A Sparkling Bubble

Written by Uri Avnery, Gush Shalom
Sunday, 03 December 2006

A FRIEND of mine, who was brought up in Egypt, took part in the interrogation of Egyptian officers captured in the 1956 Sinai war.

An Egyptian lieutenant-colonel told him: “Every time David Ben-Gurion gave a speech declaring that he was holding out his hand for peace, we put our forces on alert.”

And, indeed, it was a typical method of Ben-Gurion: before launching a military operation, he would make a speech culminating with “We are holding out our hand for peace!” He frequently added that he was ready to meet the Arab leaders face to face, that he was in favor of negotiations without pre-conditions, and such.

NOW, BEN-GURION has an heir.

True, even in his darkest dreams Ben-Gurion could not have imagined an heir like Olmert—’a politician personifying all the traits that Ben-Gurion detested. But, as the Bible says, “the dead praise not the Lord” (Psalm 115) nor can they choose their heirs.

Last week, Olmert went all the way to Ben-Gurion’s grave in the remote Negev and made a speech designed to establish his status as his successor. No point wasting words on this pretension. But it is certainly revealing to analyse the speech itself.

On the face of it, a peacenik speech the likes of which we have not heard for some time. Some said that this was an answer to the words addressed to him by the writer David Grossman at the Rabin memorial rally. And indeed, there is a resemblance between the two: just as Grossman’s speech was rich in sublime values and poor in practical proposals, so Olmert excelled in impressive phrases but failed the test of content.

WHAT DID he say, after all?

“If you (the Palestinians) set up a new government that will undertake to fulfill the principles of the Quartet, a government that will realize the Road Map and bring about the release of Gilad Shalit—’I shall propose to Abu-Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) to meet him immediately, with the aim of conducting a real, open, sincere and serious dialogue between us and you.” (I have translated the words literally, since the official translation has edited the text.)

Looks good. But if one looks again, one realizes that it is just a soap bubble.

Since the days of Ben-Gurion, all our governments have used this tactic: say “yes” to every peace proposal, and add a small prior condition that turns “yes” into “no”.

What does Olmert demand from the Palestinian government? Little things: to recognize Israel’s right to exist without fixed borders (and without Israel recognizing the right of a Palestinian state to exist within the 1967 borders), to stop the violence (without a parallel commitment by Israel) and to recognize all the agreements signed in the past (almost all of which have been violated by Israel no less than by the Palestinians.)

On top of this, the Palestinian government must fulfill its “obligations” under the Road Map. This ridiculous document, a product of Bush & Co., demands that the Palestinians’ first step must involve dismantling all the “terror organizations”. Meaning: all the military organizations of the Palestinian parties. As long as the occupation is in force, this is a completely impossible and unreasonable demand and the Palestinians, of course, do not agree. It’s like demanding that Israel must dismantle the IDF as a first step.

Olmert does not suggest that Israel, too, would follow the Road Map. According to that document, parallel to the dismantling of the Palestinian organizations, Israel must stop all settlement activities. In practice, these were not suspended for a moment and are in full swing even now.

What will happen if the Palestinians fulfill all these one-sided conditions? Olmert will agree to meet Abu-Mazen “immediately”. What for? In order to conduct a “real, open, sincere and serious dialogue.”

The words were chosen meticulously. Not “negotiations”, God forbid, but “dialogue”. A strictly non-committal term. If we eliminate from the text all the nice words that only serve as decorations—’“immediately”, “real”, “open”, “sincere”, “serious”—’all that remains is the agreement to a meeting. Perhaps there are people who are eager to meet Olmert—’it’s a matter of taste—’but this has no political meaning at all.

OLMERT DOES not spare words. “In the framework of the dialogue (again “dialogue” and not “negotiations”) and in accordance with the Road Map (see above) you (the Palestinians) will be able to establish an independent and viable Palestinian state, with territorial contiguity in Judea and Samaria (Olmert uses these occupation terms instead of the term “West Bank”, which has become a symbol of the opposition to the occupation), a state with full sovereignty and defined borders.”

Now that is really nice. No more “temporary borders”, as in the Road Map, but “defined borders”. Only one little detail: where will these run?

Some might say: one does not disclose his final positions before the start of the negotiations (sorry, dialogue). But the Palestinians are expected to give everything before the start.

“We, the State of Israel, will agree to the evacuation of many territories and the settlements that we have established therein. This is extremely difficult for us—’akin to the Parting of the Red Sea (a Hebrew saying)—but we will bear it, in exchange for true peace between us and you.”

Sounds nice. But what does it mean? The evacuation of “many territories” and not “all the territories”, not even “most of the territories”. (In Israeli usage, “territories” means “occupied territories”, a term official spokesmen prefer to avoid.)

Also, not “the borders that existed on the eve of the Six-Day War”. Not even “borders based on the Green Line”, which would allow for small changes and an agreed swap of territories. But a new border which would annex to Israel the “settlement blocs”, as defined by the Separation Wall. That means the annexation of at least 10 percent of the West Bank, and perhaps much more.

And what’s to stop that? After all, at this stage the other side would already be disarmed and would have agreed to recognize an Israel without fixed borders.

That is the old plan of Ariel Sharon: to dismantle the small and dispersed settlements, in which some 20 percent of the settlers live, in order to annex to Israel the territories occupied by the remaining 80 percent. Olmert does not say what would happen to the expanded Jordan Valley, which constitutes about 20 percent of the West Bank and which is already completely cut off from it (with the exception of Jericho). Nor does he mention East Jerusalem, in which another 200 thousand settlers have established themselves.

He promises that with the release of the captured soldier, Gilad Shalit, he would be prepared “to release numerous Palestinian prisoners, including ones who were sentenced to lengthy prison terms, in order to increase the trust between us and prove that we indeed hold out our hand for peace.”

After eliminating all the bla-bla from this sentence, what it says is that he would agree to release veteran prisoners, with “blood on their hands”, which he and his predecessors have always refused to do, in return for the soldier, as demanded by Hamas. That only confirms the Palestinian view that Israel understands only the language of force and that it would never give up anything unless compelled to do so.

It seems that Olmert was in an especially generous mood, so he added: “(After) the cessation of terrorism and violence… we will significantly diminish the number of road-blocks, increase freedom of movement in the territories, facilitate movement of people and goods in both directions, improve the operation of the border-crossings to the Gaza Strip, and release your monies held by us, in order to alleviate the humanitarian hardship which many of you suffer.”

“Thank you, really thank you from the bottom of our hearts,” a Palestinian might reply. Not the end of the occupation, not even the lifting of the blockade of Gaza. The dismantling of some road-blocks, leaving the others where they are. Not the return of freedom of movement, but an agreement to “increase” the permitted movement. And no opening of the passage between the Gaza strip and the West Bank (as provided for in the Oslo agreement 13 years ago.) But at least, we would give back the Palestinian money “held” by us. “Embezzled” would be a more proper term.

And what did Olmert not say in his speech? He did not propose a cease-fire in the West Bank. Why? Perhaps because the army chiefs object. But even a child can understand that without a cease-fire there, the cease-fire in the Gaza Strip will not hold. The members of the organizations in Gaza will not be able to sit still while their defenseless comrades in the West Bank are being arrested, wounded and killed. Not to mention the dismemberment implied in this proposal, contrary to the Oslo agreement, which states unequivocally that the West Bank and the Gaza Strip constitute “a single territorial unit”.

SO HOW to define this speech?

It is easy to say what it is not: it is not a “turning point” in the policy of the government. A “turning point” is a change of direction, which would necessitate the preparation of the public, explaining the nature of the change, its reasons and expected results. Nothing of the sort has been done. Even the spokesmen of the extreme right did not get excited.

The correct definition is “spin”—’just some more sleight of hand prepared by “image advisors” and publicity experts.

True, even spin can have some positive value. Olmert has decided to devote the spin to matters of peace, not matters of war. This shows that he believes that Israeli public opinion is moving in this direction. The Israeli peace camp can congratulate itself for that. But there is no cause for dancing in the streets.

WHY DID Olmert make such a speech at all? And why now?

There is an internal reason. In Israel, the impression has (quite rightly) gained ground that this is a government without an agenda, without a political plan, a “hollow” government (to use Grossman’s phrase), whose only concern is political survival.

Olmert thought it necessary to fill the vacuum and to create the image of a Prime Minister who knows what he is doing and is working towards a clear goal.

And there is also an external reason, which may be more significant. Olmert may be bankrupt, but President Bush is even more desperate. He has come to the Middle East in order to convince the American voter that he knows what he is doing in Iraq and in the whole region. He needs a manifest achievement. He is carrying on the tradition of his predecessors that an American president who does not know what to do turns to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and achieves a “breakthrough”.

Bush demanded that Olmert make a gesture to impress the world. So he made a gesture—’delivering a speech full of nice phrases and promises with nothing behind them.

It must be remembered: Bush wants to look like a resolute statesman, who is constructing a front of “moderate” Arab leaders against the Evil Axis of Iran, Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas. This is why he came to Amman, instead of summoning his servants to Washington. But the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan know the dangers of looking like Israeli agents. So Bush demanded that Olmert include in his speech a reference to the Saudi peace initiative, which was rejected out of hand by the Israeli government after it had been endorsed by all the Arab states. This initiative says that the entire Arab world would recognize Israel and establish normal relations with it if it withdrew to the borders of June 4, 1967. Now, suddenly, Olmert declares that there are “positive” elements in it. But he did not accept it this time either.

Bush has returned home and will forget the whole matter. Olmert’s speech will join the many others which were forgotten the day after they were delivered. Just another speech by an Israeli leader “holding out his hand for peace”.

* An Israeli author and activist. He is the head of the Israeli peace movement, “Gush Shalom”.

'I can blackmail them. We can make money'

As Scotland Yard officers fly to Washington to help the FBI quiz a former Soviet spy, The Observer reveals Alexander Litvinenko's amazing plot to extort cash from some of Russia's top figures

Mark Townsend, Jamie Doward and Tom Parfitt in Moscow
Sunday December 3, 2006
The Observer

It was perilous, but then Alexander Litvinenko was no stranger to risk. Over the summer months, the former Kremlin spy began finalising an extraordinary business proposition that may prove the most compelling motive yet for murder.

Litvinenko claimed to have made contact with senior sources in the heart of the FSB, the successor to the KGB, who would supply him with a stream of confidential dossiers on any target that the 43-year-old exile requested.

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These documents would, according to Litvinenko, be used to 'blackmail' some of Russia's most shadowy and formidable figures. It was simple: either they would pay or the world would learn their blackest secrets.

As Scotland Yard's inquiries widened to the US and Italy yesterday, it emerged that officers were looking at whether Litvinenko's money-making ploy precipitated his poisoning.

In early May, Litvinenko first approached Julia Svetlichnaja, a 33-year-old Russian-born academic who is examining the roots of the Chechen conflict for a book she is writing. Litvinenko asked if she was interested in becoming involved in his 'blackmail' project.

'He told me he was going to blackmail or sell sensitive information about all kinds of powerful people including oligarchs, corrupt officials and sources in the Kremlin,' she said. 'He mentioned a figure of £10,000 they would pay each time to stop him broadcasting these FSB documents. Litvinenko was short of money and was adamant that he could obtain any files he wanted.'

Litvinenko proved he had sources in the heart of the Russian security services by producing what he said was a 100-page confidential FSB report from 2005 and forwarding it to Svetlichnaja, a politics student at the University of Westminster.

The report alleged links between Russian organised crime gangs and the Duma, the Russian parliament, and named a number of prominent politicians allegedly embroiled in high-level criminal activity.

The report, apparently genuine, was stored on a computer disc and is believed to have been smuggled from Moscow to London. It hailed from the most secret department of the FSB, the Department for the Analysis of Criminal Organisations, where Litvinenko worked as a senior operational officer in the Nineties.

It appears Litvinenko, a vociferous critic of President Vladimir Putin, may have finally acquired the firepower to hurt some of the Kremlin's most powerful interests. Svetlichnaja said: 'He did not seem worried. Quite the opposite; Litvinenko sensed he could finally make some money of his own after years of being supported by his friend [and fellow Russian exile] Boris Berezovsky.'

Litvinenko had apparently even started hawking around his plans during the immediate period before his death. Shortly before his death, Litvinenko claimed that some FSB files documented the business practices of British firms.

But the file that most excited him was the so-called 'Yukos dossier', which allegedly includes damaging material about how the Russian oil company once owned by oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky - recently jailed on fraud and tax-dodging charges - came to be taken over by the state. Three months ago, Russian prosecutors launched an investigation into Yukos bosses, accusing them of asset-stripping, charges they deny and say are politically motivated.

Litvinenko's claims that he had such a document were yesterday corroborated by another former Soviet intelligence officer, Yuri Shvets, during questioning by Scotland Yard and the FBI. It is likely that Litvinenko's ownership of the Yukos file may have come to the attention of Russia's security services shortly before he was poisoned. Weeks before he was contaminated with polonium 210, Litvinenko had travelled to Israel to hand over the dossier to Leonid Nevzlin, a Yukos executive whom Russia has been trying to extradite. Nevzlin is currently in self-imposed exile in Israel, but denies any wrongdoing and has given the dossier to the authorities.

The British police investigation has already taken counter-terrorism officers to the US in a line of inquiry that may prove to be connected. The questioning of former KGB spy Shvets by the Metropolitan Police and the FBI in Washington focused on an October meeting between Litvinenko and 'a contact'. Shevts, also an undercover spy in Washington during the Eighties, was the man who actually compiled the Yukos dossier, a business associate said.

The associate said: 'Shevts gave it to Sasha [Litvinenko], who then showed it to a Russian in London, boasting that he wrote it himself.'

Litvinenko's email list of confidantes reveals how Shvets, 53, and Italian security consultant Mario Scaramella frequently exchanged information on Russian politics. Last year, Shvets met Scaramella in Washington to discuss a parliamentary investigation that the Italian was conducting into Soviet spy activities.

Both knew it was an investigation that would make enemies. On 1 November, Scaramella told Litvinenko over lunch in an Itsu sushi restaurant in London, that they, along with Italian senator Paolo Guzzanti, were assassination targets. With Litvinenko now dead and Scaramella 'significantly' poisoned, Italian detectives have contacted Guzzanti to ascertain his safety.

Of interest to Scotland Yard are a number of emails sent by Litvinenko in the weeks before he was poisoned. One, seen by The Observer, was written by him just four days after the assassination of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who had met Litvinenko shortly before she was shot in the head.

'This is why Putin's secret service killed Anna,' began one message sent to Svetlichnaja. Had the knowledge that Litvinenko's sudden access to humiliating FSB documents meant that, suddenly, he could no longer be ignored? Would it be better if he were silenced?

At the start of last week, Litvinenko's poisoning was being likened to the type of fiction woven by John Le Carre. Now, as the investigation's spread widens, the case has assumed a fantastical aura. Few dare predict its next twist.

So far, the radioactive trail touches some of London's best-known five-star hotels and, unexpectedly, the Ashdown Park hotel in East Sussex, where Scaramella was staying. Increasingly clear, though, is that the trail continues to lead to Moscow. But allegations that the Kremlin sanctioned the poisoning remain unfounded, as do claims that renegade Russian spies with a personal vendetta were to blame.

Elsewhere, forensic teams from the atomic weapons research establishment at Aldermaston are still trying to locate the source of the polonium. Evidence suggests the assassins struggled to contain the polonium with which they were working, leaking radioactive material wherever they went.

Among the theories that remain open is that the poisonings were an accident that happened while Litvinenko tried to assemble a dirty bomb for Chechen rebels. Those who know him believe he was crazy enough to attempt such a thing and, in the past week, some have implicated him in the smuggling of nuclear materials from Russia.

This week should bring the results of the postmortem on Litvinenko. For the first time, detectives will know how much polonium he ingested. Vast quantities would point to a murder; smaller quantities possibly to accidental contamination. From Washington to London to Moscow, detectives, governments and spies are watching and waiting.

'About Five Minutes Into It, We Had to Take Over'

U.S. Military Advisers Step In As Iraqi Army Mission Falters

By Nancy Trejos
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 3, 2006; A20

BAGHDAD, Dec. 2 -- The bullets flew from every direction -- from rooftops, windows, alleys and doorways.

Soldiers from the Iraqi army's 9th Division were pinned against a wall. They were under a covered sidewalk. According to accounts from U.S. forces who were with them on Friday, a suspected insurgent with an AK-47 assault rifle aimed at them from a doorway. Pieces of concrete fell as the insurgent's fire ripped into the wall above the Iraqi soldiers.

That's when they froze.

U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Kent McQueen, 37, arrived to help. As he tried to get them out, he was hit. The night-vision goggles perched on his helmet fell down his face. They were dented. He had been shot in the head. "God was definitely on my side," McQueen said Saturday.

The scene played out during Operation Lion Strike, the U.S. soldiers recalled. The goal was to capture insurgents in the Fadhil district of central Baghdad. It was the first time the Iraqi army's 9th Division was to be in complete control of an operation in the two years it has been training under the Americans. Teams of U.S. advisers remained close, but planned to leave the fighting to the Iraqis.

"It started out that way. But about five minutes into it, we had to take over," Staff Sgt. Michael Baxter, 35, said.

While the battle was in progress, U.S. military leaders had called it an "outstanding" example of Iraqi forces taking charge. They said the Iraqis captured 43 insurgents while suffering few casualties.

But interviews the following day with U.S. and Iraqi soldiers at Camp al-Rashid in Rustimayah, where they are based, painted a more complex picture.

Strengthening Iraq's police and army is the key to the eventual withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, American commanders say. The bipartisan Iraq Study Group, in its report due to be released next week, is expected to recommend pulling out nearly all U.S. combat units from Iraq by early 2008 and leaving behind troops such as those involved in Friday's fight in Fadhil to train, advise and support Iraqi forces.

Although the Iraqis in the 9th Division have become more effective in the two years since they formed, American soldiers and some Iraqi leaders at Camp al-Rashid said they are not yet ready to operate on their own.

"They're basically a baby army," Baxter said. "They're just now starting up. It's going to take them a while to get the experience."

The unit, the only mechanized division in the Iraqi army, has about 4,000 soldiers.

They are typically older soldiers, recruited from across the country, said Col. Douglass S. Heckman, the senior adviser for the 9th Division Military Transition Team, whose members are part of the 1st Cavalry Division. When U.S. troops first began rebuilding the Iraqi army after the 2003 invasion, recruits would drop out if they were deployed away from their homes, Heckman said. "These guys are not afraid to go anywhere," he said.

The U.S. military is increasingly ceding more authority to Iraqi leaders, Heckman said. For example, personnel decisions are now up to Iraqi leaders. "It inspires a lot of confidence to have Iraqi units with Iraqi flags," he said.

That confidence appeared to have been shaken on Friday. In one three-block section of Fadhil in a neighborhood known as Jumhuriya, 35 Iraqi soldiers came under fire as soon as they arrived at 6 a.m., their American advisers recalled.

For any army, however well trained, the Jumhuriya battle would have been a difficult one. There were empty shops and tall buildings where snipers could easily hide. The streets were narrow, preventing easy movement of tanks.

The Iraqis knew little about their enemy. They could not quantify them. They couldn't distinguish between a civilian and an insurgent because everyone dressed alike, the Americans and Iraqis said.

Their enemy, however, appeared to know a lot about them. Somehow, they knew where the Americans and Iraqis had set up one of two field headquarters and fired mortar shells at it, said Maj. Thomas J. Boczar.

The Jumhuriya battle was just one small part of Friday's operation, which involved about 500 Iraqis conducting searches and 60 Americans advising them. Other parts of the operation ran smoothly, high-ranking American officers said.

But it was a window on the challenges U.S. forces face in training the Iraqis.

Sitting in a conference room at Camp al-Rashid, American soldiers described Iraqi troops with inadequate training, resources or motivation. When they shoot, they "pray and spray" and do not aim for targets, the soldiers said. They either lack equipment or are not well trained in new equipment. On the battlefield on Friday, the Iraqis communicated by cellphone because their walkie-talkies did not work, the U.S. soldiers said.

The way the Americans see it, the Iraqis are fierce fighters. But they have been depleted of their energy after so many years of war, first against Iran in the 1980s, then against the United States during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the American soldiers said.

By about 11 a.m. on Friday, the Americans decided it was time to pull out of that part of Jumhuriya.

The sniper bullets kept flying, not just from the rooftops, but from the second and third floors of apartment buildings, they recalled. Grenades flew out the windows. Machine guns fired. It was an all-out ambush, unusual in that it was such a coordinated effort by the insurgents, the Americans said.

While some Iraqis froze in indecision, others fired wildly as they ran across streets. Hollywood heroics, one soldier called it.

"I'm just thinking to myself, oh God, get me out of this because these guys are going to get me killed if we stay here," Baxter said.

The Americans called in helicopters to shoot at the snipers, but it was too chaotic of a scene for the aircraft to make clear shots, they said.

Still pinned against the wall underneath the covered sidewalk, McQueen decided it was time to make a run for his Humvee, he recalled. In Arabic, he told the Iraqis to go.

They gave him a puzzled look. Follow me, he told them. This time they complied.

McQueen got into the Humvee first, then opened the back door. Bullets whizzed by. He pulled the soldiers inside as the Humvee drove away. They squeezed in under the gunner. They jumped on top of one another. "It looked like Twister," McQueen said.

Top Iraqi leaders at the base said the mission proved that they can someday secure their own country without interference from American forces. What they lack is not training, not motivation, not confidence, but equipment, they said. They need better tanks and spare parts, Iraqi officials said. And they really need aircraft.

"Give us the aviation and leave us alone," Brig. Gen. Kasim Maliki, a 25-year veteran of the army, said through an interpreter.

Friday's operation was planned over the course of 48 hours, in consultation with the Defense Ministry, Maliki said.

He scoffed at the idea that the Iraqi army needs better training to carry out such missions. "We have been through wars," he said over a cup of sweet tea.

Lt. Col. Bassim Mohammed, who joined the Iraqi army in 1987, said he did not believe his men were prepared for Friday's operation because they had so little notice. He said he found out about the mission at midnight, and they left at 3:30 a.m. That was not enough time to secure the perimeter, he said.

They encountered more than 100 insurgents, he said, and killed or wounded about 20 of them. He said he believes his soldiers could have better handled so many insurgents with more notice.

"We've never suffered the way we did yesterday," he said.

Bush Colluded With Big Oil Cheats

December 3, 2006
Blowing the Whistle on Big Oil
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
Honolulu

DURING a 22-year career, Bobby L. Maxwell routinely won accolades and awards as one of the Interior Department’s best auditors in the nation’s oil patch, snaring promotions that eventually had him supervising a staff of 120 people.

He and his team scrutinized the books of major oil producers that collectively pumped billions of dollars worth of oil and gas every year from land and coastal waters owned by the public. Along the way, the auditors recovered hundreds of millions of dollars from companies that shortchanged the government on royalties.

“Mr. Maxwell’s career has been characterized by exceptional performance and significant contributions,” wrote Gale A. Norton, then the secretary of the interior, in a 2003 citation. Ms. Norton praised Mr. Maxwell’s “perseverance and leadership” while cataloguing his “many outstanding achievements.”

Less than two years later, the Interior Department eliminated his job in what it called a “reorganization.” That came exactly one week after a federal judge in Denver unsealed a lawsuit in which Mr. Maxwell contended that a major oil company had spent years cheating on royalty payments.

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The Mexico killings that led to a Washington cover-up going right to the top

The House of Death

When 12 bodies were found buried in the garden of a Mexican house, it seemed like a case of drug-linked killings. But the trail led to Washington and a cover-up that went right to the top. David Rose reports from El Paso

Sunday December 3, 2006
The Observer

Janet Padilla's first inkling that something might be wrong came when she phoned her husband at lunchtime. His mobile phone was switched off. On 14 January, 2004, Luis had, as usual, left for work at 6am, and when he did not answer the first call Janet made, after taking the children to school, she assumed he was busy. Two weeks later she would learn the truth.

'It was love at first sight for Luis and me, and that's how it stayed, after two years dating at school and eight years of marriage,' says Janet. 'We always spoke a couple of times during the day and he always kept his phone on. So I called my dad, who owns the truckyard where he worked and he told me, "he hasn't been here". I called my in-laws and they hadn't seen him either, and they were already worried because his car was outside their house with the windows open and the keys in the ignition. He would never normally leave it like that.'

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Luis Padilla, 29, father of three, had been kidnapped, driven across the Mexican border from El Paso, Texas, to a house in Ciudad Juarez, the lawless city ruled by drug lords that lies across the Rio Grande. As his wife tried frantically to locate him, he was being stripped, tortured and buried in a mass grave in the garden - what the people of Juarez call a narco-fossa, a narco-smugglers' tomb.

Just another casualty of Mexico's drug wars? Perhaps. But Padilla had no connection with the drugs trade; he seems to have been the victim of a case of mistaken identity. Now, as a result of documents disclosed in three separate court cases, it is becoming clear that his murder, along with at least 11 further brutal killings, at the Juarez 'House of Death', is part of a gruesome scandal, a web of connivance and cover-up stretching from the wild Texas borderland to top Washington officials close to President Bush.

These documents, which form a dossier several inches thick, are the main source for the facts in this article. They suggest that while the eyes of the world have been largely averted, America's 'war on drugs' has moved to a new phase of cynicism and amorality, in which the loss of human life has lost all importance - especially if the victims are Hispanic. The US agencies and officials in this saga - all of which refused to comment, citing pending lawsuits - appear to have thought it more important to get information about drugs trafficking than to stop its perpetrators killing people.

The US media have virtually ignored this story. The Observer is the first newspaper to have spoken to Janet Padilla, and this is the first narrative account to appear in print. The story turns on one extraordinary fact: playing a central role in the House of Death was a US government informant, Guillermo Ramirez Peyro, known as Lalo, who was paid more than $220,000 (£110,000) by US law enforcement bodies to work as a spy inside the Juarez cartel. In August 2003 Lalo bought the quicklime used to dissolve the flesh of the first victim, Mexican lawyer Fernando Reyes, and then helped to kill him; he recorded the murder secretly with a bug supplied by his handlers - agents from the Immigration and Customs Executive (Ice), part of the Department of Homeland Security. That first killing threw the Ice staff in El Paso into a panic. Their informant had helped to commit first-degree murder, and they feared they would have to end his contract and abort the operations for which he was being used. But the Department of Justice told them to proceed.

Lalo's cartel bosses told him whenever they were planning another killing, using a grisly codeword - carne asada, 'barbecue'. In the six months after Reyes's death, they used it on many occasions. Each time, says Lalo, he informed his handlers in Ice. They did not intervene.

El Paso, population 700,000, lies in Texas's far west. It is a V-shaped city almost bisected by the Franklin mountains, lashed by desert winds. Houston and Dallas are more than 600 miles away. Much closer, across a guarded fence and the river, here little wider than a stream, is Juarez. On the western side of the Mexican city are the barrios - dirt streets of ramshackle huts without sanitation, built from discarded wood and tyres, whose inhabitants live in sight of the gleaming offices of downtown El Paso.

Eastern Juarez is very different. There, in the campestre, the country club district, lie gated developments patrolled by security guards, armoured palaces of marble, with columns, fountains and huge golden domes. Most of the money comes from drugs. Los narcos control not only Juarez but the wider state of Chihuahua, ruling through corruption and fear. One organisation is paramount - the Juarez cartel led by Vicente Carrillo Fuentes. The US State Department claims he is responsible for shipping cocaine and marijuana worth billions of dollars a year and protects his business by killing. America is offering a $5m reward for his arrest.

His cartel has penetrated Mexican law enforcement at all levels. Like many of its operatives, Lalo began as a policeman - in his case in the Mexican highway police. Having resigned from the force in 1995, he began transporting cocaine by the ton for a gang based in Guadalajara. Professing disgust at his criminal associates, he started working for the US government in February 2000, supplying information not only to Ice (then known as US Customs) but also the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco, and the FBI. A few months later, with his handlers' encouragement, he was recruited into the Juarez cartel by Il Ingeniero, the Engineer, one of Fuentes's key lieutenants and a man notorious for acts of savage violence. His real name was Heriberto Santillan-Tabares.

'The money I got from the Americans I invested in business,' says Lalo, 36. 'I had a used-car lot, a furniture store and a cellphone accessory place.' He settled with his wife and three children on the US side of the border. 'I spoke to my handlers three or four times a day. But when I went across the bridge to Juarez, I had no back-up. I was on my own.'

Lalo claims to have facilitated numerous drug seizures and arrests. But on 28 June, 2003, his loyalty came under suspicion when he was arrested by the DEA in New Mexico, driving a truck he had brought across the border containing 102lb of marijuana. He had not told his handlers about this shipment and, in accordance with its normal procedures, the DEA 'deactivated' him as a source.

Ice took a different view. Agents in its El Paso office were trying to use Lalo to build a case against Santillan, and to nail a separate cigarette-smuggling investigation. At a meeting with federal prosecutors the week after Lalo's arrest, Ice tried to persuade assistant US attorney Juanita Fielden that, if Lalo were closely monitored, he would continue to be effective. Fielden agreed. She says in an affidavit that she called the New Mexico prosecutor and got him to drop the charges. Lalo was released.

A month later, on 5 August, Santillan asked Lalo to meet him at a cartel safe house at 3633 Calle Parsonieros, in an affluent neighbourhood of Juarez. The Mexican lawyer Reyes would be there too, Santillan said, and with the help of some members of the Juarez judicial police - the local detective force - they were going to kill him.

When Lalo arrived, two cops were already there. He went out to buy the quicklime and duct tape, and when he returned Santillan turned up with Reyes. The policemen jumped on the lawyer, beating him and trying to put duct tape over his mouth. Lalo, wearing his hidden wire supplied by Ice, recorded Reyes's desperate pleas for mercy. 'They [the police] asked me to help them get him to the floor,' reads a statement he made later. 'They tried to choke him with an extension cord, but this broke and I gave them a plastic bag and they put it on his head and suffocated him.' Even then, they were not sure Reyes was dead. One of the officers took a shovel 'and hit him many times on the head'.

When Lalo returned to El Paso on the day of Reyes's murder and told his Ice employers what had happened they were understandably worried. They knew that, if they were to continue using Lalo as an informant, they would need high-level authorisation. That afternoon and evening he was debriefed at length by his main handler, Special Agent Raul Bencomo, and his supervisor. Then he was allowed to go back to Juarez - Santillan had given him $2,000 to pay two cartel members to dig Reyes's grave, cover his body with quicklime and bury it.

Meanwhile the El Paso Ice office reported the matter to headquarters in Washington. The information went up the chain of command, eventually reaching America's Deputy Assistant Attorney General, John G. Malcolm. It passed through the office of Johnny Sutton, the US Attorney for Western Texas - a close associate of George W. Bush. When Bush was Texas governor, Sutton spent five years as his director of criminal justice policy. After Bush became President, Sutton became legal policy co-ordinator in the White House transition team, working with another Bush Texas colleague, Alberto Gonzalez, the present US Attorney General.

Earlier this year Sutton was appointed chairman of the Attorney General's advisory committee which, says the official website, 'plays a significant role in determining policies and programmes of the department and in carrying out the national goals set by the President and the Attorney General'. Sutton's position as US Attorney for Western Texas is further evidence of his long friendship with the President - falling into his jurisdiction is Midland, the town where Bush grew up, and Crawford, the site of Bush's beloved ranch.

'Sutton could and should have shut down the case, there and then,' says Bill Weaver, a law professor at the University of Texas at El Paso who has made a detailed study of the affair. 'He could have told Ice and the lawyers "go with what you have, and let's try to bring Santillan to justice". That neither he nor anyone else decided to take that action invites an obvious inference: that because the only people likely to get killed were Mexicans, they thought it didn't much matter.'

In the days after Reyes's death, officials in Texas and Washington held a series of meetings. Finally word came back from headquarters - despite the risk that Lalo might become involved with further murders, Ice could continue to use and pay him as an informant. And although Santillan had already been caught on tape directing a merciless killing and might well kill again, no attempt would be made to arrest him.

Lalo's statement, made in Dallas in February 2004, is a record of cruelty and violence, the words of a man who thought himself untouchable because of his relationship with Ice. In the months after Washington decided not to move on Santillan, the garden of the house at 3633 Calle Parsonieros began to fill with bodies. One day in September 2003, 'Santillan called to ask me to bury a guy who had apparently died of a heart attack at the moment he was kidnapped', Lalo's statement says. 'Another execution I remember was on 23 November... Santillan ordered me to have these drug mules meet him in the little Parsonieros house ... Loya [a corrupt police commander] put tape around their heads, but they could still breathe and one of them began to moan loudly, so Loya shot him in the head... but he didn't die immediately.' They were killed because they were careless in their smuggling work.

Then, and on other occasions, Santillan told Lalo in advance he was going to hold a carne asada. The deposition gives details of 13 murders, all but one of whose victims were later found buried at Number 3633. Each time Lalo crossed into Mexico his Ice handlers sought and obtained formal clearance from headquarters to allow their source to travel to a foreign country while working for a US agency. Throughout the period, Lalo says, he continued to talk to his handler Bencomo up to four times a day - usually in person, at the Ice El Paso office. He says his meetings with Santillan were all covertly recorded, while documents show that Ice had arranged for Lalo's phone to be bugged.

Curtis Compton, Bencomo's Ice supervisor, insisted in an affidavit that it did not know of any murders before they occurred: 'We only learned about the murders through interviews of Lalo after the fact. I acted in good faith that all my actions were legal and proper.'

Lalo's last country clearance was issued on 13 January, 2004. Once again Santillan had called him, asking him to come to Juarez to unlock the Parsonieros house for a carne asada. Next morning Luis Padilla disappeared.

Although the Padillas had attended Socorro high school in El Paso and lived in the US from childhood, both remained Mexican citizens, resident aliens with green-card work permits. Their children, Luis jnr, Jacqueline and Jasmine, were born in the US. Luis snr was two years ahead of Janet at school and they did not speak to each other until they attended a mutual friend's quinceria, a 15th birthday party.

Janet smiles at the memory: 'I liked everything about Luis straight away. He was silly, funny, a popular guy; he played a lot of sports. He was very religious and I started going to the same church, where he was president of the youth section.' For their first date he took her to a Mexican restaurant, and then a children's park: 'We just sat there on the swings, talking as if we'd known each other for years.' In 1996, when Janet was 16, they got married. They spent their wedding night in Juarez.

By 4pm on 14 January, Janet was on the point of phoning El Paso police when she received a call from a friend in Juarez. 'She told me, "I've just seen Luis over here. He was with some cops - they were putting him in a truck". I couldn't figure it out. He shouldn't have been in Mexico at all. At 8 o'clock I couldn't stand it any longer and I went over there myself. I went to all the different police stations. Nobody had him. Nobody knew where he was.'

Since they married Janet and Luis had only ever spent a night apart - when Luis junior was born; they had been living in Dallas, but she wanted to give birth in El Paso, in order to be near her family. In the fortnight after his disappearance, Janet and the children stayed with relatives. 'I couldn't go home. I couldn't be on my own. When he was lost, not knowing what had happened drove me crazy. When at last I heard something, at first I felt relief. A lot of people disappear in Juarez and you never know what happened to them.'

On 26 January, Janet got a call. Juarez police told her they had found some bodies. She was to meet them at the city mortuary. First, she was shown some photographs, but none was of Luis, 'I had to do it in person. I went in there and they had four bodies at that time. There were still ropes around their heads and their eyes were sticking out because they had been suffocated. It was horrible, horrible. One of them had a tattoo, one had silver teeth, another was too fat.'

Janet still did not believe this could have anything to do with Luis. 'He never took drugs and he never drank, beyond the odd beer. He never got into fights. He was still really into the church and he'd just been asked to coach middle-school sports. How could he be narco-fossa?' The police phoned again. This time they asked her to meet them at 3633 Calle Parsonieros. The place looked familiar. 'The hotel where we spent our honeymoon night backed on to the garden.

'I saw his shoes and his jacket. I went into the garden and they were probing the ground with a pole. That's when they found his body.' The police exhumed him, 'but it was hard to ID him because he was so decomposed. I looked at his hands and touched them. The flesh fell off.'

Two other men had been murdered on 14 January, both of them from Juarez. The next day Santillan told Lalo he had been asked to kill them as a favour for some associates of Vicente Carrillo Fuentes - Santillan had nothing against them personally. In such circumstances, murderers can make mistakes.

While Santillan and Lalo went on killing, Bencomo, his Ice colleagues and Assistant US Attorney Fielden were assembling their case. In December 2003 Fielden drew up a sealed indictment against Santillan. But although there was already some evidence of his involvement in killings, the indictment was only for trafficking, not murder. Before they could lure him to America and arrest him, they needed permission from the DoJ. They got it on 15 January, a day after Luis Padilla died.

But this did not bring the House of Death killings to an end. Under torture, one of Santillan's victims had revealed the address of Homer Glen McBrayer - a DEA special agent resident in Juarez who operated under diplomatic cover. At 6pm on 14 January, two men rang his doorbell continuously for 10 minutes. Afraid, his wife phoned him at work. McBrayer rushed home and ushered his wife and daughters into their car. As soon as they left the estate where they lived, they were stopped by a Mexican police car. Two civilian vehicles hemmed McBrayer's car in. Their occupants got out and waited while McBrayer talked to the cops. They were Santillan's men.

Having showed his diplomatic passport, McBrayer phoned a DEA colleague, who arrived within minutes. Unwilling, perhaps, to abduct two US agents, a woman and two children on a busy street, the cartel men backed off. As the standoff unfolded, Santillan twice called Lalo. He asked him to find out what he could about an American called Homer Glen - the corrupt police had not given McBrayer's surname. Santillan, claimed Lalo, said he thought he worked for the tres letras - code for the DEA - and intended to blow up his house.

The McBrayers were lucky to be alive, and the DEA, kept in the dark about the continued use of Lalo after the first murder six months earlier, reacted with fury. Even as Ice debriefed Lalo, it refused the DEA access to him and to recordings of the events of 14 January. Every principle governing informant handling and inter-agency co-operation appeared to have been flouted, and the Mexican government was not told of the carnage taking place on - and under - its soil.

Ice got Lalo to arrange a meeting with Santillan in El Paso and on 15 January Il Ingeniero was arrested. Two days later, Ice finally told the Mexicans that the garden at 3633 Calle Parsonieros was a mass grave. After bureaucratic delays, digging began on 23 January. On 18 February, Johnny Sutton filed a new indictment against Santillan, charging him with trafficking and five murders - including those of Reyes and Padilla.

The House Of Death suddenly seemed set to become a major national scandal. Bill Conroy, a reporter who works for an investigative website, Narconews.com, was about to publish an article about it. On 24 February, Sandy Gonzalez, the Special Agent in Charge of the DEA office in El Paso, one of the most senior and highly decorated Hispanic law enforcement officers in America, wrote to his Ice counterpart, John Gaudioso.

'I am writing to express to you my frustration and outrage at the mishandling of investigation that has resulted in unnecessary loss of human life,' he began, 'and endangered the lives of special agents of the DEA and their immediate families. There is no excuse for the events that culminated during the evening of 14 January... and I have no choice but to hold you responsible.' Ice, Gonzalez wrote, had gone to 'extreme lengths' to protect an informant who was, in reality, a 'homicidal maniac... this situation is so bizarre that, even as I'm writing to you, it is difficult for me to believe it'.

But Ice and its allies in the DoJ were covering up their actions, helped by the US media - aside from the Dallas Morning News, not one major newspaper or TV network has covered the story. The first signs came in the response to Gonzalez's letter to Gaudioso - not from Ice, but from Johnny Sutton.

He reacted not to the discovery of corpses at Calle Parsonieros, but with concern Gonzalez might talk to the media. He communicated his fears to a senior official in Washington - Catherine O'Neil, director of the DoJ's Organised Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force. Describing Gonzalez's letter as 'inflammatory,' she passed on Sutton's fears to the then Attorney General, John Ashcroft, and to Karen Tandy, the head of the DEA, another Texan lawyer.

Tandy was horrified by Gonzalez's letter. 'I apologised to Johnny Sutton last night and he and I agreed on a "no comment" to the press,' she replied on 5 March. Gonzalez would have no further involvement with the House of Death case and was ordered to report to Washington for 'performance discussions to further address this officially'.

Gonzalez was told that Sutton was 'extremely upset'. Gonzalez, who had enjoyed glittering appraisals throughout his 30-year career, was told he would be downgraded. On 4 May, DEA managers in Washington sent him a letter. It said that, if he quietly retired before 30 June, he would be given a 'positive' reference for future employers. If he refused, a reference would dwell on his 'lapse'. Gonzalez resigned, and launched a lawsuit - part of which is due to come to court tomorrow.

'I've been written off,' he says. 'They dismiss my complaints, saying I'm just a disgruntled employee. But once they knew about the carne asadas, they were legally and morally obligated to do something. They already had a solid case against Santillan for drugs and murder. What the fuck else did they need? As for the DEA, they held my feet to the fire and joined the cover-up.' He had been neutralised, but there remained the danger that details of Ice's relationship with Lalo would surface at Santillan's trial.

Janet Padilla had also been dealt with. Ice has no legal responsibility for investigating murder, but after her husband's funeral Lalo's former handler, Bencomo, came calling. 'He told me that he was going to help me find my husband's killers and bring them to justice,' Janet says. 'He said to tell him anything I knew, because he would be in charge of the case. I saw him three or four times, and later I also met Juanita Fielden.' It did not occur to Janet that she ought to contact the police or other agencies.

For Janet, Santillan's indictment for murder was a moment of hope: 'I thought I was going to get justice for Luis.' But on 19 April Sutton announced a deal with Santillan - in return for his pleading guilty to trafficking and acceptance of a 25-year sentence the murder charges were dropped. 'All of the murders were committed in Juarez, by Mexican citizens, and all of the victims were citizens of Mexico,' Sutton said.

No one had any further use for Lalo. In August 2004 someone tried to shoot him at an El Paso restaurant - instead killing an innocent bystander. After that, he was taken into protective custody. And then, on 9 May 2005, Ice, the agency that had cherished him, decided that his US visa was irregular and began legal proceedings to deport him to Mexico - without doubt a death sentence. He is now in a maximum-security jail in the Midwest, fighting his former employers through the courts. In October The Observer won clearance to visit him with his lawyer, Jodi Goodwin. On the eve of the interview he was abruptly moved to a different facility where officials said a visit was impossible. Goodwin passed on a message: 'I'm not mad, I'm sad and disillusioned. Every time I did a job and brought them information, I was congratulated. Now they want to deliver me to my death.'

'If Congress and the media start to look at this properly, they will be horrified,' Sandy Gonzalez says. 'It needs a special prosecutor, as with the case of Valerie Plame [the CIA agent whose name was leaked to the media when her diplomat husband criticised Bush over Iraq's missing weapons of mass destruction]. But Valerie is a nice-looking white person and the victims here are brown. Nobody gives a shit.'

For the three children who lost their father, and their mother, now struggling to make ends meet, it is difficult to cope. 'It's worst at night, when I put them to bed,' Janet Padilla says. 'I guess that's when it hits them. I tell them, "come on you guys, we got to make a prayer. Don't worry. Your daddy's watching you." But you know, it's very hard to make it as a dad as well as a mom.'

Who's who

· Sandy Gonzalez Special Agent in charge of the DEA in El Paso who was forced to resign after complaining about the official handling of the House of Death case

· Vicente Carrillo Fuentes Believed to lead the Juarez drug cartel. The US has a $5m bounty on his head.

· Heriberto Santillan-Tabares Known as 'the Engineer', he is a key henchman of the Juarez gang and the man who arranged the killings at the House of Death.

· Guillermo Ramirez Peyro Known as Lalo, he is a US government informant who worked as a henchman inside the Juarez drug cartel. Now in a maximum-security US jail.

· Fernando Reyes A Mexican lawyer, murdered at the House of Death. His killing was tape-recorded by Lalo

.· Johnny Sutton US Attorney for Western Texas and ex-adviser to Bush. Approved indictments against Santillan.

· Raul Bencomo The Ice Special Agent who was Lalo's main handler.

Andrew Sullivan on Iraq: 'It's over, guys. Your beloved Bush administration botched this so badly it's irrecoverable.'

Saturday, December 2, 2006

Denialists Dig In

02 Dec 2006 04:37 pm

Both National Review and the Weekly Standard aim for the Baker-Hamilton Group this week. But when you examine what the Kristol-Kagan team sees as the alternative to a gradual retreat from the South and Anbar into Kurdistan, you can't help wondering how serious they really are. Money quote:

We hope that he will now take the steps necessary to accomplish his stated objectives in Iraq, including a substantial increase in the number of U.S. forces in Baghdad and throughout the contested parts of the country, as well as a long overdue increase in the total size of American ground forces so that higher force levels in Iraq can be sustained.

How much higher would make a difference? At this point, close to 50,000 to 100,000 extra troops to halt the centrifugal force of societal disintegration in Iraq. Does the Weekly Standard seriously believe that is either politically or militarily possible with the urgency necessary? Of course not. Would, say, another 20,000 troops work in a pitched battle with Sadrite forces to retake parts of Baghdad? Unlikely - and with massive casualties probably prompting an uprising in the South. Anbar is all but gone. The South is a battleground for various Shiite militias and sending U.S. troops in to police the conflict is madness. But even if you reduced troops in the South and West, and focused on 20,000 more troops just for Baghdad, it's a stretch. As even Fred Kagan acknowledges:

It is certainly true that only the 20,000 or so troops now programmed to deploy to Iraq in the spring are ready to go. Others could be made ready only in months, and would require accelerated training schedules.

We need at least 50,000 NOW. The only way to do that is sending untrained and ill-prepared or exhausted forces into a combat zone as chaotic and as opaque and as deadly as urban warfare in Baghdad. it would mean re-taking Baghdad three years after we did the first time, with far fewer advantages. And the massive surge in U.S. casualties it would mean would provoke massive opposition at home. If Rumsfeld and Cheney and Bush had done this three years ago, it might have had a chance. But they were too arrogant to do what was obviously needed when it mattered, and the window of opportunity is over. To ask for such a radical re-upping of the ante now - after the American public's patience has been exhausted and the Iraqi population has been massacred and thereby embittered on a large scale - is simply a non-starter.

The attempt to belittle the efforts of Baker-Hamilton is therefore pure positioning. In Margaret Thatcher's phrase, there is tragically no alternative to some sort of retrenchment and retreat right now. I agree we need an effort to expand the military by several divisions. That was Al Gore's position in 2000, by the way, the candidate the Weekly Standard hounded as insane and weak. It was Kerry's position in 2004, another candidate the WS smeared as Jane Fonda in drag. Maybe a period of retrenchment and rebuilding of US forces could mean a new offensive in a year or so. But the idea that it can be accomplished swiftly enough now to make a difference in a "country" that has already disintegrated into Hobbesian hell is pure fantasy and Bill Kristol and Bob Kagan must know it.

There is a mood on the right at this moment that is not entirely rational. They are lashing out at the people who can rescue them from the folly of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld policy in Iraq. They are viciously attacking those who have had the temerity to expain why they lost the last election. And they are throwing the vilest of epithets at James Baker. Please. This is not 1991. They are as graceless in defeat now as they were hubristic in premature victory three years ago. Or to put it more precisely, they are exactly what National Review accuses the Baker-Hamilton Commission of being: "driven by their own internal dynamics rather than by any connection to the real world."

It's over, guys. Your beloved Bush administration botched this so badly it's irrecoverable. You enabled them. You never fully took them on when it would have counted - and you trashed those of us who did. You knew this before the 2004 election and still cynically played the anti-Kerry card for all it was worth, telling yourselves you could sway Rummy after the election. Well, you couldn't and you didn't. Your policy was sabotaged by a defense secretary who never believed in it and by a president too weak and out-of-it to rein him in. Get over yourselves and recognize that this dream has died. And we have to fight the nightmare we now face rather than pretend your dream is still even on life-support. That's the patriotic responsibility at this point. And no, I'm not impugning your patriotism. I'm asking you to place it before your shattered dreams.

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Google is interferring with their subsiduary Blogger, my blogging host. I've noticed my posts go to Google Analytics before they go to Bloggerbeta.

Whatever they're doing is messing up the blog template.

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