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RedditDid the United States, or did it not, approve a $400 million covert operation against Iran last year, backed by an official "presidential finding"? And did the Democrats in Congress, including leaders of the intelligence committees, approve it? That's what Sy Hersh is reporting in the New Yorker.
So far, Hersh's blockbuster has gotten mentions here and there in the mainstream media--a brief mention in the Washington Post, a citation in a Los Angeles Times blog, and so on. It ought to be big news, and you'd assume that reporters for the major papers would assign their intelligence beat people to look into, and confirm, Hersh's scoop. It's not just a vague assertion but a concrete, verifiable report. (Yes, I'm trying, myself.)
It was first reported in May by Andrew Cockburn in Counterpunch, and his report didn't get much traction anywhere in the media.
When I was in Iran, in March, Iranian government and religious officials made charges about a U.S. covert operation, aimed at splintering Iran into pieces by stirring up Arab, Kurdish, and Baluchi separatists, which I reported for The Nation. Such charges are routine for Iranians, and Tehran blamed a recent explosion in the southern city of Shiraz on the United States' support for Arab rebels.
Here's the lead of Hersh's piece:
Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country's religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran's suspected nuclear-weapons program.
He also writes:
None of the four Democrats in the Gang of Eight--Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Intelligence Committee chairman John D. Rockefeller IV, and House Intelligence Committee chairman Silvestre Reyes--would comment on the Finding, with some noting that it was highly classified.
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Robert Dreyfuss
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Sorry, but Sy Hersh has been saying we're going to invade Iran "any day now"....for three or four years.
Until Inauguration Day, the man's panic mode will likely continue.
Posted by Mask at 06/30/2008 @ 10:17am
Total crap from the Dems. The democrats don't want to talk about it because this is shades of Iran-Contra. Federal money being use to fund some covert operation without the public's knowledge. Sounds like Iran-Contra to me. If this money was approved let's see the congressionl record of it. Since Iran-Contra this is how Bush I and II have been trying to get around the consequences of the Iran-Contra scandal. Now the Democrats are involved. This explains how after hearing after hearing, no republican official connected with the White House has been prosecuted by the Dems. Bush and the Dems are involved in the same game.
Posted by jimijazz at 06/30/2008 @ 10:57am
Well it's about time we did something to break up the religious leadership in Iran.
Posted by abell12ct at 06/30/2008 @ 11:31am
abell-What we are doing will greatly help the religious leaders in Iran by uniting the Iranians behind that religious leadership.Many Iranians were getting tired of that religious leadership until you good people gave them a reason to unite with that religious leadership.
Posted by i'm nobody at 06/30/2008 @ 11:58am
abell-What we are doing will greatly help the religious leaders in Iran by uniting the Iranians behind that religious leadership.Many Iranians were getting tired of that religious leadership until you good people gave them a reason to unite with that religious leadership.
Posted by i'm nobody at 06/30/2008 @ 11:58am
Q: Will we ever learn?
A: NO. As long as the means and the ends remain profitable.
Posted by MATTMAN at 06/30/2008 @ 12:30pm
Dems in Congress are dedicated to keeping their seats, period. The American public, the voting public, has become so fearful, so wimpy, so chicken that any move by a politician that can be construed as having lead to an attack on this sacred? soil will certainly be drummed out of office.
Dem's who gave the Idiot $400 million to screw-up Iran did it to cover their political asses should Iran in future launch missiles on DC(?)
It's the cowering American public that needs to get a backbone. Politicians aren't born with one.
Posted by felicity at 06/30/2008 @ 2:09pm
1) This looks nothing like Iran-Contra because Congress appears to have both approved funding and approved the goal towards which the funding was going. Unless one of these is false, there's no scandal here.
2) It's kind of weird to suggest that these moves actually unify the religious leadership in Iran. You know what ACTUALLY does that? DISCLOSING this stuff. Interestingly enough, by the way, if the document in question actually was classified, Hersh should not have leaked it. In order to contend otherwise, one would basically have to argue that the government doesn't have the right to classify documents, a right that the Court has consistently refused to reject, and for good reason.
Posted by Thrawn at 06/30/2008 @ 2:33pm
To Thrawn, my point is if it was a approved funding let's get the democrats on the record. Seems very suspicious that they are so hush-hush and don't give me that national security jazz. Everybody and their brother knows Bush has been finding a pretext for a war with Iran. So if the Dems are colluding with Bush, the public has a right to know about it. This is more than election- year posturing. I'm sure the more you dig, the more you will find - disgusting and ugly it may be.
Posted by jimijazz at 06/30/2008 @ 4:26pm
"You know what ACTUALLY does that? DISCLOSING this stuff," said "Thrawn."
Generally, it must be said that so-called "covert operations" are not very "covert" to the people who are on the receiving end of them. The people of Nicaragua were very much aware of the "covert operations" that our government was funding back in the "good old days" of Iran-Contra, and I'm sure the Nicaraguan government had plenty of red shirts to wave to generate popular support for their own program as a result. Fortunately, the Democrats were smarter and braver back then and stood up to Ollie North and Elliot Abrams.
Unfortunately, today Abrams is back in business, and the Democrats no longer have the courage or the good sense to stand up to him or his ilk. In another article presently worth reading on the Nation website, Shirin Ebadi argues that attacks and threats of attack on Iran are dangerous for the Iranian moderates, since any association with the United States undermines their credibility and makes them easy targets for government repression.
Disclosing that fact that our government is funding covert operations against Iran is probably not news to Iranians, but it is news to me - news that I can use, and frankly, news that I need to know if I am to be the citizen of a republic rather than a dictatorship. Hersh's report is an indicator of how much dumber even Democrats have become since the 1980s, and all because they want to "look tough" and because, like too many military strategists, they are perpetually trying to win the previous campaign, while the necessary strategy to win the present one perpetually escapes them.
My only hope is that, thanks to good reporters like Sy Hersh, the US-American public gradually learns how dumb, and how wasteful, counterproductive, and dangerous, all this "toughness" really is - and gives the Democrats a piece of their mind.
Posted by JakobFabian at 06/30/2008 @ 5:15pm
Gee, I certainly hope we are stirring things up in Iran. It's about time.
Posted by pyeatte at 06/30/2008 @ 5:31pm
What needs to be made public is the names of the Congressional officials - in particular, the Democrats - involved in this lunacy.
Posted by Zero
What needs to be made public are the people who broke the law and told Hersh about this.
Posted by Zero
No.
Posted by abell12ct at 06/30/2008 @ 6:02pm
<i>Posted by JakobFabian at 06/30/2008 @ 5:15pm </i>
Does the government have the right to classify documents or doesn't it?
Posted by Thrawn at 06/30/2008 @ 6:15pm
Thrawn, that classified documents excuse is just a smokscreen, I would bet on it. If there are covert operations going on with a country that has not displayed any outward agression toward the U.S. and is part of the Bush agenda when it comes to Iraq, the public definitely has a right to know about that. And it seems to me the info Sy Hersh obtained could not have been that sensitive, otherwise, why hasn't he been prosecuted? There are holes as usual in the Bush foreign policy agenda and the Dems are now involved.
Posted by jimijazz at 06/30/2008 @ 8:36pm
Is this how the founding fathers intended our gov't to act? Secret presidential findings? Discreet approprations of funds? $400 million to stir things up in another country?
Posted by paulieman1 at 06/30/2008 @ 11:49pm
They sure are. Criminals all of them
Posted by pachonegro at 07/01/2008 @ 08:47am
No, "Thrawn," generally, our government should not have the right to classify documents. This should be only an exceptional practice, not something the government routinely does to cover up its own malfeasance. If I had my way, I would not allow the Executive branch to classify documents all by itself. I'd require at least some Congressional oversight, particularly when our Executive branch's secret activities amount to an undeclared war.
It is permissible for the government to classify documents only when not only it, but we ourselves, are both in grave danger and officially, not secretly, at war. These documents should then all be declassified as soon as peacetime returns.
Our government has been so long in the habit of waging never-ending "wars" (note the scare quotes), mostly in secret, that it has really become too comfortable hiding most of what it does from us, if not from the rest of the world. The Congress has gradually lost its power to determine whether we are at war, because really, with all the secret stuff our Executive branch is involved in, who outside of this branch knows at any given time whether we are at war or not?
Since "war" has become nothing but our government's excuse to cover up incompetence and malfeasance, I believe the best chance we have to defeat the terrorists is to stop the "war." Let's try working within the law, including international laws to which our government has (after all) signed on, and start treating terrorists as what they are: criminals, not soldiers.
This would be the turning point in our present struggle against terrorists, the point at which our government stopped making the appearance of winning a "war" for the purpose of winning the next election and started making real progress in solving the problem.
Posted by JakobFabian at 07/01/2008 @ 08:54am
If we are not using covert methods in Iran we're idiots. Maybe by the use of covert opts we can avoid a major confrontation. The head in the sand isolationist pacifism preached here at the Nation is a tried and true method of foreign policy----it has been tried and it has always been truly a complete failure.
Posted by Len Mosse at 07/01/2008 @ 11:14am
The head in the sand isolationist pacifism preached here at the Nation is a tried and true method of foreign policy----it has been tried and it has always been truly a complete failure.
Posted by Len Mosse
when?
Posted by frosty zoom at 07/01/2008 @ 12:12pm
Hersh was on BBC America news last night and elaborated on you comments. Hersh zeroed in on the U.S. as his sources. ABC quoting Pentagon sources said that Israel would be bombing Iraq. I looked at Haaretz the Israeli paper, and Rosner was asking an "American Legal Expert" if it would be legal to conduct a preemptive nuclear strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. I do not know if these people are blowing smoke or are stupid enough to atttack active nuclear facilities. In any case, if this stupidity doesn't encourage a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, countries like Iran would be crazy. They will feel the need to deter Israel. If these idiot hit these plants we will see a rain of radioactive fallout blowing around the world and the Middle East, including Israel. God know how many Chernobyls will be created.
Posted by P. J. Casey at 07/01/2008 @ 12:49pm
from what i understand we have been supporting violent terrorist groups in iran since at least the beginning of the iraq fiasco. considering the cost of the iraq quagmire...i kinda wonder if it might have been more cost effective to leave hussein in power and goad him into doing such dirty work.
i cant see how it could have resulted in more misery for the people of iraq, especially the non muslim and secular population...
oh well. here we are (again).
Posted by ibbleblibble at 07/01/2008 @ 2:34pm
For all intents and purposes the United States is every bit at war with Iran right now as we were with National Socialist Germany in the period immediately before December 7, 1941, and this has happened with the full knowledge and co-operation of the Democrats. Who's surprized when lead Democrat, AIPAC stephin fetchit, Barak Obama, won't take anything "off the table" when it comes to Iran. Progressives deserve representation by candidates honestly expressive of their opinions and, what's clear, they've sure picked a poseur in Obama. Progressives need vote for Nader come November.
Posted by john lowell at 07/01/2008 @ 3:39pm
The mullahs owe Bush bigtime!
An external threat is just the ticket for suppressing the internal opposition and keeping the people in line.
Posted by REWINN at 07/01/2008 @ 3:47pm
One wishes that Hersh cd do better than 98% unnamed sources in maybe ONE of these Iran-articles, however.
Posted by jlister at 07/01/2008 @ 9:30pm
The real question is how the people of the country can regain control of Congress. And the real frustration is this feedback loop which has no entry point for logic.
Iran makes angry accusations and the talking heads, including those in what passes for the mainstream media. use those accusations as talking points. They go on and on about how crazy Tehran is. and how they're itching to be slapped down.
Fast forward a few months and this story, which apparently proves out those accusations, gets no press to speak of. You see where I'm going with this? There's no way to inject reality into this process given the transience of the media response. All the accusations and the setting of minds happens at the front end. Meanwhile the reality check is a minor echo off in the distance of time.
This is dangerous.
Posted by ncimon at 07/01/2008 @ 11:28pm
jlister: "One wishes that Hersh cd do better than 98% unnamed sources in maybe ONE of these Iran-articles, however."
TNY has VERY thorough fact-checkers. They will have called and confirmed every single source for story and identity, even if they aren't publicly named. Think about every one of Hersh's pieces on Iraq - the revelations on Abu Graib, for instance being a particularly explosive example. Despite the extreme embarrassment caused, was the veracity of the report seriously questioned?
IMHO you can take this story to the bank. But there's a lot going on behind the scenes. Gates' shakeup at the AF might be an example, the AF and Navy being the only services with the fighting capacity to take a new mission. I suspect that Gates and Rice are trying to keep the Administration's scope of action within non-violent limits.
Posted by chimpunk at 07/02/2008 @ 06:07am
The head in the sand isolationist pacifism preached here at the Nation is a tried and true method of foreign policy----it has been tried and it has always been truly a complete failure.
Posted by Len Mosse
I can translate.
the only tried and true method of foreign policy--is permanent war.
there are very small men posting here, drooling on their keyboards in anticipation of more war. two wars? not enough, we need more. they fantasize glorious victories, as if these would somehow rub off on their miserable misanthropic lives. they wave the bloody shirt, recruiting for uncle sam, beating the drum, all from the cozy safety of their keyboards.
Oh mighty keyboard warriors:
you should croak.
Posted by emile duBois at 07/02/2008 @ 09:28am
TNY has VERY thorough fact-checkers... IMHO you can take this story to the bank. Posted by chimpunk at 07/02/2008 @ 06:07am | ignore this person |
Of course you're right. I don't suspect yellow journalism or wrong doing of any sort on Hersh's part here. I take him at his word, more or less. Though, Abu Ghraib was certainly a horse of a different color insofar as it was a story of the historical and documentad (in color!) variety, rather than of the shadowy and largely speculative ilk, which Hersh's Iran-related pieces have uniformly been. But, like I said, I do indeed believe this story's content for the overwhelming part. That being said, in terms of the story's impact, the fact that Hersh (understandably) cannot provide sources, cannot name real names, is something that limits the piece's "punch."
Posted by jlister at 07/02/2008 @ 12:03pm
Stirring Up Pandora's Box
a very mixed metaphor.
Posted by emile duBois at 07/02/2008 @ 12:36pm
The mullahs owe Bush bigtime!
An external threat is just the ticket for suppressing the internal opposition and keeping the people in line.
Posted by REWINN at 07/01/2008 @ 3:47pm
oil prices.
Posted by frosty zoom at 07/02/2008 @ 12:38pm
Oh mighty keyboard warriors:
you should croak.
Posted by emile duBois at 07/02/2008 @ 09:28am
Emile, I couldn't agree more. The keyboard warriors posting here are the toughest talking blow hards known to man. Not one of them has offered their services to go to Iraq nor Afghanistan to fight for their principles.
No, that's a game for the young because they believe they have become quite indespenible with their unequalled intellect (in their own minds) and untested bravery (with the exception of in their own minds).
The typical GOP (Grand Oil Party) backers are full of shit cowards who hide behind the blood of other people....mostly the suns and daughters of poorer families that can't afford to send their kids off to college.
Posted by Wolfgang1 at 07/02/2008 @ 2:09pm
Oh mighty keyboard warriors:
you should croak.
Posted by emile duBois at 07/02/2008 @ 09:28am
Emile, I couldn't agree more. The keyboard warriors posting here are the toughest talking blow hards known to man. Not one of them has offered their services to go to Iraq nor Afghanistan to fight for their principles.
No, that's a game for the young because they believe they have become quite indespenible with their unequalled intellect (in their own minds) and untested bravery (with the exception of in their own minds).
The typical GOP (Grand Oil Party) backers are full of shit cowards who hide behind the blood of other people....mostly the suns and daughters of poorer families that can't afford to send their kids off to college.
Posted by Wolfgang1 at 07/02/2008 @ 2:10pm