Recently the news media reported a USAF B-52 taking off from Minot AFB, ND and
landing at Barksdale AFB, LA with six nuclear weapons aboard. The big question is
how or why this could happen?
First of all I have to say we are not privileged to all of the information and may
never know the underlying circumstances of this occurrence. The Department of
Defense declared this entire event was a mistake and would investigate what actually
happened.
Obviously there are two possibilities: 1. this was an error and the events that
occurred were a tragic mistake of far reaching proportions; and 2. the nuclear
weapons were moved on purpose.
The United States has had nuclear weapons for over sixty years. Through out this
time the tracking, storage and movement of these weapons has been performed
without any type of security problem. The chain of custody procedures has been
refined to the nith degree to insure that there will never be a mistake. The access to,
movement of, and custody of these weapons is so tightly controlled, each serial
numbered weapon has to be signed for when possession of it changes (from one
person to another), then only after receiving a lawful order to do so. In order to
load a nuclear weapon onto an aircraft the Weapon’s Depot Commander must
receive a lawful order from above. The order is sent down (in writing) to one of the
bomb shelter custodians and the weapon is signed out to a Loader. The Loader,
loads the weapon onto an aircraft and will keep the weapon/aircraft under
surveillance with the aircraft under armed guard by the Security Police in an isolated
protected area until the Aircraft Commander performs his pre-flight inspection on
the aircraft and signs a receipt for each of the weapons by serial number. Once
delivered at their destination the Aircraft Commander would receive a receipt for the
weapons by serial number from the receiving facility.
With all of the necessary orders and paperwork required just to move a nuclear
weapon from one room in a storage facility to another, it can be stated with some
sort of certainty that this was not a casual mistake as the Department of Defense has
eluted to.
Then if the movement wasn’t a mistake, it obviously was done with some sort of
purpose in mind.
The destination of the aircraft was Barksdale AFB, LA from which a number of the
strikes on the Middle East have initiated. Speculation would lead us to believe the
weapons were being stockpiled at this facility for a possible strike somewhere in the
world. Additional speculation would also lead us to believe the strike was to occur in
the very near future. Why else the need to forego the normal overland
transportation procedures for nuclear weapons and risk flying them to their
destination in violation of a treaty with the Russians. Also how is it the press was
aware of this movement? After all who would be suspicious of a B-52 taking off
from a B-52 base and a B-52 landing at a B-52 base. This event goes on many times
each day for practice missions and training. Some one had to have leaked the
information to the press that the U.S. was moving nuclear weapons by air in a treaty
violation.
This leads us to two possible scenarios.
1. Whoever leaked the information would have been someone in a position of
authority knowing what was going on and concerned the U.S. was actually
attempting to use nuclear weapons somewhere in the world and wanting to stop it
by exposing it. This someone would have had to have a security clearance of some
kind and violated the trust under which it was issued thus being exposed to severe
penalties and jail time for potential treason etc. Facing such severe penalties
someone would have to be totally committed to his/her own conscience/moral
beliefs. This preemptive exposure would put the U.S. on a difficult footing and loss
of the surprise factor, thus potentially curtailing the mission.
2. The other possibility would be the information on the flight was leaked on
purpose in an attempt to influence a foreign government, group or situation to
move in a particular direction. That the U.S. was “Saber rattling” and the stakes were
high enough to risk antagonizing the Russians to accomplish it. (With the possibility
the Russians were supporting the action and willing to overlook the violation as
exemplified by their lack of response in the entire situation.)
In either case we have only seen some minor actions taking by the Department of
Defense in an attempt to say; well, by accident we left a few nuc’s laying around on
some missiles we were going to destroy and they accidentally got loaded onto a
plane that by some coincidence happened to be going to a base other than the one it
was assigned to (we rarely fly B-52’s assigned at one station to another station).
B-52’s usually take off from their home base, fly their mission anywhere in the world
by aerial refueling and then return to the base from which they departed. Often
these flights take over 20 to 30 hours. If this was a mistake what is happening to the
general officers in the chain of command who would have had to issue lawful orders
for the movement of those weapons and all those in the custodial chain who would
have had to sign for each weapon as they gained possession of them? It just doesn’t
add up. Especially when there is a line item in the budget before Congress to
upgrade the missiles the Air Force says they were about to destroy. There appears
to be too many loose ends still dangling. In addition to all of this did anyone notice
how quickly this entire situation quieted down. Usually the press would play on such
a world shaking event for months. They do for other things like the first birthday of
Anna Nicole’s daughter. We’ve heard about that for weeks on end. But, for a world
event with treaty violation implications, no protests from the other treaty signers or
other major world players, we get about three days of news attention and it goes
away. It seems the exposure has played its roles and has gone away with hopes all
is forgotten.
In closing, again we are not privileged in knowing all of the facts and undercover
goings on in this matter to be fully aware of what the real intent of this action, but it
appears to be more than what the surface information appears.
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
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.