Archive for the ‘Defense’ Category

By John Bolton
Why the administration is putting America’s national interests at risk

JewishWorldReview.com | (TCSM) The Obama administration appears to be conducting an organized campaign of public pressure to stop Israel from attacking Iran’s well-developed nuclear-weapons program. So intense is this effort, and so determined is President Obama to succeed, that administration officials are now leaking highly sensitive information about Israel’s intentions and capabilities into the news media.
The president’s unwillingness to take preemptive military action against Tehran’s nuclear efforts has long been evident, notwithstanding his ritual incantation that “all options are on the table.” Equally evident is his fixation to ensure that Israel does not act unilaterally against Iran, a principal reason why Washington’s relations with Jerusalem are at their lowest ebb since Israel’s 1948 founding.
Indeed, the only conclusion to be drawn from Mr. Obama’s actions and rhetoric is that he fears an Israeli military strike more than he fears Iran achieving nuclear-weapons capability.
Current and former Obama advisers have repeatedly contended that a satisfactory negotiated outcome is possible, one where Iran will continue to develop a “peaceful” nuclear capability under international monitoring. How they can cling to this belief after years of Iran deceiving the International Atomic Energy Agency, going so far as to demolish buildings and excavate and remove thousands of cubic yards of rock and soil to try to conceal traces of radiation, is hard to fathom. Nonetheless, Team Obama still believes that Iran’s military-theocratic regime is capable of holding Pandora’s box but never opening it.

Equally disconcerting, administration officials, past and present, argue that a nuclear-capable Iran can be contained and deterred. Although Obama himself insists that containment is not his policy, I believe that assertion is true only in a limited sense: It is not his policy today. It is his policy for tomorrow, his Plan B, after the current sanctions and diplomacy fail to stop Iran. This is perhaps even more delusional than dreaming about Iran benignly pursuing “atoms for peace.”
Deterrence against the Soviet Union worked precariously and unnervingly at times, with some very narrow escapes from catastrophe, only because of a confluence of calculations between Washington and Moscow. There is no realistic prospect that Tehran’s religious autocracy will develop the same calculus of caution.
Still worse, even if Iran could be contained and deterred, there will undoubtedly be wider proliferation in the Middle East once Iran achieves nuclear weapons. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton herself has said that a weaponized Iran certainly means that Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, and perhaps others will seek their own nuclear capabilities. Thus, in a relatively short period, five to 10 years, there could be half a dozen or more nuclear-weapons states in the region.
Accordingly, stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons in the first place must be America’s top priority. The prolonged failures of diplomacy and sanctions have brought the United States to the point where, realistically, there are only two alternatives: Either Iran’s mullahs get the bomb, or someone stops them militarily beforehand. This is the dilemma that leads Obama to pressure Israel against even thinking about the second alternative.
Three years of merciless private pressure against Israel having obviously failed to extract a commitment not to use force, the Obama administration looks to have determined two months ago to go public.
The first salvo was Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s assertion that Israel might well strike Iran between April and June of this year. Nothing like letting the target know when to expect the attack.
Next came leaks to an author at Foreign Policy magazine’s Web site that Israel had secured basing rights from Azerbaijan, on Iran’s northern border, for possible use during a campaign against Tehran’s weapons program.
Launching strikes just a few hundred miles away from several likely targets — such as the Isfaham uranium conversion facility and the Natanz uranium enrichment plant — rather than having to attack from domestic airfields would give Israel both enormous tactical surprise and a critical leg up logistically.
One can assume with some confidence that Iran was not focused on the risk of Israeli bases in Azerbaijan, so hearing about it from US administration sources is a gift almost beyond measure. And one can also confidently assume that if that leak is not enough to make Israel bend its knee, more public revelations directed by the White House are only a matter of time.
Even now, Obama advisers could be revealing additional information to other governments behind closed doors. Perhaps we could ask Dmitri Medvedev.
Not only is this not the way to treat a close ally facing an existential challenge, it is directly contrary to America’s national interests. Israel is not the threat, Mr. President: Iran is.

by Gary NorthOn Monday,

April 2, the leaders of the United States, Mexico, and Canada will meet at what is billed as the North American Leaders Summit. Here is the agenda, as posted on the website of the White House.

On April 2, 2012, President Obama will host Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada and President Felipe Calderon of Mexico for the North American Leaders’ Summit (NALS) in Washington, DC. This meeting will build on wide-ranging and ongoing cooperation among the United States, Canada, and Mexico with a particular focus on economic growth and competitiveness, citizen security, energy, and climate change. The leaders will also discuss North America’s role in the Americas in anticipation of the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia later in April, as well as other global economic, political, and security issues.
Note: This summit is preliminary to a hemispheric summit to be held later in April. Note these words: citizen security, energy, and climate change. Allow me to translate: police state, rationing, and regulation.

If you think I am exaggerating, consider the following.

TRILATERAL DEFENSE: STAGE 1

The Defense Department has posted a press release on steps leading up to this summit. A new system of multi-national defense has been created. It is called the North American Defence Ministry. Notice the way Defense is spelled: Oh, Canada! You can read the press release here.

According to the three Ministers of Defence, North America is facing threats so enormous that the three nations must work together to thwart them. But what nation is strong enough to offer such a threat? None is mentioned. Nevertheless, those threats are out there, the three ministers of defense assure us.

The first meeting of what they call “the trilateral collaboration” was held in Ottawa. Here is what they decided.

By virtue of our geography, our peoples, and our trading relationship, our three nations share many defense interests. Threats to North America and the hemisphere are increasingly complex and require non-traditional responses. Building upon the trilateral collaboration under the North American Leaders Summit process, we share a determination to enhance our common understanding of those threats and of the approaches needed to address them.
It would be helpful to know what these “increasingly complex” threats to North America are. It would be even more helpful to know which “non-traditional responses” are being contemplated.

Our countries are committed to working together to address challenges in the region. We know that transnational threats require transnational responses.
That word, “transnational,” needs clarification. What are some of these transnational threats? What nation might be planning transnational threats against Canada and Mexico, as well as the United States? What nation has identified these three nations as enemies? I have heard of none.

It turns out that the threats do not come from nations. They come from SPECTRE. You remember SPECTRE, the SPecial Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion. Sean Connery’s James Bond battled against SPECTRE. Well, maybe SPECTRE isn’t the threat it once was, but something like it is.

With this in mind, we have agreed to enhance our cooperation to support efforts to counter transnational criminal organizations and to respond to natural disasters in the hemisphere.
The trilateral collaboration is determined not to let these criminal organizations get the upper hand. Neither is nature: natural disasters in the hemisphere. We all remember what the hemisphere was almost wiped out by. . . . By. . . . By whatever it was. Back then. Never again!

Our meeting today has established the framework necessary to build North America’s resilience by pursuing a practical agenda built on sustained trilateral cooperation on issues related to defense. As part of our initial work plan, we intend to:
Develop a joint trilateral defense threat assessment for North America to deepen our common understanding of the threats and challenges we face.
Explore ways to improve our support to the efforts of civilian public security agencies in countering illicit activities in our respective countries and the hemisphere, such as narcotics trafficking.
If we are to believe this press release, the Mexican drug dealers are so well armed and pose such a threat that the defense departments of all three North American nations must now cooperate trilaterally.

But that’s not all. The defense ministers will also

Explore how we can collaborate to increase the speed and efficiency with which our armed forces support civilian-led responses to disasters.
The armed forces of the three nations must increase their response time and efficiency to support “civilian-led responses to disasters.”

I am curious. What disasters across all three borders are such a threat that it requires a new trilateral defense system to respond?

I can think of one: a joint operation to release airborne anthrax in three cities, for example: Washington, Ottawa, and Mexico City. But why, exactly, will it take joint military responses to deal with this? The terrorists will be long gone.

I can think of another: a joint operation of a suicide squad that has been infected with smallpox. Each of them flies to a different city. He or she then goes to the movies. Lots of movies. If you are curious about the likely effects, do a Google search for “Dark Winter” and “terrorism.” I did. Here are the results.

Conclusion: the targets of this trilateral planning are civilians, not terrorists. This is all about a cross-border system of martial law. This is stage one. There is stage two.

Continue to work together to strengthen hemispheric defence forums.
How long will this trilateral cooperation go on? Indefinitely.

We have agreed to meet on a regular basis in order to build on today’s historic meeting and continue our cooperation in addressing shared continental threats. We will pursue this trilateral agenda respectful of national sovereignty and in coordination with other agencies in our respective governments. The results of our meeting will be conveyed to our respective leaders in advance of the upcoming North American Leaders Summit.
Notice the phrase, “respectful of national sovereignty.” If you think NAFTA was a bad idea, sovereignty-wise, wait until you see what comes next.

CANADA’S ECONOMIC ACTION PLAN

In 2011, the Canadian government posted what it called an Economic Action Plan. This is a bilateral plan to integrate economically the USA and Canada.

What caught my eye is this. They are concerned about public resistance. Remember, this is Canada – good old stodgy Canada.

Coordinate and share research on how people become radicalized and turn to violence;
Share best practices and tools for law enforcement and corrections partners to detect, prevent and respond to this threat;
Develop a common messaging and strategic communications approach; and
Emphasize community-based and community-driven efforts. This will include collaborating on how to engage with communities and build their resilience against violent extremists who seek to target specific communities in our respective countries, as well as coordinating community outreach.
Then there is CBNRE. Every problem needs an acronym. That is what CBRNE is.

Establish binational plans and capabilities for emergency management, with a focus on chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosives (CBRNE) events.
In addition to this is the threat to the communications system.

Coordinate national-level emergency communications plans and strategies;
Identify future trends and technologies related to communications interoperability;
Promote the use of standards in emergency communications;
Promote governance models and structures; and
Share best practices and lessons learned.
All in all, the Canadian government pledges the following:

We build on the efforts of many partners – from police and other emergency workers to our armed forces – who continue to safeguard us from the complex threats we face.

We also recognize that cooperation across air, land, and maritime domains, as well as in space and cyberspace, our enduring bi-national defence relationship, and military support for civilian authorities engaged in disaster response efforts and critical infrastructure protection, have all contributed significantly to the security of our populations.
This is being promoted to Canadian voters as an economic action plan. It is a great deal more than an economic action plan. This is not merely about freer trade. It is about cross-border martial law.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper up until now has pursued bilateralism: USA and Canada. That policy is about to go the way of all flesh. Trilateralism is the agenda of the North American Leaders Summit.

Harper’s government in February 2011 published a detailed outline of a system of bilateral government regulations on trade: transportation, agriculture, health products, and environmental safety. This sounded harmless to Canadians. But the extension of cross-border economic regulations is part of a much more comprehensive plan to integrate the economies of Mexico, Canada, and the United States. This, in turn, is preparatory for regional/hemispheric integration.

If all this sounds familiar, that’s because it is. When David Rockefeller created the Trilateral Commission in 1973, he had something like this in mind. Step by step, the program has extended. Think of this as the dream of the wonderful folks who gave us the euro.

FROM FREE TRADE TO POLITICAL UNIFICATION

For over two centuries, believers in political centralization have used a bait-and-switch strategy that has worked repeatedly.

First, they extol the benefits of free trade, meaning the elimination of sales taxes on imported goods. Their model: Adam Smith’s book, The Wealth of Nations (1776).

Second, they call for the creation of a joint free trade zone. They never recommend unilateral reductions of tariffs by one government on one side of a border. Always, there must be a negotiated free trade zone: joint sovereignty.

Third, they call for joint regulations making the judicial rules of production fair.

Fourth, they call for a common currency. This always turns into a call for a national central bank, then a common international central bank.

Fifth, they call for regional military defense.

Sixth, they call for political integration: the United States of Whatever.

This strategy was designed by James Madison. He attempted to get it passed at the Annapolis Convention of 1786. When that failed, he called for a closed-door convention in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787.

Delegates from several states were authorized to attend, but only on this basis: to lower tariffs, not to replace the Articles of Confederation. As soon as the closed-door session opened, four separate plans were submitted to replace the Articles of Confederation. (I wrote a book on this: Conspiracy in Philadelphia. It’s free.)

The Constitution denied the right of the states to issue currency. The federal government alone had this right,

Three years after ratification, Hamilton succeeded in getting Congress to adopt a central bank, privately owed.

In 1861, the Confederacy decided to set up its own free trade zone. The North invaded.

Throughout the 1930s, internationalists promoted the idea of a free trade zone under the League of Nations. Large multinational corporations would be licensed by the League to trade, immune from national tariffs, with the League taxing them for the privilege. The most famous advocate was New York lawyer John Foster Dulles.

In 1951, the European Coal and Steel Community was set up to conduct free trade in Western Europe. This led to the creation of the Common Market in 1957. This morphed into the European Union in 1992. This required the European Central Bank, which gave Europe the euro in 1999.

It is bait and switch.

CONCLUSION

Central planners cannot get the voters to accept internationally what the voters have long accepted nationally. So, they adopt a stealth program. It is a bait-and-switch strategy. Again and again, it has worked.

North America got NAFTA in 1994. Unless Congress stops the process, we will soon get a joint military system of domestic crowd control. The boundary markers for this system have been laid: milestones. Next will come the laying of the foundations.

Most voters know nothing of this. Of those who do know, most ignore it.

The trap is set with tax breaks: low tariffs. That is the bait. It is tasty bait. Then the trap is sprung.

Paraphrasing Patrick Henry in 1765, if that’s a conspiracy theory, make the most of it.

by Jim Kouri
With the prospect of the radical Islamist regime in Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, and the Iranians’ propensity for supporting, aiding and abetting terrorist organizations, the Canadian government passed legislation that amended its criminal code to specifically include nuclear terrorism, a U.S. intelligence analyst — who requested anonymity — told the Public Safety Examiner on Thursday.

Senator Raynell Andreychuk had written the amendments for the Senate and urged the government to acknowledge that nuclear terrorism is a very real threat to both national and global security.

“This bill would improve our existing approach to counter-terrorism by punishing those who aspire to commit acts of nuclear terrorism,” he said in a statement.

The amendments to the criminal code would create new classifications of offenses related to nuclear or radiological (“dirty bombs’) terrorism and includes:

* Possessing or trafficking nuclear or radioactive material or a nuclear or radioactive device, or committing an act against a nuclear facility or its operations, with the intent to cause death, serious bodily harm or substantial damage to property or the environment;

* Using or altering nuclear or radioactive material or a nuclear or radioactive device, or committing an act against a nuclear facility or its operation, with the intent to compel a person, a government or a domestic or international organization to do, or refrain from doing anything;

* Committing an indictable offense for the purpose of obtaining nuclear or radioactive material or a nuclear or radioactive device or to obtain access or control of a nuclear facility;

* And the threat to commit these offenses.

The enactment of these proposed amendments permits Canada to ratify the 2005 Amendment to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material (CPPNM) and the 2005 International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism, the Canadian government said in its announcement.

The CPPNM Amendment also provides for expanded cooperation between and among states regarding rapid measures to locate and recover stolen or smuggled nuclear material, mitigate any radiological consequences of sabotage, and prevent and combat related offenses.

Canada’s Nuclear Safety and Control Act and Nuclear Security regulations already outlawed illegal possession and use of nuclear material, but the CPPNM requires these restrictions to be spelled out in criminal law.

Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper stated that Canada was allocating $369 million dollars to help eliminate the threat of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons and so- called “dirty bombs.” Dirty bombs are regular explosives encased with radiological material.

While Canadian officials were discussing nuclear terrorism, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta was in the midst of meetings with his Canadian and Mexican counterparts in Ottawa, Canada, discussing military and law enforcement cooperation to combat organized crime, drugs and cross-border security operations

Continue reading on Examiner.com Canada passes legislation to combat nuclear terrorism – National public safety | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/public-safety-in-national/canada-passes-legislation-to-combat-nuclear-terrorism#ixzz1qsYs9pny

March 27, 2012 by Gary Demar

Treason: “Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason.”
Beware of open microphone! It might pick up something you didn’t mean for other people to hear. President Obama was unaware that a microphone was recording him when he asked outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev Monday for “breathing room” until after the November 2012 election. It would be at that point that negotiations on missile defense could resume in earnest.
“On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved, but it’s important for him to give me space,” President Obama told Mr. Medvedev at the end of their 90-minute meeting. The “him” is apparently a reference to incoming Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Mr. Medvedev replied, “Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you…”

President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are increasingly moving to strip America of vital defense capabilities through a web of international treaties and agreements. Already, Clinton is negotiating a code of conduct in outer space that would effectively ban our capacity to destroy satellites and put interceptor missiles in space.
Last week, the president announced that he was going to provide the Russians with detailed technical information about the anti-missile systems he plans to base in Eastern Europe, in the hopes of lessening Russian opposition to their deployment. He is exacting no reciprocal sharing of intelligence, nor can he be sure that Vladimir Putin will not just turn around and forward the gift package to North Korea or Iran.
Reuters noted that “the Obama administration is leaving open the possibility of giving Moscow certain secret data on U.S. interceptor missiles due to help protect Europe from any Iranian missile strike. A deal is being sought by Washington that could include classified data exchange because it is in the U.S. interest to enlist Russia and its radar stations in the missile-defense effort, a Pentagon spokeswoman said Tuesday.”
Defense advocates are especially fearful that these negotiations could lead to a side agreement to limit the velocity of our missile interceptors or place other limits on our anti-missile capability. In the 1990s, the Clinton administration agreed to limit velocity to 3 kilometers per second.
Hank Cooper, who was President Reagan’s ambassador in charge of defending the Strategic Defense Initiative in the Geneva Defense and Space Talks with the Soviet Union and later served as director of the SDI program, said he is worried that “these negotiations might turn into some ‘executive’ agreement that limits the velocity of future improvements to the SM-3 — or other missile defense interceptors.”
He said this would be a “very bad idea — as was demonstrated by the Clinton administration’s side agreement on the margins of the U.N. that limited the velocity of our theater missile defense interceptors. … We got rid of this [agreement] as a byproduct of withdrawing from the ABM Treaty in 2002 — it would be a very bad idea to bring it back in any form.”
Cooper and others argue that Russia already knows our missile velocity from having observed our tests, and that Moscow is seeking these negotiations to tie our hands by prohibiting improvements in our anti-missile technology.
Cooper said “the Russians are not likely to be interested in such an empty concession as sharing our current [velocity at burnout of our anti-missile]. On the other hand, there are other things they would be very interested in and I am not impressed that our current negotiating team can be trusted to keep them secret — or not to trade them away.”
He worries, in particular, that in its zest to “reset” relations with Russia, our negotiators will give away or agree to limit the ability of our interceptors to “track, discriminate and maneuver toward [their] targeted attacking weapon and associated decoys and other countermeasures. I would be very concerned about preserving the confidentiality of our capabilities in that area, and worry about possible ill-advised executive agreements on the associated so-called ‘transparency’ front — especially if they limit potential technological improvements in our defensive systems.”
It is these interceptors that the Obama administration has selected to cope with potential nuclear-armed missiles that might be launched by Iran in the near future to attack the United States or our overseas troops, friends and allies. The close nexus between the Kremlin and Tehran and Pyongyang raises the serious possibility that Russia could compromise our ability to stop their missiles.
Coming on the heels of his New START Treaty that cut our strategic forces while permitting Russia to deploy additional ones, and on top of his proposal to cut our nuclear arsenal by 80 percent with no reciprocity from any of our adversaries, Obama seems intent on disarming our nation.
Sometimes I wonder if Obama knows he is going to be defeated and is embarking on a “scorched-earth” policy to weaken our nation and to hogtie us through international agreements before he leaves office, thus fulfilling the fondest desires of his friends like former terrorist Bill Ayers.

Marine Cpl. Megan Leavey served with her four-legged partner Sgt. Rex through two tours in Iraq, completing hundreds of missions searching for roadside bombs until an insurgent explosion took them both out of service.

More than five years later, Leavey, 28, is fighting to adopt the dog she handled since her earliest days as a Marine before the German shepherd is put to sleep.

“Rex is my partner, I love him,” Leavey, who lives with her father in Rockport, N.Y. and works as a dog handler, told MSNBC. “We have been through so much together…I’ve spent day and night with this dog. It’s a very strong bond.”

Leavey was discharged in Dec. 2007, but Rex — considered a valuable work dog — was put back in service after he recovered from his injuries. That was until a month ago, when he was diagnosed with a kind of nerve paralysis that left him unable to serve, the Westchester Journal News reported.

It’s now a race against the clock as Leavey struggles to cut through military red tape and adopt Rex before he is put down.

“As a safety precaution, they don’t give all dogs away,” she told the Journal News. She said Rex, a strong “alpha dog,” never hurt anyone he wasn’t supposed to.

“The dilemma with me is the minute they say he can’t be adopted, because he‘s sick and because he can’t work, they’d have to put him to sleep,” she said. “Not because he’s too sick to live a good life, but because they can‘t utilize him so it wouldn’t make sense for them to keep a dog they’re not going to work at the kennels. I don’t want to let that happen.”

But time is ticking, she said.

“This is not [the Marines'] first priority,” Leavey told New York Fox affiliate WNYW-TV. “A lot of times it gets lost in the shuffle.”

To help speed the process up, she reached out to veteran’s organizations and to Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who sent a letter to Air Force Secretary Michael Donley, who oversees military service dog training. In the letter, Schumer detailed the relationship Leavey and Rex had and credited them with saving countless lives, according to the Journal News.

If Leavey’s request is granted, Rex will enjoy a sizable home with a fenced-in yard. Until she hears more, all she can do is wait.

“It’s a partnership,” Leavey told the newspaper. “I feel like I know Rex so well. I’m so looking forward to seeing him again.”

Source

By Scott Stewart

As we noted last week, terrorist attacks do not materialize out of thin air. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Those planning terrorist attacks follow a discernable process referred to as the terrorist attack cycle. We also discussed last week how terrorism planners are vulnerable to detection at specific points during their attack cycle and how their poor surveillance tradecraft is one of these vulnerable junctures.

While surveillance is a necessary part of the planning process, the fact that it is a requirement does not necessarily mean that terrorist planners are very good at it. With this in mind, let’s take a closer look at surveillance and discuss what bad surveillance looks like.

Eyes on a Potential Target

As noted above, surveillance is an integral part of the terrorist planning process for almost any type of attack, although there are a few exceptions to this rule, like letter-bomb attacks. The primary objective of surveillance is to assess a potential target for value, security measures and vulnerabilities. Some have argued that physical surveillance has been rendered obsolete by the Internet, but from an operational standpoint, there simply is no substitute for having eyes on the potential target — even more so if a target is mobile. A planner is able to see the location of a building and its general shape on Google Earth, but Google Earth does not provide the planner with the ability to see what the building’s access controls are like, the internal layout of the building or where the guards are located and what procedures they follow.

The amount of time devoted to the surveillance process will vary depending on the type of operation. A complex operation involving several targets and multiple teams, such as the 9/11 operation or 2008 Mumbai attacks, will obviously require more planning (and more surveillance) than a rudimentary pipe-bomb attack against a stationary soft target. Such complex operations may require weeks or even months of surveillance, while a very simple operation may require only a few minutes. The amount of surveillance required for most attacks will fall somewhere between these two extremes. Regardless of the amount of time spent observing the target, almost all terrorist planners will conduct surveillance, and they are vulnerable to detection during this time.

Given that surveillance is so widely practiced, it is amazing that, in general, those conducting surveillance as part of a terrorist plot are usually terrible at it. There are some exceptions, of course. Many of the European Marxist terrorist groups trained by the KGB and Stasi practiced very good surveillance tradecraft, but such sophisticated surveillance is the exception rather than the rule.

The term “tradecraft” is often used in describing surveillance technique. Tradecraft is an espionage term that refers to techniques and procedures used in the field, but the term also implies that effectively practicing these techniques and procedures requires a bit of finesse. Tradecraft skills tend to be as much art as they are science, and surveillance tradecraft is no exception. As with any other art, you can be taught the fundamentals, but it takes time and practice to become a skilled surveillance practitioner. Most individuals involved in terrorist planning simply do not devote the time necessary to master the art of surveillance, and because of this, they display terrible technique, use sloppy procedures and generally lack finesse when they are conducting surveillance.

The main reason that people planning terrorist attacks are able to get by with such a poor level of surveillance tradecraft is because most victims simply are not looking for them. Most people do not practice situational awareness, something we are going to discuss in more detail next week. For those who do practice good situational awareness, the poor surveillance tradecraft exhibited by those planning terrorist attacks is good news. It provides them time to avoid an immediate threat and contact the authorities.

Keying on Demeanor

The behavior a person displays to those watching him or her is called demeanor. In order to master the art of surveillance tradecraft, one needs to master the ability to display appropriate demeanor for whatever situation one is in. Practicing good demeanor is not intuitive. In fact, the things one has to do to maintain good demeanor while conducting surveillance frequently run counter to human nature. Because of this, intelligence, law enforcement and security professionals assigned to work surveillance operations receive extensive training that includes many hours of heavily critiqued practical exercises, often followed by field training with a team of experienced surveillance professionals. This training teaches and reinforces good demeanor. Terrorist operatives typically do not receive this type of training — especially those who are grassroots or lone wolf militants.

At its heart, surveillance is watching someone while attempting not to be caught doing so. As such, it is an unnatural activity, and a person doing it must deal with strong feelings of self-consciousness and of being out of place. People conducting surveillance frequently suffer from what is called “burn syndrome,” the belief that the people they are watching have spotted them. Feeling “burned” will cause surveillants to do unnatural things, such as hiding their faces or suddenly ducking back into a doorway or turning around abruptly when they unexpectedly come face to face with the person they are watching.

People inexperienced in the art of surveillance find it difficult to control this natural reaction. A video that recently went viral on the Internet shows the husband of the president of Finland getting caught staring down the blouse of a Danish princess. The man’s reaction to being caught by the princess was a textbook example of the burn syndrome. Even experienced surveillance operatives occasionally have the feeling of being burned; the difference is they have received a lot of training and they are better able to control their reaction and behave normally despite the feeling of being burned. They are able to maintain a normal-looking demeanor while their insides are screaming that the person they are watching has seen them.

In addition to doing something unnatural or stupid when feeling burned, another very common mistake made by amateurs when conducting surveillance is the failure to get into proper “character” for the job or, when in character, appearing in places or carrying out activities that are incongruent with the character’s “costume.” The terms used to describe these role-playing aspects of surveillance are “cover for status” and “cover for action.” Cover for status is a person’s purported identity — his costume. A person can pretend to be a student, a businessman, a repairman, etc. Cover for action explains why the person is doing what he or she is doing — why that guy has been standing on that street corner for half an hour.

The purpose of using good cover for action and cover for status is to make the presence of the person conducting the surveillance look routine and normal. When done right, the surveillance operative fits in with the mental snapshot subconsciously taken by the target as the target goes about his or her business. Inexperienced people who conduct surveillance frequently do not use proper (if any) cover for action or cover for status, and they can be easily detected.

An example of bad cover for status would be someone dressed as “a businessman” walking in the woods or at the beach. An example of bad cover for action is someone pretending to be sitting at a bus stop who remains at that bus stop even after several buses have passed. For the most part, however, inexperienced operatives conducting surveillance practice little or no cover for action or cover for status. They just lurk and look totally out of place. There is no apparent reason for them to be where they are or doing what they are doing.

In addition to plain old lurking, other giveaways include a person moving when the target moves, communicating when the target moves, avoiding eye contact with the target, making sudden turns or stops, or even using hand signals to communicate with other members of a surveillance team or criminal gang. Surveillants also can tip off the person they are watching by entering or leaving a building immediately after the person they are watching or simply by running in street clothes.

Sometimes, people who are experiencing the burn syndrome exhibit almost imperceptible behaviors that the target can sense more than observe. It may not be something that can be articulated, but the target just gets the gut feeling that there is something wrong or odd about the way a certain person is behaving toward them. Innocent bystanders who are not watching someone usually do not exhibit this behavior or trigger these feelings.

Principles of Surveillance Detection

The U.S. government often uses the acronym “TEDD” to illustrate the principles that can be used to identify surveillance conducted by counterintelligence agencies, but these same principles also can be used to identify terrorist surveillance. TEDD stands for time, environment, distance and demeanor. In other words, if a person sees someone repeatedly over time, in different environments and at a distance, or someone who displays poor surveillance demeanor, then that person can assume he or she is under surveillance.

However, for an individual, TEDD is really only relevant if you are being specifically targeted for an attack. In such an instance, you will likely be exposed to the time, environment and distance elements. However, if the target of the attack is a subway car or a building you work in rather than you as an individual, you likely will not have an opportunity to make environment and distance correlations, and perhaps not even time. You will likely only have the demeanor of the surveillant to key on. Therefore, when we are talking about recognizing surveillance, demeanor is the most critical of the four elements. Demeanor also works in tandem with all the other elements, and poor demeanor will often help the target spot the surveillant at a different time and place or in a different environment.

Time, environment and distance also have little bearing in an instance like the Fort Hood shooting, where the assailant is an insider, works at a facility and has solid cover for action and cover for status. In such instances, demeanor is also critical in identifying bad intent.

The fact that operatives conducting surveillance over an extended period can change their clothing and wear hats, wigs or other light disguises — and use different vehicles or license plates — also demonstrates why watching for mistakes in demeanor is critical. Because of a surveillant’s ability to make superficial changes in appearance, it is important to focus on the things that cannot be changed as easily as clothing or hair, such as a person’s facial features, build, mannerisms and gait. Additionally, while a surveillant can change the license plate on a car, it is not as easy to alter other aspects of the vehicle such as body damage (scratches and dents). Paying attention to small details can be the difference between a potential attacker being identified and the attacker going unnoticed.

One technique that can be helpful in looking for people conducting long-term surveillance is to identify places that provide optimal visibility of a critical place the surveillant would want to watch (for example, the front door of a potential target’s residence or office, or a choke point on a route the potential target frequently travels). It is also important to look for places that provide optimal visibility, or “perches” in surveillance jargon. Elevated perches tend to be especially effective since surveillance targets rarely look up. Perches should be watched for signs of hostile surveillance, such as people who don’t belong there, people lurking, or people making more subtle demeanor mistakes.

Paying attention to the details of what is happening around you (what we call practicing good situational awareness) does not mean being paranoid or obsessively concerned about security. Living in a state of paranoia and looking for a terrorist behind every bush not only is dangerous to one’s physical and mental health but also results in poor security. We are going to talk more about practicing a healthy and sustainable level of situational awareness next week.

Ideological wars are not won with guns. Good ideas beat bad ideas. The reason bad ideas win, at least politically, is because there are enough people who will vote for politicians who campaign on the platform that they will take money from one group of taxpayers with the promise that it will be given to them, the faithful party voters.
Of course, this can’t go on forever. As Margaret Thatcher said, “Socialism works until you run out of other people’s money.” How close are we? I don’t know. When we do know, it will be too late to buy a gun and the needed ammunition.
Class warfare rhetoric, the irrational economic theories of the Occupy crowd, who are preparing protests beginning in September, and repeated racial division, evidenced by an increase of black-on-white assaults, could make for social and economic volatility.
Anti-gun politicians are trying to get around the clear wording of the Constitution by putting restrictions on ammunition. Although ammunition is implied, there’s nothing in the Second Amendment that says Americans have a right to own ammunition. New laws might require a waiting period on the purchase of ammunition, so people are stocking up just in case.
When citizens believe that arming themselves is a needed protective measure, then as a nation we are headed for disaster. We have reached a tipping point of no return.
A second Obama term is leading many Americans to believe that there might be some action against the Second Amendment. If the Feds come to their door, they’ll give the Gestapo a few throw-away guns to comply with the unconstitutional measure. They remember what happened after Hurricane Katrina:

No one will be able to be armed. We’re going to take all the weapons.
Confiscating guns left the people defenseless against looters, gang members, and thugs. “A disaster can bring out predators ready to loot, rampage, and pillage the moment that they have the opportunity,” David B. Kopel wrote for Reason magazine on September 10, 2005.
People want weapons because they know if there is social unrest the police will not be able to protect them, in fact, they may turn on them. The American people are smart enough to know that criminals will not turn their guns in. The majority of Americans are law abiding. In the past, they might have turned their guns. I don’t think they will today.
If we have an economic collapse in the United States, and the government checks stop coming, then some people might become desperate. Looting will empty grocery stores in a matter of hours. Once-tranquil neighborhoods will be in jeopardy as people who are used to living off the dole will target them to steal items to sell for food and drugs.
I do not believe people are purchasing guns and ammo to start a revolution. They just don’t trust this government to protect their rights, the economy, or their property.

Read more: Gun Sales Rise as People Fear 4 More Years of Obama – Godfather Politics http://godfatherpolitics.com/4040/gun-sales-rise-as-people-fear-4-more-years-of-obama/#ixzz1oP4e9xDM

January 30, 2012 by Bruce N. Eimer, Ph.D.

You must practice and, ideally, you should work with a qualified shooting instructor.
In my practice as a defensive firearms instructor, I work with many students of all ages on a private basis.
Over the years, numerous students have come to work with me to learn advanced defensive shooting techniques. In many cases, initial evaluation of their shooting skills revealed that they were terribly incompetent with a handgun and often unsafe as well. In almost every case, these people had never gotten the basics down. This is remarkable given the fact that many of these students reported that they had attended multiple tactical shooting schools before coming to me. This phenomenon left me wondering how they had missed the boat. I was also left wondering how it was that some “big name” firearms instructors with whom they said they trained, in some cases privately, never straightened them out.
In each of these cases, it was necessary for me to take them back through the basics. A shooter must understand and be able to perform the basics before he or she can expect to move on to develop competence in advanced shooting skills and tactics. In addition, if you are going to carry a concealed handgun, you must develop advanced competence. The purpose of this article is to provide a blueprint for learning the basics well so that you can then move on to develop advanced competence with the defensive handgun. However, recognize that you cannot learn this material from an article. You must practice and, ideally, you should work with a qualified shooting instructor.
Noted police and civilian firearms instructor and writer Massad Ayoob has been a pioneer in teaching people the fundamentals of defensive shooting in ways consistent with what happens physically and psychologically when you are fighting for your life. In the 1970s, he developed the Stressfire system, and it has evolved and been refined over the years. Ayoob’s Stressfire books are highly recommended reads.
Ayoob studied what happens to the human mind and body in the “stress flood” of a fight-or-flight scenario. Based on what he learned, he created techniques that not only wouldn’t fall apart under stress but, instead, would feed off the effects of the body alarm reaction and become more effective under stress.
The Stressfire shooting program emphasizes techniques that depend on simple gross motor skills as opposed to complex fine motor skills, since fine motor skills deteriorate under life and death stress. Also, gross motor techniques can withstand the tremors and increased physical strength attendant to the body-alarm-triggered adrenaline dump into the bloodstream.
You Must Learn The Basics Well
Think about it. In order to produce accurate hits with a handgun, you need to do all of the following: grip and hold the handgun securely and firmly; maintain a stable and balanced stance; keep the muzzle on the target — that is, aim the handgun properly and maintain good aim for follow-up shots (this is called follow-through); control and flow with the handgun’s recoil; and operate the trigger in a controlled manner.
Massad Ayoob’s Stressfire System emphasizes a five-point checklist that comprises the fundamentals for accomplishing the above: power stance, high hand, hard grasp, front sight and smooth roll of the trigger. This checklist provides a blueprint for practicing the fundamentals of marksmanship.
1. The Power Stance

Defensive handgunning is about fighting with a handgun. To gain the advantage in a fight, you need to adopt a stable, balanced and mobile stance. Your stance needs to be stable and balanced so that you are not thrown over by the gun’s recoil or anything else. Your shooting/fighting stance needs to be mobile so that you are not cemented or planted to the ground. You must be able to move to achieve dominance and to avoid being the recipient of blows or shots from your opponent.
More times than not, when I work with shooting students, I have to correct their stance. Many initially stand with a backward lean. Many stand too rigidly or too floppily. Some stand like a pole, and many stand square to their target with both feet parallel. None of these stances are aggressive fighting stances. Sure, you may have to shoot in a rapidly unfolding dynamic gunfight from an unorthodox and non-choreographed position; however, you must start from an aggressive and powerful stance that gives you a solid foundation.
A power stance gives you a wide base for stability and balance. It keeps you from being pushed backward by the firearm’s recoil or by your opponent. It entails leaning aggressively forward from the hips (head in front of shoulders and shoulders in front of hips). Knees should be slightly bent to absorb shock and facilitate mobility. The non-dominant foot (the one opposite your strong shooting hand) should be forward; and your dominant foot should be rearward, digging into the ground.
This power stance can be applied while static or while moving. It will be familiar to anyone with experience in wrestling, boxing or the martial arts. As stated by Massad Ayoob, “… it allows the fighter to deliver and receive impact without losing balance or the ability to continue strenuous physical activity.”
2. The High Hand

The lower a handgun’s bore axis, the easier it is to control the gun during recoil in order to deliver accurate follow-up shots. One can make the bore axis sit lower in the hands by gripping the handgun with one’s master hand as high up on the back strap as is possible. This increases your control over the gun whether you are shooting with one hand or two.
3. The Hard Grasp Or “Crush Grip”

You cannot grip a handgun too hard or too strongly. In real combat, defensive shooting means you are fighting for your life. Are you going to be relaxed at such a time? The answer is, of course not. You are going to be holding onto your life support system, your weapon, as if your life depends on it — and it does. Get used to it now. A crush grip or convulsive grip will make your handgun more difficult for your opponents to take away from you. A crush grip will help you control a powerful handgun’s recoil or the snappy recoil of a not-so-powerful mouse gun. Additionally, a crush grip will help you better isolate the movement of your trigger finger so that you have more trigger control. Conversely, a light grasp on the handgun encourages milking, which is likely to make a right-handed shooter’s shots go to low left.
As Ayoob points out, the crush grip or hard grasp may be applied with the thumbs in virtually any position, but it will benefit most when the thumbs are curled tightly down. When you curl your thumb down over your other fingers — as when you make a fist — you can squeeze harder. Try it and see for yourself.
4. The Front Sight

The bullet will go where the muzzle is pointed. To assure that the muzzle is pointed where you want the bullet to hit, you must have a reliable way of indexing the muzzle on target. That is the purpose of the front sight. The front sight helps you align your handgun’s muzzle with your point of aim on the target. This is usually accomplished in coordination with the rear sight. Verifying that the front sight is centered in the rear sight notch is called sight alignment, and superimposing your aligned front and rear sights onto your point of aim on the target is called getting a sight picture.
The more precise your shot or shots need to be, the smaller your target; or the greater your distance from your target, the more precise your sight alignment and sight picture need to be and the more time you will need to take those precise shots.
Sight alignment and trigger control are the two most important features of marksmanship. Trigger control helps the shooter maintain sight alignment and, therefore, muzzle alignment as the gun is fired and immediately afterward. Afterward is called follow-through. It means giving the bullet enough time to exit the barrel by keeping the gun directed at the point of aim while breaking the shot and, subsequently, recovering your point of aim after the gun travels through its arc of recoil so that you can prepare for a follow-up shot.
“… a firearm is a remote-control drill, and must be indexed or the hole it produces will be drilled in the wrong place…”
The goal of defensive marksmanship is to achieve combat accurate hits as fast as possible. Combat accurate hits are defined as shots that inflict disabling damage on the opponent. In any fight, the fighter who lands the first good hits on his opponent has the edge. In a gunfight, this translates into shooting well-placed bullets into your opponent before he hits you. It is foolish to sacrifice accuracy for speed. You can’t miss fast enough to win a gunfight.
Factoring out the variable of a shooter’s confidence in his shooting ability, the closer the distance, the faster the shooter can afford to shoot, and the less reliance is needed on a perfect sight picture. At close (bad breath) distances, point shooting is the way to go. To learn to shoot for combat accuracy in a gunfight (defensive shooting), the shooter must learn to shoot both with and without sights — the latter being point shooting.
As Ayoob points out:
… a firearm is a remote-control drill, and must be indexed or the hole it produces will be drilled in the wrong place. The index may be precise or coarse, depending on the nature of the shot that must be taken. Distance, target size and speed are all factors in that determination. The shooter may have the precise sight picture of the conventional marksmanship manual. They may have a similar image in line of sight, seen quickly and less than perfectly (Col. Jeff Cooper’s concept of ‘flash sight picture‘). Out to roughly seven yards with a handgun, the front sight sitting above the rear sight is adequate for a heart-area hit and can be indexed even in secondary or tertiary focus when the shooter is focused primarily on the threat (StressFire’s “StressPoint Index,” champion Todd Jarrett’s concept of “shooting out of the notch”). In poor light at extreme speed, it may suffice to simply see the silhouette of the handgun superimposed over the area of the threat that the officer wants to hit (Jim Cirillo’s “gun silhouette” concept).
5. The Smooth Roll

Good trigger control is the most important aspect of getting good hits. It becomes even more important under stress. Poor trigger control is one of the biggest reasons for dropped and errant shots. It is logical that to keep the muzzle on target, the shooter needs to smoothly operate the trigger. Erratic trigger control will drive the muzzle away from the shooter’s point of aim.
The goal is to smoothly press the trigger all the way rearward without hesitation until the shot breaks and then to ride the trigger forward as the trigger resets for the next shot. As Ayoob points out, “… each activation of the trigger is done with a single-stage movement. We use the term ‘roll the trigger’ to convey the smooth, even, uninterrupted, straight-back rearward pressure on the trigger which we seek.”
If the handgun fits the shooter’s hands, poor trigger control is typically caused by a combination of factors. These can include: poor isolation of the trigger finger (also known as “milking” the gun), inadequate placement of the trigger finger on the face of the trigger, an inadequate or unstable grip on the handgun (poor form, gripping too loosely, having to re-adjust the grip after each shot), flinching, anticipating the shot, jerking the trigger, trying to stage the trigger, and not keeping the finger on the trigger throughout a string of shots.
Trigger control can be practiced through dry fire in addition to live fire; so can the other fundamentals of marksmanship. An excellent dry fire drill for practicing all of the fundamentals is the Wall Drill.
The Wall Drill
Grasp the handgun high on the back strap so that the tang of the handgun pinches into the V-notch of your dominant strong hand.
This dry fire drill requires sustained focus and concentration. This drill builds a muscle memory or motor memory of the key marksmanship fundamentals.
Make sure that the handgun is unloaded, that there is no ammunition in the room, and that the backstop is safe and in a safe direction.
Pick an aim point on the wall or surface in front of you and point your triple-checked, unloaded handgun about an inch away from the aim point such that your front sight is right over the aim point.
Go through your pre-flight checklist of marksmanship fundamentals as discussed earlier: power stance, high hand, crush grip, front sight, sight alignment, sight picture and smooth roll of the trigger.
Think to yourself front sight, keep your sight alignment and sight picture steady and say to yourself “smooth roll” as you smoothly press the trigger all the way rearward and then let it reset for the next shot. Your aim is to keep your gun steady as you press the trigger.
When you maintain a maximum strength, crush grip or “gorilla grip” on the handgun, you may see the whites of your knuckles. That’s how you know you are gripping hard enough, thumbs curled down, thumbprint over thumbnail for greater strength.
Live Fire Focus Drill

Live fire practice of the marksmanship fundamentals is essential. The following live fire drill is called the One Hole Drill. This drill makes use of the principle that if you aim small, you will miss small.
Start out at a reasonable distance from your target. Don’t be ashamed for this to be three yards; that’s nine feet. Pick a small spot on your paper target as your point of aim. You can draw a 1-inch circle in black magic marker to mark the spot.
Go through your checklist of marksmanship fundamentals as you focus on your aim point. Punch your handgun out toward your aim point as you focus intently on your front sight and acquire a sight picture. Your front sight should be in sharp focus as contrasted with a relatively slightly blurred target and rear sight. Recognize that you can only focus sharply with your eyes on one object at a time.
Keeping your gun steady (you should be in a power stance, with a high-handed, two-handed hard grasp on your handgun), smoothly roll your trigger rearward as you stay focused on your front sight. Watch your front sight as the shot breaks and through the gun’s arc of recoil. Don’t peek over your gun to see the shot.
Hold your trigger to the rear as the gun recoils and then ride your trigger forward until it resets as the gun settles back on target. Now, prepare for your next shot by taking up any slack in the trigger.
The front sight should be in focus; the rear sight and target slightly blurred.
You can run this drill in either one of two ways: One way is to take a string of shots without checking where those shots went; after shooting the string, lower the gun to a ready position and check the results of your work. The other way is to drop the gun to the ready after each single shot or pair of shots.
Your goal is a perfect 1-inch group. You want to exercise your fundamentals at the target distance at which you are working until you attain a perfect one inch group, and when you do, you can then move backward to a greater distance (e.g., 5 to 7 to 10 to 12 to 15 to 20 to 25 yards, and so on). You keep moving backward (increasing the distance) until you can no longer shoot a perfect group at a given distance, and then you stay and work at that distance.
This drill will increase your accuracy and marksmanship skill in live fire.
Summary
Without a solid foundation in the fundamentals, advanced shooting techniques fall short. Defensive and combat-oriented shooters need to create the discipline to practice their fundamentals regularly in order to keep their edge and maintain their advanced skills.
–Bruce N. Eimer, Ph.D.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez lavished each other with praise, mocked U.S. disapproval and joked about having an atomic bomb at their disposal.

“Despite those arrogant people who do not wish us to be together, we will unite forever,” the Iranian President told socialist leader Mr. Chavez at the start of a visit to four left-leaning Latin American nations.

Despite their geographical distance, the fiery anti-U.S. ideologues have forged increasingly close ties between their fellow OPEC nations in recent years, although concrete projects have often lagged behind the rhetoric.

Mr. Ahmadinejad was in Venezuela at the start of a tour intended to shore up support as expanded Western economic sanctions kick in over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.

“The imperialist madness has been unleashed in a way that has not been seen for a long time,” Mr. Chavez said in a ceremony to welcome Mr. Ahmadinejad at his presidential palace in Caracas.

Both men hugged, beamed, held hands and showered each other with praise.

As he often does, the theatrical and provocative Mr. Chavez stuck his finger right into the global political sore spot, joking that a bomb was ready under a grassy knoll in front of his Miraflores palace steps.

“That hill will open up and a big atomic bomb will come out,” he said, the two men laughing together.

“The imperialist spokesmen say … Ahmadinejad and I are going into the Miraflores basement now to set our sights on Washington and launch cannons and missiles … It’s laughable.”

U.S. officials from President Barack Obama down have expressed disquiet over Venezuela’s close ties with Iran. They fear Mr. Chavez will weaken the international diplomatic front against Iran and could give Tehran an economic lifeline.

The United States and its allies believe Iran’s nuclear policy is aimed at producing a weapon. Iran says it is only for peaceful power generation.

As well as Venezuela, Mr. Ahmadinejad plans to visit Nicaragua, Cuba and Ecuador – a visit that Washington has said shows its “desperation” for friends.

Those nations’ governments share Mr. Chavez’s broad global views, but do not have Venezuela’s economic clout and are unable to offer Iran any significant assistance.

Regional economic powerhouse Brazil, which gave the Iranian leader a warm welcome when he visited during the previous government of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, was notably absent from his agenda this time.

Analysts are watching closely to see if Mr. Chavez will back Iran’s threat to close the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important oil shipping lane, or how much he could undermine the sanctions by providing fuel or cash to Tehran.

Mr. Ahmadinejad, who is subordinate to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on foreign policy, has said little about the rising tensions with the West, including the sentencing to death of an Iranian-American man for spying for the CIA.

The Venezuelan and Iranian leaders mostly limited their comments on Monday to mutual adulation and anti-U.S. snipes.

“President Chavez is the champion in the war on imperialism,” Mr. Ahmadinejad said.

“The only bombs we’re preparing are bombs against poverty, hunger and misery,” added Mr. Chavez, saying 14,000 new homes had been built recently in Venezuela by Iranian constructors.

by Edwin Mora 

(CNSNews.com) – An alleged Mexican drug trafficker awaiting trial in a Chicago federal court claims that the notorious Sinaloa cartel received weapons from “Operation Fast and Furious” under an alleged immunity agreement that the U.S. government made with cartel leaders, in exchange for information on rival gangs.

The defendant in a trafficking case before the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Vicente Jesus Zambada-Niebla, also claims the immunity deal allowed the criminal cartel to “continue to smuggle tons of illicit drugs” into the United States.

He wants the U.S. government to provide documents relating to the botched gun running sting operation along the southwest border, arguing that it would benefit his defense.

Operation Fast and Furious, which began in September 2009, saw the Phoenix office of the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives supervise the sale of guns to straw purchasers with the intent of tracing the guns to Mexican drug trafficking organizations and prosecuting their members. The ATF allowed about 2,000 guns to be sold in this manner.

The operation came under congressional scrutiny after it was linked to the December 2010 murder of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry at the hands of Mexican bandits.

An investigative report, spearheaded by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), found that most of the weapons provided to Mexican criminals under the operation were going to the Sinaloa cartel, arguably one of the world’s largest drug trafficking organizations.

In a court pleading filed last July, Zambada-Niebla made the claims about an immunity deal.

“Mr. Zambada-Niebla believes that the documentation that he requests will confirm that the weapons received by Sinaloa Cartel members and its leaders in Operation ‘Fast & Furious’ were provided under the agreement entered into between the United States government and [a Mexican lawyer] on behalf of the Sinaloa Cartel that is the subject of his defense …,” it said.

“Mr. Zambada-Niebla believes that the documentation will also provide evidence showing that the United States government has a policy and pattern of providing benefits, including immunity, to cartel leaders, including the Sinaloa Cartel and their members, who are willing to provide information against rival drug cartels.”

The defendant argued that he is protected from federal prosecution for trafficking drugs into the U.S. between 2004 and 2009 under an alleged immunity deal struck between the U.S. government and Sinaloa leaders.

According to court documents, Zambada-Niebla claims that the immunity deal provided the cartel’s leadership with “carte blanche to continue to smuggle tons of illicit drugs into Chicago and the rest of the United States” in exchange for information on rival drug cartels.

U.S. prosecutors deny the existence of such an immunity deal between the U.S. government and the cartel.

Nevertheless, the U.S. government last September filed a motion to invoke the Classified Information Procedures Act, which is aimed at assuring that national security information stemming from criminal cases – such as details associated with CIA operations – are not leaked to the public during court proceedings.

In a court pleading filed in September, U.S. prosecutors claimed that Zambada-Niebla’s allegations about Fast and Furious have no merit.

“Defendant requests all information in the possession of the U.S. government related to an ATF investigation referred to as ‘Fast and Furious’…” it said. “Defendants request related to Fast and Furious … and other unrelated matters are gratuitous and wholly unrelated to any legitimate discovery issues in this case.”

Zambada-Niebla, who was arrested in Mexico in March 2009 and extradited to the U.S. eleven months later, is accused of smuggling tons of cocaine and heroin into the U.S.

He claims he was working on behalf of the U.S. Department of Justice, Drug Enforcement Administration, FBI, and U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, court documents show.

The defendant’s pleading highlighted a July 2011 letter sent by Issa and Grassley to Attorney General Eric Holder, “suggesting that multiple United States agencies were employing as informants members of Mexican drug organizations.”

“The evidence seems to indicate that the Justice Department not only allowed criminals to smuggle weapons, but that tax payers’ dollars in the form of informant payments, may have financed those engaging in such activities,” the pleading added.

Tehran’s latest display of military power will bring it into close proximity of US warships in strategic oil route.

Iran’s navy has started a 10-day drill in international waters near the strategic oil route that passes through the Strait of Hormuz.

The exercises, dubbed “Velayat 90″, could bring Iranian ships into proximity with United States Navy vessels in the area. “Velayat” is a Persian word for “supremacy” and it is currently used as a title of deference for the Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The war games cover a 2,000km stretch of sea off the Strait of Hormuz, northern parts of the Indian Ocean and into the Gulf of Aden, near the entrance to the Red Sea, state television reported.

The drill will be Iran’s latest show of strength in the face of mounting international criticism over its controversial nuclear programme, which the West fears is aimed at developing atomic weapons. Tehran denies those charges, insisting the program is for peaceful purposes only.

Adm Habibollah Sayyari, the navy chief, said Iran is holding the drill to show off its prowess and defense capabilities.

“To show off its might, the navy needs to be present in international waters. It’s necessary to demonstrate the navy’s defense capabilities,” state TV quoted Sayyari as saying.

Sayyari said submarines, surface-to-sea missile systems, missile-launching vessels, torpedoes and drones will be employed in the maneuvers.

Strategic waterway

The Strait of Hormuz is of strategic significance as the passageway for about a third of the world’s oil tanker traffic. Beyond it lie vast bodies of water, including the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

The US Navy’s Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet is also active in the area, as are warships of several other countries that patrol for pirates there.

Iran regularly holds war games and has also been active in fighting piracy. Both the US and Israel have not ruled out a military option against Iran over its nuclear program.

Iranian hard-liners have come out with occasional threats that Tehran would seal off the key waterway if the US or Israel moved against the country’s nuclear facilities.

Iranian authorities have given no indication the strait will be closed during the exercise, and it has not been shut during previous drills.

The US, Britain and Canada announced new measures against Iran’s energy and financial sectors last month and the European Union is considering a ban, already in place in the US, on imports of Iranian oil.