Random Politics & Religion #00

Posted at 6:00 AM ET, 05/25/2010
CIA unit's wacky idea: Depict Saddam as gay
By Jeff Stein
During planning for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the CIA's Iraq Operations Group kicked around a number of ideas for discrediting Saddam Hussein in the eyes of his people.

One was to create a video purporting to show the Iraqi dictator having sex with a teenage boy, according to two former CIA officials familiar with the project.

“It would look like it was taken by a hidden camera,” said one of the former officials. “Very grainy, like it was a secret videotaping of a sex session.”

The idea was to then “flood Iraq with the videos,” the former official said.

Another idea was to interrupt Iraqi television programming with a fake special news bulletin. An actor playing Hussein would announce that he was stepping down in favor of his (much-reviled) son Uday.

“I’m sure you will throw your support behind His Excellency Uday,” the fake Hussein would intone.

The spy agency’s Office of Technical Services collaborated on the ideas, which also included inserting fake “crawls” -- messages at the bottom of the screen -- into Iraqi newscasts.

The agency actually did make a video purporting to show Osama bin Laden and his cronies sitting around a campfire swigging bottles of liquor and savoring their conquests with boys, one of the former CIA officers recalled, chuckling at the memory. The actors were drawn from “some of us darker-skinned employees,” he said.

Eventually, “things ground to a halt,” the other former officer said, because no one could come to agreement on the projects.

They also faced strong opposition from James Pavitt, then head of the agency’s Operations Division, and his deputy, Hugh Turner, who “kept throwing darts at it.”

The ideas were patently ridiculous, said the other former agency officer.

“They came from people whose careers were spent in Latin America or East Asia” and didn’t understand the cultural nuances of the region.

“Saddam playing with boys would have no resonance in the Middle East -- nobody cares,” agreed a third former CIA official with extensive experience in the region. “Trying to mount such a campaign would show a total misunderstanding of the target. We always mistake our own taboos as universal when, in fact, they are just our taboos.”

A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, declined to confirm the accounts, or deny them.

"While I can't confirm these accounts, if these ideas were ever floated by anyone at any time, they clearly didn't go anywhere," the official said.

The reality, the former officials said, was that the agency really didn’t have enough money and expertise to carry out the projects.

“The military took them over,” said one. “They had assets in psy-war down at Ft. Bragg,” at the army’s special warfare center.

“The agency got rid of most of its non-paramilitary covert action in the 1980s, after Bill Casey died,” said the third former official. “He was a big fan of covert action, but neither Bob Gates, who succeeded him as acting [CIA] director, or any after him, wanted anything to do with it.”

“There was a flurry of activity during the first Gulf War,” the official added, “but [Gen. Norman] Schwarzkopf made it clear he had to approve everything, and he basically approved nothing, except, reluctantly at first, surrender leaflets. By the late '90s there were very few people left who knew anything about covert action or how to do it. “

The leaflets also had “unintended consequences,” the former official added.

“In the perverted logic of Iraq, the Iraqi soldiers decided they had to have a leaflet to surrender, so they fought us to get one."

According to histories of the 2003 invasion, the single most effective “information warfare” project, which originated in the Pentagon, was to send faxes and e-mails to Iraqi unit commanders as the fighting began, telling them their situation was hopeless, to round up their tanks, artillery and men, and go home.

Many did.

A 2010 Washington Post article authored by former Army Intelligence Officer Jeff Stein features a detailed account of how the CIA admittedly filmed a fake Bin Laden video during the run up to the 2003 Iraq war.

The article, which includes comments from multiple sources within the CIA’s Iraq Operations Group, explains how the agency had planned to “flood Iraq with the videos” depicting several controversial scenarios.

“The agency actually did make a video purporting to show Osama bin Laden and his cronies sitting around a campfire swigging bottles of liquor and savoring their conquests with boys, one of the former CIA officers recalled, chuckling at the memory,” the article states. “The actors were drawn from ‘some of us darker-skinned employees.’”

Other CIA officials admitted to planning several fake videos featuring former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, one of which would depict the leader engaged in sexual acts with a teenage boy.

“It would look like it was taken by a hidden camera,” said one of the former officials. “Very grainy, like it was a secret videotaping of a sex session.”

According to one official, the video ideas were eventually scrapped due to the CIA officers, who spent their careers in Latin America and East Asia, not understanding “the cultural nuances of the region.”

“Saddam playing with boys would have no resonance in the Middle East — nobody cares,” a third former CIA official said. “Trying to mount such a campaign would show a total misunderstanding of the target. We always mistake our own taboos as universal when, in fact, they are just our taboos.”

The article does however admit that one specific psyop was successfully implemented, linking to a document from the Rand Corporation that explains the program.

“According to histories of the 2003 invasion, the single most effective ‘information warfare’ project, which originated in the Pentagon, was to send faxes and e-mails to Iraqi unit commanders as the fighting began, telling them their situation was hopeless, to round up their tanks, artillery and men, and go home,” the article states. “Many did.”

While the aforementioned videos were never released, the much looked over admission of such psychological operations raises questions in light of the recent ISIS beheading videos.

Only days after Infowars’ questioned several discrepancies in the James Foley beheading video, top British forensic experts concluded that the video was likely staged using “camera trickery and slick post-production techniques.”

“After enhancements, the knife can be seen to be drawn across the upper neck at least six times, with no blood evidence to the point the picture fades to black,” an analyst said.”I think it has been staged. My feeling is that the execution may have happened after the camera was stopped.”

Given the brutality seen in many of ISIS’ grainy, low quality cell phone videos from Iraq and Syria, many have also begun questioning why the “beheading” video’s hide the actual beheading while also exhibiting more advanced editing techniques and high definition cameras.

While no one questions the tragic fate of both James Foley and Steven Sotloff, other questions have been raised in light of who discovered the most recent video: the SITE Intelligence Group (Search for International Terrorist Entities).

“One of SITE’s founders, Rita Katz, is a government insider with close connections to former terrorism czar Richard Clarke and his staff in the White House, as well as investigators in the Department of Justice, Department of the Treasury, and the Department of Homeland Security according to SourceWatch,” notes Infowars’ Kurt Nimmo.

The most glaring issue still remains the United States government’s involvement in creating ISIS, recently pointed out by General Thomas McInerney.

“We backed I believe in some cases, some of the wrong people and not in the right part of the Free Syrian Army and that’s a little confusing to people, so I’ve always maintained….that we were backing the wrong types,” McInerney said.

While the Obama Administration admits to having no strategy against ISIS, internal sources claim the President has received intelligence on their rise for more than a year. Even as reports come in on possible ISIS attacks in the Southern US, the President still refuses to secure the border as border gates are left wide open.