PressTV

Iran’s Intelligence Ministry has uncovered ‘terrorist’ plots targeting the country’s security and stability during the presidential election.

“The ministry has dismantled the groups involved in such activities and has arrested almost all group-members in two stages,” IRNA quoted Intelligence Minister Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei on Wednesday.He said that the plots included bomb attacks on several sites in Iran, adding that those behind such activities were linked with “the Zionist and non-Zionist regimes outside the county.”

One of the targets, Mohseni-Ejei said, was the holy shrine of the late founder of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khomeini. After the plot was foiled, the assailant detonated the bomb outside the shrine and “a number of people have been arrested regarding the suicide bombing,” he added.

The Intelligence Ministry and the police also seized a group who were planning terrorist activities in the East of the country and confiscated their equipment.

“The police also captured another group, which planned to carry out a terrorist act in the city of Tabriz when one of the presidential candidates wanted to make a speech there,” he explained.

“Some other terrorist groups in the south of the country especially in Ahvaz were identified and nabbed before they could carry out any activities,” he went on to say.

According to the intelligence minister, the US and some western countries were aiming to achieve unrest in Iran’s elections atmosphere.

When asked by a reporter about the arrest of foreign spies working under the guise of reporters, Mohseni-Ejei said, “Anybody who embarks on espionage activity in the country will be arrested. A foreign reporter has so far been nabbed and another one has been questioned and his things were confiscated.”

The Iranian government has arrested a reporter working for the Newsweek and another one working for the Washington Times.

A whistleblower who defected from the Pakistani Taliban has been assassinated just days after he claimed that the group was working with US intelligence to destabilize the country.

Qari Zainuddin, a tribal leader of the South Waziristan region in Pakistan was shot dead on Tuesday by a gunman said to be loyal to Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud.

Analysts said that Mr Zainuddin’s murder was a serious blow to the military campaign against the militants, as support of his faction was considered crucial, reports the London Times. “[It] is a warning to other pro government tribal commanders,” said Mahmood Shah, a retired brigadier who had served as top official in the tribal region.

Zainuddin had rejected Mehsud’s Taliban tribe, and shifted his allegiance to the Pakistani government, following a string of suicide bombings targeting mosques and civilians.

The Pakistani government also claims that Mehsud was responsible for the 2007 assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto.

One of Qari Zainuddin’s aides, who was also injured in the attack that killed the tribal leader, told the media that a lone gunman was able to enter Zainuddin’s office and open fire, before escaping uninjured.

“It was definitely Baitullah’s man who infiltrated our ranks, and he has done his job,” Baz Mohammad told the Associated Press news agency.

Zainuddin had recently hit out at Mehsud in an interview with the AP.

“Whatever Baitullah Mehsud and his associates are doing in the name of Islam is not a jihad, and in fact it is rioting and terrorism,” Zainuddin said.

Though the BBC and other mainstream sources highlighted this interview with Zainuddin, they neglected to cover the fact that Zainuddin also reportedly denounced Mehsud as “an American agent”.

Both Iranian and Pakistani media independently covered his remarks, adding that Zainuddin also described Baitullah Mehsud as having strong links with both Indian and Israeli intelligence.

In an interview with local media the defector said that Mehsud had established strong links with Israeli intelligence services, which were destabilizing the nuclear armed country, reports the Iranian news service Press TV.

“These people (Mehsud and his men) are working against Islam.” the report quotes Zainuddin as having said.

Meanwhile, Pakistan’s largest daily newspaper, The News, carried a report last Sunday that highlighted the remarks:

“In interviews to various media organisations on Thursday, Qari Zainuddin and his deputy Haji Turkistan had alleged that Baitullah was an American and Indian agent, he had killed Benazir Bhutto and that the real Jihad was going on in Afghanistan, not in Pakistan.” the report stated.

“Many diplomats contacted Foreign Office and Interior Ministry officials as well as media persons, seeking answers to their questions. Some Western diplomats were particularly confused over the claim that Baitullah was an American agent and that he had killed Benazir Bhutto. These diplomats were asking a question that if Baitullah was involved in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, does that mean that the American authorities were also involved in the conspiracy.” the report continued.

Of course, whether you put faith in the Iranian and Pakistani media on these reports, is another question, however, there have been suspicions for some time amongst some Pakistanis that Baitullah Mehsud is on the CIA payroll and is being protected by the intelligence apparatus.

According to retired brigadier and former vice president and founder of the Islamabad Policy Research Institute, Shaukat Qadir, the Pakistani military has requested US help to kill Baitullah Mehsud on several occasions and provided the US with accurate information of his location. Despite this, he claims, Mehsud was never targeted.

Other analysts hold suspicions that Indian and US intelligence are funneling weapons, financial aid and even fighters to the Pakistani Taliban.

The history of the Taliban in Afghanistan, as we have previously reported, is replete with connections to western controlled intelligence agencies.

These facts were also recently highlighted by Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari, who admitted that the CIA and his country’s ISI together created the Taliban.

The Taliban’s spread into Pakistan has also been connected to intelligence driven plots to Balkanize the middle East.

Laboratory Says Security Is Tighter, but Earlier Count Missed Dangerous Vials

by Nelson Hernandez, Washington Post

An inventory of potentially deadly pathogens at Fort Detrick’s infectious disease laboratory found more than 9,000 vials that had not been accounted for, Army officials said yesterday, raising concerns that officials wouldn’t know whether dangerous toxins were missing.

After four months of searching about 335 freezers and refrigerators at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Frederick, investigators found 9,220 samples that hadn’t been included in a database of about 66,000 items listed as of February, said Col. Mark Kortepeter, the institute’s deputy commander.

The vials contained some dangerous pathogens, among them the Ebola virus, anthrax bacteria and botulinum toxin, and less lethal agents such as Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus and the bacterium that causes tularemia. Most of them, forgotten inside freezer drawers, hadn’t been used in years or even decades. Officials said some serum samples from hemorrhagic fever patients dated to the Korean War.

Kortepeter likened the inventory to cleaning out the attic and said he knew of no plans for an investigation into how the vials had been left out of the database. “The vast majority of these samples were working stock that were accumulated over decades,” he said, left there by scientists who had retired or left the institute.

“I can’t say that nothing did [leave the lab], but I can say that we think it’s extremely unlikely,” Kortepeter said.

Still, the overstock and the previous inaccuracy of the database raised the possibility that someone could have taken a sample outside the lab with no way for officials to know something was missing.

“Nine thousand, two hundred undocumented samples is an extraordinarily serious breach,” said Richard H. Ebright, a professor at Rutgers University who follows biosecurity. “A small number would be a concern; 9,200 . . . at an institution that has been the focus of intense scrutiny on this issue, that’s deeply worrisome. Unacceptable.”

The institute has been under pressure to tighten security in the wake of the 2001 anthrax attacks, which killed five people and sickened 17. FBI investigators say they think the anthrax strain used in the attacks originated at the Army lab, and its prime suspect, Bruce E. Ivins, researched anthrax there. Ivins committed suicide last year during an investigation into his activities.

Kortepeter noted that since 2001 the lab has imposed multiple layers of security to check people entering and leaving, that there are now cameras in the labs, and that employees are subjected to a reliability program and random inspections.

“The bottom line is, we have a lot of buffers to prevent anybody who shouldn’t be getting into the laboratory,” Kortepeter said.

Sam Edwin, the institute’s inventory control officer, said most of the samples found were vials with tiny amounts of pathogens that would thaw quickly and die once they were taken out of a freezer, making smuggling something off the base difficult.

The probe began in February, when a problem accounting for Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus triggered the suspension of most research at the lab. A spot check in January found 20 samples of the virus in a box of vials instead of the 16 listed in the institute’s database. Most work was stopped until the institute could take a thorough inventory of its stock of viruses and bacteria.

Edwin said about 50 percent of the samples that had been found were destroyed. The rest were added to the catalog. Because the lab will now conduct an inventory every year, “it’s really less likely that we will be in a situation like this again,” he said.

Procedures have changed, too. Scientists who have worked at the lab said that in the past, departing scientists turned over their logbooks to their successors, but records were sometimes incomplete or complex. As generations of scientists passed through, the knowledge of what was in the freezers was lost. With a comprehensive database, every sample is now tracked until it is destroyed or transferred.

But some scientists are skeptical. Unlike uranium or chemical weapons, pathogens are living materials that can replicate and die. A small amount can easily be turned into a large amount. They said the strict inventories slow their work without guaranteeing security.

Here is an excellent video of STRATFOR CEO George Friedman talking about the future of the Middle East given Iran’s recent elections.  STRATFOR is a free market, global intelligence analysis center that supplies corporations and large businesses with global intelligence that could effect their businesses.

This analysis is very compelling for a few reasons, mainly to do with Dr. Friedman’s candid consideration of Israel’s past and current policies and how the Obama administration has been handling the Middle East.

My interview with Robert K. Wilcox regarding the assassination of General George S. Patton, Jr. after World War II is now on YouTube as a 10-part series for the full (nearly) 2 hour interview.