[Marxism] From Germany With Love (Germans Seek Probe Into Iraqi Spy Ops)

[Nobby <nobbytob@xxxxxxxx>]

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=031006C

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CTRL+D');   } }               From Germany With Love
                     By    T.K. Vogel    :      BIO |    10 Mar 2006            
                                  Germans may soon no longer have to grab a 
copy of the New York Times if they want to know their country's contribution to 
the War on Terror and the War in Iraq. It was the Times which broke the story, 
over a year ago, of the arrest in Macedonia of Khaled el-Masri, a German 
citizen of Lebanese background, and his subsequent ordeal in CIA detention in 
Afghanistan. And it was the Times which provided details, just last week, of 
the sharing by German spies of actionable intelligence on Iraqi military 
targets with their U.S. counterparts in the run-up to the war.
  Not all of the allegations carry equal weight or credibility. Controversy 
here as in other European countries has also focused on CIA flights through 
European airspace presumed to serve the transfer of terror suspects to third 
countries where they might be tortured. It is in the nature of this program of 
"extraordinary rendition," whose existence has not been denied by the U.S. 
government, that even close allies would only have an approximate idea of 
what's going on. In contrast to el-Masri's story and that of the German agents 
in Baghdad, the CIA flight story is almost entirely based on conjecture. Just 
to what extent could now be the focus of a special parliamentary commission.
  The grand coalition of Christian Democrats and Social Democrats, in power 
only since last September's defeat of the previous coalition of SPD and the 
Greens, has been doing its utmost to keep these issues firmly within the 
regular parliamentary procedures. But on Monday, the Liberals joined the other 
two opposition parties (the Greens and the Left Party) in demanding a special 
commission, whose establishment now looks fairly certain. The parties, however, 
still need to agree on a mandate for the commission, and it is here that the 
whole exercise might run into trouble, for the opposition parties are pursuing 
diametrically opposed goals. The Liberals, the most Atlanticist of Germany's 
parties, want to retroactively discredit the red-green coalition's anti-war 
policy by exposing its hypocrisy at the top level. The Greens and the Left 
Party want to expose the scandal of the German foreign intelligence agency BND 
working against the orders coming from their political masters ? though
 these orders had conveniently only been communicated orally.
  What's interesting in the whole affair is that both main opposition camps 
seem to believe that the allegations of BND connivance in the Iraq war are 
essentially true. The Liberals welcome the BND's presumed activities as proof 
that the cabinet's anti-war policy was unrealistic; the Greens take it as proof 
that the intelligence services are still moonlighting for the Americans.
  Not surprisingly, this is not how the government sees things. It has denied 
whatever could plausibly be denied (and a few things that couldn't, until they 
were called on it) and maintained that the regular oversight mechanisms through 
a standing parliamentary committee had worked fine. After a session of this 
oversight committee had heard evidence from several BND agents, one of its SPD 
members said on Monday that there was "nothing" to the allegations and that the 
meeting had been "very reassuring." There was simply no need for a special 
commission to investigate, the government said. After it became clear that a 
special commission was nonetheless in the offing, SPD politicians called it 
"pure show" and warned that it could threaten Germany's security interests.
  Monday's unscheduled meeting of the committee was called following new 
allegations made in the Times the previous week. But even without the new, 
slightly adventurous claim that German agents had passed on an Iraqi plan for 
the defense of Baghdad to the Americans, the facts as they are now on the table 
are highly embarrassing for the Germans. (The defense plan story seems dodgy 
since the document reproduced by the Times doesn't look like a particularly 
credible strategy to defend Baghdad. Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier 
called it "undercomplex.")
  Here are the plain facts, no longer disputed by the German government: two 
BND agents were stationed in Baghdad in the run-up to the invasion and its 
early phases, while another colleague worked as a liaison officer with the U.S. 
commander of the invasion in Qatar. The intelligence they passed on to their 
U.S. colleagues was not just of a humanitarian nature, as claimed earlier, but 
of military relevance. All three later received medals from the Americans in 
recognition of the "critical information to United States Central Command to 
support combat operations in Iraq," according to the New York Times, which 
quoted from a classified German report on the matter. It was this report, 
prepared for the standing oversight committee, that prompted several of its 
members to declare that any special commission wouldn't find anything that 
hadn't been known already ? to the select few who could read the report in its 
entirety.
  Whatever the exact information the Germans shared with the Americans, their 
cooperation seems to have been well within what could reasonably be expected to 
take place between allies, especially during a war. It was primarily the 
government's stalling that promoted the issue to such prominence, though the 
motivation behind the delaying tactics is not difficult to see: the current 
foreign minister is Steinmeier, who, as the Chancellor's chief of cabinet, 
coordinated intelligence activities for the Schröder government.
  The political wrangling surrounding the German assistance to the war in Iraq, 
and the constant stream of revelations coming from the media, are now drowning 
out another facet of Germany's participation in the war on terror that is far 
more troubling. As part of the global clampdown on terrorism, the CIA has 
transferred at least two German citizens to third countries (el-Masri to 
Afghanistan and Mohammed Zammar, arrested by the Moroccans in late 2001, to 
Syria) and two long-time German residents are being held at Guantanamo. It 
gradually transpired over the last few months that all of them, plus terror 
suspects held by Kurds in Northern Iraq, had been visited and interrogated by 
German intelligence officers, something the government denies in el-Masri's 
case but admits in all others. Last December, Interior Minister Wolfgang 
Schäuble confirmed and defended the fact that his agents had questioned Zammar 
at a notorious Damascus prison, where Syrian military intelligence torture
 political detainees.

 "If we said that, under any circumstances, we should not use information where 
we cannot be sure that it was attained under conditions completely in line with 
the rule of law, then this would be absolutely irresponsible," Schäuble told 
the media. He also told parliament that "it wasn't in the files" that Zammar 
had been tortured. This was highly disingenuous, of course. Conditions in the 
Far' Falastin prison, where Zammar is being held, are so unsavory that 
according to Time magazine even the CIA stays away. CIA officials submit 
written questions to the Syrians, who then communicate Zammar's replies back to 
the Americans. Why the Germans would have been so inept as to interrogate 
Zammar directly, and inside the prison, is unclear.
   What is clear, however, is that the War on Terror has developed into one 
gigantic exercise in cutting corners. That the German government simply stands 
by as its citizens are abducted and handed over to nasty regimes that routinely 
torture their prisoners is bad enough; that German officials would seek to 
directly benefit from that torture is outrageous. Zammar is no goody-goody: he 
has admitted to having recruited several high-profile terrorists for al-Qaeda, 
including people involved in 9/11, and he was under observation by German 
intelligence at the time he disappeared in Morocco. But that surely doesn't 
justify standing by as he is brutalized by the Syrians, an untrustworthy, shaky 
regime that is probably manipulating whatever knowledge Zammar may have had 
four years ago. (This, incidentally, might be the reason why the Germans wanted 
to talk to him directly rather than through Syrian intermediaries. Would the 
CIA be more trusting than the BND?) Zammar's fate, then, is
 regrettable not just morally or on a human level, but for pragmatic reasons as 
well. He would quite probably have been far more useful under German 
surveillance than languishing in a Syrian prison, where he may just die one 
day. That's the real scandal, and the German public seems slow to grasp it.

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