Issue of 2004-06-28
Posted 2004-06-20

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

June 20, 2004

THIS WEEK IN

THE NEW YORKER

 http://www.newyorker.com/press/content/

PRESS CONTACTS:
Perri Dorset, Director, Public Relations (212) 286-5898
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Current and former intelligence officials in the United States, the Middle East, and Europe confirm that "Israeli intelligence and military
operatives are now quietly at work in Kurdistan," in Iraq, "providing training for commando units," Seymour M. Hersh reports in "Plan B," in the June 28, 2004 issue of The New Yorker.

The Israeli operatives include members of the Mossad, Israel's clandestine foreign-intelligence service, "who work undercover in Kurdistan as businessmen and, in some cases, do not carry Israeli passports," Hersh writes. Mark Regev, the spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington, says, "The story is simply untrue," but a senior C.I.A. official tells Hersh that the Israelis are indeed operating in Kurdistan, that the Israeli presence is widely known in the American intelligence community, and that the Israelis "think they have to be there." Hersh reveals that "by the end of last year Israel had concluded that the Bush Administration would not be able to bring stability or democracy to Iraq, and that Israel needed other options."

·Ehud Barak, the former Israeli Prime Minister, took it upon himself last fall to tell Vice-President Dick Cheney that America had lost in Iraq.

According to an American close to Barak, Barak told Cheney that Israel "had learned that there's no way to win an occupation" and that the only issue was "choosing the size of your humiliation." Cheney did not respond to Barak; his office also declined to comment to Hersh.

A former Israeli intelligence official assessed the situation this way: "It doesn't add up. It's over. Not militarily-the United States cannot be defeated militarily in Iraq-but politically."

·Hersh also reports on Iyad Allawi, who was recently appointed interim Prime Minister. Allawi, who has been involved with anti-Saddam activities for the past two decades, was, in the nineteen-sixties and seventies, a Baath Party operative. "If you're asking me if Allawi has blood on his hands from his days in London, the answer is yes, he does," Vincent Cannistraro, a former C.I.A. officer, says. "He was a paid Mukhabarat agent for the Iraqis, and he was involved in dirty stuff."

A cabinet-level Middle East diplomat adds that Allawi was involved in a Mukhabarat "hit team" that sought out and killed Baath Party dissenters throughout Europe. Allawi's office did not respond to a request for comment.

·Hersh also reveals that Israeli operatives have crossed the border into Iran, accompanied by Kurdish commandos, to install sensors and other sensitive devices that target suspected Iranian nuclear facilities. "Look," a former Israeli intelligence official explains, "Israel has
always supported the Kurds in a Machiavellian way-as balance against Saddam.

It's Realpolitik. By aligning with the Kurds, Israel gains eyes and ears in Iran, Iraq, and Syria." Nonetheless, Hersh writes, officials from several countries "depicted Sharon's decision, which involves a heavy
financial commitment, as a potentially reckless move that could create
even more chaos and violence as the insurgency in Iraq continues to
grow."

·"Israel's immediate goal after June 30th is to build up the Kurdish commando units to balance the Shiite militias-especially those which would be hostile to the kind of order in southern Iraq that Israel would like to see," one former senior intelligence official says. "Of course, if a fanatic Sunni Baathist militia took control-one as hostile to Israel as Saddam Hussein was-Israel would unleash the Kurds on it, too."

·Burgeoning Kurdish-Israeli coِperation could have a negative effect on Israel's generally positive relationship with Turkey. One Turkish diplomat tells Hersh, "We tell our Israeli and Kurdish friends that Turkey's good will lies in keeping Iraq together. We will not support alternative solutions." If in fact "you end up with a divided Iraq," a senior Turkish official tells Hersh, "it will bring more blood, tears, and pain to the Middle East, and you will be blamed.... From Mexico to Russia,
everybody will claim that the United States had a secret agenda in Iraq: you came there to break up Iraq."

·If the June 30th transfer of sovereignty does not go well, "there is no fallback-nothing," a former National Security Council member tells Hersh. "The neocons still think they can pull the rabbit out of the hat" in Iraq, a former intelligence official says. "What's the plan? They say, 'We don't need it. Democracy is strong enough. We'll work it out.' "

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