Sorry I'm late.
I had to stop by the Wax Museum again and give the finger to FDR.
We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America and by God we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it, I say it again.
You've been had.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw us, he died.
We ain't killing they army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like Say Our Name been saying, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
All right, you guys, introducing our friend Gareth Porter, the great Gareth Porter.
He's the author of the book on Iran's nuclear program.
It's called Manufactured Crisis, fittingly.
The definitive book on Iran's nuclear program.
Also, he writes a lot of great articles and we got three of them to discuss today.
First and foremost here at the American Conservative Magazine, translated doc debunks narrative of Iran-Al-Qaeda alliance.
Welcome back to the show, Gareth.
How are you doing?
I'm doing fine.
Thanks for having me again, Scott.
Hey, listen, I'm really happy to have you here and I'm happy that I have you to rely on to do this work for us, man.
As always, the ever reliable Gareth Porter here.
And so when you say in your headline, translated doc, you actually are talking about the same document that everyone else is citing, saying that, aha, see Iran is behind Al-Qaeda and their war against America.
Gareth?
Exactly.
Yes, it is indeed the document that has been written about extensively in the mainstream media as basically confirming all these stories over the years that are legion.
I mean, there are too many of them to even count, although I have a very thick file full of them that said that Iran is believed by U.S. intelligence or by somebody else in the U.S. government to be consorting with Al-Qaeda, supporting Al-Qaeda terrorist activities, essentially.
So this is the actual document that is the source of all these stories that came out around November 2nd, 3rd.
And basically, I'm quite convinced that none of those people who wrote those stories ever had access to a translated version of the document itself.
They were relying on the Long War Journal, which I think some of your listeners, maybe most of your listeners may be aware, is part of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, which is, of course, an Israeli lobby institution, essentially.
And they have a very, very strong propaganda position on this issue.
And we're promoting it through their very summary version of what the document is all about.
And that was, it seems to me quite clear that that is what the basis of the stories in the mainstream media was, that it was all about a couple of quotes and a summary by the Long War Journal.
And the CIA director arranged for this to begin, and not through the DNI's office, right, just straight from the director of the CIA.
He gave it to this pro-Israel think tank, as you describe it here over there at the Long War Journal.
That's right, Scott.
And in fact, one can make a very strong argument that this represents perhaps the apotheosis of the politicization of the CIA and of the intelligence community in general.
I mean, they are always politicized.
Let's start with that as the fundamental fact of the matter.
They are always politicized.
They always have been to some extent.
It varies depending on the individuals and on the administration and the situation.
And I would argue that this represents the absolute nadir of that process of politicization of the CIA with the current leadership.
It's really a fiasco, I must say.
Well, and, you know, they had this whole narrative too, beyond, aha, see Iran backs al-Qaeda, they say, and there's been a cover up this whole time too, right?
And they portray this as, you know, geez, and here we thought Saddam backed them, but it turned out it was the Ayatollah all along.
And so all that framing makes it seem like there's really a basis for them to conclude that.
But instead, it's all start with the conclusion and the basis isn't really there, is your claim anyway.
The basis is not there.
And in fact, you know, I mean, there is this very long history of leaks and outright public statements by people within the Bush and Obama administration, now the Trump administration, really making a very clear argument that Iran was in cahoots with al-Qaeda, beginning particularly with the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
That's when that reached its peak.
And I've written something about this in the past, but there's much more to be written about it, that's for sure.
All right.
Well, so now longtime listeners of this show are familiar probably with, oh, surprise, surprise, it was your story back when for the American prospect, burnt offering about Iran's, it wasn't just an offer to deal on issues like al-Qaeda, but to deal everything, to put the nuclear program on the table, support for Hamas and Hezbollah on the table, and certainly cooperation against al-Qaeda and against Saddam Hussein and the American, you know, support for America's policy in Iraq.
And the Americans didn't want to deal with them at all.
And so, but anyway, the biggest part, I think the most notable part of that was their offer to trade captured al-Qaeda guys for members of the Mujahideen-e-Khalq Iranian communist terrorist cult that had been working for Saddam Hussein and were, you know, basically holed up in Iraq, stateless in Iraq, and then had been inherited by the U.S., I guess by Rumsfeld and before CIA, I don't know who, but anyway.
Right, right, Scott, you are one of the few people in this country who remembers very clearly that episode and understands its significance.
And I didn't get into that in this article, but it clearly- And in fact, you know what, Damon, for the show notes and for people Googling along at home, what you do is you type in Gareth Porter, Iran offer, and then, but make sure and add dot PDF.
And what you'll find is there's an IPS news page.
It's not the prospect report.
The prospect report maybe has it too, but there's an IPS news page that has a dead link at the bottom, but the link is correct, but the link is not lit up, but it's a dead link.
So, if you search and add that dot PDF, I bet you can find it.
And then that PDF is the actual offer that the Iranians gave to the Americans through the Swiss ambassador, who then was insulted and dressed down for daring to even bring the Iranian offer to the Americans' attention.
So, the significance of that episode is that it was precisely at that time in early 2003, when that offer was formulated, and the previous months in 2002, 2001, 2002, that Iran was at the height of its desire to cooperate with the United States in counterterrorism, as well as, of course, as you have said, in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And it was at that point that the events were transpiring with regard to Iran's dealing with Al Qaeda presence in Iran, that this document that has been written about, and which I've now read the full document, or I've had the document read to me in English all the way through, and reported on in this piece.
And what it shows is that Iran clearly, you know, was up against a serious challenge here with not just hundreds, but thousands of Al Qaeda people moving from Afghanistan into Pakistan, and then from Pakistan being ordered to go into Iran.
Now, most of those people, this document makes clear, entered Iran illegally.
They were smuggled into Iran.
They were not given, you know, a pass to go into Iran through a border outpost where, you know, they showed some sort of document.
They got in illegally.
And this is a very important piece of the puzzle, because that was the problem the Iranians were up against.
Now, there were also a much smaller group that entered Iran with passports that they'd gotten, or they had passports stamped at the Iranian consulate, I guess, in Peshawar or Karachi.
I guess it was Karachi where they got the passport stamped.
And those people actually did obviously approach the Iranian government asking to be able to allow to stay there or to pass through.
And I talk about that in some detail in the piece.
And the Iranians agreed to do that on very, very strict security conditions, that they could not do anything involving organization or using their cell phones.
They could not communicate with anybody.
So that they made sure that there was nothing that would happen that the Americans would find out about.
Or if they did find out about it, they were going to react and turn these people in immediately.
So that is the background of this.
Then there were thousands more who were hiding in Iran during this period from basically early 2002 to 2003.
And it was those people that the Iranians were really worried about.
And so what they did was to follow the people that they knew had entered very closely to try to get intelligence about the ones who were hiding.
And within a matter of months, they began to arrest both the people who had come legally and some of the people who were hiding.
And they got more intelligence.
And then a few months later, they struck again and arrested as many of them as they were able to find.
That's the story in a nutshell.
That's the story that I tell in the piece.
All right.
Now, so it also seems like you make a couple of concessions to the WNEP narrative here, or the FDD narrative here.
The author of this, again, this is supposedly, we don't even know, it's an anonymous document, but you're saying it seems genuine to you.
And it's from some kind of, you know, mid to possibly like upper middle manager type working for Al-Qaeda, which it's a pretty small group.
I don't know.
Back then, anyway, it was.
Right.
A few dozen perhaps.
Yeah.
And then, but so you're saying, you saying here that it is true, as these guys highlight, that the Iranians had offered them money and arms and training with Hezbollah.
I mean, when I heard that, I was like, come on, this is made up.
Like this document probably isn't even true at all.
That doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
They're going to go to the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon and go hang out with Hezbollah.
This is stupid.
But you're saying that, yeah, no, that's really in there.
So what do you make of that?
He did say that in the document.
There's no question he says it in the document, but whether it happened is another question entirely.
And what I suggest in this piece is that, first of all, the guy, you know, was not even there.
He didn't witness or have immediate knowledge of anything of the sort.
He was hearing about this supposedly.
Okay.
He supposedly heard about this later from people because this guy wasn't even there when the people, before the people were arrested.
He wasn't even there.
He arrived after the first round of arrest, the first wave of arrest.
And so he didn't really know precisely what had transpired.
And, uh, look, what, what was in other words, it certainly wasn't that they had made this offer to him.
He was saying what he had heard.
No, no, of course not.
No, of course not.
And, and what, what clearly happened here is that the Iranians were cultivating these people who had, uh, who had arrived legally, uh, you know, telling them that they were heroes or, or, you know, intimating that they admired them and so on and so forth.
And, oh, gee, it would be great to collaborate with you guys, you know, you know, in the abstract sort of, uh, uh, mode and, uh, getting them to be, you know, all not defensive, but, but to trust them as much as possible.
So they get information from them.
And you're telling me in context, that's clear in the document that that's what's going on here at best is the Iranian counter intelligence forces are dealing with these guys the best that they can, but not using them and not planning on using them against it.
Exactly.
And, and I point out that, that the, that the specific individual, the Saudis that he claims were told that they would, that they would get, or they were offered, uh, you know, arms and training and money, uh, were the ones who were actually deported back to Saudi Arabia.
Now that obviously doesn't add up.
I mean, it's just not conceivable that the Iranians planned to do anything with these people because they're the very people that they deported back.
Now, you know, they, I'm sure that they told him stuff to gain their confidence and, you know, we don't know what it was.
Maybe they said something like that to them, but clearly they had no intention of, of doing that whatsoever.
This was during a period again, when they had, uh, you know, no use for Al Qaeda.
They knew that they had to expel them.
They knew that they had to capture them, arrest them, put them in prison as much as possible or deport them out of the country.
And so, uh, this, this is clearly a story that, uh, does not mean what it appears to mean at all.
And now do I read you right here that you say that they had captured Zarqawi, but then they turned him loose.
Uh, they, they did capture Zarqawi according to this guy as part of the, uh, uh, I can't remember this moment, whether it was the first or second round.
I think it was the first round, but I'm not sure.
Um, and he was deported to Iraq.
Now, when I say deported, he was actually not a member of Al Qaeda at the time, by the way, he just later would found Al Qaeda in Iraq about a year and a half after America invaded that country.
Well, I mean, that, that, that's probably a distinction that, that could have some significance.
I'm not sure, but in any case, um, they put him on the border and said, get out of here, you know, find your own way.
Uh, he was not deported to the authorities in Iraq, as was the case with, uh, the Saudis there, there was a distinction made the Saudis Jordanian and wanted by them.
I don't know if he was wanted by the Americans at that point.
Right.
Right.
So, so there is a distinction there, but, um, in any case, they, they, uh, just told him to get out and, and, you know, get it, you know, he's on his own, that that's the way it was left.
Well, and you know what, not to harp too bad on it, but might as well.
There's some really great reporting out there for all I know by you as well about how the military begged George Bush for authority to kill Zarqawi and his small group when they were hiding up in American protected autonomous Iraq Kurdistan before the war.
And they told them no over and over again, because Colin Powell needed his fake talking point that Zarqawi was the link between Saddam and Osama, even though he wasn't a member of Al Qaeda, he had turned down Osama's offer to join Al Qaeda.
He wanted to fight Jordan, not America.
And then Saddam's only connection was he was in quote unquote, Iraq as Colin Powell put it, but he was safe up in American Iraqi Kurdistan really that had been autonomous under American protection since 1990.
And, uh, Very good point.
Very good point.
In other words, they were, as is often the case, using a threat to justify something that was more important to them.
And so they, and they lied that they said Saddam had given him medical treatment and all this stuff when, in fact, Saddam had just put out an APB for the guy.
That's all.
Yeah.
Uh, you know, the, the dishonesty here has no bottom has no, there's no bottom to the dishonesty that we have seen on the part of the U S national security state.
And this is a very good example of it.
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That'd be nice.
You know, I haven't heard from them for a while, but I think they wrote a thing recently.
Have you heard from Flint and Hillary Mann Leverett who, um, they were the source, uh, that you relied on for quite a few pieces along these lines back when, uh, they were both officials in the U S government at the time.
I don't know exactly who was in which role, but they were both at one time or another on the Bush administration's national security council.
And I know Flint was formerly a very high level analyst at CIA.
And they told the story.
I know I cite Hillary Mann Leverett in my book, uh, saying that the Iranians were cooperative, you know, from the very beginning, they said nine 11 was basically their opportunity to try to make friends with America and get a rapprochement there.
And there was obviously very officially sanctioned candlelight vigil of more than a million people in Tehran on September the 12th.
Uh, exactly.
You're, you're absolutely right.
It was, and they said, Hey, let us help you in Afghanistan.
Let us help you with Saddam wink, wink.
And, uh, this is the, this is the, uh, point that I make very strongly in my article that you led with, but wait, maybe I'm not cynical enough.
Cause actually we're talking about those sneaky double deal in carpet salesmen, those, the Persians.
And also we're talking about theocrats, which is the worst kind of politicians.
And I hate all politicians.
So maybe I'm being naive and maybe the Ayatollah really is, you know, must be a double deal in SOB.
Hell, if the CIA can back Al Qaeda, then the Iranians can, right?
Well, I mean, certainly, you know, there was a time when, when Iran was, uh, friendly with, with, uh, Al Qaeda and with bin Laden.
I mean, that was both during, I mean, when they held Clinton armed them in Bosnia in 1995, immediately before, uh, during and, uh, immediately after the U S backed war of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, because they were on the same side.
I mean, the, the Robonians were fighting, uh, you know, they were, uh, against the, the Soviet troops in Afghanistan, Soviet, uh, uh, occupation of Afghanistan and bin Laden and the Americans were against that.
So they were both on the same side and that continued, you know, after the Soviets withdrew the, the, the war continued and, uh, the Mujahideen were trying to gain power and, and, uh, the Taliban got there first and so on and so forth.
But nevertheless, they were still on the same side in 91, 92, um, and 93, I suppose, but somewhere along the line between 93 and 98, when the Taliban killed 12, uh, was it 11 Iranian diplomats in, uh, Afghanistan, the Iranians began to lose enthusiasm for Al Qaeda and Taliban.
So that was, that was a big shift in their policy.
No question about it.
Yeah.
Well, and Bill Clinton did, you know, at least look the other way.
And I think more likely really facilitated Iranian weapons transfers to the Mujahideen in Bosnia in 1995.
And in fact, that CIA officer, Cynthia Storer confirmed that on my show.
Um, good for you.
Yeah.
That's, that's a great find.
That's, that's a great story.
And in fact, you know what, it's that freak John Schindler, the former NSA guy, he wrote a whole book about this back then about, and I haven't read the book, but I guess I read, you know, an article about it and I looked at it and it was a very critical take on, you know, that scumbag traitor, Bill Clinton and all his support for the Mujahideen in Bosnia.
And then later in Kosovo, which of course is exactly correct.
Right.
You know, depending on which part is inside Iran at which time, I guess.
And he really objected to that, that, you know, here, Al Qaeda was already attacking the United States and Bill Clinton still backing them anyway.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's right.
And I mean, the Clinton administration was so focused on Iran and Hezbollah.
It really did not care.
We've talked about this before many times.
I'm sure they really did not care about Al Qaeda through 96, 97, 98.
We talked about blaming the Kobar towers attack on Iran instead of Osama was a huge part of that.
Because what if it had come out that like, Hey man, the guy that blew up the world trade center and tried to knock one tower down into the other in 93, his uncle and Osama bin Laden just killed 19 of our airmen in Saudi.
What if that had been the narrative, not some murky nonsense about Iranian Shiite Saudi Hezbollah?
Yeah.
As I said in my series on that, that the very last piece, I remember very clearly what I said was that precisely what you just said, if the narrative had been, uh, that, that it was Al Qaeda that did this, you know, presumably nine 11 would never have happened because both Clinton administration and the incoming administration would have had no choice but to make that their highest priority.
And that's of course, exactly the opposite of what happened.
By the way, I guess I should say that same former CIA analyst, Cynthia Storer also said that, Oh yeah, no, Iranian, uh, backed Saudi Shia Hezbollah did do that attack, but I can't tell you how I know that it's classified, but trust me, they did.
And I said, well, Gareth Porter and, uh, Michael Shoyer and all these people have said, nah, and she said, yeah, well, trust me.
So I've heard that from other people in the intelligence community at that time.
Um, and I, I just don't believe it.
I mean, I, I think the, the evidence is, is just too strong on the other side.
And, and I interviewed, I didn't talk about this in my piece, but I interviewed John Brennan, uh, for, for that series of pieces that he did on the Cobar Towers.
And I found him so unpersuasive that I didn't even mention it.
I mean, his argument was, well, we had these two pots of, of evidence and one pot was the evidence that Al Qaeda did it.
And the other pot was the evidence that Hezbollah did it, or, you know, Hezbollah and his friends, the Saudi Hezbollah did it.
And we found that one pot was very small and one pot was very large.
So I, I decided it's not even worth mentioning this.
Uh, but, but I found him to be, uh, very, uh, shall we say untrustworthy?
Yeah, man.
All right.
Listen, um, so there's so many more things here.
Uh, talk to me about what it means for Al Qaeda to be hiding in Iran for all of these years or not necessarily hiding.
I mean, there's two different kinds of hiding.
There's hiding out from the Americans who are occupying Afghanistan and Iraq to the East and the West.
But then there's also, as you say, you know, guys who were just, uh, illegal immigrants basically hiding somewhere in Iran, even from Iranian authorities.
Then there were guys who supposedly were under house arrest and then, but there were other takes that said, no, they were in prison prison.
Uh, maybe it's some of each or maybe that that's cover that actually they were living comfortable.
I think I've seen, I don't know, David from types or whatever saying, man, these guys were guests of the Iranians.
They weren't under house arrest.
They're, you know, treated great.
Okay.
Let me clarify this.
And, and I could have, and perhaps should have spent more space on this point in, I mean, I should have gotten into this point in my latest piece and didn't, but it's very clear that they put them in prison.
They were in prison.
Okay.
It was not, it was not some Villa somewhere they're put in prison and then, and they, and they allowed them to be visited by their wives and families.
Um, and then there was a prison break.
There were some people who escaped in the confusion of wives visiting them.
Uh, this is, this is the story told in this long 19 page, uh, uh, uh, article or, or, or paper.
And so then they decided to have the families move in with them so they didn't have this confusion.
And so there were, there was a different physical location for that purpose.
But nevertheless, there's still, it's not just house arrest.
They are still in prison, but it's conditions with, with family accompanying them.
And, uh, and even Obama administration officials admitted, acknowledged, as I point out in my piece that they were not able to communicate with the outside.
There was, there was no way that they could do anything from the position they were in, uh, imprisonment in, in, uh, this, this location.
It wasn't, it wasn't in Tehran.
It was outside of Tehran.
So, uh, so that, that much is clear.
Now there's, there's another group, however, the larger group of illegals who, who were escaped, who escaped arrest.
Those people were depending on the help of, uh, the Baluchis and Kurds in Zahedan and elsewhere in that part of, uh, Sistan Baluchistan, which is a border province that is full of people who don't like the regime in Tehran.
Uh, there, there are people who supported them from the time they arrived and were part of that illegal network, part of that illegal organization.
So, so, so they have been, and these would have been the same, this would have been the same community basis support for a Jandala that CIA and Mossad were using to attack the Iranian regime with.
Exactly.
And by the way, the author of this piece that I had translated for me and which I'm reporting on says explicitly, I didn't talk about this, that, you know, the fact is that it's true.
The United States did support the, uh, the, the Jandala folks.
He doesn't name it, but it's clear that's what he, who he's talking about.
The CIA did support them.
What's the date on this thing again?
It was written around 2007.
And in there he says all this stuff about, oh yeah, they offered to have Hezbollah train us in Lebanon.
He says in there, oh yeah, and the CIA has been around helping Jandala out.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Talk about burying the lead, Porter.
No, it's another story.
It's another story entirely.
It's another story entirely.
All right.
Well, and of course, you know, I actually am lost now.
It's been too long and I don't remember, but it was, was it, um, it was Mark Perry, right?
Who reported that?
No, it wasn't CIA.
It was Mossad pretending to be CIA.
That's right.
It did that.
That's right.
But then I don't remember whether that stood up or whether later reporting said, nah, it was both or one, then the other.
It could be both.
Absolutely.
I mean, you know, that's, that would be my reading of it, but you know, it's, it certainly bears further, further, uh, in investigation, I would say.
You would think that I could keep all of this straight, but not always.
All right.
So Gareth, who's this, uh, safe Al Ado guy.
And, and there was some controversy about him because he supposedly, well, they've been holding them all that time.
We could have traded MEK for this guy way back when, but since we didn't, they held him long enough to trade him in a hostage negotiation.
Yeah.
Yeah.
First of all, of course, you're absolutely right in pinpointing and recalling the, the fact that the crucial fact that the neocons in the Bush administration insisted on no, uh, trading of, of intelligence with Iran, which meant that they passed up the opportunity to get key intelligence on, uh, on Al-Qaeda at that point.
And even, you know, having access to the senior people that they had, they wouldn't do it.
And as a result of that, of course, uh, Saif al-Adl was one of the people that they held senior Al-Qaeda official.
Um, and, and he was, uh, in prison, uh, in, in Iran from 2000, uh, 2002 until 2015.
And then because the, the Al-Qaeda people had, uh, had seized, uh, at least two, uh, Iranian diplomats, one in Peshawar and one in, um, I guess it was, uh, Yemen.
It was in Yemen.
Uh, the Iranians were forced to make a prisoner, uh, uh, uh, trade with, with Al-Qaeda in 2015.
And Saif al-Adl then was returned to Al-Qaeda under that, under that deal.
Yeah.
See how bad that looks in a vacuum out of proper context about how it didn't have to be that way.
Uh, look what those Iranians did.
Well, after we put them in that position, could have had them a long time ago.
And just so that we could hold onto the MEK, Gareth.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, what use are those guys anyway?
You know what?
In fact, let me ask you about this.
I mean, it said that it's MEK guys that did the assassinations of the Iranian nuclear scientists, but I wonder if that's even true, whether it was, whether MEK is even that useful as murderers, you know, very much.
I doubt that very much.
I don't think Mossad was trust the MEK to do that at all.
They, they have their own people.
I mean, the wife reported that Rumsfeld and Cheney were using them to collect intelligence inside Iran.
And I think Scott Ritter at one point said they had done a bombing or two or something, but all those targeted assassinations seem a little sophisticated for a bunch of nuts like them.
Right.
I mean, I, I, right.
I mean, I, I, I'm quite convinced that Mossad has their own people that they train and that that's not, that's not the kind of thing that they do with MEK.
All right.
Hang on just one second again.
All right.
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Listen, we've already gone so long about this topic.
Let me change the subject here to 2007.
Speaking of the wife, she debunked this back then in the fall of 2007, the Israeli attack on the supposed nuclear reactor being built in Syria.
And in fact, one of her major points, I forget there were two or three different articles about this that she wrote for raw story, but one of them was, oh yeah, well, where's all the graphite says the anonymous IAEA source who was on scene and saying this was not a nuclear reactor.
So it was funny because when I posted your article on Twitter, one of the original responses was, oh yeah, well, that's not what the IAEA says.
And I just thought, well, that's funny because that's what IAEA sources told my wife 10 years ago.
And that's what IAEA sources are telling Gareth Porter right now.
So what's the difference there, Gareth, between the official report and you guys journalism?
Right.
The official report, which of course, Ali Heinonen is really responsible, was really responsible.
Well, there you go, everybody.
Ali Heinonen, ladies and gentlemen.
Now, now, of course, a senior advisor to who the foundation for the defense of democracy.
You don't say.
I do say.
And so, so his, his allowed his true colors to show through now.
He, he made sure that the IAEA covered up the fact that there was no nuclear grade graphite found on the scene, made up various stories or various arguments to try to cover that at various times over a few years.
But, but what the IAEA reported was that finally in 2012, if I remember correctly, they said that, yes, we found graphite, but we, we have not been able to establish whether it was nuclear grade or not.
Well, I mean, that's absurd.
I, you know, that, and I quote, Barad Nakai, who was a senior researcher, a nuclear researcher at Oak Ridge National Lab for many years, saying that that doesn't make any sense at all.
They have the tools with which they could determine that very easily.
So, so that was clearly a lie.
All right.
So now convince me then, and look, I know, I mean, Giraldi and Pat Lang and all these, you know, connected intelligence sources back 10 years ago were saying this was definitely not a nuclear reactor for the following all kinds of reasons.
And I'm not positive about this, but I'm pretty sure that Robert Kelly was, I think this may be the first time he ever publicly started debunking some stuff.
The former IAEA inspector Kelly and, and the leverets, I'm pretty sure were good on this back then.
Nobody who's, you know, critical of this kind of thing bought into the story at the time.
And yet still the burden is on you because officialdom says, Gareth, so you tell me why to believe instead it was, what do you say, a missile depot here, or it was some kind of decoy target for some kind of deal.
And why didn't the Syrians object to being bombed?
They must've been guilty and all these things.
You know, the narrative debunk it.
Yeah, there's, there's lots of, there's lots of different questions here that, that I try to address in this piece really for the first time in a fully developed fashion.
And, and the main thing I would say is that the, the, the expert at the IAEA, the guy who really knew the kind of nuclear reactors that supposedly, the kind of nuclear reactor that was supposedly built in the Syrian desert, which was a, a graphite, uh, uh, moderated, uh, reactor and, and, uh, one that's the same, it was based on the supposedly North Korean reactor at Yongbyon.
Uh, and he was an expert on that.
He had visited the, the Yongbyon reactor many times, like, like 15 times, uh, uh, over a period of years and had long conversations with the people who ran and had designed and ran, uh, that reactor at Yongbyon.
So he knew it better than anybody else in the world outside of North Korea.
And, and he looked at the CIA video, the 11 minute video that they put out in 2000, in April, 2008 CIA did and said, no, this is not possible.
Technically it just doesn't add up at all.
And, and ticked off, you know, five or six reasons why, uh, it, it couldn't have been a reactor.
Uh, so, so I, without going into detail, I mean, I'm telling your, your listeners that, that he gave a very detailed technical analysis to, uh, ElBaradei, who was of course at that time, the head of the IAEA and Olli Heinonen, who was the deputy head of IAEA for safeguards.
And what he found out very quickly was that they weren't interested in his expertise.
They did not want an expert to get involved in this.
Why?
Because clearly the fix was on the IAEA was going to support the U S Israeli position on this because of obviously for political reasons.
And so ElBaradei was not in the chain on this one, or what happened with that?
Cause he was a pretty responsible head of the IAEA.
Well, uh, this happened in early 2008 at the time when he had decided to go back to, uh, Egypt to run, to be president, to run for presidency.
So he needed the United States support that I didn't get into that.
I've, I've not published that as far as I can recall, but as far as I'm concerned, that, that is the key to understanding why ElBaradei didn't put his foot down and let El, let, let Olli Heineman get away with this criminal, uh, activity, uh, surrounding both, both, uh, uh, the, the Syrian case and the Iran case.
Yeah.
He did.
He is Muhammad ElBaradei is, you know, guilty of heroic obstruction of America's lies about Iran in the 2000 aughts there in the Bush years in, in debunking their narratives about Iran's nuclear weapons program.
He, if it hadn't been for him, you know what I mean?
That's one of those alternative histories.
I hate to see.
So this is a real disappointment that a guy, a guy who would go to such heroic lengths on Iran would then turn right around and kowtow on something like Syria like this.
Well, but he, he first stood up to Bush on Iraq in 2003.
That was true, right?
He, he, he told the Congress before the war that he had debunked the Niger uranium forgeries in 30 minutes with Google.
Well, he, he told the UN security council.
In fact, that was, that was, that was what, right, right.
That's what, that's what enraged the neocons in the Bush administration against, against ElBaradei.
And then you're right that in, in 2005, 2006, 2007, he was a break on the U S uh, and, and Israel, but 2008, he began to pull back and let Olli Heineman take care of the problem.
Now, why would he do that?
There's no question in my mind that it's because he had political ambitions in Egypt and he knew that he couldn't afford to push too hard on the United States.
All right.
So now, I'm sorry, go back to, to uh, this building and what it really was and, and what the, what you think the, you think the Israelis knew good and well, it was not a nuclear reactor, but they wanted to bomb it anyway.
They wanted to get America to bomb it first, right?
They wanted the United States to get into a war with the regime in Damascus.
This was the way that they saw to do it.
And of course we know from, uh, you know, Bob Robert Gates, um, uh, memoirs that Cheney was in on it.
I mean, clearly he was the one they were relying on to get the decision within the Bush administration in favor of the Israeli proposal that the U S carry out bombing of this site.
And Cheney said, let's go beyond that.
Let's go after other military targets, including Hezbollah and Syrian, uh, uh, weapons sites, meaning missile and rocket sites.
Uh, so, so that's the, that's the real background here, but then there's more to it, which I point out.
And that is that Hayden and Cheney and that whole gang that involved John Bolton and so forth, they wanted to attack this, uh, issue to get at North Korea in order to kill the negotiations that Condi rice was carrying on with the North Koreans, which were, it was anathema to the neocons.
And so this whole case that was made was also a device, a very useful device to, to kill within the administration, the idea of negotiating with North Korea.
And they, in fact, uh, managed to do that in 2008, 2009.
All right now.
So part one of this is called Israel's ploy selling a Syrian nuke strike.
It's at a consortium news.com and also reprinted at antiwar.com.
And then same goes for the sequel part two, uh, is that consortium news?
And it will be on antiwar.com tomorrow.
This is the follow-up here, how Syrian nuke evidence was faked.
And, uh, we'll have the links to those in the show notes for everybody to check this out too.
Very important story, even if it is a decade old here, uh, certainly helps, uh, you know, uh, provide for the frame of reference about who's who and which side they're on in the current conflicts.
Uh, very good.
That's the great Gareth Porter again, first and foremost, and by popular demand to translated doc debunks narrative of Al-Qaeda Iran alliance.
That one is that the American conservative magazine, and then at antiwar.com and at consortium news again, Israel's ploy, selling a Syrian nuke strike and how Syrian nuke evidence was faked.
The book is manufactured crisis, the truth behind the Iran nuclear scare.
Thanks again, Gareth.
Thank you, Scott.
All right, you guys.
And you know, the deal scotthorton.org fools, Aaron dot us for the book by the book fools, Aaron timed in the war in Afghanistan, libertarian institute.org antiwar.com.
And follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton show.
Thanks.
