by, Michele Steinberg

On Oct. 14, the London Observer published one of the now familiar -- and totally false -- propaganda scare stories, entitled "Iraq 'Behind U.S. Anthrax Outbreaks.' " The story gave credence to the ravings of "American hawks" who say there is "a growing mass of evidence that [Iraqi President] Saddam Hussein was involved, possibly indirectly, with the Sept. 11 suicide hijacks." If confirmed, said the Observer, "the pressure now building ... for an attack [on Iraq] may be irresistible." One of these "hawks," an unnamed U.S. "administration official," told the Observer that British Prime Minister Tony Blair is a "faithful ally" in the war against terrorism and that "if it means we are embarking on the next Hundred Years' War, then that's what we are doing" (emphasis added).

The "next Hundred Year's War"? Who are the U.S. maniacs who use such language, and are they not as dangerous as Osama bin Laden's jihad?

Here we will name the names of the fanatics in this anti-Iraq grouping who have become known as the "Wolfowitz cabal," named after Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. According to the New York Times, which published a leak about their activities on Oct. 12, this grouping wants an immediate war with Iraq, believing that the targetting of Afghanistan, already an impoverished wasteland, falls far short of the global war that they are hoping for. But Iraq is just another stepping stone to turning the anti-terrorist "war" into a full-blown "Clash of Civilizations," where the Islamic religion would become the "enemy image" in a "new Cold War."

The "Clash of Civilizations" theory, developed by Harvard professor-turned President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and his protégés, including Harvard Prof. Samuel Huntington, defined the Arab and Islamic world as an "arc of crisis" from the Middle East to the Islamic countries of Central Asia in the then-Soviet Union. Brzezinski wanted to use the "Islamic card" against the Soviet Union, and in so doing, began the policy of promoting Islamic fundamentalists against moderate and pro-Western Arab and Islamic governments. After the end of the Cold War, the Brzezinski/Huntington crowd updated their "arc of crisis," declaring that the Islamic religion is the enemy, in a new war in which religions, rather than political systems, inevitably battle each other. However, trained by British and U.S. special intelligence services and the CIA, and armed by Israeli military networks, the very terrorist drug-runners in the Islamic world who were launched by Brzezinski and "adopted" by the Iran-Contra networks run by Lt. Col. Oliver North, under the elder George Bush's Executive Order 12333, have become the main suspects in terrorist attacks against the United States.

A Network Throughout The Government

The adherents of the so-called "Wolfowitz cabal," pushing the "Clash of Civilizations" theory, are nothing less than "an enemy within" the United States, a network that cuts across the Defense Department, the State Department, the White House, and the National Security Council. This report is not a "good guys" versus "bad guys" description of the Bush Administration; rather it is a warning that this cabal is a close-knit rogue network that is trying to hijack U.S. policy, and turn the current Afghanistan mess into a global war. The cabal bears a dangerous resemblance to the "secret parallel government" of North and Gen. Richard Secord's "Project Democracy" operation that ran Iran-Contra. In fact, some of the cabal members now in the Bush Administration are convicted criminals as a result of their activity in North's "Enterprise"!

Agence France-Presse U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and Secretary of State Colin Powell

On Oct. 12, the New York Times revealed deep divisions in the Bush Administration, describing how the cabal plots policy behind the back of Cabinet officials, such as Secretary of State Colin Powell, in the name of the U.S. government. The group wants to obliterate Iraq, put Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority on the terrorism list (if not the obituary list), and declare war on nation-states.

The Times revealed that a key section of the "Wolfowitz cabal," is the 18-member Defense Policy Board, which met for more than 19 hours on Sept. 19-20 to "make the case" against Saddam Hussein. The meeting pushed for a renewed war against Iraq as soon as the war against Afghanistan had concluded its initial phase. It discussed overthrowing Saddam Hussein, partitioning Iraq into mini-states led by U.S.-funded dissidents who would steal the proceeds from the Basra oil revenues for their quisling government. The meeting discussed how to manipulate information so as to pin the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States on Saddam Hussein.

According to the Times, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld attended the meetings for only "part" of both days, and on Sept. 22, President George Bush rejected the Policy Board's recommendation to declare war against Iraq. But to the "Wolfowitz cabal," Bush's decision didn't really matter—senior members of the Policy Board had been selected for their broad international connections, especially to the United Kingdom and Israel, allowing them to force changes in U.S. policy through an "outside-inside" operation. If unable to change policy through advising, the network could also run covert operations as a "government within a government," as they had maneuvered during Iran-Contra.

The chairman of the Defense Policy Board is Richard Perle, the former Reagan Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, now based at the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute.

Perle, nicknamed "The Prince of Darkness" because of his nuclear Armageddon views during the Cold War, is, more importantly, an asset of Conrad Black's Hollinger International, Inc., which grew out of British Empire Security Coordinator William Stephenson's efforts to secure arms for Britain during World War II. At present, Hollinger owns the British Tory Party-linked Telegraph PLC, whose International Advisory Board is headed by former British Prime Minister, now Lady Margaret Thatcher. Hollinger also owns the Jerusalem Post, another war-mongering press outlet.

The "heavy hitters" on the Defense Policy Board are the worst of the Anglo-American-Israeli geopolitical fanatics from the last several decades, including: former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, who is also a member of Hollinger's International Advisory Board; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich; former Clinton Administration Director of Central Intelligence R. James Woolsey; former Deputy Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. David E. Jeremiah; former Vice President Dan Quayle; former Defense and Energy Secretary James R. Schlesinger; and former President Carter's Defense Secretary Harold Brown.

PHOTO COURTESY OF CBC Media tycoon Conrad Black took his seat among the Lords on October 31, 2001 (Halloween) as Lord Black of Crossharbour.

Though Perle was only recently appointed to head the Defense Policy Board, he and Wolfowitz have been collaborators for more than two decades, as agents-of-influence of the right-wing Israeli war faction. In 1985, when it was clear that Jonathan Jay Pollard, an American convicted that year of spying for Israel, could not have been working alone in stealing such high-level U.S. secrets for Israel to sell to the Soviet Union, top-level intelligence officials told EIR that an entire "X Committee" of high-level U.S. officials, was being investigated. Wolfowitz and Perle were on the list of "X Committee" suspects, and Israeli spying against the United States was so thick that investigators told EIR they had found "not moles, but entire molehills." Pollard and his Israeli defenders later claimed that Pollard "had to" spy against the United States because the Americans were soft on Iraq and other Arab countries.

The "Wolfowitz cabal" is deterimined to push the United States in the direction of the most dangerous Israeli right-wing policy, including a possible Israeli nuclear attack on an Arab state. They are implementers of the very "breakaway ally" scenario about which 2004 Democratic Party Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon LaRouche warned in his statement of Oct. 12 (see International).

Plan B: Wagging The Dog

The "Wolfowitz cabal" is out to destroy any potential for a Middle East peace, and simultaneously is determined to crush Eurasian economic development centered around cooperation among Europe, Russia, and China. After being rebuffed after the marathon Defense Policy Board meetings, the Wolfowitz cabal set various operations in motion to plant propaganda stories, falsify reports of U.S. policy, and carry out other maneuvers, whereby the tail would "wag the dog." Unapproved statements are made by cabal members, interviews misrepresenting U.S. policy are planted around the globe, and intelligence reports are altered or manufactured to further the policy goals.

The pattern is becoming crystal clear.

In the first such instance, shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, Wolfowitz declared that the United States will "end states harboring terrorism," and insisted that under the principle of self-defense, the United States could act alone, without the United Nations, or cooperation from any other country. He wanted to establish the "doctrine" that the United States would hit a country "anywhere, anytime" based on secret evidence. But, Wolfowitz was forced to retract his statements, in a visible rift with the White House. Some days later, NATO allies at its Brussels headquarters snubbed Wolfowitz, and refused to formalize cooperation with the United States under NATO agreements at a meeting where Wolfowitz represented the Bush Administration.

In the same vein, on Oct. 7, the day the Afghanistan bombings began, the cabal again attempted to provoke a rift between the United States and members of the UN Security Council, especially Russia and China, by altering the text of a letter from U.S. Ambassador to the UN John D. Negroponte. (Not coincidentally, Negroponte was a notorious insider in the Iran-Contra operation, who was accused of collaborating with narcotics-linked military death squads in Honduras in the 1980s.) The changes in the letter were made without notifying Negroponte's boss, Secretary of State Powell.

In the letter, Negroponte echoed Wolfowitz's so-called gaffe, writing, "We may find that our self-defense requires further action with respect to other organizations and states" (emphasis added). The statement implicitly targetted Iraq, Syria, and Sudan, all countries which are on the State Department's list of countries that support terrorism. The statement violated promises the United States had made, that it would limit "coalition" action to redressing the attack of Sept. 11. Upon learning of the statement, from the press, Powell reportedly "hit the roof." The insertion was drafted by Stephen J. Hadley, who is the Deputy Adviser to the National Security Council. The stunt may have been planned at the Defense Policy Board meetings.

Then there's the case of former CIA director R. James Woolsey, whose defined role is as the Policy Board member who is most public in demanding the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. The Knight-Ridder newspaper chain reported on Oct. 11, that Woolsey had been authorized the prior month to fly to London on a U.S. government plane, accompanied by Justice and Defense Department officials, on a secret mission to gather evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the Sept. 11 attack. In a Sept. 18 press conference by Defense Week, Woolsey called for creating a "no-fly and no-drive zone" in the north and south of Iraq, so that the Kurds and the Shi'ites, respectively, could better fight Saddam. "The watchword of the day," Woolsey said, is, "It's the Regimes, Stupid!"

Since the Oct. 5 death from anthrax of Bob Stevens, the Sun tabloid photo editor, from anthrax, Woolsey has been the world's leading finger-pointer at Saddam as being behind the anthrax attack. His so-called evidence is dated, prejudiced, and completely unreliable.

It was no accident that Woolsey role-played a prominent character -- CIA Director -- in the New York Council on Foreign Relations 1999-2000 scenario the previous year, "The Next Financial Crisis: Warning Signs, Damage Control, and Impact," that acted out a virtual coup d'état coming on the heels of a combined financial crisis and terrorist attack. In the CFR war-game, the U.S. President would be taken out of the picture, leaving the country under the control of a crisis management dictatorship.

Also dispatched to London to propagandize for a "rolling war" that would attack Afghanistan, then Iraq, then country after country until revenge is exacted, was fellow Policy Board member Newt Gingrich. Talking to the London Times, owned by top British-Israeli propagandist Rupert Murdoch, Gingrich said that the United States is "at war" with "organized, systematic extensions of terror, supported by nation-states." He said that targetting the Afghan Taliban without defeating Iraq would be "like defeating Imperial Japan and leaving the Nazis alone." Gingrich threatened that countries judged not cooperative against terrorism would face the consequences: "The U.S. and the coalition forces will assist your own people in removing you."

Setting the pace for his team, Perle was the joint initiator with neo-con William Kristol of the Rupert Murdoch-funded Weekly Standard, of an open letter to President Bush, that, while ostensibly supporting the President in the war against terrorism, was, in fact, an ultimatum to support a "Clash of Civilizations" Thirty Years' War in the Middle East. Among the non-negotiable demands set forth in that letter was the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, "even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the [Sept. 11] attack."

There is no doubt that the Wolfowitz/Perle duo is at the heart of the network that can use Israel in the "breakaway ally scenario." Indeed, Wolfowitz is one of great hopes of right-wing extremists in Israel, including among the radical settlers movement, who are demanding the assassination of Arafat and the expulsion of all Palestinians from the Occupied Territories (see coverage in International). But, Wolfowitz and Perle are not "Israeli agents." Rather, they are second-generation operatives both mentored by the RAND Corp.'s Albert Wohlstetter, a former Trotskyite communist turned nuclear strategist. Nor are the cabal war-mongers Seven Days in May militarists.

A key member of the cabal is Richard Armitage, the number-two man in the U.S. State Department, who was investigated in the Iran-Contra scandal, and who is a longtime collaborator of Wolfowitz in the targetting of Iraq. The cabal also has high-level operatives at the National Security Council (NSC):

Gen. Wayne Downing, former Commander in Chief of the Special Operations Command, was just appointed as Director of Combatting Terrorism for the Homeland Defense Board, headed by former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge. In 1997-98, Downing drew up a military plan to overthrow Saddam, by assassination, if necessary. The plan hinged on heavily arming dissident gangs of Iraqi Shi'ites in the south of Iraq, and Kurdish fighters in the north. Invasion by U.S. Special Forces ground troops was not ruled out. The promoter of the neo-Conservative yahoos in Congress and the think-tanks was Wolfowitz, then head of the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Unable to ram this plan through the Clinton Administration, Wolfowitz shopped the plan to Perle, an expert in "chain-letter" pressure politics, who garnered signatures. Now at the NSC, Downing has the ready-made plan to hit Iraq.

Richard Clarke, Adviser to the President for Cyberspace Warfare. Clarke, who was originally with the State Department during the elder Bush's Administration, was demoted for covering up Israeli violations of the Arms Exporting laws. In August 1998, Clarke was one of the key figures who planted false information about Sudan's involvement in the East Africa U.S. Embassy bombings, which led to U.S. cruise missile attacks on a Sudanese pharmaceutical company in Khartoum. Clarke shopped in disinformation from British-Israeli covert operations stringer Yosef Bodansky that targetted Sudan.