05/28/09 – Larisa Alexandrovna – The Scott Horton Show

For Antiwar.com, I'm Scott Horton.
This is Antiwar Radio.
I'd like to introduce my friend, Larissa Alexandrovna.
She is the managing investigative news editor of RawStory.com.
Welcome to the show, Larissa.
How are you?
Hey, I'm great.
Thanks for having me.
Did I get your title right?
Yeah, you did.
That was outside my brain, not the page where I got that.
Pretty good, huh?
Uh-huh.
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
All right.
Okay.
First of all, a week ago, Dick Cheney gave a speech, and you wrote something basically accusing him of not just being a liar, but also being guilty of treason to the United States of America.
He did take an oath to preserve and protect the Constitution and all that.
I wonder what you possibly could have been getting at there, Larissa.
Well, I didn't actually accuse him of treason.
I said that others who had thought of certain of his actions were treasonable, in fact.
What I was talking about was the outing of Valerie Plame-Wilson, the covert CIA officer.
Basically, the people with whom I spoke in intelligence who provided me with information relating to her work activities believed that Dick Cheney's outing of Valerie Plame was treasonous.
So that's what I pointed out.
I just wanted to note that.
I see.
But, Larissa, Valerie Plame just had a desk job, and that was no big deal.
That was all just about whether Libby committed perjury, about whether he told her name to a reporter or something.
What could that possibly have to do with treason and AQ con?
Well, you know, you could have a desk job and still be doing something incredibly classified and important to our national security.
Having said that, she didn't only have a desk job.
It's well documented that she, in fact, had traveled abroad within that timeframe of a five-year period, making her, in fact, covert, and beyond covert, she was a non-official cover officer.
The AQ con thing is, you know, and I have to be really careful here, when Valerie Plame also was outed, so was everything that she and her cover company, Brewster Jennings, were involved in.
At the time of her outing, she was tasked to investigating nuclear proliferation in the Middle East with a focus on Iraq, and obviously it's pan-national, but Iran and other countries in the region.
What I was told at the time of my article in which I reported her work was that her team had provided, in fact, and I don't know in what way this is highly classified.
Her team had, in fact, provided some support, again, I don't know what that means, for monitoring or investigating or running agents, I don't know, with regard to the AQ con network.
So when Dick Cheney outed her, and there's no question that he was involved, when he outed her, whatever methods, sources, whatever that logistical even support was, was also outed.
And as a result, that is treason, because AQ con network supplies, in fact, the very enemies we're supposed to have gone to war against, including al-Qaeda.
So that's it in a nutshell.
Okay, so let me make sure I have this right.
This whole scandal about the outing of Valerie Plame, which at least on its face, and for all I know maybe that's all you chalk it up to too, you can address it however you like, but on its face the story is that this lady's husband had debunked Cheney's Niger uranium forgery story there about Saddam Hussein trying to get nuclear material from Niger there.
However you pronounce it.
Niger is fine.
And so this was to embarrass her husband by saying that he was a mama's boy and his wife got him the job, and just to try to discredit the guy who was discrediting the administration.
But what you're saying is that by outing this woman who worked at the CIA, Valerie Plame, they also in effect outed her organization, her CIA front company, Brewster Jennings & Associates, which was responsible to some vague degree with monitoring the nuclear black market and for example Iran and you said Al-Qaeda's participation in this thing.
And this basically left to some percentage degree, I don't know how you quantify it, America's intelligence agencies deaf and blind to what was going on with these black markets that her CIA front company had been monitoring.
That's correct.
I would add though that although I don't know their motivation, obviously I don't know what the administration was thinking, whether they just wanted to punish her husband or what, but I think it's telling that they used her maiden name rather than her married name.
Why is that?
Because had they used Valerie Wilson, I don't think that would have been as problematic because her maiden name was used longer and...
So basically Brewster Jennings would not necessarily have been outed if they had just called her Wilson, not Plame.
No, no, no, no, no.
I think that Brewster Jennings was outed in the second outing because they had actually given that to Robert Novak.
They had given that second installment, which is another red flag thing.
Wait a minute.
Right.
You know, if this was just to punish Joe Wilson, why did they have to go that extra mile and do the secondary outing?
Well, you know how TV is.
TV makes this all about Karl Rove, but of course, you know, I don't know exactly what his classification status was, but clearly somebody leaked it to him before he could leak it to anybody, right?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
No, and he had the highest security clearances.
He sat in on national security meetings, which is a whole other scandal and should be because this is supposed to be a man running domestic politics and issues, you know, relating to elections and stuff.
So why he needs to be in possession of the highest security clearances is, you know, a question somebody should be asking, and I often have.
But I think that with regard to her maiden name, she had used that name formally in her work when she was, how should I say, recruiting?
She had used that name longer, and so more damage was done.
Had they used Wilson, I think they could have maybe, you know, made it so that the damage was isolated.
They could have sort of stopped the bleeding a little bit.
But, again, I don't know their motivations.
I just think the way that they went about it suggests that there's a lot more going on here.
Well, now, let me come at you from this angle, too.
AQ Khan's black market was not so black.
As I know you're well aware, the CIA knew what this guy was up to from the 1970s and all the way through.
And Jane's Defense Weekly did a thing about a giant arms bazaar where they had a little booth, AQ Khan Laboratories, and here's a brochure.
And, yeah, he sold some garage sale-level, you know, excess first-generation equipment to Libya that did nothing with it, North Korea that did nothing with it, AQ Khan that did something with it, but all that they're doing with it is running an IAEA-monitored and safeguarded industrial-grade uranium enrichment program.
So what is the big deal here?
Well, wait a minute.
You're assuming that everything that AQ Khan's network is not just AQ Khan or his immediate legit businesses and whatnot.
The network has grown far and wide and has surpassed him.
It's become its own mechanism, its own animal.
So that's the first issue.
The second issue is he himself has engaged in rather, you know, sort of behavior that isn't necessarily approved of by any of the governments or that they're even aware of.
For example, I don't think anybody would have wanted or even have allowed, and this gets back into territory that you know I can't get into in terms of detail, but I don't think anybody would have wanted anyone selling any kind of weapons to al-Qaeda, period.
With a booth or without a booth?
Well, what was sold to al-Qaeda?
Well, again, I just gave you that caveat.
You know, I just… Well, let me draw as much as I can.
What you're saying is you have intelligence sources that tell you that al-Qaeda got some stuff, but you're sworn to not reveal anything more than that.
Is that what you're telling me?
Yes.
That's what I told you before, yes.
Not directly from AQ Khan, per se, but from the network.
Remember, the network has mesophatized.
It's its own entity.
It's its own thing now.
Sure.
And has been for quite some time, you know, if you go back to what AQ Khan actually did, he stole blueprints from the British, and that's how he, you know… Yeah, from Urenko.
Yeah.
So, you know, it's not just that, even.
It's… Where there's huge amounts of arms, there's huge amounts of… Money.
Other interests.
What?
I know.
You're like having me discuss something that I'm so bound to… Well, be careful.
It's okay.
You know, there's other interests there.
You know, any arms sort of hotbed is going to draw other elements, not just the clients, but other dealers of bigger, worse weapons.
Then you've got the whole drug element, you know, with Afghanistan and heroin.
So, I mean, it's a really sort of… It's an incredibly dangerous area and really does affect our national security.
And so to sort of cause this kind of damage, even if it's just a small ripple, right, you just drop a pebble and you're like, oh, it'll just be a little bit of damage.
It doesn't matter.
No matter what the damage is, this is so dangerous to us that to risk any of our ability to protect ourselves from these elements in order to pay back a political, you know, get someone back for publicly embarrassing you over a lie you told.
To me, it's just not worth the cost.
I mean, maybe they're that ridiculously childish, but to me it just suggests that there's another motive.
I mean, because this is no small scandal.
Well, and the other motive is easy to see.
I mean, if you look, what was the worst thing that happened to Dick Cheney?
You know, it wasn't 9-11 happening on his watch.
The worst thing that happened to Dick Cheney during his time in power was that the National Intelligence Council put out the NIE of November 2007 that said Iran is not making nuclear weapons.
Right, right, right.
So it's pretty easy to see why he would try to get rid of the CIA's ability to come to those kinds of conclusions if what he wanted was a war.
Sure, you can go back to 2001, though.
You can go back to December of 2001 where a group of DOD people and some, you know, advisers are sent on a mission to Italy to meet with an Iranian arms dealer.
Why?
Man, it's your Gore Bannifore.
You're talking about the infamous Rome meetings with Michael Ledeen and Skiri.
Yeah, and I've talked to Michael Ledeen about this many times, okay?
And he's always maintained, and so has Gore Bannifore, by the way, that the topic of those conversations, starting in December of 2001, was always the threat of Iran.
So Iran looked to me like to be, you know, phase two, like they had already started, that Iraq had already been planned for, and we could see how well that went off, and that they were already doing, or there were task teams, Team Iraq and Team Iran, because there's no explanation for why that early on anybody's being sent to meet with Gore Bannifore.
Well, you know, I was always confused about the fact that, and, you know, I can't really remember now exactly, you know, whether it was Iran Contra II by Joshua Marshall or where exactly I read, you know, different things about this, but it seemed like there were members of the Supreme Islamic Council and members of, you know, representatives, basically, of the Iranian government, and at the same time people who were obviously dissidents and helping plot with Ledeen to overthrow them, all at the same meeting or something?
Help me understand that.
Well, no, I don't know where you read that, and I remember...
They were all dissidents, no one representing the Iranian government?
Wait, wait, wait.
I do remember very vaguely Josh Marshall's very excellent report.
He authored that with Laura Rosen, if I recall.
But what I'm talking about is what I got directly from the principals of that meeting and where they do not contradict one another.
I mean, there's some contradiction, you know, in what specifically was discussed.
Where they all agree is what was discussed.
In terms of who was there, there was some disagreement, and I haven't been able to, with the exception of Ledeen, Franklin, Carol Brody, Gurbani Far, and a few Italians and a few, you know, sort of Iranian elements I'm not aware of.
Well, and some of Chalabi's representatives from the INC, right, or Chalabi himself?
Well, that's the thing.
Some people have said yes, some people have said no.
Where I'm comfortable saying who was there is those names I just gave you.
Those were absolutely at the meeting, and that's one thing.
The other thing is what was discussed was that Iran was a major threat to the United States and that they were, that particular meeting, and Ledeen only stayed for one.
He left.
The others continued.
And I would wager that probably Israel was represented there as well.
That's my theory.
I don't know, but I would think it absolutely insane to have that kind of meeting without Israeli intelligence, you know, being involved.
And Harold Brody doesn't count?
He counts as Chalabi's close friend.
Yeah.
Well, he was, I guess, I'm trying to remember, was it Richard Sale who reported that he was basically Chalabi's handler?
He was more than Chalabi's handler, but that's a whole other story.
No, but, you know, Larry Franklin went on to plead guilty to espionage with regard to Iran and passing classified information to Israeli lobbyists.
And, of course, Chalabi ended up being busted and outed as an Iranian spy who the CIA and DIA, at least, accused of helping liaise in a war in Iraq on behalf of Iran and that's what the Iranians wanted, was Saddam overthrown.
And I guess they figured it would be tough enough for us that they wouldn't be next on the list.
He wasn't outed until, like, you know, do you know how many articles I did on the fact that he was an Iranian asset before anybody noticed?
I mean, Bob Bear was up there saying this guy's trying to undermine us.
Well, INC headquarters was in Tehran.
I mean, I remember Bob Dreyfuss writing about it back then.
Yeah, yeah.
And officially, how long it took them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, I know he was raided in, the CIA raided his place in Iraq in, what, 2004, right?
Or was it 2004?
They raided his place sometime, you know, obviously, I didn't know we were going to talk about this.
I would have messed up on the date.
But, yeah, somewhere around then.
I remember that Rhodey and Chalabi and Judith Miller were all together in Iraq.
They had had a meeting together.
Why?
I don't know.
How she managed to turn around an entire battalion she was, you know, embedded with and say, I've got to go over here and meet with these guys.
I had no idea journalists had that kind of power.
I know that was in May of 2003.
So it had to have been, yeah, it had to have been well after Plame's outing.
So I would say, yeah, you're probably right, 2004.
Now, I want to ask you a little bit about what it was like growing up under the occupation of the USSR in Ukraine, Larissa.
I guess, you know, I don't have a question more specific than that other than just say what you want.
Okay.
Could you ask me a more specific question?
Because I'm still sort of on national security and I can't turn around as quickly.
All right.
So you're a little girl and there's guys in uniforms marching up and down with the Soviet goose step march and nobody's got any freedom and the government owns everything and it really sucked.
Something like that?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I remember all of it.
You know, my parents can't believe that I do.
But, you know, I wasn't a toddler.
I was, you know, six, seven.
So I remember a good deal of it.
I don't recall people marching up and down, but I remember from a very young age being told over and over and over never to talk to anybody about anything for any reason.
Because the Soviets had this thing where, you know, other little kids or mothers of a kid or a teacher try to make friendly conversation with you just to see what your parents are talking about at home.
And you could be, you know, just answering basic questions, but in them revealing more than, you know, as a little kid you realize.
So never to talk to anybody for any reason about any subject.
I remember that.
And you were taught that from how young of an age?
As young as I can remember.
I just never talked to anybody about anything.
Yeah.
And, you know, that wasn't because, you know, like maybe a comparative case in America, the parents are pot smokers and they tell their kids, you know, never discuss this kind of thing.
No, no, no.
You're talking about never discuss anything at all because your mom and dad could get taken away in the middle of the night.
Yeah, and you could too.
And then you might have to be forced to testify against them.
Something equivalent of if I'm living here and I say, and I'm a little kid and I hear mom and dad talking about the George Bush, you know, maybe he's a bad president, right?
That's enough.
You're gone.
You're arrested and you go to a war camp.
That's it.
That's the end of the story.
Probably seven, 15 years.
So, I mean, and, you know, a little kid can be led there fairly easily, you know what I mean, by someone who's skilled at manipulating.
You know, you're talking about little kids.
So the safest approach was don't say anything about anything to anyone ever.
Well, you know, depending on who you are in this society, things can be pretty bad for you.
But I think by and large most people don't have to fear a situation like what you're describing.
And yet it sort of seems to me like we're headed that way in this society, Larissa.
And that's really why I wanted to ask you about that, to give people the idea of what it really means to live in a police state, to be that afraid of authority, that afraid that anyone could snitch on you and have you taken away for no good reason at all.
Well, that's why I'm so distraught about the whole wiretapping thing.
You know, everyone's like, well, I didn't do anything wrong, so I have nothing to worry about.
And I don't think they understand that it's not the people who did anything wrong.
It's everybody else who's in danger.
Because people like the Bush-Cheney group, I think, never had an interest in keeping us safe from anything.
Because if they had, they wouldn't have gone into Iraq.
They would have gone into Pakistan or, you know, felt some blow to the Saudis that would have been felt much more strongly than, let's say, a war.
Or done something to the actual people implicated in 9-11, but reacting by cooking up a phony war and taking up all of our resources that we could defend ourselves with and strengthen our economy and strengthen our national security and such.
You know, taking that and going off on another adventure suggests strongly to me that they never really cared about national security.
And give them the dirty tricks that we know, oh, and we know a great deal, about these guys that they engaged in.
You know, and you talk about Nixon's abuses, okay?
What did Nixon do?
He spied on journalists.
He even wanted to have journalists killed.
He wanted to have peace protesters kidnapped and shipped off, you know, like, extradited and dropped off somewhere.
I mean, for these guys with that kind of power, you think they're looking for terrorists?
We don't know what they're looking for, but it scares me.
And it should scare everyone because this is the kind of line you start crossing a little bit, a little bit, and eventually you end up exactly with the Soviet type of government.
Because, you know, the Soviets didn't suddenly win the revolution and suddenly become these evil monsters overnight.
It was little by little, the more the people allowed, the more it was taken.
Well, and I think we've talked before about James Bamford's book, The Shadow Factory, and about how he, I guess, basically proves beyond any doubt that total information awareness was not closed down.
It was simply moved to the National Security Agency and renamed Basketball, and they're building a gigantic Alamo dome-sized building.
It's on Google Earth right now down there in San Antonio, you know, a mile away and connected with broadband to a new Microsoft headquarters being built there.
And they are vacuuming up the entire Internet all day, every day.
They're saving every instant message and every email and every Google search and every, at least, who you called, if not the MP3 file of every phone call everybody makes.
And we're at the point where if you're doing something right, you might have something to worry about.
Well, you know, anything can be taken out of context, too.
Remember that.
And given the political prosecutions in this country, also reminiscent of the Soviet Union, it's my belief that a lot of the evidence that was obtained and used was likely done so through these methods.
They wanted to nail someone.
They had nothing, so they found ways to get something.
Yeah, ask ShakeOutLibby.
Oh, you can't because they murdered him in his cell.
Right.
I don't know if that's true.
I mean, there's no proof that he was murdered.
We know that he killed himself, whether or not that's – I don't know.
I just don't know.
No, we don't know.
That was a gratuitous assertion, but it seems pretty likely.
I read the other day that when Human Rights Watch came to talk to him, he said, where were you when they were torturing me?
Get the hell away from me.
And that was the last anybody ever heard from him.
Yeah, well, you know, it's a really sad state of affairs.
But more to the abuse of power, you know, what really concerns me is that I think there's a strong possibility that the reason nobody's being held accountable for anything is because of these wiretaps, you know?
I don't know what people were caught and what human weakness, what criminal activity, I don't know.
But, you know, I wouldn't put it past – someone who could lie us into a war of choice with so many dead people, so many innocent lives lost, torture people to get false confessions, and they would be above blackmail.
I just don't believe it.
I think, in fact, we have a lot to fear from these types of programs.
Yeah, well, and I think that is a great line of investigative reporting you could go down, Larissa.
I'm sorry we're all out of time.
I want to thank you very much for your time on the show today.
Oh, thanks for having me.
That's Larissa Alexandrovna.
She's the managing investigative news editor of rawstory.com.