We got wind of this story listening to Alex Jones on Coast to Coast am. Alex and many other believe that the US government is using the elite P2OG unit to instigate the terrorist situation world wide to precipitate the taking of people rights. To protect US from the evil terrorists. And after reviewing the evidence on the subject I believe it warrants closer scrutiny.

 We found this evidence on the net. Published originally by the LA Times.
Published on Sunday, October 27, 2002 by the Los Angeles Times
The Secret War
Frustrated by intelligence failures, the Defense Department is dramatically expanding its 'black world' of covert operations

by William Arkin 

SOUTH POMFRET, Vt. -- In what may well be the largest expansion of covert action by the armed forces since the Vietnam era, the Bush administration has turned to what the Pentagon calls the "black world" to press the war on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. 

The Defense Department is building up an elite secret army with resources stretching across the full spectrum of covert capabilities. New organizations are being created. The missions of existing units are being revised. Spy planes and ships are being assigned new missions in anti-terror and monitoring the "axis of evil." 

The increasingly dominant role of the military, Pentagon officials say, reflects frustration at the highest levels of government with the performance of the intelligence community, law enforcement agencies and much of the burgeoning homeland security apparatus. It also reflects the desire of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to gain greater overall control of the war on terror. 

Insulated from outside pressures, armed with matchless weapons and technology, trained to operate below the shadow line, the Pentagon's black world of classified operations holds out the hope of swift, decisive action in a struggle against terrorism that often looks more like a family feud than a war. 

Coupled with the enormous effort being made throughout the government to improve and link information networks and databases, covert anti-terror operations promise to put better information in the hands of streamlined military teams that can identify, monitor and neutralize terrorist threats. 

"Prevention and preemption are ... the only defense against terrorism," Rumsfeld said in May. "Our task is to find and destroy the enemy before they strike us." 

The new apparatus for covert operations and the growing government secrecy associated with the war on terrorism reflect the way the Bush administration's most senior officials see today's world: 

First, they see fighting terrorism and its challenge to U.S. interests and values as the 21st century equivalent of the Cold War crusade against communism. Second, they believe the magnitude of the threat requires, and thus justifies, aggressive new "off-the-books" tactics. 

In their understandable frustration over continued atrocities such as the recent Bali attack, however, U.S. officials might keep two points in mind. 

Though covert action can bring quick results, because it is isolated from the normal review processes it can just as quickly bring mistakes and larger problems. Also, the Pentagon is every bit as capable as the civilian side of the government when it comes to creating organization charts and bureaucracy that stifle creative thinking and timely action. 

The development of the Pentagon's covert counter-terror capability has its roots in the 1979 Iran hostage crisis. The Army created a highly compartmentalized organization that could collect clandestine intelligence independent of the rest of the U.S. intelligence community and follow through with covert military action. 

Known as the Intelligence Support Activity, or ISA, when it was established in 1981, this unit fought in drug wars and counter-terror operations from the Middle East to South America. It built a reputation for daring, flexibility and a degree of lawlessness. 

In May 1982, Deputy Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci called the ISA "uncoordinated and uncontrolled." Though its freelance tendencies were curbed, the ISA continued to operate under different guises through the ill starred U.S. involvement in Somalia in 1992 and was reportedly active in the hunt for Bosnian Serbs suspected of war crimes. 

Today, the ISA operates under the code name Gray Fox. In addition to covert operations, it provides the war on terrorism with the kind of so-called "close-in" signals monitoring -- including the interception of cell phone conversations -- that helped bring down Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. 

Gray Fox's low-profile eavesdropping planes also fly without military markings. Working closely with Special Forces and the CIA, Gray Fox also places operatives inside hostile territory. 

In and around Afghanistan, Gray Fox was part of a secret sphere that included the CIA's paramilitary Special Activities Division and the Pentagon's Joint Special Operations Command. 

These commands and "white" Special Forces like the Green Berets, as well as Air Force combat controllers and commandos of eight different nations report to a mind-boggling array of new command cells and coordination units set up after Sept. 11. 

An Army brigadier general commands the Joint Interagency Task Force at Bagram air base north of Kabul to coordinate CIA, Defense Department and coalition forces in Afghanistan. A new Campaign Support Group has been established at Ft. Bragg, N.C. The Special Operations Joint Interagency Collaboration Center has been created in Tampa, Fla. 

In Europe, the Joint Interagency Coordination Group handles information-sharing and logistical support with NATO. Hawaii's Pacific Command stood up a Joint Interagency Counter-Terrorist Group this summer. 

Meantime, old commands are being morphed into new ones for the covert war. The two Joint Interagency Task Forces in the United States previously devoted to fighting drugs now have the war on terrorism as their highest priority. 

The epicenter of the Pentagon's covert operations remains the North Carolina-based Joint Special Operations Command, often referred to as Delta Force. The super-secret command is still not officially acknowledged to exist. Its two-star commander, Army Maj. Gen. Dell L. Dailey, who spent much of the Afghan war in Oman, has no public biography. 

Among Dailey's assets is a fleet of aircraft specially equipped for secret operations -- conventional and covert military planes and helicopters, and even former Soviet helicopters. The bulk of those craft, including the reconfigured Russian choppers, fly from airfields in Uzbekistan and from two Pakistani air bases, Shahbaz and Shamsi. 

The Air Force and the CIA collect additional intelligence from unmanned Predator and Global Hawk drones. They also have low-profile reconnaissance assets that look like transport planes and operate under such code names as ARL-Low, Keen Sage, Scathe View and Senior Scout. 

Not to be left out, the Navy's Gray Star spy vessel, reminiscent of the old Pueblo, captured by North Korea in 1968, now sweeps up sophisticated -- and obscure -- "measurements and signatures intelligence" to monitor the ballistic missile capabilities of Iraq, Iran and North Korea. 

Even with all this, the Pentagon wants to expand covert capabilities. 

Rumsfeld's influential Defense Science Board 2002 Summer Study on Special Operations and Joint Forces in Support of Countering Terrorism says in its classified "outbrief" -- a briefing drafted to guide other Pentagon agencies -- that the global war on terrorism "requires new strategies, postures and organization." 

The board recommends creation of a super-Intelligence Support Activity, an organization it dubs the Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group, (P2OG), to bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence, and cover and deception. 

Among other things, this body would launch secret operations aimed at "stimulating reactions" among terrorists and states possessing weapons of mass destruction -- that is, for instance, prodding terrorist cells into action and exposing themselves to "quick-response" attacks by U.S. forces. 

Such tactics would hold "states/sub-state actors accountable" and "signal to harboring states that their sovereignty will be at risk," the briefing paper declares. 

Never to be outdone in proposing hardware solutions, the Air Force is designing its own Global Response Task Force to fight the war on terrorism. The all-seeing, all-bombing Air Force envisions unmanned A-X aircraft capable of long-range, nighttime gunship operations and an M-X covert transport, as well as hypersonic and space-based conventional weapons capable of delivering a "worldwide attack within an hour." 

Who says the arms race is over? Rumsfeld's science board warns against overemphasis on equipment even as it recommends more. Washington is well on its way to an arms race with itself. 

And for those who worry that all these secret operations and aggressive new doctrines will turn the United States into the world's policeman, there is a ray of hope. 

Rumsfeld is now the field marshal of the war on terrorism, but the Pentagon is also creating new layers of bureaucracy that may save it from itself. Not to mention the rest of us. 

William M. Arkin is a military affairs analyst who writes regularly for Opinion. E-mail: warkin@igc.org

Copyright 2002 Los Angeles Times

This was a part of a UPI story.
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20020926-010140-9498r

Panel wants $7bn elite counter-terror unit

WASHINGTON, Sept. 26 (UPI) -- The United States should create an elite group of counter-terror operatives to make the war on terrorism pre-emptive and proactive, duping al Qaida into undertaking operations it is not prepared for and thereby exposing its personnel, a Pentagon report advocating more than $7 billion in new spending will recommend. UPI obtained documents summarizing the report of the Defense Science Board, which will be publicly released in late October. Among other things, the report will advocate tagging key terrorist figures with special chemicals so they can be tracked by laser anywhere on Earth and creating a "red team" of particularly diabolical thinkers to plot imaginary terror attacks on the United States so the government can plan to thwart them.

http://www.goordnance.apg.army.mil/PDF%20Files/
OrdnanceReports0926.pdf

Panel wants $7bn elite counter-terror unit

WASHINGTON, Sept. 26 (UPI) - The United States should create an elite group of counter-terror operatives to make the war on terrorism pre-emptive and proactive, duping al Qaida intoundertaking operations it is not prepared for and thereby exposing its personnel, a Pentagon report advocating more than $7 billion in new spending will recommend.

United Press International has exclusively obtained documents summarizing the report of the Defense Science Board, which will be publicly released in late October, after it has been presented to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

The report, which reads in parts like a fantastical "spy vs. spy "manual, will also advocate tagging key terrorist figures with special chemicals so they can be tracked by laser anywhere on Earth; creating a special SWAT team to surreptitiously find and destroy chemical, biological and nuclear weapons all over the world; and creating a "red team" of particularly diabolical thinkers to plot imaginary terror attacks on the United States so the government can plan to thwart them.

These recommendations and many more comprise the report by the DSB, a panel of private industry executives that advise the Pentagon on technologies, threats and policies. The report outlines billions in new spending on counter-terror operations and an expanded new role for Joint Forces Command in preparing the military for urban battles. The report is entitled "Special Operations and Joint Forces in Countering Terrorism."

The counter-terror operations group alone would require 100 people and at least $100 million a year. Rather than simply trying to find and foil terrorists' plans - the approach that characterizes the current strategy - the "Proactive Pre-emptive Operations Group" - known as P2OG - would devise ways to stimulate terrorists into responding or moving operations, possibly by stealing their money or tricking them with fake communications, according to the report. The group would be comprised of specialists in information operations, psychological operations, computer network attack, covert activities, signal intelligence, human intelligence, special operations forces and deception operations.

The Defense Department already maintains a secretive counter-terror operations group known as Delta Force that is called in when acris is happens; P2OG would focus its efforts on preventing those crises from even occurring in the first place.

The DSB is recommending the group be headed not by the Pentagon but by the White House's national security adviser's staff, a suggestion that is meeting some resistance in the Defense Department, according to sources close to the matter. Rumsfeld has not been briefed on the report yet but many of his top generals have, including U.S. Central Command chief Gen. Tommy Franks, who is running the war against al Qaida in Afghanistan. One of the most costly recommendations is an overhaul of theintelligence community's ability to penetrate terrorist cells to collect information. The technologies and methods to do so are classified in the report, but the price tag is not: $1.7 billion over a 5-year period beginning in 2004.

The panel also envisions a new breed of chemical and DNA tags to identify and track terrorist leaders. Agents could infiltrate terrorist groups and swab leaders' clothes with chemicals that would make them "light up" under a laser tracker. A DNA database could be created to track the same people by collecting samples of biological material from objects and papers handled by the targets. The DSB would also convene a panel of some 24 creative, highly respected analysts - and even people like author Tom Clancy who show a talent for dreaming up possible scenarios of destruction - who would plan "as terrorists might" ways to attack the U.S. homeland and forces overseas. Funded at around $20 million a year, the panel would report their detailed plans to the CIA director. They would also report on what to look for in someone who is planning such an attack - what materials are being purchased, what countries are being visited, and who would be contacted.

The panel would also create a team of specially trained special forces soldiers able to search out and take offensive action against suspected nuclear, chemical or biological weapons sites, offer force protection for U.S. soldiers nearby and "consequence management, "like enforcing quarantines. That effort would cost about $500 million a year and U.S. Special Operations Command would be in charge. That team would need a new set of battlefield sensors to determine when the weapons are being used, according to the DSB. Currently there are no tactical nuclear detectors that operate kilometers away from detonation - a safe standoff range; no clandestine chemical detectors that operate kilometers away; and no biological agent detectors that operate at safe distances.

"No matter the sensing, `agent defeat' (destroying or vitiating the effect of chemical or biological weapons) is critical and requires additional resources," the report states.

The Defense Science Board advocates $1 billion a year for research and development in sensor and "agent defeat" technologies. Special Forces, the centerpiece of the war in Afghanistan, would move firmly to the center of military operations as the global war on terrorism continues, according to the DSB.

The panel sees Special Forces increasing the number and scope of exercises it conducts with conventional forces; increasing its size by about 2 percent a year; and dramatically increasing its budget. Special operations is also one of the few ways that U.S. allies can offer comparable capabilities: Eight countries contributed special forces to the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan.

The costs of improving Special Forces' equipment, larger exercises and increasing international cooperation are in the "billions," according to the report.

The war on terrorism presents an intelligence challenge unlike anything the United States has seen before, and the Defense Science Board responds by suggesting the creation of a force of former intelligence retirees who could be recalled to duty instantly when a surge capacity of intelligence workers is needed. They would be called to active duty at least once a year and participate in counter-terror intelligence exercises - a total effort that would cost about $100 million a year.

The counter-terrorism capabilities resident in the military services and intelligence agencies would be enhanced by the addition of 500 people over the next 18 months who would "focus on understanding effects of globalization, radicalism, cultures, religions, economics, etc., to better characterize potential adversaries." For the personnel increase and the technical capabilities they would need, the bill could rise to $800 million.

The panel would also add $200 million to the Joint Warfare Analysis Center - a cell of about 500 planners and target analysts in Dahlgren, Va. - and Joint Forces Command's net assessment center. The panel also recommends establishing other similar centers to support targeting of terrorist organizations and their supporting infrastructures.

Once the terrorists are found, the battles that ensue are likely to take place in urban environments, something for which the U.S. military is woefully underprepared, according to the DSB.

The entire spectrum of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance would be invigorated with an infusion of $1.6 billion per year over the next six years, with the emphasis on tying together unmanned aerial vehicles, manned platforms, space-based sensors and databases into a seamless whole. The money would also be invested in developing "a rich set of new ground sensor capabilities" that would be specially focused on watching small terrorist cells. While the U.S. experience in Somalia in 1993, immortalized in the book and movie "Black Hawk Down," spurred more urban-operationstraining, the DSB asserts that there remain significant problems indoctrine, training and technology. It recommends creating a dedicated urban training range on the West Coast, similar in function to the Army's National Training Center in California. Training would emphasize small unit action, leadership initiative and flexibility and low-level control of supporting fire - that is, having relatively junior members of the military decide how much back-up fire they need, when and where.

That effort would require $300 million a year for the next six years. Joint Forces Command, now charged with experimentation in military concepts, would be put in charge of research and development of technologies and tactics in urban warfare. Like U.S. Special Forces Command, it would be given a separate budget it could invest however it deemed necessary, without relying on the military services. In fact, the report recommends that Joint Forces Command should be given power over the military services' command and control investments, to ensure that all will be using interoperable equipment, enabling joint operations during war and exercises. Intrinsic to urban warfare would be the development of a detailed database of most of the cities in the world where troops might been gaged, with GPS coordinates marking key structures and roads. The database would be constantly updated. It would come together in a three-dimensional display showing buildings, including windows and doors, streets and alleys and underground passages, obstacles like power lines and key infrastructure like water and communicationslines.

The Defense Science Board also believes the military's "rear flank"- protecting its people, forces, critical infrastructures, and ability to mobilize forces safely - needs a great deal more attention." Increase 10-fold over three years the people and resources devoted to assessing vulnerabilities of our DOD force projection capabilities and critical infrastructure," the report recommends. The report also suggests conducting an extensive vulnerability assessment on military posts and mobility routes. Together the efforts would cost more than $250 million

This was found on AFPN.
Written By: Chris Floyd

"Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG)"
Fri Jun 20 02:44:09 2003
208.152.73.56

The Pentagon Plan to Provoke Terrorist Attacks

by CHRIS FLOYD

This age: layers of lime harden in the sick son's blood... There's nowhere to run from the tyrant-epoch... Who else will you kill? Who else glorify? What other lies will you invent?

Osip Mandelshtam,
"1 January 1924"

This column stands foursquare with the Honorable Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, when he warns that there will be more terrorist attacks against the American people and civilization at large. We know, as does the Honorable Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, that this statement is an incontrovertible fact, a matter of scientific certainty. And how can we and the Honorable Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, be so sure that there will be more terrorist attacks against the American people and civilization at large?

Because these attacks will be instigated at the order of the Honorable Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense.

This astonishing admission was buried deep in a story which was itself submerged by mounds of gray newsprint and glossy underwear ads in last Sunday's Los Angeles Times. There--in an article by military analyst William Arkin, detailing the vast expansion of the secret armies being massed by the former Nixon bureaucrat now lording it over the Pentagon--came the revelation of Rumsfeld's plan to create "a super-Intelligence Support Activity" that will "bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence, and cover and deception."

According to a classified document prepared for Rumsfeld by his Defense Science Board, the new organization--the "Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG)"--will carry out secret missions designed to "stimulate reactions" among terrorist groups, provoking them into committing violent acts which would then expose them to "counterattack" by U.S. forces.

In other words--and let's say this plainly, clearly and soberly, so that no one can mistake the intention of Rumsfeld's plan--the United States government is planning to use "cover and deception" and secret military operations to provoke murderous terrorist attacks on innocent people. Let's say it again: Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and the other members of the unelected regime in Washington plan to deliberately foment the murder of innocent people--your family, your friends, your lovers, you--in order to further their geopolitical ambitions.

For P2OG is not designed solely to flush out terrorists and bring them to justice--a laudable goal in itself, although the Rumsfeld way of combating terrorism by causing it is pure moral lunacy. (Or should we use the Regime's own preferred terminology and just call it "evil"?) No, it seems the Pee-Twos have bigger fish to fry. Once they have sparked terrorists into action--by killing their family members? luring them with loot? fueling them with drugs? plying them with jihad propaganda? messing with their mamas? or with agents provocateurs, perhaps, who infiltrate groups then plan and direct the attacks themselves?--they can then take measures against the "states/sub-state actors accountable" for "harboring" the Rumsfeld-roused gangs. What kind of measures exactly? Well, the classified Pentagon program puts it this way: "Their sovereignty will be at risk."

The Pee-Twos will thus come in handy whenever the Regime hankers to add a little oil-laden real estate or a new military base to the Empire's burgeoning portfolio. Just find a nest of violent malcontents, stir 'em with a stick, and presto: instant "justification" for whatever level of intervention/conquest/rapine you might desire. And what if the territory you fancy doesn't actually harbor any convenient marauders to use for fun and profit? Well, surely a God-like "super-Intelligence Support Activity" is capable of creation ex nihilo, yes?

The Rumsfeld-Bush plan to employ murder and terrorism for political, financial and ideological gain does have historical roots (besides al Qaeda, the Stern Gang, the SA, the SS, the KGB, the IRA, the UDF, Eta, Hamas, Shining Path and countless other upholders of Bushian morality, decency and freedom). We refer of course to Operations Northwoods, oft mentioned in these pages: the plan that America's top military brass presented to President John Kennedy in 1963, calling for a phony terrorist campaign--complete with bombings, hijackings, plane crashes and dead Americans--to provide "justification" for an invasion of Cuba, the Mafia/Corporate fiefdom which had recently been lost to Castro.

Kennedy rejected the plan, and was killed a few months later. Now Rumsfeld has resurrected Northwoods, but on a far grander scale, with resources at his disposal undreamed of by those brass of yore, with no counterbalancing global rival to restrain him--and with an ignorant, corrupt president who has shown himself all too eager to embrace any means whatsoever that will augment the wealth and power of his own narrow, undemocratic, elitist clique.

There is prestuplyeniye here, transgression, a stepping-over--deliberately, with open eyes, with forethought, planning, and conscious will--of lines that should never be crossed. Acting in deadly symbiosis with rage-maddened killers, God-crazed ranters and those supreme "sub-state actors," the mafias, Bush and his cohorts are plunging the world into an abyss, an endless night of black ops, retribution, blowback, deceit, of murder and terror--wholesale, retail, state-sponsored, privatized; of fear and degradation, servility, chaos, and the perversion of all that's best in us, of all that we've won from the bestiality of our primal nature, all that we've raised above the mindless ravening urges and impulses still boiling in the mud of our monkey brains.

It's not a fight for freedom; it's a retreat into darkness.

And the day will be a long time coming.

Chris Floyd is a columnist for the Moscow Times and a regular contributor to CounterPunch. He can be reached at: cfloyd72@hotmail.com 
---------------------------
'P2OG' allows Pentagon to fight dirty
By David Isenberg
Asia Times, November 5 2002
http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/a-list/2002w45/msg00032.htm

"Run away from the light": Such might be the motto of a new, covert policy
that the Bush administration is considering implementing. According to
recent news reports, it would be the largest expansion into the world of
black ops and covert action since the end of the Vietnam War in the 1970s.

And that's saying quite a lot, considering that since Vietnam the Pentagon
has not exactly been dormant in this area.

As well-known military analyst William Arkin pointed out in an October 27
column in the Los Angeles Times, the development of the Pentagon's covert
counter-terror capability has its roots in the 1979 Iran hostage crisis. The
army created a highly compartmentalized organization that could collect
clandestine intelligence independent of the rest of the US intelligence
community, and follow through with covert military action. Today, it
operates under the code name Grey Fox. In Afghanistan it operated alongside
the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) paramilitary Special Activities
Division and the Pentagon's Joint Special Operations Command.

Then there are numerous recent initiatives, such as net assessment
capabilities at combatant commands, a new campaign support group at Fort
Bragg, a counter-terrorism Technology Support Office, to name just a few.

Yet the Pentagon wants more. Its Defense Science Board (DSB) conducted a
2002 "Summer Study on Special Operations and Joint Forces in Support of
Countering Terrorism". Excerpts from that study, dated August 16, were
leaked and obtained by the Federation of American Scientists, which posted
them on their website. The report was produced by a 10-member panel of
military experts that included Vice Admiral William O Studeman, former
director of the National Security Agency.

According to the leak, the United States is engaged in a global war on
terrorism that is "a real war" in case anyone doubts it. This means, among
other things, a "committed, resourceful and globally dispersed adversary
with strategic reach" against whom the US will wage "a long, at times
violent, and borderless war" which "requires new strategies, postures and
organization".

That explains why the United States has, so to speak, decided to fight fire
with fire. Although the study is filled with lots of the usual buzzwords and
phrases that Pentagon planners love, such as "robust connectivity, agile
ground forces, adaptive joint command and control and discriminant use of
force", one thing that does stand out is its call for
"preemption/proaction/interdiction/disruption/quick-response capabilities".

This is consistent with the administration's new National Security Strategy,
which called for preemption; indeed, since the DSB study preceded the
release of the strategy, it is possible that the strategy was written to
incorporate some of its aspects.

The study urges the Pentagon to "take the terrorist threat as seriously as
it takes the likelihood and consequences of major theater war", urging
officials to launch secret missions and intelligence operations to penetrate
and disrupt terrorist cells abroad. Some of those operations should be aimed
at signaling to countries that harbor terrorists that "their sovereignty
will be at risk".

If adopted, some of the proposals appear to push the military into territory
that traditionally has been the domain of the CIA, raising questions about
whether such missions would be subject to the same legal restraints imposed
on CIA activities.

But William Schneider Jr, chairman of the DSB, rejected such concerns,
saying that the panel set out to identify ways that special operations units
could do more to assist the war on terrorism, not encroach on other
agencies' authority.

"The CIA executes the plans but they use Department of Defense assets,"
Schneider said. He emphasized that the board was not recommending any
changes to long-standing US policies banning assassinations, or requiring
presidents to approve in advance US covert operations. Nor, he said, was the
panel advocating changes that would erode congressional oversight.

Yet lawmakers have expressed concern with Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld's push to expand the Pentagon's covert capabilities, mainly because
the Pentagon is not subject to rules that require the CIA to report its
covert activities to Congress.

The DSB summary document suggests that many changes are already under way.
It cites the expansion of existing intelligence analysis centers and the
creation of new management teams to direct covert operations at such
installations as Fort Bragg, where US special forces such as Delta Force are
based.

It recommends the creation of a super-Intelligence Support Activity, an
organization it dubs the Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG), to
bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare,
intelligence and cover and deception. For example, the Pentagon and CIA
would work together to increase human intelligence (HUMINT)
forward/operational presence and to deploy new clandestine technical
capabilities.

To bolster government HUMINT capabilities, the task force advances the idea
of an intelligence "surge/unsurge" capability - a "robust, global cadre of
retirees, reservists and others who are trained and qualified to serve on
short notice, including expatriates". This group could be pressed into
service during times of crisis.

P2OG would launch secret operations aimed at "stimulating reactions" among
terrorists and states possessing weapons of mass destruction, meaning it
would prod terrorist cells into action, thus exposing them to
"quick-response" attacks by US forces. The means by which it would do this
is the far greater use of special operations forces.

Responsibility and accountability for the P2OG would be vested in a "Special
Operations Executive" in the National Security Council (NSC). The NSC would
plan operations but not oversee their execution in order to avoid
comparisons to past abuses, such as the Iran-Contra operations run out of
the NSC by Oliver North during the Reagan administration. Under the board's
proposal, NSC plans would be executed by the Pentagon or the CIA.

Costs would include developing new means to enable "deep penetration of
adversaries" ($1.7 billion annually); exercises and gaming ($100 million
annually); development of technical capabilities and the hiring of 500 new
staff ($800 million annually); establishment of centers of excellence to
handle increased workload ($500 million annually); and expansion of the
Joint Forces net assessment activity ($100 million annually). The total cost
is envisaged as $3.3 billion.

The DSB study also provides tantalizing glimpses of new capabilities already
in the works, referring to new high-tech sensors in development that would
enable the United States more closely to track the movements of vehicles or
even individuals by satellite. Some of these capabilities are already
advanced, such as high-altitude airships, thermobaric weapons and improved
urban assault capabilities. Other new projects are being executed by the
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

If the DSB proposal is adopted, it would only reinforce recent Pentagon
activity. The Washington Post reported last month that the Pentagon was
preparing to consolidate control of most of the global war on terrorism
under the US Special Operations Command, signaling an intensified but more
covert approach to the next phase in the battle against al-Qaeda and other
international terrorist groups.

Special Operations units have been active in Pakistan for months and are
training military forces in Yemen and Georgia. These missions could provide
a cover for conducting any covert raids and other actions against suspected
al-Qaeda members in the two countries.

The United States has also placed more than 500 Special Operations troops in
the African nation of Djibouti, where they are near potential hot spots such
as Yemen and Somalia. The USS Belleau Wood, an amphibious assault ship that
carries attack helicopters and a handful of Harrier jump jets, has been
stationed off the Horn of Africa for about six weeks, ready to carry those
troops and some specialized helicopters.

And, in early October, the Washington Times reported that US commandos
hunting Taliban and al-Qaeda guerrillas in Afghanistan gained permission to
employ "source operations" - clandestine tactics typically confined to the
CIA.

"Source operations" generally refers to recruiting and maintaining spies
within the enemy's camp. In Afghanistan, it means finding Afghans and Arabs,
possibly within the Taliban and al-Qaeda network, who would supply
intelligence to US special-operations forces.

THE PROVOCATEUR STATE 
By David Bloom 
Created 05/09/2005 - 20:33 

Is the CIA Behind the Iraqi "Insurgents"--and Global Terrorism?

by Frank Morales

The requirement of an ever-escalating level of social violence to meet the political and economic needs of the insatiable "anti-terrorist complex" is the essence of the new US militarism. What is now openly billed as "permanent war" ultimately serves the geo-political ends of social control in the interests of US corporate domination, much as the anti-communist crusade of the now-exhasuted Cold War did.

Back in 2002, following the trauma of 9-11, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld predicted there would be more terrorist attacks against the American people and civilization at large. How could he be so sure of that? Perhaps because these attacks would be instigated on the order of the Honorable Mr. Rumsfeld. According to Los Angeles Times military analyst William Arkin, writing Oct. 27, 2002, Rumsfeld set out to create a secret army, "a super-Intelligence Support Activity" network that would "bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence, and cover and deception," to stir the pot of spiraling global violence.

According to a classified document prepared for Rumsfeld by his Defense Science Board, the new organization--the "Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG)"--would actually carry out secret missions designed to provoke terrorist groups into committing violent acts. The P2OG, a 100-member, so-called "counter-terrorist" organization with a $100-million-a-year budget, would ostensibly target "terrorist leaders," but according to P2OG documents procured by Arkin, would in fact carry out missions designed to "stimulate reactions" among "terrorist groups"--which, according to the Defense Secretary's logic, would subsequently expose them to "counter-attack" by the good guys. In other words, the plan is to execute secret military operations (assassinations, sabotage, "deception") which would intentionally result in terrorist attacks on innocent people, including Americans--essentially, to "combat terrorism" by causing it!

This notion is currently being applied to the problem of the Iraqi "insurgency," it seems. According to a May 1, 2005 report by Peter Maass in the New York Times Magazine, two of the top US advisers to Iraqi paramilitary commandos fighting the insurgents are veterans of US counterinsurgency operations in Latin America. Loaning credence to recent media speculation about the "Salvadorization" of Iraq, the report notes that one adviser currently in Iraq is James Steele, who led a team of 55 US Army Special Forces advisers in El Salvador in the 1980s. Maass writes that these advisors "trained front-line battalions that were accused of significant human rights abuses."

The current senior US adviser at the Iraqi Interior Ministry, which Maass writes "has operational control over the commandos," is former top US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) official Steve Casteel, who worked "alongside local forces" in the US-sponsored "Drug War" in Bolivia, Peru and Colombia, "where he was involved in the hunt for Pablo Escobar, the head of the Medellin cocaine cartel."

The US "drug war" in Latin America also serves as a cover for ongoing counterinsurgency, employing terrorist methods to achieve two aims: one, actually combating genuine insurgency; two, the ratcheting up of a "strategy of tension," heightened social violence designed to induce fear among the citizenry and the subsequent call for greater "security."

This was the essence, for example, of Operation Gladio, a decades-long covert campaign of provocateur-style terrorism and deceit. The ostensible purpose of Gladio, officially launched as a covert NATO program in 1952, was to establish a clandestine network of "stay-behind" teams which would organize armed resistance and sabotage in the event of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. But the network actually took a far more proactive role. Directed by US/NATO intelligence services of the West against their own populations, Operation Gladio led to possibly hundreds of innocent people being killed or maimed in "terrorist" attacks which were then blamed on "leftist subversives" or other political opponents. The most notorious such attack was the 1980 bombing of the train station at Bologna, which left 85 dead. Initially blamed on left-wing radicals, the blast was revealed upon investigation to be the work of an ultra-right network linked to the Italy's Gladio team; four Italian neo-fascists were eventually convicted of the crime.

The purpose was again twofold: to demonize designated enemies (the "communists") and to frighten the public into supporting ever-increasing powers for the national security state. It appears the Pentagon has been implementing Gladio-style operations for quite some time--possibly including 9-11. A stretch? Maybe not.

Witness the US Joint Chiefs discussion of "Operation Northwoods" back in 1962, a plan to blow up U.S. "assets"--including U.S. citizens--in order to justify an invasion of Cuba. Later, US Army Field Manual 30-31B, entitled "Stability Operations Intelligence - Special Fields," dated March 18, 1970 and signed by Gen. William C Westmoreland, promoted terrorist attacks (and the planting of false evidence) in public places which were then to be blamed on "communists" and "socialists." It called for the execution of terrorist attacks throughout Western Europe, carried out through a network of covert US/NATO armies, in order to convince European governments of "the communist threat."

What's striking is that during this period the primary source for US government info on the Russian "threat" was coming from the Gehlen Organiation, Hitlers eastern front intelligence apparatus, which in the aftermath of World War II had cut a deal with the CIA's Allen Dulles and worked out of Fort Hunt, just outside Washington DC, before being relocated back to Munich. Headed up by super-spy Nazi General Reinhard Gehlen, the Org's "special operations" expertise was heeded, financed and well-protected by U.S. tax dollars well into the 1970's. Could the Gehlen Org have had an influence in the production of FM 30-31B?

According to FM 30-31B, "there may be times when Host Country Governments show passivity or indecision in the face of communist subversion and according to the interpretation of the US secret services do not react with sufficient effectiveness. Most often such situations come about when the revolutionaries temporarily renounce the use of force and thus hope to gain an advantage, as the leaders of the host country wrongly consider the situation to be secure. US army intelligence must have the means of launching special operations which will convince Host Country Governments and public opinion of the reality of the insurgent danger."

The U.S. Army now claims the document was a Russian forgery. Journalist Allan Francovich in his BBC documentation on Gladio and US/NATO "special operations" terrorism, asked Ray Cline, CIA deputy director from 1962 to 1966, if he believed FM 30-31B was for real and he replied: "Well, I suspect it is an authentic document. I don't doubt it. I never saw it but it's the kind of special forces military operations that are described," to be implemented at the discretion of the president and Defense Department on the "appropriate occasion."

It could be that in Iraq--and elsewhere around the world--the "appropriate occasion" has arrived. Bush's war on terrorism could be the ultimate manifestation of the provocateur state; carrying out of clandestine "executive actions" and "special operations" directed against populations, including our own, who are truly ignorant of the real "enemy" in the face of the ever-present manufactured one, traumatized by strategic terror designed to engender fear and acquiescence to further "security measures"--thereby enriching the military, police agencies, and munitions and nuclear business enterprises.

THE WORLD WILL KNOW THE TRUTH
"John Pilger in New Statesman (London) 16 December 2002

John pilger reveals the deranged agendas of the ruthlessly
power-and-profit-greedy people directing the current American
administration, most of them relics from the Reagan-Bush Sr. cold war era.

"Two years ago a project set up by the men who now surround George W.
Bushsaid what America needed was "a new Pearl Harbor". Its clearly spelled
out aims which have very conveniently come alarmingly true, according to
John Pilger
in the New Statesman.

"The threat posed by US state terrorism to the security of nations and
individuals was outlined in prophetic detail in this secret document written
more than a year before the Sept. 11 events, and accidentally exposed
recently. What was needed for America to dominate most of humanity and the
world's resourc! es, it said, was "some catastrophic and catalysing event
-like a new Pearl Harbor".

"The attacks of 11 September 2001 provided the "new Pearl Harbor", described
as "the opportunity of ages". The extremists who have since ruthlessly and
effectively exploited 11 September come from the era of Ronald Reagan, when
far-right groups and "think-tanks" were established to avenge the American
"defeat" in Vietnam.

"One of George W. Bush's "thinkers" is Richard Perle. I interviewed Perle
when he was advising Reagan; and when he spoke about "total war", I then
dismissed him as mad. He recently used the term again in describing
America's "war on terror". "No stages," he said. "This is total war. We are
fighting a variety of enemies. There are lots of them out there. All this
talk about first we are going to do Afghanistan, then we will do Iraq . . .
this is entirely the wrong way to go about it. If we just let our vision of
th! e world go forth, and we embrace it entirely and we don't try to piece
together clever diplomacy, but just wage a total war . . . our children will
sing great songs about us years from now."

"Perle is one of the founders of the Project for the New American Century,
the PNAC. Other founders include Dick Cheney, now vice-president, Donald
Rumsfeld, defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, deputy defence secretary, Lewis
Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, William J Bennett, Reagan's education
secretary, and Zalmay Khalilzad, Bush's ambassador to Afghanistan. These are
the modern chartists of American state terrorism.

"The PNAC's seminal report, Rebuilding America's Defences: strategy, force
and resources for a new century, was a blueprint of American aims in all but

name. Two years ago it recommended an increase in arms-spending by $48
billion so that Washington could "fight and win multiple, simultaneous major
theatre wars". Thi! s has happened. It said the United States should develop
"bunker-buster" nuclear weapons and make "star wars" a national priority.
This is happening.

"It said that, in the event of Bush taking power, Iraq should be a target.
And so it is. As for Iraq's alleged "weapons of mass destruction", these
were dismissed, in so many words, as a convenient excuse, which it is.

"While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate
justification," it says, "the need for a substantial American force presence
in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." How has
this grand strategy been implemented?

"A series of articles in the Washington Post, co-authored by Bob Woodward of
Watergate fame and based on long interviews with senior members of the Bush
administration, reveals how 11 September was manipulated.

"On the morning of 12 September 2001, without any evidence of who the
hijackers were,! Rumsfeld demanded that the US attack Iraq. According to
Woodward, Rumsfeld told a cabinet meeting that Iraq should be "a principal
target of the first round in the war against terrorism". Iraq was
temporarily spared only because Colin Powell, the secretary of state,
persuaded Bush that "public opinion has to be prepared before a move against
Iraq is possible". Afghanistan and the Talibans, created, trained and funded
by the CIA, was chosen as the softer option.

"If Jonathan Steele's estimate in the Guardian is correct, some 20,000
people in Afghanistan paid the price of this debate with their lives.

"Time and again, 11 September is described as an "opportunity". In last
April's New Yorker, the investigative reporter Nicholas Lemann wrote that
Bush's most senior adviser, Condoleezza Rice, told him she had called
together senior members of the National Security Council and asked them "to
think about 'how do you capital! ise on these opportunities' ", which she
compared with those of "1945 to 1947": the start of the cold war."

Note: If anyone wishes to investigate in depth and detail all the
extraordinary unexplained anomalies and blatant inconsistencies in the
official story about September 11, I recommend the website

http://208.187.163.46/completetimeline/index.htm

"Since 11 September, America has established bases at the gateways to all
the major sources of fossil fuels, especially central Asia. The Unocal oil
company is to build a pipeline across Afghanistan.

"Bush has scrapped the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions, the war
crimes provisions of the International Criminal Court and the anti-ballistic
missile treaty. He has said he will use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear
states "if necessary". "Under cover of propaganda about Iraq's alleged
weapons of mass destruction, the! Bush regime is developing new weapons of
mass destruction that undermine international treaties on biological and
chemical warfare.

"In the Los Angeles Times, the military analyst William Arkin describes a
secret army set up by Donald Rumsfeld, similar to those run by Richard Nixon
and Henry Kissinger and which Congress outlawed. This "super-intelligence
support activity" will bring together the "CIA and military covert
action,information warfare, and deception". According to a classified
document prepared for Rumsfeld, the new organisation, known by its Orwellian
euphemism as the Proactive Pre-emptive Operations Group, or P2OG, will
provoke terrorist attacks which would then require "counter-attack" by the
United States on countries "harbouring the terrorists".

"In other words, innocent people will be killed by the United States. This
is reminiscent of Operation Northwoods, the plan put to President Kennedy by
h! is military chiefs for a phoney terrorist campaign - complete with
bombings, hijackings, plane crashes and dead Americans - as justification
for an invasion of Cuba. Kennedy rejected it. He was assassinated a few
months later. Now Rumsfeld has resurrected Northwoods, but with resources
undreamt of in 1963 and with no global rival to invite caution.

"You have to keep reminding yourself this is not fantasy: that truly
dangerous men, such as Perle and Rumsfeld and Cheney, have power. The thread
running through their ruminations is the importance of the media: "the
prioritised task of bringing on board journalists of repute to accept our
position".

"Our position" is code for lying. Certainly, as a journalist, I have never
known official lying to be more pervasive than today. We may laugh at the
vacuities in Tony Blair's "Iraq dossier" and Jack Straw's inept lie that
Iraq has developed a nuclear bomb (which his minions rus! hed to "explain").
But the more insidious lies, justifying an unprovoked attack on Iraq and
linking it to would-be terrorists who are said to lurk in every Tube
station, are routinely channelled as news. They are not news; they are black
propaganda.

"This corruption makes journalists and broadcasters mere  ventriloquists'
dummies. An attack on a nation of 22 million suffering people is discussed
by liberal commentators as if it were a subject at an academic seminar, at
which pieces can be pushed around a map, as the old imperialists used to do.

"The issue for these humanitarians is not primarily the brutality of modern
imperial domination, but how "bad" Saddam Hussein is. There is no admission
that their decision to join the war party further seals the fate of tens or
even hundreds of thousands of innocent ordinary people condemned to wait on
America's international death row. Their doublethink will not work. You!
cannot support murderous piracy in the name of humanitarianism. Moreover,
the extremes of American fundamentalism that we now face have been staring
at us for too long for those of good heart and sense not to recognise them.

"Remember, if you send this on to just 10 others and all down the chain each
one follows the same simple procedure, THE WORLD WILL KNOW THE TRUTH: That
the present US administration is threatening in an unprecedented way not
only the peace and survival of millions, but the entire planet and all life
on it. Other nations MUST speak up to put a stop to this madness. The press
is in the pay of the destructive powers and will not tell us the truth, so
the Internet is our only way to access and spread the truth. LET'S USE IT!"

"Unless we change direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed."
Old Chinese Proverb