Did Chinese Military Hackers Take Over Nuclear Armed B-52? - 4 articles to consi

[Guest guest]

At 02:57 AM 10/2/07, you wrote:

 

 

To find the truth, we must consider different theories. These

articles seem important to consider, and if true, could mean that the war

with Iran has been derailed. " Chinese military figures wrote that a

hacker could have more power than a nuclear bomb.â€

----------------------------

 

http://www.oregontruthalliance.org/?q=node/234

 

Command Override: How Chinese Military Hackers Took Over a Nuclear Armed

B-52

 

It is the absolute responsibility of everybody in uniform to disobey

an order that is either illegal or immoral.†-General Peter Pace,

Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff addressing the National Press Club, Feb

17/06

 

Command Override: How Chinese Military Hackers Took Over a Nuclear

Armed B-52

By William Thomas

September 22, 2007

[Ed. note: This piece is provided for informational purposes and for the

citations & links provided. Check the original or contact the author

to seek further verification of the analysis.]

The story sounded like a sequel to “Dr. Strangeloveâ€. Leaked by the

Pentagon's news service, Military Affairs to quell scuttlebutt racing

through the ranks-and perhaps warn the world-a U.S. Air Force B-52

strategic bomber “mistakenly†loaded with six nuclear cruise missiles

took off from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota on August 30, 2007 and

flew for more than three hours over at least five states, before landing

at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.

The mistake was so egregious, the National Command Authority comprising

President George BU.S.H and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates were

quickly informed. The Sec Def has since been assured that nuclear weapons

“were part of a routine transfer between the two bases… at no time was

the public danger.â€

Both statements are false.

 

In fact, nuclear weapons like these are carefully crated for shipment

between bases, and placed inside the bomb bays or cargo compartments of

transporting aircraft. In stunning contrast, this reporter has learned

from two independent and highly placed sources that the six Advanced

Cruise Missiles dangling from the B-52's fatigued and flexible wings were

fully armed and ready to fire-except for a single fail/safe switch under

the Command Pilot's control.

The quickly blacked out episode has prompted an Air Force investigation.

Gates, whose official defense computer was hacked last June,

necessitating the shutdown of the entire Sec Def network, has ordered

daily briefings on the Air Force inquiry. The Minot base commander, who

might turn out to be the hero in this frightening affair, was relieved of

his command.

DR. STRANGELOVE VISITS BOURBON STREET

As far as anyone knows, no U.S. aircraft has ever been armed with a full

wartime loadout of six nuclear weapons. “Nothing like this has ever

been reported before and we have been assured for decades that it was

impossible,†declared Representative Markey, co-chair of the House Task

Force on Nonproliferation. [AP Sept 5/07; Seattle Times Sept

5/07]

Hans Kristensen, an expert on U.S. nuclear forces, says he knows of no

other publicly acknowledged case of live nuclear weapons being flown on

bombers since the late 1960s.

[http://ace.mu.nu] Stanley Kubrick's “Dr. Strangelove Or How I Learned to Stop

Worrying and Love the Bomb†was released in 1964

Each of the six ACMs carried a “dialable†150-kiloton W80-1

warhead--for a combined total of 60-times the destructive power of the

bomb that melted the city and inhabitants of Hiroshima--over the

unsuspecting residents of five states. Depending on the route flown, a

half-dozen armed nuclear weapons wafted for three-and-a-half hours over

North Dakota and either South Dakota or Minnesota, Nebraska or Missouri,

Oklahoma or Arkansas, and Louisiana.

It's no secret that Dick Cheney and his presidential surrogate intend to

bomb Iran into the Kingdom to Come. [bBC News Aug 29/07]

But New Orleans?

 

“What does the government have against Louisiana?†asked a blogger

named Lobster Martini.

[www.democraticunderground.com]

TOUGH LOVE

The “mistake†was supposedly discovered when the B-52 landed at

Barskdale, where the plane should have been secured by an armed security

detail. Instead, it simply parked on the flight line, where ground crew

noticed the words “nuclear armed†stenciled on the sides of the

missiles.

Three officers confirmed the warheads were, in Bush's argot,

“nucular.â€

But the mission could have ended in a “broken arrow†nuclear calamity

if the bomber had crashed, or inadvertently dropped its ordnance.

Munitions, and even entire engines-such as the No. 1 turbine that fell

off an American Airlines DC 10 after taking off from Chicago's O'Hare

airport in May, 1979, killing two people on the ground and all 271 people

onboard-occasionally drop from underwing pylons in flight. [Chicago

Tribune May 26-30/79; National Transportation Safety Board Aircraft

Accident Report NSTB-AAR-79-17]

A few other examples:

 

 

-- A B-36 ferrying a nuclear weapon from Biggs Air Force Base, Texas

to Kirtland accidentally drops a bomb in the New Mexico desert.

[ww.nuclearfiles.org]

-- A fighter pilot accidentally dropped a BDU-33 dummy bomb into a

house, narrowly missing a family of three.

[www.f-117a.com

]

-- A 500-pound bomb fell from an FA-18 plane during a routine

training exercise and exploded on the edge of a U.S. base 100 miles north

of Sarajevo. [ AP July 17/02]

-- A National Guard F-16 fighter jet on a nighttime training mission

strafed an elementary school in New Jersey with 25 rounds of depleted

uranium ammunition. [AP Nov 4/04]

-- Another U.S. Air Force practice bomb accidentally on the Yorkshire

countryside in England. [ BBC Jan 12/04]

-- Electromagnetic interference from military transmitters may have

caused an F-16 jet to accidentally drop a 500 pound bomb on rural West

Georgia. [Montreal Gazette May 12/89]

A crash, mid-air explosion or structural breakup-not uncommon

occurrences with heavily-laden B-52s-could have ignited the high

explosives used to implode the warheads. The ultimate dirty bomber's

fantasy could have seen plutonium--the deadliest substance ever conjured

by humans-raining down over what would become a statewide “national

sacrifice zoneâ€, off-limits to all life-forms for more than 4 billion

years.

Barksdale AFB is no stranger to nuclear accidents. On July 6, 1959, a

C-124 “Flying Boxcar†crashed on takeoff, completely destroying the

aircraft and the nuclear weapon it was carrying.

[www.cdi.org]

 

[see: “Broken Arrows†]

PROTOCOLS

The Air Combat Command has ordered a command-wide stand down for

September 14, 2007 to “review procedures.†Though they actually

responded flawlessly to apparently authentic orders, the highly trained

specialists who carried out the nuclear loadout have been temporarily

“decertified†from handling nukes.

Representative Ike Skelton, chairman of the House Armed Services

Committee, called the mishandling of arms capable of destroying cities

“deeply disturbing. There is no more serious issue than the security

and proper handling of nuclear weapons.†[AP Sept 5/07]

The crewdogs who flew their assigned mission without mishap have been

ordered not to mention that all pilots are required to perform a “walk

around†inspection of their airplanes and calculate elaborate

“weight-and-balance†graphs before attempting to aviate. Failure to

notice or be informed of the much heavier nuclear casings on the missiles

they were carrying would have jeopardized flight safety.

According to a well-informed and extremely thorough U.S. military source

I call “Hank†(with whom I have broken major stories over the past 15

years), someone “must have adjusted the bomber's balance. It had to

have been done.â€

In addition to knowing what is externally attached to their airplane, the

amount of paperwork, signatures, and discrete passwords involved in

releasing a nuclear weapon from its storage bunker and loading it onto an

airframe are more formidable than flak.

And there were six of them.

PICKUP AND DELIVERY

The coded message to upload and launch the B-52 from Minot with six live

nuclear weapons carried the signature of the “football†containing

the day's nuclear launch codes that is carried close to the president at

all times by a specially detailed aide. After checking and

counter-checking their coded orders, as few as a dozen people in uniform

were actually involved in the subsequent secret nuclear mission.

According to Hank, at least three high-ranking officers were escorted

into Minot AFB's nuclear arms bunker after passing through multiple doors

secured by pass codes, whose complete sequences were supplied each

officer, who only knew part of each code. One hiccup, a fumbled code

sequence, or “the wrong wrench†would have cancelled the loadout

instantly.

SAFETY FIRST

Because the base had stood down for Labor Day, the timing was ideal for

security. In his standing orders for August 30, 2007, 5th Bomb Wing

commander Colonel Bruce Emig encouraged his troops to “Enjoy a safe

Labor Day weekend.

“Warbirds, It's hard to believe that Labor Day weekend is already

here!†the colonel wrote. “Though cooler temperatures are right

around the corner, the weather forecasters tell me that we should have a

warm, summer-like weekend. Since Air Combat Command and Air Force Space

Command have declared Friday a Family Day, many of you should be able to

enjoy a nice, 4-day break as we transition from summer to fall. I wish

all of you a relaxing and enjoyable time off, and urge you all once again

to please keep safety in mind in all you do!â€

[www.libertypost.org]

Under a bomber's nuclear umbrella in a discrete corner of the sprawling

airbase, air, ground and ordnance crews did not converse with each other.

Or anyone else. Everyone involved knew better than to ask questions that

could abruptly end their careers by inadvertently tipping people who did

not need to know.

LOADOUT

Within hours, an airplane with a wingspan longer than the Wright

Brothers' first flight was safely loaded with avgas, sandwiches, and six

nuclear weapons. Uploaded to the bomber using an accordion cradle on each

missile trolley, each Advanced Cruise Missile was fueled once it was

secured to a hard point under the aircraft's wings. Because the ACMs were

not inside a bomb bay, where they could be armed in flight, each

underslung missile had to be fully armed before takeoff. “Wing

walker†is not a B-52 job description.

The plates connecting the firing circuits of each warhead to the cockpit

were then activated, and the safeties were pulled from each clearly

marked “nuclear weaponâ€-rendering it “liveâ€. For the Explosive

Ordnance Disposal detail who performed the loadout, there could be no

doubt they were activating six nuclear weapons.

Alarms on the flight line should have sounded as soon as they sniffed hot

ions leaking from the pulled pile rods in six slowly fissioning warheads.

But the alarms remain silenced. That order, Hank insisted, could only

have come under the properly coded signature of the National Command

Authority-Commander-in-Chief G.W. Bush or Secretary of Defense, Robert

Gates.

The ensuing takeoff was an event branded on the central nervous system of

every creature in auditory range as eight jet engines at maximum takeoff

thrust levitated six missiles, up to 46,000 gallons of fuel, and an

airplane the length of a 150-foot ship into a blue yonder that had just

become much wilder. Everyone within miles knew that a B-52 had come into

Minot and taken off again. But only God and the devil knew where it was

going.

[www.boeing.com]

And they weren't saying.

 

WHO DUNNIT?

In the silence left by this momentous departure, if there were questions,

nobody voiced them. Perhaps there were a few quietly delivered high-fives

instead. Despite the high stress that runs counter to every human

instinct, everyone involved had carried out their assigned duties with

complete attention to the details required to launch a half-dozen live

nuclear weapons “safelyâ€. The professionally conducted operation was

carried off in complete secrecy, without a hitch, only after the loadout

and launch order had been digitally confirmed as coming from the

NCA.

There was only one problem regarding the originators of those orders,

Hank emailed me:

“IT WAS NOT US.â€

 

FAULTY (COMPUTER) TOWERS

Let us quickly review. My earlier exclusive on my former website,

willthomas.net, disclosed how in October 2006, North Korea's leaders

asked China to take out Japan's shiny new recon satellite before it could

be tasked by American officers to monitor Pyongyang's first atomic test.

Blowing up someone's satellite is an act of war. But overriding its

“Made In China†microchips with a remote command from the ground

could never be proven. Even if no solar flares were recorded at the

time.

This first Chinese demo got the Pentagon's attention. After all, their

stated goal of “Full Spectrum Dominance†over Earth's land, seas,

airspace and electromagnetic spectrum depends on America's successful

weaponization of space. But as the Joint Chiefs are only now discovering,

many of the supposedly secure chips in America's civilian

infrastructure-as well as all military communications, surveillance and

weapons systems-have been “Wal-Marted†by U.S. corporations to

low-bid Chinese suppliers-who rigged them for failure or takeover by

“command override†in the event of war.

[see: “Faulty Microchips Threaten U.S. Attack On Iran†]

http://www.willthomasonline.net/willthomasonline/Faulty_Chips.html

SEE DICK RUN

The second demonstration of China's newfound capabilities to manipulate

microchips came in late February 2007, when Dick Cheney's 757, flying

home from Australia where the Vice President had not been well received

by the locals, was forced to divert to Singapore.

In a story intriguingly tagged, “U.S. Denies Cheney Forced To Land,â€

Agence France-Presse reported that the White House admitted the

Vice-President's “specially secured†Boeing 757 had “suffered

electrical problems†before landing in Singapore. But Cheney spinner

Lea Anne McBride insisted, “This was the preplanned, scheduled

refueling stop. We were not diverted. The vice president did not get off

the plane during his refueling stop.†[AFP Feb 26/07]

Wrong again.

 

According to U.S. military personnel present on the tarmac at Paya Lebar

Air Base-who according to Hank said were “trying to yak with the

locals: 'Can you get us this part? Do you have a Radio Shack?'â€-a small

Chinese delegation met with Cheney outside his electronically-challenged

aircraft. Wandering in and out of the brief conversation, Hank's sources

described the brief encounter, which occurred shortly after 1400 hours

Singapore time.

Disembarking Air Force One, Cheney said something like, “Gosh, we got

this kind of interesting problem…â€

“No, you don't understand sir,†a Chinese official interrupted.

“This is how we brought you here. And this is why.â€

Cheney's visitors itemized the separately wired galley stoves, reading

lights, in-flight video, and power outlets onboard the Vice President's

aircraft that had all conked out in flight. They knew this, they said,

because the electronic signals that had disabled the microchips

controlling these various devices had been directed by their government.

In an impressive feat, the Chinese military had located and selectively

targeted a stealthy aircraft painted with radar-absorbent materials

flying at nearly 500 knots at 35,000 feet without a public

itinerary.

According to Hank's boots-on-the-tarmac sources, the mostly one-way

conversation in Singapore concerned “Gulf of Tonkin

possibilities.â€

“They reached out and touched someone,†Hank related. “They had a

message they wanted to get across: 'You've got ships out there in the

Gulf. If this thing cooks off, all bets are off because some of the

things that are put out there, we are really now wanting people to talk

about.'â€

The Chinese were referring to their control of most of the microchips on

this planet.

A very thoughtful Dick Cheney departed two hours later.

OPENING THE GATES

The next Chinese digital demo came last June. In what came to be called

“the most successful cyber attack ever mounted on the U.S. defence

department,†Chinese military hacked into a Pentagon computer network

serving the defense secretary's personal office.

Like their American counterparts, the People's Liberation Army (PLA)

regularly probes U.S. military networks. But American officials said

these latest cyber attack caused grave concern when China demonstrated it

“could disrupt U.S. defenses systems at critical times.â€

“The PLA has demonstrated the ability to conduct attacks that disable

our system... and the ability in a conflict situation to re-enter and

disrupt on a very large scale,†revealed a former official, adding that

the PLA has also penetrated the networks of U.S. arms corporations and

war-launching think-tanks. [Financial Times Sept 3/07]

A Chinese official named Jiang repeated his government's denial that it

had penetrated other government and military computer networks. But

British and German newspapers cited intelligence and other officials

saying that government and military networks in Germany, the United

States and Britain had been broken into by Chinese army hackers this

summer.

According to the Associated Press: “China's military has openly

discussed using cyber attacks as a means of harrying or defeating a more

powerful conventional military. In a 1999 paper on unconventional

strategies titled 'Unlimited Warfare' two top Chinese military figures

wrote that a hacker could have more power than a nuclear

bomb.â€

In a report this year, security software maker Symantec Corp. listed

China as having the second most malicious computer activity in the

world-after the United States. [AP Sept 6/07]

Speaking as a soldier, Hank commented, “The June hack showed an

enormous hole in our ability to protect and communicate our

information.

LOST IN SPACE

The next hack came almost immediately, when Russian computers controlling

the International Space Station's orientation and supplies of oxygen and

water inexplicably failed while the station's three crewmembers were

hosting seven visiting shuttle astronauts.

Among the station's network of six Russian computers, only two remained

functioning. A system-wide re-boot usually resolved smaller hitches, But

this time, the system was unable to re-boot.

" A failure of this type has not occurred before, " the BBC

reported. [bBC June 14/07]

" This is serious, " stated James Oberg, a retired rocket

scientist turned author and consultant. " These computers run their

life support, so if they can't be restored, the space station could

become uninhabitable. " Oberg added, " Statistically, this is not

random. There is some new environmental factor that must identified and

isolated, and neither step is trivial. " [TechNewsWorld June

14/07]

Russian flight controllers and onboard engineers traced the problem to

" odd readings " in electrical power cables feeding the Russian

computers through a corroded junction box labeled BOK 3. [space.com July

16/07]

The gremlins returned to the Russian machines on February 5, when another

ISS computer system crashed in the Zvezda Service Module that routes data

between orientation sensors and four positioning gyroscopes. The space

station's solar power stopped supplying power, and communications were

cut with Earth.

Though power and comms were restored three hours later, New Scientist

reports, " The cause of the computer crash remains a mystery. NASA

has so far not identified the cause of the crash. " [New Scientist

Feb 5/02]

But Hank was on it. " They had limited oxygen, a limited time

frame, " he observed. The astronauts onboard the space station didn't

know if the next computer malfunction " would open an airlock. "

But like an airliner in flight, the station should have smoothly shifted

over to backup systems.

It didn't.

" The word 'redundancy' never got into the story, " Hank pointed

out. Instead, all three backup circuit boards wired into three isolated

circuits, " had to blow out in the same way at the exact same time.

The fault that occurred in the first board, the second board, and the

third board all had to be the same damn thing at the same damn

time. "

" Impossible, " he declared. Especially, since each of the

simultaneously faulty microchips had been " stress tested to hell and

back. Except for internal stressors. "

Except for " Made In China " microchip mischief.

While it is not yet confirmed that the February 5 microchip malfunction

was related to the June 14 space station hack, according to Hank's

sources, on that earlier date the Chinese pulled the equivalent of

Cheney's Singapore diversion--in space. " Nobody got busted for

it, " he adds. " You always hear about the company at

fault. "

Not this time.

AC WE SEE

While White House fundamentalists remained mesmerized by the firepower

ostensibly under their command, Beijing kept trying to send a very

different message. Their next installment came in early September 2007,

when U.S. Air Force officers passed through multiple levels of security

and entered the inner computer sanctum of America's Air and Space Command

deep under Cheyenne Mountain. This digital repository stores regularly

updates archives needed to execute " clean reinstalls " in case

air force computer systems crash or are otherwise compromised.

Entering the quietly humming room, the air force officers were shocked to

see monitors aglow with light. The displays were supposed to be off. As

they watched in shock and awe, randomly typed letters scrolled across a

screen. The words were gibberish. But the message was heart-stoppingly

clear: " We Can Play With Your Toys! "

The sender " left breadcrumbs, " Hank related. The deliberately

attached ISP (Internet Service Provider) pointed to China.

This was bad enough. But what really freaked out the officers was the

realization that none of these " stand alone " machines was

online. None of them contained a modem!

The only way to access these machines, Hank revealed, is to " use the

sneaker net to walk up to it and tap on the keyboard. And yet they were

interacting, and they were doing it in real time. They fussed with our

stuff. These guys were able to go into what was a stand alone system and

take control of it. "

How did the PLA hack supposedly secure air force computers lacking

network modems? Just like as select power companies can now pipe the

Internet to home computers through electrical power lines, the Chinese

were able to play on SAC's supposedly secure computers through the AC

power cables connecting them to the national power...

" grid " .

But how did they break supposedly " unbreakable " military

encryption?

And how were they able to transmit signals to override specific chips

buried under a mountain of granite halfway around the globe? According to

Hank, the International Space Station was not in line-of-sight with China

when it's onboard computers and back-up systems simultaneously went

down.

HIT MAN

When it comes to dialing up a bomber to drop nuclear weapons on another

country, " It's kind of like hiring a hit man, " Hank explained.

You meet him in the parking lot with the assignment, a weapon, and cash.

Later, you confirm that you haven't changed your mind. Then the mission

proceeds, and either the target or the hit man is taken out.

In the case of the mission out of Minot, the First Phase began with an

initiation order authorizing weapons release to arm a B-52 specially

flown in for this operation. Proper codes and paperwork provided the

Pilot in Command with an initial heading to fly, and initial waypoints or

nav points to punch into the plane's GPS. No destination was provided.

The pilots were just supposed to get in and drive.

They did.

 

Once the B-52 was airborne, it flew into an electronic black hole. No

electromagnetic emissions came from the bomber. There were no radio calls

to home base asking, " Are you guys sure you really want to do

this? " Even more startling, no coded IFF squawks identified the BUFF

(Big Ugly Fat Fucker) as friendly to prowling post-9/11 fighters. And no

transponder beeps identified the airplane and its mission.

This is not the normal procedure for transporting weapons, or flying a

B-52 through heavily-trafficked air corridors over the Continental United

States. Every aircraft flying at high altitudes over CONUS, (or through

Controlled Airspace around airports at lower attitudes) must transmit

their identity on an assigned transponder frequency.

Commercial planes squawk in their own dialect. " When you're talking

a government vehicle, like a C-130 [military transport], that's another

level up, " Hank noted. " It's a different kind of squawk. ATC

knows how to treat that kind of traffic differently. A B-52 is another

level up. Controllers don't see that every day. A C-5 [flying down from

Colorado to dust a hurricane, for example]-they really don't see that

every day. "

The transponder code of the B-52 out of Minot would have prioritized it

to civilian Air Traffic Control, and they would have cleared a corridor

for its exclusive track-much like a presidential motorcade.

If this Bad Boy had been transferring six advanced nuclear cruise

missiles to Barksdale, as official spin insisted, its transponder would

have squawked: " Hey, guess what? We've got nukes onboard! Make sure

no one runs into us. And if this signal stops scramble recovery people

wearing proper attire. "

Or code to that effect.

But this did not happen.

" The Situation Room in the White House was not stood up, but they

still have people there, " Hank continued. " One of their jobs is

to track nuclear weapons. Somebody in that head shed should have seen a

transponder code matched up with nuclear weapons loaded onto that

aircraft. That should have been something that went up on the board. They

would have known that a B-52 was getting a full loadout, and that all

procedures had been followed. And someone else would have said, 'Mmm, six

nukes. We'll keep an eye on it. "

And given an order for radar operators to push a button to highlight that

particular blip.

Instead, the blacked-out BUFF flew on.

TARGET IRAN

High in the stratosphere, where the nitrous oxide exhaust from eight

fuel-hungry turbines attacked this planet's shredding ozone layer,

boosting global warming another notch toward a catastrophic methane

meltdown, wings never designed to carry heavy ordnance flexed up and down

like a bird in flight. The crew must have considered the long roster of

crashed Stratofortress with ?broken arrows? onboard. Not for a second

could they forget that the six live nuclear weapons strapped to their

wings were as close to detonation as a gremlin's wet dream.

Or the fail-safe switch under the Plane Commander's gloves.

An hour or two out of Minot, a bell chimed in the cockpit and a secure

printer spat out a coded paper message. Even if they betrayed no emotion,

the pilots must have felt a chill. Because the mission's next critical

Fail-Safe had been passed. " We've thought about it, and the mission

is still a go, " the message essentially read. If these new orders

had not been received, or had been issued incorrectly, the plane would

have immediately turned back to the nearest base capable of handling its

special needs.

But their orders were in order. Positively authenticated by both pilots

as coming from the NCA, the new message received onboard the bomber

issued the radio frequencies, call signs and rendezvous coordinates for

" hitting " one of three aerial refueling planes constantly

orbiting over the Gulf of Mexico. Their new " Go Code " also

identified their target region. After topping off their tanks, they were

to take up a heading for another Gulf, half a world away.

BLIND MAN'S BUFF

Wouldn't the base commander, or the other officers involved in sending

live nuclear weapons toward Iran have second thoughts about a strike that

could trigger an even bigger political-military chain reaction?

Not necessarily, Hank explained. Military leaders usually favor

intimidation in place of bloodshed. If the Iranians could be dissuaded

from acquiring a nuclear deterrent of their own, or decide to stop

supplying their Shiite brothers next door with sophisticated

shaped-charge rockets capable of penetrating the depleted uranium hides

of M-1 Abrams tanks-terrific! Everyone involved in the mission must have

hoped that in this high-stakes brinksmanship, when Iranian sensors picked

up the radioactive signature of an inbound American nuclear bomber

strike, the mullahs in Teheran would burn their Korans and turn to

Jesus.

On the other hand, how do you say " pissed off " in Persian? The

mullahs might panic and start pushing buttons of their own. Especially

when the Israeli Air Force was notified of the strike, and launched

" supporting " fighter-bombers of their own.

In any case, it was out of the hands of the base commander and his

immediate superiors. Since any one of these key staff officers could

conceivably be kidnapped or impersonated during a nuclear strike, none

had the authority to issue a recall order. Even if someone in the chain

of command issued an RTB (Return To Base), SAC bomber crews en route to

the final IP coordinates to commence their attack are trained to ignore

all such entreaties.

In fact, a frantic " Come home for lunch, " or " Call your

wife " command would confirm for the crew that something really was

amiss, and they were at war.

In this way, a series of rote military assumptions can make an ash out of

you and me.

WHAT, ME WORRY?

Meanwhile, the man under whose digitally coded authority this strike was

being carried out, remained completely unaware that six nuclear cruise

missiles with his name on them were headed toward Iran.

Phase Three would have issued coded authorization to take out their

assigned targets. One target confirmed by two highly placed, independent

sources was a nuclear power plant hard against the mountains of Iran.

" But the bomber would still have five missiles left. And it would

not leave the area empty, " Hank insisted. " If they go loaded

for bear, they're not going to leave with a rabbit. "

After all, he added, a pre-BDA [bomb Damage Assessment] would have been

done before launching the bomber " to determine how many it would

take. And they needed six? "

Despite all the Hollywood hype, cruise missiles are notoriously

inaccurate. Just ask the folks ducking strays in Kuwait or Iran. Still, a

cruise missile striking within 30 miles would have taken out that Iranian

power plant. But if the nuclear-tipped ACM had detonated over its

pile?

" Bad. Bad. Very bad, " as Hank would say. Because the resulting

electromagnetic pulses from such a synergistic chain reaction would

have--among other things--fried every unhardened Chinese microchip aboard

every American ship, plane and vehicle in the Persian Gulf.

" You don't have to sink the CAG, just turn it off, " Hank said,

referring to the formidable--yet completely microchip dependent--Carrier

Air Group steaming off the coast of Iran. " Once they realized that

these ships were just bobbing around out there, " the bad guys would

have " launched 10,000 rowboats " from surrounding shorelines to

go play pirates.

Was this why several Chinese Aegis destroyers were steaming in from the

east about 250 nautical miles from the Straits of Hormuz? Was this why

two or three Chinese submarines had been deployed to the area of the

transiting destroyers the week before?

Or were the two Chinese anti-aircraft destroyers part of an elaborate

fail-safe in case the demonstration glitched and the bomber could not be

recalled? Even if their anti-aircraft missiles could not reach the

distant plane (easily tracked through its rigged Chinese chips), specific

signals sent from the ship could have turned the plane around. Or its

fuel off.

What were the Chinese thinking?

CHINESE CHECKERS

Ever since Katrina, and the subsequent standing wave put up off the south

coast of Africa by HAARP to deflect hurricanes from the U.S. Atlantic and

Gulf Coasts, Beijing has felt under siege as earthquakes and wild,

shipping-interrupting storms continue to be conducted " all the way

to China " by the powerful Gakona, Alaskan transmitter. [see

" Where Have All The Hurricanes Gone " -upcoming on

willthomasonline.net]

Three times, the Chinese have attempted to override HAARP. And failed.

Elaborate demonstrations of their electronic warfare

capabilities--including fizzing circuits in space, and a face-to-face

with the U.S. Vice-President in Singapore--had not persuaded American

leaders to A: Refrain from hoisting a false flag over a Persian Gulf of

Tonkin, and B: Turn HAARP off.

Surely, Beijing must have reasoned, ordering a United State Air Force

strategic bomber loaded out with six armed nuclear weapons to fly over

the United States and then on towards Iran would conclusively demonstrate

who was now in charge.

" This op would not have 'Made In China' stamped all over it, "

Hank pointed out. " Instead, American bombs, American bombers and

American systems were used. " No matter how the mission had

proceeded, if Washington had been forced to tell the world, " It

wasn't us. We lost control of our bomber carrying six atomic

warheads " --how would that have looked to a global audience already

angry over America's misuse of its military might?

Whatever Beijing's intentions, Hank was not the only person in the U.S.

military to have his head rearranged by this latest Chinese

demonstration. " They might have wanted to go all the way. Of they

might have wanted to put pieces in play and see how far they could

go, " he surmised. " Maybe the Chinese started, and stopped

it. "

Either way, the unauthorized Minot mission has bluntly shown the White

House and the Pentagon: " If you start something, we can stop it. You

no longer know how much control you have over your own weapons systems

because we can play with them at will. No matter where you are, no matter

what you're doing, if you're using our chips you are vulnerable. And you

can't know if our Trojan chips are in your systems unless you tear apart

every circuits in every surveillance, communications, weapons system,

pipelines, telecom and power grid in your entire military and civilian

inventory and look. And then dismantle every network they are connected

to. "

" And one more thing, " Beijing inferred, " If you take

offense and pop off a missile, remember, we might make it do a

loop-de-loop and come right back down on its originating

silo. "

Hank and others in America's command hierarchy remain alarmed and

puzzled-which makes them even more uneasy. Would China's leadership have

precipitated a cloud of radioactive fallout downwind over their own

population? Emphatically, yes. The country's generals have long counted

an expendable population and land mass as key factors in

" winning " a nuclear war.

Best case scenario, this recent flight of fancy was a warning for

Washington to chill the bomb Iran rhetoric, and dial down HAARP.

" Maybe the Chinese got it right and they were just messin' with

us, " Hank mused. " Or they got it wrong, and something very bad

almost happened. But why only one plane? Why stop there? It's a limited

use of a system that is now exposed. "

But what can we do about it?

And what a message it sent!

[see " Cyber War " ]

RECALL

Phase Three of the mission would have sent coded target grid coordinates

and time(s) of weapon(s) release, as well as updates on weather over the

area, enemy defense status and friendly escorts. Those orders never

came.

Instead, Phase Four was initiated. When the cockpit teleprinter spat out

paper tape again, it read, in so many words: " Forget the whole

thing. Abort the mission. Turn back. " The only people capable of

issuing a nuclear strike recall order would be the President, the

Secretary of Defense, a specific designate of the SecDef authorized by

special code. Or a Chinese military hacker.

As Hank notes, " The plane had to be diverted to a base that could

handle nuclear weapons. " That would be Barksdale. But...

" Live hot nukes would have tripped alarms on the tarmac when it

touched down. Either they were nonfunctional on both ends [Minot and

Barksdale], which is scary beyond belief considering what we're talking

about. " Or the Joint Chiefs or the NCA could have ordered the

radiation sensors silenced to keep the mission-and the hijacked

mission-under wraps. Or the Chinese could have turned them off. If the

system is digital, Beijing probably controls it.

Bottom line: if the incoming bomber had crashed approach, no one

responding would have known they were dealing with a quiver-full of

" broken arrows " .

BARKSDALE

Thought the missiles were never launched, they still remain in play. As

Hank worried, " Six nukes are now forward deployed to the air force

base that handles Middle East ops. "

A former counter-terrorism expert with the CIA and the State Department

shares his concern. Larry Johnson does not buy the official story that

six nuclear weapons were " mistakenly " flown over the USA-not

after a retired B-52 pilot reminded him. " The only time you put such

weapons on a plane is when they are on alert, or if the crew has been

tasked to move the weapons to a specific site. " Besides running

nuclear war exercises like the Global Guardian drill it ran on the

morning of 9/11, Barksdale AFB deploys " heavies " to the Middle

East.

Like Hank, Johnson wants to know, " Why would we want to preposition

nuclear weapons at a base conducting Middle East operations? " His

pilot pal believes that an insider leaker tried to send up a bright red

flag. Johnson asks, " Did someone at Barksdale try to indirectly warn

the American people that the Bush Administration is staging nukes for

Iran? "

[www.antiwar.com]

But Hank points out another problem. Cruise missiles-which are

essentially autonomous, unpiloted drones-have special needs. Since six

cruise missiles showing up at Barksdale were an oddity, can they be

adequately stored and maintained there? The Gulf Coast is " a very

different environment " than Nebraska, Hank emphasizes. How long is

Barksdale going to hold onto them? In the hurricane season?

" Are we going to see some of them floating out on the tide? "

Hank wants to know. Americans need a big confirm that these weapons have

been sent back north to a better home.

 

An Interview Verifying " Command Override "

 

http://www.oregontruthalliance.org/?q=node/235

 

VERIFICATION

By William Thomas

Unable as a professional journalist to go to press without verification,

I turned for confirmation to a second highly placed source within the

U.S. power structure. The following questions were placed by an

intermediary well-known to me, to a source who does not know Hank, but

like him, cannot be identified:

Was the target Iran?

Yes.

 

Was it a nuclear power plant in Iran?

Yes.

 

Was the power plant the Bushehr nuclear power plant on the coast?

No. Let me rephrase that. A nuclear power plant, but not that

one.

 

Were Bush and Cheney involved?

No.

 

Was the flight crew involved?

The crew did not know what was going on.

 

[Taping started as the interview resumed.]

Was it the Americans?

No.

 

Was it the Russians?

No.

 

Was it the Japanese?

Yes.

 

Was it Japanese technology?

Yes.

 

Do the Japanese know what it was being used for?

No.

 

Was it related to the June incident?

Yes. It is the same technology.

 

Was the order placed like a Trojan Horse?

It's tied into something else. It's not a simple answer.

 

Was it like a microchip virus?

Kind of. It's in that category. But not exactly it. It's a technology

that's not widely known.

 

Was it electromagnetic or a microchip?

A technology not widely understood. You already asked me that.

 

What technology did Japan have that China did not have?

It is a highly secretive thing that only China knows about and U.S.

does not know about.

 

Is it technology that they had found in Japan and immigrated into

technology they have?

China has gone as far as they could figure out to go. And there were

some pieces that the Japanese had. Like if you were doing some kind of

experiment and not being able to complete it.

 

Is the technology the Japanese had not normally used?

Yes.

 

Is it military technology?

It can be applied to military. It can be applied to other things.

 

Was this done to prevent war or to be used to make war happen?

Can't answer that question that way. The technology can be applied to

anything that you want to apply it to. The Chinese purchased the

technology from the Japanese and they told the Japanese that 'you don't

need to know what we're doing with it.'

 

Was it purchased from a private company?

Yes. It's not from the government. It's from an individual group, a

group of people who developed the technology.

 

Would it be possible to get the name of the Japanese group?

No.

 

What would the term for such a Japanese group be?

It's a group of techies, like woodbangers, young people playing around

seeing what they could do with the technology. It's not a group with an

agenda developing the technology, saying 'Now we're going to do this.'

They were playing around, seeing what they could do with the technology

and somebody found out that they had been able to do this and said,

'we'll pay you.' The ones with the agenda were the Chinese.

 

What was the purpose of the operation?

The operation was made to look like America is the aggressor.

 

What was the stated destination and ETA of the official flight plan?

The original flight plan was changed while they were in flight. When

the pilot got on the plane, he thought he was going one place. And then

he was told to change course.

 

Is it true that the base commander could not issue a recall order?

Right. The military officer did not have that authority. He had to get

it from someplace else.

 

Was the plane diverted back?

Yes. It got called back for some reason past Barksdale because

somebody in the government realized something was not normal. The Chinese

are showing they can break the code, and 'You're not as big a power as

you think you are.'

 

Did the recall originate in the U.S. or China?

U.S.

 

Who issued the recall order?

Someone in the military. This person issued the recall, but was under

the orders of someone else.

 

Was this a demonstration of China's capabilities, or an actual attack on

Iran?

It was China saying 'Wake up for America. You haven't seen nothin'

yet.'

 

Did they intend to go all the way?

No. It wasn't set. It was a demonstration of power.

 

What happened when the plane landed at Barksdale? Was the crew

detained?

No.

 

Was the crew debriefed?

No. They did not know what was going on.

 

After this incident, how can the U.S. military command be certain their

orders are genuine?

They can't.

................................................................

 

http://www.oregontruthalliance.org/?q=node/234

 

Command Override: How Chinese Military Hackers Took Over a Nuclear Armed

B-52

 

It is the absolute responsibility of everybody in uniform to disobey

an order that is either illegal or immoral.†-General Peter Pace,

Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff addressing the National Press Club, Feb

17/06

 

Command Override: How Chinese Military Hackers Took Over a Nuclear

Armed B-52

By William Thomas

September 22, 2007

http://www.willthomasonline.net/willthomasonline/Command_Override.html

[Ed. note: This piece is provided for informational purposes and for the

citations & links provided. Check the original or contact the author

to seek further verification of the analysis.]

The story sounded like a sequel to “Dr. Strangeloveâ€. Leaked by the

Pentagon's news service, Military Affairs to quell scuttlebutt racing

through the ranks-and perhaps warn the world-a U.S. Air Force B-52

strategic bomber “mistakenly†loaded with six nuclear cruise missiles

took off from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota on August 30, 2007 and

flew for more than three hours over at least five states, before landing

at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.

The mistake was so egregious, the National Command Authority comprising

President George BU.S.h and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates were

quickly informed. The SecDef has since been assured that nuclear weapons

“were part of a routine transfer between the two bases… at no time was

the public in danger.â€

Both statements are false.

 

In fact, nuclear weapons like these are carefully crated for shipment

between bases, and placed inside the bomb bays or cargo compartments of

transporting aircraft. In stunning contrast, this reporter has learned

from two independent and highly placed sources that the six Advanced

Cruise Missiles dangling from the B-52's fatigued and flexible wings were

fully armed and ready to fire-except for a single fail/safe switch under

the Command Pilot's control.

The quickly blacked out episode has prompted an Air Force investigation.

Gates, whose official defense computer was hacked last June,

necessitating the shutdown of the entire SecDef network, has ordered

daily briefings on the Air Force inquiry. The Minot base commander, who

might turn out to be the hero in this frightening affair, was relieved of

his command.

DR. STRANGELOVE VISITS BOURBON STREET

As far as anyone knows, no U.S. aircraft has ever been armed with a full

wartime loadout of six nuclear weapons. “Nothing like this has ever

been reported before and we have been assured for decades that it was

impossible,†declared Representative Markey, co-chair of the House Task

Force on Nonproliferation. [AP Sept 5/07; Seattle Times Sept

5/07]

Hans Kristensen, an expert on U.S. nuclear forces, says he knows of no

other publicly acknowledged case of live nuclear weapons being flown on

bombers since the late 1960s.

[http://ace.mu.nu] Stanley Kubrick's “Dr. Strangelove Or How I Learned to Stop

Worrying and Love the Bomb†was released in 1964

Each of the six ACMs carried a “dialable†150-kiloton W80-1

warhead--for a combined total of 60-times the destructive power of the

bomb that melted the city and inhabitants of Hiroshima--over the

unsuspecting residents of five states. Depending on the route flown, a

half-dozen armed nuclear weapons wafted for three-and-a-half hours over

North Dakota and either South Dakota or Minnesota, Nebraska or Missouri,

Oklahoma or Arkansas, and Louisiana.

It's no secret that Dick Cheney and his presidential surrogate intend to

bomb Iran into the Kingdom to Come. [bBC News Aug 29/07]

But New Orleans?

 

“What does the government have against Louisiana?†asked a blogger

named Lobster Martini.

[www.democraticunderground.com]

TOUGH LOVE

The “mistake†was supposedly discovered when the B-52 landed at

Barskdale, where the plane should have been secured by an armed security

detail. Instead, it simply parked on the flight line, where ground crew

noticed the words “nuclear armed†stenciled on the sides of the

missiles.

Three officers confirmed the warheads were, in Bush's argot,

“nucular.â€

But the mission could have ended in a “broken arrow†nuclear calamity

if the bomber had crashed, or inadvertently dropped its ordnance.

Munitions, and even entire engines-such as the No. 1 turbine that fell

off an American Airlines DC 10 after taking off from Chicago's O'Hare

airport in May, 1979, killing two people on the ground and all 271 people

onboard-occasionally drop from underwing pylons in flight. [Chicago

Tribune May 26-30/79; National Transportation Safety Board Aircraft

Accident Report NSTB-AAR-79-17]

A few other examples:

 

-- A B-36 ferrying a nuclear weapon from Biggs Air Force Base, Texas

to Kirtland accidentally drops a bomb in the New Mexico desert.

[ww.nuclearfiles.org]

-- A fighter pilot accidentally dropped a BDU-33 dummy bomb into a

house, narrowly missing a family of three.

[www.f-117a.com

]

-- A 500-pound bomb fell from an FA-18 plane during a routine

training exercise and exploded on the edge of a U.S. base 100 miles north

of Sarajevo. [ AP July 17/02]

-- A National Guard F-16 fighter jet on a nighttime training mission

strafed an elementary school in New Jersey with 25 rounds of depleted

uranium ammunition. [AP Nov 4/04]

-- Another U.S. Air Force practice bomb accidentally on the Yorkshire

countryside in England. [ BBC Jan 12/04]

-- Electromagnetic interference from military transmitters may have

caused an F-16 jet to accidentally drop a 500 pound bomb on rural West

Georgia. [Montreal Gazette May 12/89]

A crash, mid-air explosion or structural breakup-not uncommon

occurrences with heavily-laden B-52s-could have ignited the high

explosives used to implode the warheads. The ultimate dirty bomber's

fantasy could have seen plutonium--the deadliest substance ever conjured

by humans-raining down over what would become a statewide “national

sacrifice zoneâ€, off-limits to all life-forms for more than 4 billion

years.

Barksdale AFB is no stranger to nuclear accidents. On July 6, 1959, a

C-124 “Flying Boxcar†crashed on takeoff, completely destroying the

aircraft and the nuclear weapon it was carrying.

[www.cdi.org]

[see: “Broken Arrows†]

PROTOCOLS

The Air Combat Command has ordered a command-wide stand down for

September 14, 2007 to “review procedures.†Though they actually

responded flawlessly to apparently authentic orders, the highly trained

specialists who carried out the nuclear loadout have been temporarily

“decertified†from handling nukes.

Representative Ike Skelton, chairman of the House Armed Services

Committee, called the mishandling of arms capable of destroying cities

“deeply disturbing. There is no more serious issue than the security

and proper handling of nuclear weapons.†[AP Sept 5/07]

The crewdogs who flew their assigned mission without mishap have been

ordered not to mention that all pilots are required to perform a “walk

around†inspection of their airplanes and calculate elaborate

“weight-and-balance†graphs before attempting to aviate. Failure to

notice or be informed of the much heavier nuclear casings on the missiles

they were carrying would have jeopardized flight safety.

According to a well-informed and extremely thorough U.S. military source

I call “Hank†(with whom I have broken major stories over the past 15

years), someone “must have adjusted the bomber's balance. It had to

have been done.â€

In addition to knowing what is externally attached to their airplane, the

amount of paperwork, signatures, and discrete passwords involved in

releasing a nuclear weapon from its storage bunker and loading it onto an

airframe are more formidable than flak.

And there were six of them.

PICKUP AND DELIVERY

The coded message to upload and launch the B-52 from Minot with six live

nuclear weapons carried the signature of the “football†containing

the day's nuclear launch codes that is carried close to the president at

all times by a specially detailed aide. After checking and

counter-checking their coded orders, as few as a dozen people in uniform

were actually involved in the subsequent secret nuclear mission.

According to Hank, at least three high-ranking officers were escorted

into Minot AFB's nuclear arms bunker after passing through multiple doors

secured by pass codes, whose complete sequences were supplied each

officer, who only knew part of each code. One hiccup, a fumbled code

sequence, or “the wrong wrench†would have cancelled the loadout

instantly.

SAFETY FIRST

Because the base had stood down for Labor Day, the timing was ideal for

security. In his standing orders for August 30, 2007, 5th Bomb Wing

commander Colonel Bruce Emig encouraged his troops to “Enjoy a safe

Labor Day weekend.

“Warbirds, It's hard to believe that Labor Day weekend is already

here!†the colonel wrote. “Though cooler temperatures are right

around the corner, the weather forecasters tell me that we should have a

warm, summer-like weekend. Since Air Combat Command and Air Force Space

Command have declared Friday a Family Day, many of you should be able to

enjoy a nice, 4-day break as we transition from summer to fall. I wish

all of you a relaxing and enjoyable time off, and urge you all once again

to please keep safety in mind in all you do!â€

[www.libertypost.org]

Under a bomber's nuclear umbrella in a discrete corner of the sprawling

airbase, air, ground and ordnance crews did not converse with each other.

Or anyone else. Everyone involved knew better than to ask questions that

could abruptly end their careers by inadvertently tipping people who did

not need to know.

LOADOUT

Within hours, an airplane with a wingspan longer than the Wright

Brothers' first flight was safely loaded with avgas, sandwiches, and six

nuclear weapons. Uploaded to the bomber using an accordion cradle on each

missile trolley, each Advanced Cruise Missile was fueled once it was

secured to a hard point under the aircraft's wings. Because the ACMs were

not inside a bomb bay, where they could be armed in flight, each

underslung missile had to be fully armed before takeoff. “Wing

walker†is not a B-52 job description.

The plates connecting the firing circuits of each warhead to the cockpit

were then activated, and the safeties were pulled from each clearly

marked “nuclear weaponâ€-rendering it “liveâ€. For the Explosive

Ordnance Disposal detail who performed the loadout, there could be no

doubt they were activating six nuclear weapons.

Alarms on the flight line should have sounded as soon as they sniffed hot

ions leaking from the pulled pile rods in six slowly fissioning warheads.

But the alarms remain silenced. That order, Hank insisted, could only

have come under the properly coded signature of the National Command

Authority-Commander-in-Chief G.W. Bush or Secretary of Defense, Robert

Gates.

The ensuing takeoff was an event branded on the central nervous system of

every creature in auditory range as eight jet engines at maximum takeoff

thrust levitated six missiles, up to 46,000 gallons of fuel, and an

airplane the length of a 150-foot ship into a blue yonder that had just

become much wilder. Everyone within miles knew that a B-52 had come into

Minot and taken off again. But only God and the devil knew where it was

going.

[www.boeing.com]

And they weren't saying.

 

WHO DUNNIT?

In the silence left by this momentous departure, if there were questions,

nobody voiced them. Perhaps there were a few quietly delivered high-fives

instead. Despite the high stress that runs counter to every human

instinct, everyone involved had carried out their assigned duties with

complete attention to the details required to launch a half-dozen live

nuclear weapons “safelyâ€. The professionally conducted operation was

carried off in complete secrecy, without a hitch, only after the loadout

and launch order had been digitally confirmed as coming from the

NCA.

There was only one problem regarding the originators of those orders,

Hank emailed me:

“IT WAS NOT US.â€

 

FAULTY (COMPUTER) TOWERS

Let us quickly review. My earlier exclusive on my former website,

willthomas.net, disclosed how in October 2006, North Korea's leaders

asked China to take out Japan's shiny new recon satellite before it could

be tasked by American officers to monitor Pyongyang's first atomic test.

Blowing up someone's satellite is an act of war. But overriding its

“Made In China†microchips with a remote command from the ground

could never be proven. Even if no solar flares were recorded at the

time.

This first Chinese demo got the Pentagon's attention. After all, their

stated goal of “Full Spectrum Dominance†over Earth's land, seas,

airspace and electromagnetic spectrum depends on America's successful

weaponization of space. But as the Joint Chiefs are only now discovering,

many of the supposedly secure chips in America's civilian

infrastructure-as well as all military communications, surveillance and

weapons systems-have been “Wal-Marted†by U.S. corporations to

low-bid Chinese suppliers-who rigged them for failure or takeover by

“command override†in the event of war.

[see: “Faulty Microchips Threaten U.S. Attack On Iran†]

SEE DICK RUN

The second demonstration of China's newfound capabilities to manipulate

microchips came in late February 2007, when Dick Cheney's 757, flying

home from Australia where the Vice President had not been well received

by the locals, was forced to divert to Singapore.

In a story intriguingly tagged, “U.S. Denies Cheney Forced To Land,â€

Agence France-Presse reported that the White House admitted the

Vice-President's “specially secured†Boeing 757 had “suffered

electrical problems†before landing in Singapore. But Cheney spinner

Lea Anne McBride insisted, “This was the preplanned, scheduled

refueling stop. We were not diverted. The vice president did not get off

the plane during his refueling stop.†[AFP Feb 26/07]

Wrong again.

 

According to U.S. military personnel present on the tarmac at Paya Lebar

Air Base-who according to Hank said were “trying to yak with the

locals: 'Can you get us this part? Do you have a Radio Shack?'â€-a small

Chinese delegation met with Cheney outside his electronically-challenged

aircraft. Wandering in and out of the brief conversation, Hank's sources

described the brief encounter, which occurred shortly after 1400 hours

Singapore time.

Disembarking Air Force One, Cheney said something like, “Gosh, we got

this kind of interesting problem…â€

“No, you don't understand sir,†a Chinese official interrupted.

“This is how we brought you here. And this is why.â€

Cheney's visitors itemized the separately wired galley stoves, reading

lights, in-flight video, and power outlets onboard the Vice President's

aircraft that had all conked out in flight. They knew this, they said,

because the electronic signals that had disabled the microchips

controlling these various devices had been directed by their government.

In an impressive feat, the Chinese military had located and selectively

targeted a stealthy aircraft painted with radar-absorbent materials

flying at nearly 500 knots at 35,000 feet without a public

itinerary.

According to Hank's boots-on-the-tarmac sources, the mostly one-way

conversation in Singapore concerned “Gulf of Tonkin

possibilities.â€

“They reached out and touched someone,†Hank related. “They had a

message they wanted to get across: 'You've got ships out there in the

Gulf. If this thing cooks off, all bets are off because some of the

things that are put out there, we are really now wanting people to talk

about.'â€

The Chinese were referring to their control of most of the microchips on

this planet.

A very thoughtful Dick Cheney departed two hours later.

OPENING THE GATES

The next Chinese digital demo came last June. In what came to be called

“the most successful cyber attack ever mounted on the U.S. defence

department,†Chinese military hacked into a Pentagon computer network

serving the defense secretary's personal office.

Like their American counterparts, the People's Liberation Army (PLA)

regularly probes U.S. military networks. But American officials said

these latest cyber attack caused grave concern when China demonstrated it

“could disrupt U.S. defenses systems at critical times.â€

“The PLA has demonstrated the ability to conduct attacks that disable

our system... and the ability in a conflict situation to re-enter and

disrupt on a very large scale,†revealed a former official, adding that

the PLA has also penetrated the networks of U.S. arms corporations and

war-launching think-tanks. [Financial Times Sept 3/07]

A Chinese official named Jiang repeated his government's denial that it

had penetrated other government and military computer networks. But

British and German newspapers cited intelligence and other officials

saying that government and military networks in Germany, the United

States and Britain had been broken into by Chinese army hackers this

summer.

According to the Associated Press: “China's military has openly

discussed using cyber attacks as a means of harrying or defeating a more

powerful conventional military. In a 1999 paper on unconventional

strategies titled 'Unlimited Warfare' two top Chinese military figures

wrote that a hacker could have more power than a nuclear

bomb.â€

In a report this year, security software maker Symantec Corp. listed

China as having the second most malicious computer activity in the

world-after the United States. [AP Sept 6/07]

Speaking as a soldier, Hank commented, “The June hack showed an

enormous hole in our ability to protect and communicate our

information.

LOST IN SPACE

The next hack came almost immediately, when Russian computers controlling

the International Space Station's orientation and supplies of oxygen and

water inexplicably failed while the station's three crewmembers were

hosting seven visiting shuttle astronauts.

Among the station's network of six Russian computers, only two remained

functioning. A system-wide re-boot usually resolved smaller hitches, But

this time, the system was unable to re-boot.

" A failure of this type has not occurred before, " the BBC

reported. [bBC June 14/07]

" This is serious, " stated James Oberg, a retired rocket

scientist turned author and consultant. " These computers run their

life support, so if they can't be restored, the space station could

become uninhabitable. " Oberg added, " Statistically, this is not

random. There is some new environmental factor that must identified and

isolated, and neither step is trivial. " [TechNewsWorld June

14/07]

Russian flight controllers and onboard engineers traced the problem to

" odd readings " in electrical power cables feeding the Russian

computers through a corroded junction box labeled BOK 3. [space.com July

16/07]

The gremlins returned to the Russian machines on February 5, when another

ISS computer system crashed in the Zvezda Service Module that routes data

between orientation sensors and four positioning gyroscopes. The space

station's solar power stopped supplying power, and communications were

cut with Earth.

Though power and comms were restored three hours later, New Scientist

reports, " The cause of the computer crash remains a mystery. NASA

has so far not identified the cause of the crash. " [New Scientist

Feb 5/02]

But Hank was on it. " They had limited oxygen, a limited time

frame, " he observed. The astronauts onboard the space station didn't

know if the next computer malfunction " would open an airlock. "

But like an airliner in flight, the station should have smoothly shifted

over to backup systems.

It didn't.

" The word 'redundancy' never got into the story, " Hank pointed

out. Instead, all three backup circuit boards wired into three isolated

circuits, " had to blow out in the same way at the exact same time.

The fault that occurred in the first board, the second board, and the

third board all had to be the same damn thing at the same damn

time. "

" Impossible, " he declared. Especially, since each of the

simultaneously faulty microchips had been " stress tested to hell and

back. Except for internal stressors. "

Except for " Made In China " microchip mischief.

While it is not yet confirmed that the February 5 microchip malfunction

was related to the June 14 space station hack, according to Hank's

sources, on that earlier date the Chinese pulled the equivalent of

Cheney's Singapore diversion--in space. " Nobody got busted for

it, " he adds. " You always hear about the company at

fault. "

Not this time.

AC WE SEE

While White House fundamentalists remained mesmerized by the firepower

ostensibly under their command, Beijing kept trying to send a very

different message. Their next installment came in early September 2007,

when U.S. Air Force officers passed through multiple levels of security

and entered the inner computer sanctum of America's Air and Space Command

deep under Cheyenne Mountain. This digital repository stores regularly

updates archives needed to execute " clean reinstalls " in case

air force computer systems crash or are otherwise compromised.

Entering the quietly humming room, the air force officers were shocked to

see monitors aglow with light. The displays were supposed to be off. As

they watched in shock and awe, randomly typed letters scrolled across a

screen. The words were gibberish. But the message was heart-stoppingly

clear: " We Can Play With Your Toys! "

The sender " left breadcrumbs, " Hank related. The deliberately

attached ISP (Internet Service Provider) pointed to China.

This was bad enough. But what really freaked out the officers was the

realization that none of these " stand alone " machines was

online. None of them contained a modem!

The only way to access these machines, Hank revealed, is to " use the

sneaker net to walk up to it and tap on the keyboard. And yet they were

interacting, and they were doing it in real time. They fussed with our

stuff. These guys were able to go into what was a stand alone system and

take control of it. "

How did the PLA hack supposedly secure air force computers lacking

network modems? Just like as select power companies can now pipe the

Internet to home computers through electrical power lines, the Chinese

were able to play on SAC's supposedly secure computers through the AC

power cables connecting them to the national power...

" grid " .

But how did they break supposedly " unbreakable " military

encryption?

And how were they able to transmit signals to override specific chips

buried under a mountain of granite halfway around the globe? According to

Hank, the International Space Station was not in line-of-sight with China

when it's onboard computers and back-up systems simultaneously went

down.

HIT MAN

When it comes to dialing up a bomber to drop nuclear weapons on another

country, " It's kind of like hiring a hit man, " Hank explained.

You meet him in the parking lot with the assignment, a weapon, and cash.

Later, you confirm that you haven't changed your mind. Then the mission

proceeds, and either the target or the hit man is taken out.

In the case of the mission out of Minot, the First Phase began with an

initiation order authorizing weapons release to arm a B-52 specially

flown in for this operation. Proper codes and paperwork provided the

Pilot in Command with an initial heading to fly, and initial waypoints or

nav points to punch into the plane's GPS. No destination was provided.

The pilots were just supposed to get in and drive.

They did.

 

Once the B-52 was airborne, it flew into an electronic black hole. No

electromagnetic emissions came from the bomber. There were no radio calls

to home base asking, " Are you guys sure you really want to do

this? " Even more startling, no coded IFF squawks identified the BUFF

(Big Ugly Fat Fucker) as friendly to prowling post-9/11 fighters. And no

transponder beeps identified the airplane and its mission.

This is not the normal procedure for transporting weapons, or flying a

B-52 through heavily-trafficked air corridors over the Continental United

States. Every aircraft flying at high altitudes over CONUS, (or through

Controlled Airspace around airports at lower attitudes) must transmit

their identity on an assigned transponder frequency.

Commercial planes squawk in their own dialect. " When you're talking

a government vehicle, like a C-130 [military transport], that's another

level up, " Hank noted. " It's a different kind of squawk. ATC

knows how to treat that kind of traffic differently. A B-52 is another

level up. Controllers don't see that every day. A C-5 [flying down from

Colorado to dust a hurricane, for example]-they really don't see that

every day. "

The transponder code of the B-52 out of Minot would have prioritized it

to civilian Air Traffic Control, and they would have cleared a corridor

for its exclusive track-much like a presidential motorcade.

If this Bad Boy had been transferring six advanced nuclear cruise

missiles to Barksdale, as official spin insisted, its transponder would

have squawked: " Hey, guess what? We've got nukes onboard! Make sure

no one runs into us. And if this signal stops scramble recovery people

wearing proper attire. "

Or code to that effect.

But this did not happen.

" The Situation Room in the White House was not stood up, but they

still have people there, " Hank continued. " One of their jobs is

to track nuclear weapons. Somebody in that head shed should have seen a

transponder code matched up with nuclear weapons loaded onto that

aircraft. That should have been something that went up on the board. They

would have known that a B-52 was getting a full loadout, and that all

procedures had been followed. And someone else would have said, 'Mmm, six

nukes. We'll keep an eye on it. "

And given an order for radar operators to push a button to highlight that

particular blip.

Instead, the blacked-out BUFF flew on.

TARGET IRAN

High in the stratosphere, where the nitrous oxide exhaust from eight

fuel-hungry turbines attacked this planet's shredding ozone layer,

boosting global warming another notch toward a catastrophic methane

meltdown, wings never designed to carry heavy ordnance flexed up and down

like a bird in flight. The crew must have considered the long roster of

crashed Stratofortress with ?broken arrows? onboard. Not for a second

could they forget that the six live nuclear weapons strapped to their

wings were as close to detonation as a gremlin's wet dream.

Or the fail-safe switch under the Plane Commander's gloves.

An hour or two out of Minot, a bell chimed in the cockpit and a secure

printer spat out a coded paper message. Even if they betrayed no emotion,

the pilots must have felt a chill. Because the mission's next critical

Fail-Safe had been passed. " We've thought about it, and the mission

is still a go, " the message essentially read. If these new orders

had not been received, or had been issued incorrectly, the plane would

have immediately turned back to the nearest base capable of handling its

special needs.

But their orders were in order. Positively authenticated by both pilots

as coming from the NCA, the new message received onboard the bomber

issued the radio frequencies, call signs and rendezvous coordinates for

" hitting " one of three aerial refueling planes constantly

orbiting over the Gulf of Mexico. Their new " Go Code " also

identified their target region. After topping off their tanks, they were

to take up a heading for another Gulf, half a world away.

BLIND MAN'S BUFF

Wouldn't the base commander, or the other officers involved in sending

live nuclear weapons toward Iran have second thoughts about a strike that

could trigger an even bigger political-military chain reaction?

Not necessarily, Hank explained. Military leaders usually favor

intimidation in place of bloodshed. If the Iranians could be dissuaded

from acquiring a nuclear deterrent of their own, or decide to stop

supplying their Shiite brothers next door with sophisticated

shaped-charge rockets capable of penetrating the depleted uranium hides

of M-1 Abrams tanks-terrific! Everyone involved in the mission must have

hoped that in this high-stakes brinksmanship, when Iranian sensors picked

up the radioactive signature of an inbound American nuclear bomber

strike, the mullahs in Teheran would burn their Korans and turn to

Jesus.

On the other hand, how do you say " pissed off " in Persian? The

mullahs might panic and start pushing buttons of their own. Especially

when the Israeli Air Force was notified of the strike, and launched

" supporting " fighter-bombers of their own.

In any case, it was out of the hands of the base commander and his

immediate superiors. Since any one of these key staff officers could

conceivably be kidnapped or impersonated during a nuclear strike, none

had the authority to issue a recall order. Even if someone in the chain

of command issued an RTB (Return To Base), SAC bomber crews en route to

the final IP coordinates to commence their attack are trained to ignore

all such entreaties.

In fact, a frantic " Come home for lunch, " or " Call your

wife " command would confirm for the crew that something really was

amiss, and they were at war.

In this way, a series of rote military assumptions can make an ash out of

you and me.

WHAT, ME WORRY?

Meanwhile, the man under whose digitally coded authority this strike was

being carried out, remained completely unaware that six nuclear cruise

missiles with his name on them were headed toward Iran.

Phase Three would have issued coded authorization to take out their

assigned targets. One target confirmed by two highly placed, independent

sources was a nuclear power plant hard against the mountains of Iran.

" But the bomber would still have five missiles left. And it would

not leave the area empty, " Hank insisted. " If they go loaded

for bear, they're not going to leave with a rabbit. "

After all, he added, a pre-BDA [bomb Damage Assessment] would have been

done before launching the bomber " to determine how many it would

take. And they needed six? "

Despite all the Hollywood hype, cruise missiles are notoriously

inaccurate. Just ask the folks ducking strays in Kuwait or Iran. Still, a

cruise missile striking within 30 miles would have taken out that Iranian

power plant. But if the nuclear-tipped ACM had detonated over its

pile?

" Bad. Bad. Very bad, " as Hank would say. Because the resulting

electromagnetic pulses from such a synergistic chain reaction would

have--among other things--fried every unhardened Chinese microchip aboard

every American ship, plane and vehicle in the Persian Gulf.

" You don't have to sink the CAG, just turn it off, " Hank said,

referring to the formidable--yet completely microchip dependent--Carrier

Air Group steaming off the coast of Iran. " Once they realized that

these ships were just bobbing around out there, " the bad guys would

have " launched 10,000 rowboats " from surrounding shorelines to

go play pirates.

Was this why several Chinese Aegis destroyers were steaming in from the

east about 250 nautical miles from the Straits of Hormuz? Was this why

two or three Chinese submarines had been deployed to the area of the

transiting destroyers the week before?

Or were the two Chinese anti-aircraft destroyers part of an elaborate

fail-safe in case the demonstration glitched and the bomber could not be

recalled? Even if their anti-aircraft missiles could not reach the

distant plane (easily tracked through its rigged Chinese chips), specific

signals sent from the ship could have turned the plane around. Or its

fuel off.

What were the Chinese thinking?

CHINESE CHECKERS

Ever since Katrina, and the subsequent standing wave put up off the south

coast of Africa by HAARP to deflect hurricanes from the U.S. Atlantic and

Gulf Coasts, Beijing has felt under siege as earthquakes and wild,

shipping-interrupting storms continue to be conducted " all the way

to China " by the powerful Gakona, Alaskan transmitter. [see

" Where Have All The Hurricanes Gone " -upcoming on

willthomasonline.net]

Three times, the Chinese have attempted to override HAARP. And failed.

Elaborate demonstrations of their electronic warfare

capabilities--including fizzing circuits in space, and a face-to-face

with the U.S. Vice-President in Singapore--had not persuaded American

leaders to A: Refrain from hoisting a false flag over a Persian Gulf of

Tonkin, and B: Turn HAARP off.

Surely, Beijing must have reasoned, ordering a United State Air Force

strategic bomber loaded out with six armed nuclear weapons to fly over

the United States and then on towards Iran would conclusively demonstrate

who was now in charge.

" This op would not have 'Made In China' stamped all over it, "

Hank pointed out. " Instead, American bombs, American bombers and

American systems were used. " No matter how the mission had

proceeded, if Washington had been forced to tell the world, " It

wasn't us. We lost control of our bomber carrying six atomic

warheads " --how would that have looked to a global audience already

angry over America's misuse of its military might?

Whatever Beijing's intentions, Hank was not the only person in the U.S.

military to have his head rearranged by this latest Chinese

demonstration. " They might have wanted to go all the way. Of they

might have wanted to put pieces in play and see how far they could

go, " he surmised. " Maybe the Chinese started, and stopped

it. "

Either way, the unauthorized Minot mission has bluntly shown the White

House and the Pentagon: " If you start something, we can stop it. You

no longer know how much control you have over your own weapons systems

because we can play with them at will. No matter where you are, no matter

what you're doing, if you're using our chips you are vulnerable. And you

can't know if our Trojan chips are in your systems unless you tear apart

every circuits in every surveillance, communications, weapons system,

pipelines, telecom and power grid in your entire military and civilian

inventory and look. And then dismantle every network they are connected

to. "

" And one more thing, " Beijing inferred, " If you take

offense and pop off a missile, remember, we might make it do a

loop-de-loop and come right back down on its originating

silo. "

Hank and others in America's command hierarchy remain alarmed and

puzzled-which makes them even more uneasy. Would China's leadership have

precipitated a cloud of radioactive fallout downwind over their own

population? Emphatically, yes. The country's generals have long counted

an expendable population and land mass as key factors in

" winning " a nuclear war.

Best case scenario, this recent flight of fancy was a warning for

Washington to chill the bomb Iran rhetoric, and dial down HAARP.

" Maybe the Chinese got it right and they were just messin' with

us, " Hank mused. " Or they got it wrong, and something very bad

almost happened. But why only one plane? Why stop there? It's a limited

use of a system that is now exposed. "

But what can we do about it?

And what a message it sent!

[see " Cyber War " ]

RECALL

Phase Three of the mission would have sent coded target grid coordinates

and time(s) of weapon(s) release, as well as updates on weather over the

area, enemy defense status and friendly escorts. Those orders never

came.

Instead, Phase Four was initiated. When the cockpit teleprinter spat out

paper tape again, it read, in so many words: " Forget the whole

thing. Abort the mission. Turn back. " The only people capable of

issuing a nuclear strike recall order would be the President, the

Secretary of Defense, a specific designate of the SecDef authorized by

special code. Or a Chinese military hacker.

As Hank notes, " The plane had to be diverted to a base that could

handle nuclear weapons. " That would be Barksdale. But...

" Live hot nukes would have tripped alarms on the tarmac when it

touched down. Either they were nonfunctional on both ends [Minot and

Barksdale], which is scary beyond belief considering what we're talking

about. " Or the Joint Chiefs or the NCA could have ordered the

radiation sensors silenced to keep the mission-and the hijacked

mission-under wraps. Or the Chinese could have turned them off. If the

system is digital, Beijing probably controls it.

Bottom line: if the incoming bomber had crashed approach, no one

responding would have known they were dealing with a quiver-full of

" broken arrows " .

BARKSDALE

Thought the missiles were never launched, they still remain in play. As

Hank worried, " Six nukes are now forward deployed to the air force

base that handles Middle East ops. "

A former counter-terrorism expert with the CIA and the State Department

shares his concern. Larry Johnson does not buy the official story that

six nuclear weapons were " mistakenly " flown over the USA-not

after a retired B-52 pilot reminded him. " The only time you put such

weapons on a plane is when they are on alert, or if the crew has been

tasked to move the weapons to a specific site. " Besides running

nuclear war exercises like the Global Guardian drill it ran on the

morning of 9/11, Barksdale AFB deploys " heavies " to the Middle

East.

Like Hank, Johnson wants to know, " Why would we want to preposition

nuclear weapons at a base conducting Middle East operations? " His

pilot pal believes that an insider leaker tried to send up a bright red

flag. Johnson asks, " Did someone at Barksdale try to indirectly warn

the American people that the Bush Administration is staging nukes for

Iran? "

[www.antiwar.com]

But Hank points out another problem. Cruise missiles-which are

essentially autonomous, unpiloted drones-have special needs. Since six

cruise missiles showing up at Barksdale were an oddity, can they be

adequately stored and maintained there? The Gulf Coast is " a very

different environment " than Nebraska, Hank emphasizes. How long is

Barksdale going to hold onto them? In the hurricane season?

" Are we going to see some of them floating out on the tide? "

Hank wants to know. Americans need a big confirm that these weapons have

been sent back north to a better home.

----------------------

 

http://www.oregontruthalliance.org/?q=node/245

 

B-52 Nukes Headed for Iran, Not For Decommissioning: Airforce

Refused

 

Air Force refused to fly weapons to Middle East theater

By Wayne Madsen

Sept. 24, 2007

Author's website:

http://www.waynemadsenreport.com

 

WMR has learned from U.S. and foreign intelligence sources that the B-52 transporting six stealth AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missiles, each armed with a W-80-1 nuclear warhead, on August 30, were destined for the Middle East via Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.

However, elements of the Air Force, supported by U.S. intelligence agency personnel, successfully revealed the ultimate destination of the nuclear weapons and the mission was aborted due to internal opposition within the Air Force and U.S. Intelligence Community.

Yesterday, the Washington Post attempted to explain away the fact that America's nuclear command and control system broke down in an unprecedented manner by reporting that it was the result of " security failures at multiple levels. " It is now apparent that the command and control breakdown, reported as a BENT SPEAR incident to the Secretary of Defense and White House, was not the result of a command and control chain-of-command " failures " but the result of a revolt and push back by various echelons within the Air Force and intelligence agencies against a planned U.S. attack on Iran using nuclear and conventional

weapons.

The Washington Post story on BENT SPEAR may have actually been an effort in damage control by the Bush administration. WMR has been informed by a knowledgeable source that one of the six nuclear-armed cruise missiles was, and may still be, unaccounted for. In that case, the nuclear reporting incident would have gone far beyond BENT SPEAR to a National Command Authority alert known as EMPTY QUIVER, with the special classification of PINNACLE.

Just as this report was being prepared, Newsweek reported that Vice President Dick Cheney's recently-departed Middle East adviser, David Wurmser, told a small group of advisers some months ago that Cheney had considered asking Israel to launch a missile attack on the Iranian nuclear site at Natanz. Cheney reasoned that after an Iranian retaliatory strike, the United States would have ample reasons to launch its own massive attack on Iran. However, plans for Israel to attack Iran directly were altered to an Israeli attack on a supposed Syrian-Iranian-North Korean nuclear installation in northern Syria.

WMR has learned that a U.S. attack on Iran using nuclear and conventional weapons was scheduled to coincide with Israel's September 6 air attack on a reputed Syrian nuclear facility in Dayr az-Zwar, near the village of Tal Abyad, in northern Syria, near the Turkish border. Israel's attack, code named OPERATION ORCHARD, was to provide a reason for the U.S. to strike Iran. The neo-conservative propaganda onslaught was to cite the cooperation of the George Bush's three remaining " Axis of Evil " states -- Syria, Iran, and North Korea -- to justify a sustained Israeli attack on Syria and a massive U.S. military attack on Iran.

WMR has learned from military sources on both sides of the Atlantic that there was a definite connection between Israel's OPERATION ORCHARD and BENT SPEAR involving the B-52 that flew the six nuclear-armed cruise missiles from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barksdale. There is also a connection between these two events as the Pentagon's highly-classified PROJECT CHECKMATE, a compartmented U.S. Air Force program that has been working on an attack plan for Iran since June 2007, around the same time that Cheney was working on the joint Israeli-U.S. attack scenario on Iran.

PROJECT CHECKMATE was leaked in an article by military analyst Eric Margolis in the Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper, the /Times of London/, is a program that involves over two dozen Air Force officers and is headed by Brig. Gen. Lawrence Stutzriem and his chief civilian adviser, Dr. Lani Kass, a former Israeli military intelligence officer who, astoundingly, is now involved in planning a joint U.S.-Israeli massive military attack on Iran that involves a " decapitating " blow on Iran by hitting between three to four thousand targets in the country. Stutzriem and Kass report directly to the Air Force Chief of Staff, General Michael Moseley, who has also been charged with preparing a report on the B-52/nuclear weapons incident.

Kass' area of speciality is cyber-warfare, which includes ensuring " information blockades, " such as that imposed by the Israeli government on the Israeli media regarding the Syrian air attack on the alleged Syrian " nuclear installation. " British intelligence sources have reported that the Israeli attack on Syria was a " true flag " attack originally designed to foreshadow a U.S. attack on Iran. After the U.S. Air Force push back against transporting the six cruise nuclear-armed AGM-129s to the Middle East, Israel went ahead with its attack on Syria in order to help ratchet up tensions between Washington on one side and Damascus, Tehran, and Pyongyang on the other.

The other part of CHECKMATE's brief is to ensure that a media " perception management " is waged against Syria, Iran, and North Korea. This involves articles such as that which appeared with Joby Warrick's and Walter Pincus' bylines in yesterdays /Washington Post/. The article, titled " The Saga of a Bent Spear, " quotes a number of seasoned Air Force nuclear weapons experts as saying that such an incident is unprecedented in the history of the Air Force. For example, Retired Air Force General Eugene Habiger, the former chief of the U.S. Strategic Command, said he has been in the " nuclear business " since 1966 and has never been aware of an incident " more disturbing. "

Command and control breakdowns involving U.S. nuclear weapons are unprecedented, except for that fact that the U.S. military is now waging an internal war against neo-cons who are embedded in the U.S. government and military chain of command who are intent on using nuclear weapons in a pre-emptive war with Iran.

CHECKMATE and OPERATION ORCHARD would have provided the cover for a pre-emptive U.S. and Israeli attack on Iran had it not been for BENT SPEAR involving the B-52. In on the plan to launch a pre-emptive attack on Iran involving nuclear weapons were, according to our sources, Cheney, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley; members of the CHECKMATE team at the Pentagon, who have close connections to Israeli intelligence and pro-Israeli think tanks in Washington, including the Hudson Institute; British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, a political adviser to Tony Blair prior to becoming a Member of Parliament; Israeli political leaders like Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu; and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, who did his part last week to ratchet up tensions with Iran by suggesting that war with Iran was a probability. Kouchner retracted his statement after the U.S. plans for Iran were delayed.

Although the Air Force tried to keep the B-52 nuclear incident from the media, anonymous Air Force personnel leaked the story to /Military Times/ on September 5, the day before the Israelis attacked the alleged nuclear installation in Syria and the day planned for the simultaneous U.S. attack on Iran. The leaking of classified information on U.S. nuclear weapons disposition or movement to the media, is, itself, unprecedented. Air Force regulations require the sending of classified BEELINE reports to higher Air Force authorities on the disclosure of classified Air Force information to the media.

In another highly unusual move, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has asked an outside inquiry board to look into BENT SPEAR, even before the Air Force has completed its own investigation, a virtual vote of no confidence in the official investigation being conducted by Major General Douglas Raaberg, chief of air and space operations at the Air Combat Command.

Gates asked former Air Force Chief of Staff, retired General Larry Welch, to lead a Defense Science Board task force that will also look into the BENT SPEAR incident. The official Air Force investigation has reportedly been delayed for unknown reasons. Welch is President and CEO of the Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA), a federally-funded research contractor that operates three research centers, including one for Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President and another for the National Security Agency. One of the board members of IDA is Dr. Suzanne H. Woolsey of the Paladin Capital Group and wife of former CIA director and arch-neocon James Woolsey.

WMR has learned that neither the upper echelons of the State Department nor the British Foreign Office were privy to OPERATION ORCHARD, although Hadley briefed President Bush on Israeli spy satellite intelligence that showed the Syrian installation was a joint nuclear facility built with North Korean and Iranian assistance. However, it is puzzling why Hadley would rely on Israeli imagery intelligence (IMINT) from its OFEK (Horizon) 7 satellite when considering that U.S. IMINT satellites have greater capabilities.

The Air Force's " information warfare " campaign against media reports on CHECKMATE and OPERATION ORCHARD also affected international reporting of the recent International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) resolution asking Israel to place its nuclear weapons program under IAEA controls, similar to those that the United States wants imposed on Iran and North Korea. The resolution also called for a nuclear-free zone throughout the Middle East. The IAEA's resolution, titled " Application of IAEA Safeguards in the Middle East, " was passed by the 144-member IAEA General Meeting on September 20 by a vote of 53 to 2, with 47 abstentions. The only two countries to vote against were Israel and the United States. However, the story carried from the IAEA meeting in Vienna by Reuters, the Associated Press, and Agence France Press, was that it was Arab and Islamic nations that voted for the resolution.

This was yet more perception management carried out by CHECKMATE, the White House, and their allies in Europe and Israel with the connivance of the media. In fact, among the 53 nations that voted for the resolution were China, Russia, India, Ireland, and Japan. The 47 abstentions were described as votes " against " the resolution even though an abstention is neither a vote for nor against a measure. America's close allies, including Britain, France, Australia, Canada, and Georgia, all abstained.

Suspiciously, the IAEA carried only a brief item on the resolution concerning Israel's nuclear program and a roll call vote was not available either at the IAEA's web site -- www.iaea.org -- or in the media.

The perception management campaign by the neocon operational cells in the Bush administration, Israel and Europe was designed to keep a focus on Iran's nuclear program, not on Israel's. Any international examination of Israel's nuclear weapons program would likely bring up Israeli nuclear scientist Mordechai Vanunu, a covert from Judaism to Christianity, who was kidnapped in Rome by a Mossad " honey trap " named Cheryl Bentov (aka, Cindy) and a Mossad team in 1986 and held against his will in Israel ever since.

Vanunu's knowledge of the Israeli nuclear weapons program would focus on the country's own role in nuclear proliferation, including its program to share nuclear weapons technology with apartheid South Africa and Taiwan in the late 1970s and 1980s. The role of Ronald Reagan's Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency Ken Adelman in Israeli's nuclear proliferation during the time frame 1983-1987 would also come under scrutiny. Adelman, a member of the Reagan-Bush transition State Department team from November 1980 to January 1981, voiced his understanding for the nuclear weapons programs of Israel, South Africa, and Taiwan in a June 28, 1981 /New York Times/ article titled, " 3 Nations Widening Nuclear Contacts. " The journalist who wrote the article was Judith Miller. Adelman felt that the three countries wanted nuclear weapons because of their ostracism from the West, the third world, and the hostility from the Communist countries. Of course, today, the same argument can be used by Iran, North Korea, and other " Axis of Evil " nations so designated by the neocons in the Bush administration and other governments.

There are also news reports that suggest an intelligence relationship between Israel and North Korea. On July 21, 2004, New Zealand's /Dominion Post/ reported that three Mossad agents were involved in espionage in New Zealand. Two of the Mossad agents, Uriel Kelman and Elisha Cara (aka Kra), were arrested and imprisoned by New Zealand police (an Israeli diplomat in Canberra, Amir Lati, was expelled by Australia and New Zealand intelligence identified a fourth Mossad agent involved in the New Zealand espionage operation in Singapore). The third Mossad agent in New Zealand, Zev William Barkan (aka Lev Bruckenstein), fled New Zealand -- for North Korea.

New Zealand Foreign Minister Phil Goff revealed that Barkan, a former Israeli Navy diver, had previously worked at the Israeli embassy in Vienna, which is also the headquarters of the IAEA. He was cited by the /Sydney Morning Herald/ as trafficking in passports stolen from foreign tourists in Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia. New Zealand's One News reported that Barkan was in North Korea to help the nation build a wall to keep its citizens from leaving.

The nuclear brinkmanship involving the United States and Israel and the breakdown in America's command and control systems have every major capital around the world wondering about the Bush administration's true intentions.

NOTE: WMR understands the risks to informed individuals in reporting the events of August 29/30, to the present time, that concern the discord within the U.S. Air Force, U.S. intelligence agencies, and other military services. Any source with relevant information and who wishes to contact us anonymously may drop off sealed correspondence at or send mail via the Postal Service to: Wayne Madsen, c/o The Front Desk, National Press Club, 13th Floor, 529 14th St., NW, Washington, DC, 20045.

 

--

Dispatches From The Edge

http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/article.cfm?storyID=28105

Errant Nukes; Syrian Mystery

By Conn Hallinan

'Loose nukes sink...' well, just about anything.

The official story is that on Aug. 30, the U.S. Air Force (AF) 'mistakenly' loaded six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles on a B-52 at Minot, North Dakota and flew them to Barksdale, Louisiana for decommissioning. The mistake was discovered and the munitions officer at Minot was suspended pending an investigation.

Except the story doesn't make any sense and it certainly didn't happen the way the AF says it did. At least according to the hundreds of current and retired military personal and non-commissioned officers (NCOs) with nuclear experience who are writing letters to the Army Times and military websites essentially charging that the AF is lying.

'Ain't no way in hell that anybody in the U.S. military could do anything 'inadvertently' with a nuke,' writes a retired NCO who worked with nuclear weapons.

Another veteran with lots of hands-on experience says, 'the safeguards involved in nuclear munitions in all the armed forces are incredibly complex,' and when nuclear weapons are involved, 'all kinds of red lights go off in everyone's systems.' The military is so up- tight about nuclear weapons procedures, the writer says, that in one incident an NCO who violated a 'no go' area was fatally bayoneted by a guard.

There are any numbers of things that don't make sense about the 'official' version.

For one thing, when nuclear weapons are moved by air, it is in a special C-130s designed to prevent radiation leakage in case of a crash. But in the Aug. 6 event, the missiles were attached to the wings of the B-52, which as one wag commented was like 'shipping ammunition in a gun.'

Secondly, if the nukes were going to be decommissioned, they would have been sent to Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico. From there the warheads would have been transferred to the Pantex facility in Amarillo, Texas for dismantling. Barksdale, in contrast, is one the main staging bases for the Middle East.

Some commentators argue that the only way the operation could have avoided the 'red lights' was by leap frogging the normal chain of command. Only the National Security Agency or Vice-President Dick Cheney's office has that kind of juice. In May 2001, Cheney was placed in charge of 'all federal programs dealing with weapons of mass destruction.'

One theory is that Cheney was trying to ship nukes to the Middle East in preparation for a strike on Iran. But transporting nukes to the Middle East would be like sending coals to Newcastle: U.S. forces in the theater are bristling with nuclear weapons.

A former officer writes that it might even have been a 'cost-cutting' maneuver-albeit a dumb one-to save money by putting the nukes on a regular flight rather than using the expensive, specially designed C-130.

Some have even suggested that it was a plot by Christian evangelicals trying to bring on the apocalypse. As silly as that might sound, a 2006 study for the U.S. War College by Col. William Millonig concluded that 'conservative Christian and Republican values have affected the military's decision making and policy recommendations.' and warned that 'America's strategic thinkers, both military and civilian, must be aware of this and its potential implications on policy formulation.'

So the explanations for the errant nukes range from 'Grand Conspiracy,' penny pinching, to new Testament crazies. Major incompetence is a strong candidate as well.

And who blew the whistle? One military source says that if the Army Times ran the story, it was because someone very high up the command chain told them to do it. According to the source, the only way the story could have come out is if 'the dime dropper wore at least three stars, if not four.'

What gets lost in all this is that the Advanced Cruise Missile packs a W-80 warhead with an explosive power of from five to 150 kilotons. The atomic bomb that flattened Hiroshima and killed 220,000 people-100,000 of them in a millisecond-was 13 kilotons. Schelpping these things around by 'mistake' is something that Congress, not the Air Force, needs to investigate. Identifying who authorized the operation would go a long way toward finding out how six nuclear weapons went AWOL. .

Maybe the media should drop OJ and start asking some questions?

'Loose warplanes...' well, it is not clear exactly what those Israeli jets that violated Syrian airspace Sept.

6 were up to, except that they weren't there for the reasons the U.S. State Department is claiming.

The aircraft, according to Syrian Foreign Minister, Walid Muallem, dropped 'bombs' in Syria's arid northern plains and 'fuel tanks' in Turkey. The Turks called the incident 'unacceptable.'

The Israelis are mum.

On Sept. 11, unnamed 'officials' in the Bush Administration told the New York Times that the Israelis bombed a 'weapons cache' that Syria was sending to Hezbollah in Lebanon. But that story had no legs. The bombing-if there was one-took place on the Turkish-Syrian boundary, a long way from Lebanon's northern border. On top of which, Hezbollah is in south Lebanon.

Three days later, Andrew Semmel, the acting deputy secretary of state for nuclear nonproliferation policy, trotted out another explanation: Israel bombed a covert nuclear program set up by the North Koreans.

According to Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator and a senior fellow at the New American Foundation, neoconservatives in the Bush Administration are trying to sabotage talks with North Korea and any detente with Syria. 'They [neocons] want to torpedo the North Korea deal' and 'make sure there is no cooperation in Syria.'

And right on cue, former UN Ambassador and neocon stalwart John Bolton was writing in the Wall Street Journal that 'Iran, Syria, and others might be 'safe havens' for North Korea's nuclear-weapons development, or may already have benefited from it.' He then told the New York Times that continued talks with North Korea over ending its nuclear weapons program 'would be a big mistake.'

Chiming in was U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who wrote in the New York Sun, 'Damascus has been developing its nuclear facilities,' and warning, 'Syria poses a growing threat that the U.S. must confront.'

But when the international Atomic Energy Agency investigated Syria in 2004, it found no evidence of a nuclear program.

Joseph Cirincione, director for nuclear policy at the Center for American Progress, says 'The story nonsense.' He says the 40-year old Syrian nuclear program 'is too basic to support any weapons capability. Universities have larger programs than Syria.'

Another possibility is that the Israelis are preparing to whack Iran. Northern Syria is one of Israel's corridors into Iran (the other is through Jordan and Saudi Arabia). According to Time, the Israeli incursion was designed to test Syria's Russian made Pantsyr air defense system, a mixture of missiles and 30 mm cannons that is supposedly immune to jamming. According to Time, Iran is also deploying the Pantsyr around its nuclear facilities.

The corridor explanation makes some sense, probing the Pantsyr does not. The latter is a short-range tactical system and any bombing of Iranian targets will be from high altitude using satellite-guided munitions. Even Syria's new SA-24 missile system can only reach 22,000 feet, not high enough to seriously bother U.S. or Israeli planes.

So, what were those warplanes up to? Mapping radar sites? Spoiling for a fight? Humiliating the Syrians?

Dark armies are moving by night, with potential catastrophe at every turn.

 

 

 

 

See what's new at AOL.com and Make AOL Your Homepage.

---

Incoming mail is certified Virus Free.

Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).

Version: 6.0.859 / Virus Database: 585 - Release 2/14/05

 

******

Kraig and Shirley Carroll ... in the woods of SE Kentucky

http://www.thehavens.com/

thehavens

606-376-3363

 

 

 

---

Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.

Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).

Version: 6.0.859 / Virus Database: 585 - Release 2/14/05