatever it was, they would have to, and he's not telling them that.
Obama doesn't do that kind of thing.
He's a consensus guy.
So I can't see Obama telling anybody to stop anything.
He certainly hasn't been very successful in telling them to stop.
And all you have to do is look at the example of Libya.
I mean, why is there no news on Libya anymore?
Because Libya has basically gone backwards 50 years in terms of its social development and its economic development.
It's like a kid going into a room and smashing up the blocks and then walking away and not thinking about it anymore.
That's exactly the way our government acts.
Man, you look at the consequences of the Iraq War as they're still playing out, including this war in Syria right now, and just think of once Syria falls, who knows what could happen after that.
Already there's indications you could have independent Kurdistan, as we talked about on the show last week, I guess, right?
And those different Kurdish rebel movements in various states aligned together.
There's a whole new promise of a war right there, just for one.
Yeah, well, that's what has the Turks scared right now.
They've always wanted to have a stable situation across their border because their great concern is that Kurds in Syria and Kurds in Iraq and Kurds in Lebanon and Kurds inside Turkey will all unite and create a serious problem for the Turks.
They're twitching about it a little bit now.
I think they made a bad judgment in supporting the Free Syrian Army.
They felt that the Free Syrian Army would basically be able to overthrow Assad in fairly short order, but of course that hasn't happened.
Yeah, well, and now though, and I don't know how desperate he's getting if this is a sign of that or what, but now apparently he's launched his fighter bombers to attack what are more or less civilian ground targets, depending on, you know, if they were fighting Americans, they'd be militants, but since there are guys there, innocent civilians, the rebel fighters, and he's bombing them with airstrikes, American style, which they're going to call a war crime, and then that was their excuse in Libya was, oh my God, he's bombing the people of his own country with airplanes.
This is the line we can't let him keep crossing.
This is what we did in Fallujah, didn't we?
You know, the point is, yeah, you're right.
I mean, who's calling terrorists and militants and insurgents?
I mean, these are just labels.
I mean, basically Assad is fighting groups that he calls terrorists, and by most people's definitions, they would be, but the United States does this kind of thing, and it does it wherever it goes, and yeah, they become militants.
They become the bad guys.
I can see why a young kid growing up might think the difference between the Republicans and the Democrats is the Republicans back the Iranians, and then the Democrats try to undo that again, which, you know, the parties are always switching.
Is it the reverse of the way it was in the Reagan years?
Well, the problem is that, you know, foreign policy is not a serious issue for either party, and essentially they'd rather not talk about it except to, you know, come out with bumper slogans and stuff like that, bumper sticker slogans and quick lines like Mitt Romney did on his recent tour de force through Europe and the Middle East.
So it's a tragedy we've fallen into because the public is too ignorant to know that these people are just blowing smoke.
Well, so what's your near-term prediction for Syria?
Do you think that Assad's going to fall?
If he does, do you think the state of Syria is going to come apart and be replaced with a brand-new thing, or it'll just lose its leadership like happened in Yemen and in Egypt?
Well, I'm more pessimistic than I think you are.
I see Syria dissolving into something very much like a civil war in the next month or two.
And I also see a military strike initiated by Israel against Iran.
That's what I think.
Before the election?
Mm-hmm.
See, that's where we left it at the break, but I forgot.
What did you think about that lady who didn't sign the letter, if I heard Ray McGovern right?
She didn't sign the letter.
She's one of your veteran intelligence professionals for sanity here, because she said, too little, too late, forget it, I'm going to the beach, or whatever it was.
Well, that individual, there were a couple issues there.
That individual also is working as a government contractor.
So I suspect that individual did not want to sign because he or she did not want to have the name appearing on that letter.
But at the same time, because that person is a government contractor, one suspects that he or she knows more about the situation there and might, when saying that the horse is already out of the stable, might actually be saying something that's important.
But I don't know.
I don't have the answer to that.
I think it was an act of sheer cowardice, actually.
I've got to tell you, Obama, I don't understand.
He spends so much political capital just to hold hearings, meetings, and then blow them.
Pretend he wants to do the right thing, or even something like the right thing on this issue, and then he really would be that easy to push right into a war from Netanyahu's point of view.
He wouldn't stand up to Netanyahu, really would he?
He'd just go along.
No, he would roll over.
And he would have to.
With elections coming up, he would have to support Israel.
That's when Netanyahu knows.
Yeah, that's just crazy, man.
You'd think that the President of the United States could send a message to the Prime Minister of Israel that, like, hey, you're really pissing me off, and that that would mean something.
You know?
No?
Well, George Bush was able to do it.
He was able to tell the Israelis, I do not want an attack on Iran, and he made it stick.
But somehow Obama doesn't seem to have whatever it takes to do that.
But then, you know, go back to the first quarter, basically, of this year, right?
He put story after story in the Times, saying the military doesn't want to do it.
They say it'll go regional and be a total disaster.
And all the intelligence agencies agree there is no nuclear weapons program.
And it was clear it was the government behind that.
Hell, the Republicans made a leaked scandal out of it or some crap when the whole point was what was the substance of the stories coming out.
It was Obama himself, his team, debunking the case for war on the eve of these, you know, the Baghdad and Moscow talks, etc.
And then he goes into the talks and he just does nothing with them.
Right, right.
As I say, he's a consensus guy.
This is not a guy who takes positions unless he feels real, real safe vis-à-vis how that position is going to turn out for him.
And I think some of these issues are just way over his head.
Yeah, well, you know, for all the liberals and Democrats who always argue that, hey, you've got to support the Democrats no matter what they do, because at least they're not the Republicans, this is what it gets you.
Because there is no pressure.
He's not really worried about, geez, if I kill too many people, then the liberals are going to go all code pink on me.
He knows that they won't.
Right, that's exactly right.
He can count on the fact that they won't.
It's horrible.
It's not even part of his, or it is as part of his mathematics.
He knows it.
Just forget them.
That margin, the code pink margin, they are what they are, but they're not growing.
That's right, that's right.
Well, it's like anti-war sentiment in the Republican Party.
I mean, it exists among traditional conservatives and people like myself, but the fact is that it's insignificant.
They don't care.
Yeah, and that's what's really sad, is it ought to grow at least during Obama and Hillary Clinton times, but it doesn't.
That's the only thing conservatives like about Obama and Hillary Clinton, is at least they kill people a lot.
That's right.
Spend a lot of money doing it, too.
We love that.
Oh, yeah.
All right.
Well, thanks again for your time, Phil.
It's always a bummer.
Okay, Scott.
Take care.
All right, see you.
Bye-bye.
All right, thanks everybody for listening.
See you next week.
Scotthorne.org.