Hersh: Congress Agreed to Bush Request to Fund Major Escalation in Secret Operations Against Iran
The operations were set out in a highly classified Presidential Finding signed by Bush which, by law, must be made known to Democratic and Republican leaders. The plan allowed up to $400 million in covert spending for activities ranging from supporting dissident groups to spying on Iran’s nuclear program.
Hersh joins us from Washington DC.
AMY
GOODMAN: We are on the road, Denver, Colorado. We turn now to our first
segment. Congressional leaders agreed to a request from President Bush
last year to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran,
aimed at destabilizing Iran’s leadership. This according to a new
article by veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in The New
Yorkermagazine. The operations were set out in a highly classified
presidential finding signed by Bush, which by law, must be made known
to Democratic and Republican House and Senate leaders and ranking
members of the intelligence committees. The plan allowed up to $400
million dollars in covert spending for activities ranging from
supporting dissident groups to spying on Iran’s nuclear program.
According to Hersh, U.S. special forces of been conducting cross-border
operations from southern Iraq since last year. These have included
seizing members of the Iranian revolutionary guard and taking them to
Iraq for interrogation, in the pursuit of so-called “high value
targets” who may be captured or killed. All covert operations against
Iran are not new; Hersh writes the scale and the scope of the
operations in Iran, which involve the C.I.A. and the joint special
operations command, have now been significantly expanded. He is a
Pulitzer prize-winning journalist. He joins me now on the telephone
from Washington, D.C. Welcome to Democracy Now!
SEYMOUR HERSH: And a very good early morning to you.
AMY GOODMAN: Start off by talking about how you learned this information.
SEYMOUR
HERSH: Well, that stops me for a second, Amy. Here’s the problem with
that question: this is all very classified. Let’s just say that in
general, there are a lot of people who are very loyal to the
U.S.—military people, people in special operations, people elsewhere in
the Congress obviously, people in the Executive—who are increasingly
being made anxious,—and I think “frightened” is a fairly good word,
too—about what this President and the Vice President may do in Iran.
And so it was from that quarter I was able to learn that…. the problem
with the finding, and the problem with the whole story, the
complication is that, almost the last people, it seems to me, that know
exactly what our special forces are doing—particularly the joint
special operations command, which is a very elite unit, whose mission
essentially is, this is a separate unit of the special operations
command called JSOT… Their unit to go find and kill and capture, if
possible, high-value targets anywhere in the world. The whole world is
a free fire zone for them. When they get into a place like Iran, where
they are, the Congress isn’t told. So Congress did approve—and the
words were very careful—“up to”—because the president wanted as much as
that; we just don’t know how much he’s taken at this point… $400
million dollars for operations. And then they discovered the operations
they approved may go way beyond what they think they were approving. So
it’s sort of like the end of democracy, in a way. We don’t know what
the government is doing. People inside the government don’t know what
the government is doing. So it was from this sort of collective angst
that people began to talk to me about the operations.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the Democratic controlled Congress, and what exactly it approved late last year?
SEYMOUR
HERSH: Late last year, at the time of the—as many in the audience will
remember—at the time of the National Intelligence Estimate was made
public in late November or early December. And that was a document
that—I do not know why it has been totally devalued by everybody,
including by all the candidates. The two Democratic candidates during
the primary and McCain kept on talking about Iran as if it was on the
edge of being nuclear. What the N.I.E. said—and it was a really
carefully done document—was since 2003, the evidence is clear that Iran
has not pushed a weapons program. There’s no evidence they are actually
seeking weapons, as they have been saying. That’s what the N.I.E. said.
At the same time, as we all know this President and the Vice President
and the Secretary of Defense and the National Security Adviser and the
Secretary of State—they’ve all disavowed it. It’s as if it didn’t
exist. At that time, Bush went to Congress with the finding that said
“I need this huge chunk of money to continue operations.” He has the
right as President to ask that only a few members of Congress – it’s
known in the law informally as the Gang of Eight – and that would be
the House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi; her counterpart, the leading
Republican in the House; the Majority Leader in the Senate, Harry Reid
of Nevada and his counterpart; and all the Democratic and Republican
chairmans of the House and Senate Intelligence Committee—in the case of
the Democrats, it’s Rockefeller in the Senate and Reyes from Texas in
the House. Those four Democrats got a chop at this. The finding was
given to them, particularly in the intelligence committees; lawyers
looked at it—and did nothing. The money was eventually appropriated by
both the House and Senate Defense Appropriation Subcommittees, just as
a line item. The rest of the Congress knows nothing about these kind of
operations. When it gets to highly classified operations, the money is
promulgated through a highly classified defense appropriations
subcommittee. The rest of the people in the business—on the floor, in
various committees—it could be on the other side of the moon as far as
they’re concerned. But those eight people, the four Democrats—Reid,
Pelosi, Rockefeller and Reyes—did nothing. It’s complicated because I
can’t tell you officially, the answer everybody gives is “we can’t talk
about this kind of stuff.” It’s amazing, it’s sort of the catch-22. I
did learn—
AMY GOODMAN: But again, a key point here is that
the N.I.E. of the 16 spy agencies, had come out saying Iran did not
have nuclear weapons, they had abandoned the program years ago.
SEYMOUR
HERSH: Yes. I wouldn’t say the word “abandoned,” but they said there
was no evidence they had done anything since 2003. It might have been
“on pause,” whatever you want to say. The N.I.E. was very clear, very
devastating for an administration that was trying to rally public
support. So what you have is at the same time, within the same few
weeks, and of course the White House knew about the N.I.E. since August
or probably earlier, that it was going to be hurtful in terms of their
campaign against Iran. And so at the same time, these Democrats
approved the money, and the best guess I can tell you—what I heard from
one, two aides actually, who knew the process—is that the Democratic
position was very sort of cynical. Which is that “We’re going to do
well next year in the election. We’re gonna certainly increase our
plurality in the House and Senate, and we’re probably gonna win the
presidency. Let’s not give Bush an issue, right now. Let him have his
money so he cannot accuse us”—you know, the old traditional fear of the
Democrats of being soft on national security. I did hear that from a
couple of people as the reason. But none of the members can speak about
it, because if they do, they are violating the law. And so that’s what
I meant by catch- 22. For a democracy, is a very strange situation.
AMY
GOODMAN: Can you talk about the Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and
what he had to say about the situation, about the Bush administration
attacking Iran?
SEYMOUR HERSH: The leadership of the caucus,
the Democratic Caucus in the Senate, has off-the-record lunches. Not
every week, but on Thursdays usually. They’re pretty sacrosanct in the
sense when you go in they’re pretty secure, and in this case, Gates
went to one of the lunches. He knew many of the senators for many
years, he’s been around Washington forever. During the colloquy, [he]
said very flatly, that if we bomb Iran, our grandchildren will be
fighting jihadists. The senator with whom I talked about this said the
other senators are stunned, a million questions about it. He eventually
said he was speaking for himself. But you know, Amy, let me say
something. I write in the article also that the Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs, [Admiral Mike] Mullen, is known to be pushing back on the idea
of bombing, and also that these ten combatant commanders—you know,
these are the guys who run the commanders in chief in the Far East, or
the CENTCOM [Central Command], or what you will. And members of some of
the junior members of the joint chiefs have all signed or gotten
together collectively—at least 10 of them—to say “no bombing.” But
here’s the problem with that kind of thinking: We’re ready to go. This
has been an issue for this president for three years. As you know, I
have been writing in The New Yorker constantly about this stuff, and it
doesn’t go away. After three years, our submarines are there, they have
the targets, our cruise missiles, our destroyers are there, the cruise
missiles are loaded on them, and all targeted. Our air force and
navy—not so much the marine—will have a big role in particular in it.
They have their target selection, they’ve gone through the practice. We
have ground troops. One of the problems with hitting Iran is if you hit
‘em big, is a lot of their anti-aircraft and anti-missile batteries are
dug-in underground so marines and other units have to go in and
basically blast them out. So before you bomb Iran, you have to take out
their radar and their defensive systems. You can’t do it in any other
way than a big package, unless you want a lot of your planes shot down.
This has been practiced, it’s been exercised, they’ve done it, they’re
ready to go. I can tell you that no matter what Gates thinks and no
matter what Mullen thinks, if the president says “go,” on January the
13th, 2009, a week before the inauguration, they will go. Because
that’s just the way the system is. He’s got the—–
AMY GOODMAN: What about Admiral [William] Fallon, who was forced out over this?
SEYMOUR
HERSH: Yeah, well that’s a complicated story. He was forced out, as
everybody knows. Bill Fallon was the commander-in-chief for the central
command, which gave him responsibility for Afghanistan and Iraq and
presumably the covert war inside Iran. What Fallon did, of course, we
know that he was publicly against the bombing of Iran, he just did not
think it made sense. What I discovered was that was a factor in getting
him in a lot of trouble, particularly with Mr. Cheney. But another
major issue for Fallon in terms of—Cheney, I should say, his attitude
toward him is Fallon discovered all of the special operations inside
Iraq, he knew about it, and certainly knew about some of the
cross-border stuff into Iraq, and about the big stuff going on. There’s
been a new task force set up in Afghanistan under the Joint Special
Operations Command, under the rubric of the $400 million dollars that
we discussed earlier. And he couldn’t get into it. He wasn’t cleared.
He wasn’t on what they call a “bigot list.” I have actually been told,
here’s some lieutenant commander telling a four-star admiral, “Sir, I
cannot discuss this with you, because you’re not cleared.” He pushed.
He wanted to know. This is what they call an “AO,” his area of
operation. He wanted to know what the hell was going on in his area of
responsibility, and he did not like special forces teams operating—I
don’t think he was against what they were doing necessarily, but he
wanted to know. He wanted the responsibility to know, and that caused
him a lot of trouble. What is amazing to me for this story, is Fallon
did talk about some of this in an indirect but enough of a way, and one
of his former commanders when he was a two-star general—a very bright
marine general named Jack Sheehan who last year was asked to be the
czar for the war by the White House. If you want guys with integrity
running your military, he is one of them. Sheehan talked to me on the
record about it, and said Fallon’s problem is with a certain group in
the White House, and we all know who that is, that’s the Vice
President’s office. I still personally think, and I do not know,
because one can’t know-–and I have some access to the vice president’s
office, but I do not know what the president thinks. We all hear a lot
of stories that he’s not, but I still think Cheney is the top dog on a
lot of issues in this government.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to
turn to Iran’s reaction to the threats of a possible attack from
Israel. This is what the Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki
had to say at a conference on Sunday in Pakistan.
MOTTAKI:
We do not see the Zionist regime in a situation in which they would
engage in such adventurism. They know full well what the consequences
of such an act would be in the region.
AMY GOODMAN: Seymour Hersh, your response?
SEYMOUR
HERSH: Well of course. Look, Israel can’t do it, because I just
described earlier the kind of anti-missile defense they would run into.
This is a country, Iran, that has been spending hundreds of millions if
not billions on improving its defenses, at $140 a barrel. The idea of a
sanction regime card hurting them seriously is comical. They’re making
a lot of money and buying a lot of weapons and have never improved
their security to the point where the idea of is your which has
submitted aircraft and limited missile, cruise missile capability, it
will not be able to do much. I can tell you that inside the White
House, Cheney has said more than once that Israel is not gonna go. If
Israel wants to go, we will have to go because if they went, we would
be blamed anyway. The whole—how much of this is posturing from Israel
and how much of this is posturing by us—I don’t know. I would love to
have at the end of this regime be proven to be dead wrong on all this
stuff, that it never was going to happen. But I do think the idea of
Israel going is not realistic because they simply do not have the
firepower. We’re the ones that can do it. This is the Presidency—you
have to listen to what these guys say. They’re pretty consistent. If
you listen to what they said before the invasion of Iraq, in ‘03 when
many thought it was just crazy, including me, that it would not do it.
It has been pretty clear. They could not care less with the N.I.E.
said. They believe Iran either has or will have a weapon and will be
stabilize Israel, and would use it against Israel, even if it meant
suicide, ignoring the fact that Iran has never attacked anyone outside
of its borders for 280 years, or something like that as a major power.
They have never done an offensive operation, that is just a simple
fact. That is just ignored by this White House. They talk about
Iran—internally, their position is, we’re not leave the Presidency with
Iran capable of blowing up the world, and they believe they are
capable. They want to stop it. It cannot stop with negotiations, I do
not know what they will do. Particularly if Obama is elected. Obama
looks like he’s gonna win, that a definite increase the chances of the
president doing something. If McCain wins, I’ve been told by people who
listen to conversations there, it will be easier for them because they
think McCain is on the same wavelength, which he is, on all of these
issues, and that McCain could possibly do it in the middle of next year
or whenever he chose. But if Obama is the winner, that will put
pressure on Bush. Bush says all the time, he just said it a few weeks
ago—“I don’t care what people think about me. I gonna do the right
thing.” You know, we have the most radical president we have ever had,
leading our country right now, and he is completely uneducable. If that
does not scare the hell out of you, it scares the hell out of me, I’ll
tell ya.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Seymour Hersh, what are the groups the U.S. is running right now in Iran, the opposition groups?
SEYMOUR
HERSH: You know – the enemy of my enemy is your enemy. Certainly, we
have been doing a lot of stuff with the MEK [People’s Mujahedin of
Iran], the whackos that we have been doing stuff with inside Iran from
their little base in Iraq for years, doing cross-border kind of stuff.
They are still doing a lot of stuff. They’re a pretty corrupt
organization. They’re banking a lot of money that we’re giving them. As
you know, Iran is a Shiite-dominated country but you have a number of
Sunni groups, who live on the borders with the Sunni Kurds, who do not
like the government, many elements of them do not, and they’re getting
funded. Another group of Shias, who are 50% of the population—there is
some dissidence there. So we’re dumping a lot of money into various
groups. ….. You can always pay them money to kill people. Many of their
young people have gone to the same madrassas and the Taliban—in the
Taliban. There’s a lot of other stuff going on in the name of al Qaeda.
Their number of course we probably would not look at it all. We are
funding the because they’re against the central government. You know
what it’s like? Someone once said to meif the Iranians are coming in
there and looking around for grabs, it is as if the Iranians came to
America and wanted to cause trouble. Here’s is critical the sons of the
revolution in the south and have this flag and it cannot even fly the
rebel flag anymore. Wow obviously this would be a great group to go up
to and get them to go against the government, not knowing the sons of
the revolution are totally loyal to America in every sense. We are
flying blind. We do not know who we’re giving money to. The idea that
Iran is not a tribal country, not an Arab country, it is a Persian
country, a country with a solid in terms of its national identity as
France, Germany. The idea you will cause significant trouble internally
is a smoke dream. What this White House wants to do with these new
operations, yes, continuing the old command collecting intelligence and
causing trouble. The real thing I think they want from JSOC, which are
the junta killer teams of America, I think Cheney would love to get a
scientist, nuclear scientists and bring them back to America and have
them publicly testify to the fact that yes, indeed, Iran has 36 bomb
factories, just like Vice President Cheney goes to bed with in his
dreams. They would like to have that. They would also like to create
enough chaos in the country, bombings, sabotage, which is going up
since this operation began. There’s always the connection but I do not
have any empirical evidence for it. In the last four months, the latest
incidents in terms of domestic violence, bombings, in attacks have gone
up exponentially. We would like to the Iranian central government
crackdown but in some vigorous weighed against these groups include a
situation where there is sort of open dissidents, open warfare, then
perhaps begin come in. The problem America has with the Bush/Cheney
administration, is the American public overwhelmingly is not very
interested in the bombing of Iran, despite all of the biblical talk.
AMY
GOODMAN: Seymour Hersh, we will leave it there. Thank you for being
with us. Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh, is a piece
years in the New Yorker magazine called “Preparing the battlefield: the
Bush administration steps up its secret moves against Iran.” This is
democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. I’m Amy
Goodman. When we come back, a battle over affirmative action in
Colorado. We will have the debate. Stay with us.
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