OCTOBER 2007
B-52 Nukes Were Headed for Iran: Airforce >>>Refused<<<
SPECIAL REPORT
Air
Force refused to fly weapons to Middle East theater
By Wayne Madsen
Sept. 24, 2007
Author's website
WMR has learned from U.S. and foreign intelligence
sources that the B-52 transporting six stealth AGM-129
Advanced Cruise Missiles, each armed with a W-80-1
nuclear warhead, on August 30, were destined for the
Middle East via Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.
However, elements of the Air Force, supported by U.S.
intelligence agency personnel, successfully revealed the
ultimate destination of the nuclear weapons and the
mission was aborted due to internal opposition within the
Air Force and U.S. Intelligence Community.
Yesterday, the Washington Post attempted to
explain away the fact that America's nuclear command and
control system broke down in an unprecedented manner by
reporting that it was the result of "security
failures at multiple levels." It is now apparent
that the command and control breakdown, reported as a
BENT SPEAR incident to the Secretary of Defense and White
House, was not the result of a command and control
chain-of-command "failures" but the result of a
revolt and push back by various echelons within the Air
Force and intelligence agencies against a planned U.S.
attack on Iran using nuclear and conventional weapons.
The Washington Post story on BENT SPEAR may have
actually been an effort in damage control by the Bush
administration. WMR has been informed by a knowledgeable
source that one of the six nuclear-armed cruise missiles
was, and may still be, unaccounted for. In that case, the
nuclear reporting incident would have gone far beyond
BENT SPEAR to a National Command Authority alert known as
EMPTY QUIVER, with the special classification of
PINNACLE.
Just as this report was being prepared, Newsweek reported
that Vice President Dick Cheney's recently-departed
Middle East adviser, David Wurmser, told a small group of
advisers some months ago that Cheney had considered
asking Israel to launch a missile attack on the Iranian
nuclear site at Natanz. Cheney reasoned that after an
Iranian retaliatory strike, the United States would have
ample reasons to launch its own massive attack on Iran.
However, plans for Israel to attack Iran directly were
altered to an Israeli attack on a supposed
Syrian-Iranian-North Korean nuclear installation in
northern Syria.
WMR has learned that a U.S. attack on Iran using nuclear
and conventional weapons was scheduled to coincide with
Israel's September 6 air attack on a reputed Syrian
nuclear facility in Dayr az-Zwar, near the village of Tal
Abyad, in northern Syria, near the Turkish border.
Israel's attack, code named OPERATION ORCHARD, was to
provide a reason for the U.S. to strike Iran. The
neo-conservative propaganda onslaught was to cite the
cooperation of the George Bush's three remaining
"Axis of Evil" states -- Syria, Iran, and North
Korea -- to justify a sustained Israeli attack on Syria
and a massive U.S. military attack on Iran.
WMR has learned from military sources on both sides of
the Atlantic that there was a definite connection between
Israel's OPERATION ORCHARD and BENT SPEAR involving the
B-52 that flew the six nuclear-armed cruise missiles from
Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barksdale. There
is also a connection between these two events as the
Pentagon's highly-classified PROJECT CHECKMATE, a
compartmented U.S. Air Force program that has been
working on an attack plan for Iran since June 2007,
around the same time that Cheney was working on the joint
Israeli-U.S. attack scenario on Iran.
PROJECT CHECKMATE was leaked in an article by military
analyst Eric Margolis in the Rupert Murdoch-owned
newspaper, the Times of London, is a program
that involves over two dozen Air Force officers and is
headed by Brig. Gen. Lawrence Stutzriem and his chief
civilian adviser, Dr. Lani Kass, a former Israeli
military intelligence officer who, astoundingly, is now
involved in planning a joint U.S.-Israeli massive
military attack on Iran that involves a
"decapitating" blow on Iran by hitting between
three to four thousand targets in the country. Stutzriem
and Kass report directly to the Air Force Chief of Staff,
General Michael Moseley, who has also been charged with
preparing a report on the B-52/nuclear weapons incident.
Kass' area of speciality is cyber-warfare, which includes
ensuring "information blockades," such as that
imposed by the Israeli government on the Israeli media
regarding the Syrian air attack on the alleged Syrian
"nuclear installation." British intelligence
sources have reported that the Israeli attack on Syria
was a "true flag" attack originally designed to
foreshadow a U.S. attack on Iran. After the U.S. Air
Force push back against transporting the six cruise
nuclear-armed AGM-129s to the Middle East, Israel went
ahead with its attack on Syria in order to help ratchet
up tensions between Washington on one side and Damascus,
Tehran, and Pyongyang on the other.
The other part of CHECKMATE's brief is to ensure that a
media "perception management" is waged against
Syria, Iran, and North Korea. This involves articles such
as that which appeared with Joby Warrick's and Walter
Pincus' bylines in yesterdays Washington Post.
The article, titled "The Saga of a Bent Spear,"
quotes a number of seasoned Air Force nuclear weapons
experts as saying that such an incident is unprecedented
in the history of the Air Force. For example, Retired Air
Force General Eugene Habiger, the former chief of the
U.S. Strategic Command, said he has been in the
"nuclear business" since 1966 and has never
been aware of an incident "more disturbing."
Command and control
breakdowns involving U.S. nuclear weapons are
unprecedented, except for that fact that the U.S.
military is now waging an internal war against neo-cons
who are embedded in the U.S. government and military
chain of command who are intent on using nuclear weapons
in a pre-emptive war with Iran.
CHECKMATE and OPERATION
ORCHARD would have provided the cover for a pre-emptive
U.S. and Israeli attack on Iran had it not been for BENT
SPEAR involving the B-52. In on the plan to launch a
pre-emptive attack on Iran involving nuclear weapons
were, according to our sources, Cheney, National Security
Adviser Stephen Hadley; members of the CHECKMATE team at
the Pentagon, who have close connections to Israeli
intelligence and pro-Israeli think tanks in Washington,
including the Hudson Institute; British Foreign Secretary
David Miliband, a political adviser to Tony Blair prior
to becoming a Member of Parliament; Israeli political
leaders like Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Likud leader
Binyamin Netanyahu; and French Foreign Minister Bernard
Kouchner, who did his part last week to ratchet up
tensions with Iran by suggesting that war with Iran was a
probability. Kouchner retracted his statement after the
U.S. plans for Iran were delayed.
Although
the Air Force tried to keep the B-52 nuclear incident
from the media, anonymous Air Force personnel leaked the
story to the Military Times on September 5, the
day before the Israelis attacked the alleged nuclear
installation in Syria and the day planned for the
simultaneous U.S. attack on Iran. The leaking of
classified information on U.S. nuclear weapons
disposition or movement to the media, is, itself,
unprecedented. Air Force regulations require the sending
of classified BEELINE reports to higher Air Force
authorities on the disclosure of classified Air Force
information to the media.
In another highly
unusual move, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has asked an
outside inquiry board to look into BENT SPEAR, even
before the Air Force has completed its own investigation,
a virtual vote of no confidence in the official
investigation being conducted by Major General Douglas
Raaberg, chief of air and space operations at the Air
Combat Command.
Gates asked former Air Force Chief of Staff, retired
General Larry Welch, to lead a Defense Science Board task
force that will also look into the BENT SPEAR incident.
The official Air Force investigation has reportedly been
delayed for unknown reasons. Welch is President and CEO
of the Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA), a
federally-funded research contractor that operates three
research centers, including one for Office of Science and
Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the
President and another for the National Security Agency. One
of the board members of IDA is Dr. Suzanne H. Woolsey of
the Paladin Capital Group and wife of former CIA director
and arch-neocon James Woolsey.
WMR has learned that neither the upper echelons of the
State Department nor the British Foreign Office were
privy to OPERATION ORCHARD, although Hadley briefed
President Bush on Israeli spy satellite intelligence that
showed the Syrian installation was a joint nuclear
facility built with North Korean and Iranian assistance. However, it is
puzzling why Hadley would rely on Israeli imagery
intelligence (IMINT) from its OFEK (Horizon) 7 satellite
when considering that U.S. IMINT satellites have greater
capabilities.
The Air Force's "information warfare" campaign
against media reports on CHECKMATE and OPERATION ORCHARD
also affected international reporting of the recent
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) resolution
asking Israel to place its nuclear weapons program under
IAEA controls, similar to those that the United States
wants imposed on Iran and North Korea. The resolution
also called for a nuclear-free zone throughout the Middle
East. The IAEA's resolution, titled "Application of
IAEA Safeguards in the Middle East," was passed by
the 144-member IAEA General Meeting on September 20 by a
vote of 53 to 2, with 47 abstentions. The only two
countries to vote against were Israel and the United
States. However, the story carried from the IAEA meeting
in Vienna by Reuters, the Associated Press, and Agence
France Press, was that it was Arab and Islamic nations
that voted for the resolution.
This was yet more perception management carried out by
CHECKMATE, the White House, and their allies in Europe
and Israel with the connivance of the media. In fact,
among the 53 nations that voted for the resolution were
China, Russia, India, Ireland, and Japan. The 47
abstentions were described as votes "against"
the resolution even though an abstention is neither a
vote for nor against a measure. America's close allies,
including Britain, France, Australia, Canada, and
Georgia, all abstained.
Suspiciously, the IAEA carried only a brief item on the
resolution concerning Israel's nuclear program and a roll
call vote was not available either at the IAEA's web site
-- www.iaea.org -- or in the media.
The perception management campaign by the neocon
operational cells in the Bush administration, Israel and
Europe was designed to keep a focus on Iran's nuclear
program, not on Israel's. Any international examination
of Israel's nuclear weapons program would likely bring up
Israeli nuclear scientist Mordechai Vanunu, a convert
from Judaism to Christianity, who was kidnapped in Rome
by a Mossad "honey trap" named Cheryl Bentov
(aka, Cindy) and a Mossad team in 1986 and held against
his will in Israel ever since.
Vanunu's knowledge of the Israeli nuclear weapons program
would focus on the country's own role in nuclear
proliferation, including its program to share nuclear
weapons technology with apartheid South Africa and Taiwan
in the late 1970s and 1980s. The role of Ronald Reagan's
Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency Ken
Adelman in Israeli's nuclear proliferation during the
time frame 1983-1987 would also come under scrutiny.
Adelman, a member of the Reagan-Bush transition State
Department team from November 1980 to January 1981,
voiced his understanding for the nuclear weapons programs
of Israel, South Africa, and Taiwan in a June 28, 1981 New
York Times article titled, "3 Nations Widening
Nuclear Contacts." The journalist who wrote the
article was Judith Miller. Adelman felt that the three
countries wanted nuclear weapons because of their
ostracism from the West, the third world, and the
hostility from the Communist countries. Of course, today,
the same argument can be used by Iran, North Korea, and
other "Axis of Evil" nations so designated by
the neocons in the Bush administration and other
governments.
There are also news reports that suggest an intelligence
relationship between Israel and North Korea. On July 21,
2004, New Zealand's Dominion Post reported that
three Mossad agents were involved in espionage in New
Zealand. Two of the Mossad agents, Uriel Kelman and
Elisha Cara (aka Kra), were arrested and imprisoned by
New Zealand police (an Israeli diplomat in Canberra, Amir
Lati, was expelled by Australia and New Zealand
intelligence identified a fourth Mossad agent involved in
the New Zealand espionage operation in Singapore). The
third Mossad agent in New Zealand, Zev William Barkan
(aka Lev Bruckenstein), fled New Zealand -- for North
Korea.
New Zealand Foreign Minister Phil Goff revealed that
Barkan, a former Israeli Navy diver, had previously
worked at the Israeli embassy in Vienna, which is also
the headquarters of the IAEA. He was cited by the Sydney
Morning Herald as trafficking in passports
stolen from foreign tourists in Thailand, Myanmar, Laos,
and Cambodia. New Zealand's One News reported that Barkan
was in North Korea to help the nation build a wall to
keep its citizens from leaving.
The nuclear brinkmanship
involving the United States and Israel and the breakdown
in America's command and control systems have every major
capital around the world wondering about the Bush
administration's true intentions.
NOTE: WMR understands
the risks to informed individuals in reporting the events
of August 29/30, to the present time, that concern the
discord within the U.S. Air Force, U.S. intelligence
agencies, and other military services. Any source with
relevant information and who wishes to contact us
anonymously may drop off sealed correspondence at or send
mail via the Postal Service to: Wayne Madsen, c/o The
Front Desk, National Press Club, 13th Floor, 529 14th
St., NW, Washington, DC, 20045.
<http://earthboppin.net/cgi-bin/talkrec.cgi?submit=lt&baseurl=http://earthboppin.
net/talkshop/national&msg_num=59386>
Comment on the subject
in xymphora.blogspot.com brought on the following
comment:Xymph's question: "the U. S. has
nukes all over the world, so why would they have to go
through such convolutions to get one to Iran?"
Elementary, dear Xymph. In a US military base abroad it
is nearly impossible to overrule standard operating
procedures and bypass the normal chain of command.
If there was indeed an attempt at starting an
irreversible chain-reaction in the ME with an attack on
Iran, against the will and best judgment of considerable
parts of the US military, then it is plausible that
orders bypassing the higher echelons of the military may
have been issued by the office of the Vice-President or
the NSC.
It is even possible that this order may have been dressed
up as a rehearsal of 'continuity of government'
contingency plans.
MORE
COMMENT FROM http://www.legitgov.org/minot_afb_nukes_oddities.html
Minot Base Officials Say Airman Dies
While On Leave 12 Sep 2007 The Minot Air Force
Base said an airman has died while on leave in Virginia.
Airman First Class Todd Blue, who was 20 years old, died
Monday while visiting with family members. The statement
did not say how he died. The base said Blue was a
response force member assigned to the 5th Security Forces
Squadron. [The primary mission of the 5th Security Forces Squadron is to 'provide
24-hour law enforcement and security services for the 5th
Bomb Wing and all tenant units assigned to Minot AFB.' "Guardians of the Upper
Realm" --The host wing on Minot Air Force Base,
the 5th Bomb Wing operates the B-52H Stratofortress
aircraft to provide global strike and combat-support
capabilities to geographic commanders. B-52 Stratofortress - Mission --Air Combat
Command's B-52 is a long-range, heavy bomber that can
perform a variety of missions... It can carry nuclear or
precision guided conventional ordnance with worldwide
precision navigation capability.]
AF Secretary Visits MAFB 14 Sep 2007 The top civilian in the Air Force spent the afternoon at Minot Air Force Base today. Michael Wynne, the Secretary of the Air Force, arrived at the base about 1 PM to get a personal look at how nuclear weapons are stored, protected, and handled. His visit comes two weeks after a B-52 bomber loaded with six nuclear warheads was flown from Minot to Barksdale Air Force Base.
Staging Nukes for Iran? By Larry Johnson 05 Sep 2007 My buddy... reminded me that the only times you put weapons on a plane is when they are on alert or if you are tasked to move the weapons to a specific site... Barksdale Air Force Base is being used as a jumping off point for Middle East operations... Why would we want to preposition nuclear weapons at a base conducting Middle East operations? His final point was to observe that someone on the inside obviously leaked the info that the planes were carrying nukes. A B-52 landing at Barksdale is a non-event. A B-52 landing with nukes. That is something else. Now maybe there is an innocent explanation for this? I can’t think of one. What is certain is that the pilots of this plane did not just make a last minute decision to strap on some nukes and take them for a joy ride... Did someone at Barksdale try to indirectly warn the American people that the Bush Administration is staging nukes for Iran?
*****
'Opposing'
view:
The
following email was sent to CLG on 19 September,
anonymously.
Hello there,
I’m a Staff Sergeant in the US Air Force. I do
network security, so, that’s why I’m emailing
anonymously, even though I really don’t feel it’s
necessary. I’m just paranoid like that, which is why
I’m pretty good at my job. ;) Also, parts of what I’m
putting in here are probably classified, which is the
primary reason I’m sending this anonymously.
Anyway, I see a lot of people posting on Reddit about
government conspiracies about nukes and things like this.
It’s frustrating for me because it’s really
very silly. Please, let me explain some background, to
help you all understand what’s going on in the
background for the Air Force:
Minot AFB is a dead-end base. It’s the abyss of the Air Force, the saying goes “Why not Minot?” They have major retainability problems there – people volunteer to go to Iraq, Korea, anywhere just to get out of there. Beside its location (middle-of-nowhere North Dakota), the base has very little real mission and spins its wheels forever in drills that all result in the end of the world since it’s a nuke base designed to fight the Cold War. But, there is no Cold War for them to fight (at least not one that Minot’s golden piece of real estate would be useful in fighting), so its people probably feel pretty worthless and tired of fighting the now non-existent Soviet Union. The base has already been re-aligned (more on that in a moment) and it’s probably going to be BRACed into a regional airport in a few decades. Ellison AFB in South Dakota has already had its closure decided.
One of the biggest problems with killing off Minot is its core mission – all of the nukes it has. Its weapons capability is moving to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana as the AF further consolidates after the Cold War and infrastructure budget cuts because of Iraq et al. Moving weapons capability to Barksdale, in real world terms, means moving the actual missiles that would deliver the nuclear warhead to Barksdale. No big deal, conventional weapons move all the time. Nuclear warheads, however, when transported for these reasons, are moved by the Department of Energy – a very time consuming, expensive, and burdensome process that someone else will have to figure out much later once they finally decide to close the base.
So, the Air Force’s solution is to move the missiles, and leave the warheads behind, to be dealt with one day when all of us are retired and don't have to worry about it. That’s what SHOULD have happened. So the mission itself was pretty normal otherwise. (It may actually be intentional to leave things this way, to prevent Congressional involvement, as whatever Senator is from ND is probably desperate to keep Minot around as long as possible; leaving the nukes, but operationally stripping the base serves both sides purposes).
The mistake, and the reason everyone now knows about this, is that the warheads weren’t removed from the missiles being moved to Barksdale. I bet the guys on the ground in Barksdale were sure as shit surprised when they cracked the payload open and saw a warhead. ;)
I know as much as I do because I work with a cross-trainee whose last base was Barksdale as a munitions specialist. He was involved in this process there; along with the various other missions Barksdale has (it’s a pretty critical base in the AF). Anyway, you would think there would be a pretty clear checklist for all of this, but apparently no one even bothered. Doing what they do day-to-day, is pretty standard operating procedure. People get lazy when they do the same thing day after day, and there’s no less than a half dozen teams who would be transferring these weapons around from storage until they’re loaded. The idea of someone dropping the ball in the AF is not exactly unusual (quite common, actually, heh), especially when 4:30 rolls around and everyone wants to go home. If the next step is to hand it off to the guys who remove the warhead, and it’s 1630 on a Friday, hell, let’s just leave it until Monday, since the mission doesn’t fly until Tuesday anyway. Monday rolls around, someone else takes over, and doesn’t know the job wasn’t finished on Friday. There SHOULD be some paper trail for that kind of thing, but then, like I said, people are lazy. Oh, and Minot usually fails its nuclear operational readiness inspections. ;) Sorry to kill your confidence in the military.
I’ve seen too much crazy stuff to believe in some massive conspiracy, there’s too many people involved. You’d have to kill like 50 people to “cover up” moving nukes to Barksdale. Plus, what would it achieve? There’s already more than enough nukes at Barksdale to blow the world up 3x over. Who needs 6 more? Seriously? Plus, more accidents occur with conventional than nukes, since nukes are computerized and designed to be super-duper safe. Conventional weapons are built by the lowest bidder. [Yikes!] I’d be more worried about a fully-loaded F16 flying around NYC after 9/11 sucking up a bird than a B52 with nukes flying around without anyone knowing it was loaded with nukes. The pilots couldn’t "secretly" be in on it and launch them, the interface wouldn’t be installed, the COMSEC material wouldn’t be available, etc. You’d have to kill half the base to hide the paper trail necessary to give the pilots the ability to launch.
Several people dying from Minot is bad, of course, but then, crazy stuff happens. Motorcycle accidents, mind you, are the #1 non-war cause of dead in the Air Force. The Captain who died wasn’t a pilot (he was Combat Weather, as evidenced by his pewter beret in the photo linked from your site). Captains are a dime a dozen, just like the Security Forces troop who died. Yes, a part of the Security Forces Squadron mission there would be do defend the nukes, but he’s not at all involved in any of the process. He stands outside the door and checks IDs. Seriously, that’s it. I have 5 cops (as they're generally called in the Air Force) I deal with every day where I work because I do computer stuff, and they have zero clue what’s happening behind the door. They spend most of the day on the phone chit chatting with friends at other security posts about the latest dorm gossip about who slept with whom.
So, to conclude, just chill out a bit about the conspiracy, it’s kinda silly. Plus, again, what would be the point? It’s not a big deal to authorize a nuke mission. After 9/11 the entire Barksdale arsenal was loaded and on the flightline ready to fly. I wouldn’t sweat 6 who someone forgot to unload.
Feel free to republish, maybe it'll educate a few people.
V/r
SSgt
*****
Rebuttal
to 'Opposing View'
The
following email was sent to CLG on 19 September.
Subject:
comments closed?
http://www.legitgov.org/minot_afb_nukes_oddities.html
I’m NOT anonymous, and I take issue with the anonymous "ssgt" statements.
I’m a cold war vet from the US Navy, one who worked as part of an operation designed to exhaust and bankrupt the Soviet military, by constantly testing their limitations. This SSgt is a defacto shill for a propaganda machine.
1st.
Bullsheep. Plain and simple. IF this "SSgt" was actually just debunking a load of Steaming Holstein, none of his command would have much issue with any of his statements, especially publicly available facts such as retention rates and base activities that are noted on google.com, mil.gov, wikipedia, and many other websites worldwide. There is no need to be anonymous when you’re not releasing classified data, is there? Saying "there is not a plot" is not contrary to secure data, even if there is not a plot.
2nd
6 people dying within days of a world-record nuclear screw-up is decidedly newsworthy, and suspicious, in itself. The rate of fatalities in the military isn’t that high even in war zones.
3rd
The "Decider" has already stated that he believes the USA has the right to bomb Iran, and that he will not certify that he’d refuse to use nukes. "No option is off the table" as he is fond of saying. I think that’s pretty damn clear, being as it is coming from the Commander In Chief.
4th
The military reporting of these incidents is itself contrary to military secrecy, reason, and law. I suspect an altogether different agenda. I believe that this high-level press coverage of a screw up, carrying nukes on B52s, is designed to use the US Media [gasp, they’ve never done that before!] to pressure Iran to meet US demands.
a.
The US military would never release to the public any real classified data, especially including data about moved or missing nukes, without authority from the White House.
b.
The US media is NOT entitled to print or distribute classified information, and is NEVER brought-in as it was in this case, so rapidly or on such an elemental and critical faux paus.
c.
The only logical excuse for the sudden and detail-filled news coverage of this event is that of an intentional release of data for political purposes.
5th
Declaring that the US Military is lying in the media isn’t illegal provided that one does not expose any actual events or secrets, or violate the UCMJ by disobeying a direct order. All soldiers still have their civil rights. These rights are merely waived as needed for valid military purposes, as it is the job of a soldier to take abnormal risks and bear state secrets.
If it was really a secret, the anonymous sergeant would now be a traitor to the USA, just by talking about it. Thus, the implication that the letter is legit, is ALSO an implication that the letter is NOT legit. There is no need to be anonymous if it’s not a secret. QED. This is an example of a circular argument.
Thus, "I" am not violating any UCMJ or Federal laws by stating that it’s bunk. You can’t cite me for a double negative: I’m stating that what doesn’t exist, doesn’t not exist. We call that the First Amendment, and whether Dumbya likes it or not, it’s still in force. I’m saying that there is no pink elephant.
The missiles were moved, without any doubts, intentionally; OR The missiles were never moved and the press coverage is based on propaganda to scare Iran; OR the missiles were moved and the press coverage is based on propaganda to scare Iran. You can’t prove or disprove what the US military has done without EXTERNAL data. They’ll say whatever they want to suit themselves.
Sincerely,
Don Lee E3/EW
US Navy vet
ASWOC 574 Jacksonville FL
Top Secret and other clearances [inactive]
I wouldn't dismiss Madsen so fast.
Xenophile | 09.28.07 - 11:04 am