Indian Intelligence: Mumbai terror mastermind is a US double agent

Mumbai suspect is US double agent, India claims

An American man charged with plotting the attacks on Mumbai was a double agent for both the United States and al-Qaeda terror group Lashkar e Taiba, Indian officials have claimed.

Telegraph | Dec 16, 2009

By Dean Nelson in New Delhi

David Headley, a Pakistan-born American national arrested in Chicago in October, is alleged to have carried out reconnaissance missions in the run-up to the Mumbai attacks, in which 166 people were killed.

He is also believed to have been present in the terrorists’ “control room” in Pakistan where their handlers directed the killing spree over an open telephone line.

According to Indian officials, Headley travelled to India again in March this year, with the knowledge of American agencies who did not inform their Indian counterparts. During the trip, Headley is alleged to have collected intelligence for future terrorist attacks on civilian and military targets, including India’s National Defence College.

Indian officials are desperate to question Headley but have been frustrated by American refusals to grant them access. A team of Indian investigators travelled to Washington shortly after Headley was arrested in October but soon returned after their American counterparts told them they would not be able to meet him.

They want to question him about the Mumbai attacks involved Pakistan’s ISI intelligence agency in any way and the role of Indian extremists in providing logistical support.

American officials say that under US law they cannot force any person in their custody to give evidence to foreign agencies. But Indian intelligence officers have questioned why Washington is not doing more to help their own inquiry and suggested Headley’s connections with American intelligence agencies is behind the reluctance.

Headley, who was born Daood Syed Gilani and schooled in Pakistan before moving to Philadelphia with his American mother in 1977, was convicted of smuggling heroin into the United States in 1998. He served only 15 months in jail after agreeing to become an informant for the Drugs Enforcement Administration (DEA). He changed his name to David Headley in 2006.

According to Indian officials he continued to serve as a DEA informant until shortly before his arrest in October. Indian intelligence sources believe Headley may have been recruited to work for the CIA which, along with the FBI, shared intelligence with the DEA and other government agencies after the creation of the National Counter-Terrorism Centre in 2004.

B. Raman, a former senior official in India’s intelligence agency, said: “He was working for Lashkar e Taiba, taking photographs and video recordings of the [Mumbai] hotels and harbour. And he was an agent for the DEA on drugs, so in that sense he was a double agent.

“Indian officials are very keen to question him about his network, but we can’t because we might find out about any connections with the CIA or ISI. They don’t want that to happen. The Americans say ‘you ask us what you want us to find out and we’ll share the information’,” he added.

The Real Face of Obama’s “Good War”

australia.to | Dec 14, 2009

by Bill Van Auken

“WSWS” — Reports that mercenaries employed by the notorious Blackwater-Xe military contracting firm participated in CIA assassinations in Iraq and Afghanistan have further exposed the real character of so-called “good war” that is being escalated by the Obama administration.

Citing former employees of the firm and US intelligence agents, the New York Times reported Friday that Blackwater gunmen, ostensibly contracted as security guards, “participated in some of the CIA’s most sensitive activities—clandestine raids with agency officers against people suspected of being insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan and the transporting of detainees.”

These “snatch and grab” operations—many of them involving killings of individuals suspected of participating in the resistance to US occupation—“occurred on an almost nightly basis during the height of the Iraqi insurgency from 2004 to 2006, with Blackwater employees playing central roles,” the Times reports.

Both the Times and the Washington Post quoted unnamed intelligence officials and ex-Blackwater operatives as asserting that the involvement of the company’s mercenaries in assassinations and abductions was not planned. Rather, they claimed, it was a matter of the division of labor between CIA operatives and private guards supposedly hired for the purpose of protecting them becoming “blurred.”

According to the Times, the Blackwater guards “were supposed to only provide perimeter security during raids, leaving it up to CIA officers and Special Operations military personnel to capture or kill suspected insurgents.” The newspaper added, “But in the chaos of operations, the roles of Blackwater, CIA and military personnel sometimes merged.”

The pretense that armed Blackwater contractors, most of them former US Special Operations troops themselves, would be used merely as security guards for CIA personnel is absurd on its face. Whatever justification was given for the contract, the “skill set” that Blackwater offered was precisely that of highly trained assassins.

A spokesman for Blackwater-Xe responded to the press reports by insisting that there was never any contract for the firm to participate in raids with CIA or Special Forces troops “in Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere else.” He added: “Any allegation to the contrary by any news organization would be false.”

The absence of a contract spelling out Blackwater’s role in assassination missions is hardly surprising, given that the mercenary outfit’s chief attraction for the CIA is precisely its ability to act without regard to any government oversight or regard for civil or military law. As the Post put it, citing a retired intelligence officer, “For government employees, working with contractors offered ways to circumvent red tape.”

Blackwater’s role as an extra-legal extension of the Central Intelligence Agency tasked with dirty operations with which the CIA did not want its employees directly associated is more than evident.

An article published in the current (January) edition of Vanity Fair, written by Adam Ciralsky, a former CIA attorney, cites intelligence sources in reporting that Eric Prince, the multi-millionaire Republican founder-owner of Blackwater, was not merely a private contractor, but a “full-blown asset” recruited by the agency precisely for such operations.

The central role played by Blackwater in the CIA’s activities became increasingly clear as key agency officials left the CIA and took up positions in Blackwater’s management. These included J. Cofer Black, the former head of the agency’s Counter Terrorism Center, Enrique Prado, the center’s former chief of operations, and Rob Richer, formerly the second-in-command of the CIA’s clandestine service.

In Iraq, Blackwater’s employees acted with complete impunity, killing large numbers of civilians without being held to account by either the Iraqi regime or US military commanders. The scope of this violence came to public attention in September 2007, when a convoy of Blackwater operatives stopped in Baghdad’s Nisour Square and without provocation opened fire on unarmed civilians, killing 17 Iraqis.

Six of the Blackwater mercenaries have been charged by federal prosecutors with voluntary manslaughter over the killings. One of them has pled guilty and is expected to testify against the others in a trial starting in February.

Meanwhile, the company is being sued in separate civil cases brought on behalf of 70 Iraqis over killings by the firm’s employees in Iraq. Two ex-employees of Blackwater have filed affidavits in these cases charging that company head Prince may have either murdered or ordered the murders of individuals cooperating with the Justice Department’s investigation of the firm.

Friday’s report in the Times follows a series of revelations that have surfaced since last June, when CIA Director Leon Panetta briefed Congressional intelligence committees about a covert assassination program involving Blackwater, which he claimed to have only just discovered and terminated. Panetta asserted that the program had never been implemented. Until then, it had been kept secret from Congress, reportedly on the orders of former vice president Dick Cheney.

It was subsequently revealed that employees of Blackwater, since renamed Xe Services in an attempt to shed the firm’s infamous reputation, were actively involved in an ongoing assassination program on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, carried out by means of Predator drones. The Blackwater mercenaries were assembling and loading the 500 pound bombs and Hellfire missiles used to carry out so-called “targeted killings,” which have taken the lives of hundreds of civilians. In addition, they provided security for the drone bases and according to some reports, participated in intelligence operations that determined the targets for the attacks.

There have been at least 65 such aerial assassination strikes in Pakistan since August 2008, with a reported death toll of over 625 people. Some estimates put the number killed at over 1,000, many of them women and children. Most of these attacks have taken place since the Obama administration took office.

In addition to the more than 30,000 additional US troops being sent into Afghanistan, Obama has authorized the CIA to dramatically escalate the drone attacks. US officials have also warned the Pakistani government that these attacks are to be extended beyond the tribal areas on the border with Afghanistan into Baluchistan, and potentially against the crowded city of Quetta, where Afghan Taliban leaders have reportedly taken refuge.

It is far from clear, based on the Times report, to what extent Blackwater’s role in targeted assassinations, both from the air and on the ground, is continuing. Since 2001, the firm has netted over $1.5 billion in government contracts, providing armed mercenaries for the CIA, the State Department and the Pentagon.

One thing is certain, assassinations of the kind involving Blackwater mercenaries are going to be carried out on a far greater scale as part of Obama’s escalation of the US war in Afghanistan.

These plans were hinted at by Central Command chief Gen. David Petraeus during his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday. “There’s no question you’ve got to kill or capture those bad guys that are not reconcilable,” Petraeus told the senators. “And we are intending to do that.”

The general continued, “In fact, we actually will be increasing our counterterrorist component of the overall strategy.” He said that additional “national mission force elements” will be arriving in Afghanistan by next spring.

The “elements” cited by Petraeus include Special Operations units like the Army’s classified Delta Force, as well as CIA hit squads and, in all probability, mercenary forces like those fielded by Blackwater.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, tapped by Obama to direct the Afghan war, was previously the head of the super-secret Joint Special Operations Command, which consists of such special forces troops and assassination squads. Petraeus said that McChrystal could brief members of the Senate committee on this element of the Obama surge in a closed session.

It is noteworthy that the controversy in the major media is centered on whether the use of Blackwater mercenaries to hunt down and murder individuals suspected of opposing the US occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan represented an illegitimate use of private contractors in carrying out a core government function.

The murders themselves are not an issue. In 1976, President Gerald Ford issued an executive order barring the CIA from directly carrying out assassinations or contracting them out to others. The decision followed a wave of public outrage over a series of revelations of CIA assassination plots around the globe that earned the agency the epithet “Murder, Inc.”

In 2001, President George W. Bush overturned Ford’s ruling, issuing his own intelligence finding that such restrictions no longer applied in the “global war on terrorism.” The Democrats offered no objections, and the media has treated it entirely as a matter of course, while blacking out any serious reporting on the resulting carnage and victims.

As with every other essential question, President Barack Obama has adopted Bush’s policy. “Targeted assassinations,” extraordinary rendition, the use of mercenaries, all of the sordid crimes carried out under the Bush administration continue. These brutal methods are about to be unleashed with redoubled force against the peoples of Afghanistan and Pakistan as Obama oversees new war crimes.

Former FBI and CIA chief picked to lead Fort Hood probe into lack of “red flags”

FBI “policies, practices and actions” before Fort Hood massacre are under review

William Webster, 85, a former FBI and CIA director, will lead the investigation

Inquiry will focus on lack of “red flags” after suspect’s actions drew FBI attention

CNN | Dec 8, 2009

William Webster (shown in 2004 photo) was FBI director from 1978 to 1987 before taking over as CIA director.

Washington (CNN) — Former FBI and CIA Director William Webster will lead an outside investigation of the FBI’s “policies, practices and actions” before the November massacre at Fort Hood, the bureau announced Tuesday.

Webster, a former federal judge, conducted a previous review of the FBI following the exposure of double agent Robert Hanssen in 2001. He has been asked to look into “whether there are improvements to our current practices or other authorities that could make us all safer in the future,” current FBI Director Robert Mueller said in a statement Tuesday.

“We must be sure that the systems we have in place give investigators the tools they need to carry out their responsibilities,” Mueller said. “At the same time, we must ensure constitutional protections and the confidence of the American public we serve.”

The FBI has said that Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Army psychiatrist charged with killing 13 people and wounding dozens at the Fort Hood Army post, came to its attention as part of an unrelated terrorism probe in December 2008. Agents found Hasan and the subject of that investigation — identified as a radical cleric from Yemen who had once preached at a Virginia mosque Hasan attended — had been in communication, but their exchanges “raised no red flags” that would have turned agents’ scrutiny on Hasan, senior investigative officials said in November.

Webster, 85, led the FBI from 1978 until 1987, when then-President Ronald Reagan named him CIA director. Webster took over the spy agency in the aftermath of the Iran-Contra scandal and led it until 1991.

The FBI already has conducted a preliminary review of the Fort Hood matter. Meanwhile, the Pentagon is conducting its own investigation into whether any signs that could have warned of the rampage were missed.

Webster’s investigation will be coordinated with the Defense Department to avoid interference with the Army-led inquiry, and he “will have complete access and whatever resources necessary to complete the task,” Mueller said.

Inventer connects the dots back to his involuntary Verichip implant

Bob Boyce first noticed what turned out to be the VeriChip implant that caused his malignant tumor when he was working with former associate, Bob Potchen. Having fallen asleep at a desk, when he awoke, his right shoulder felt like it had been numbed; and when he rubbed it, he noticed a small, hard lump there.

Boyce chip implanter suspect identified

Pure Energy Systems News | Dec 6, 2009

by Sterling D. Allan

We recently reported that Bob Boyce, the highly-revered inventor of ultra-efficient electrolysis systems and of a self-charging battery circuit (harnessing energy from the environment, possibly from zero point energy), had contracted terminal cancer and that the originating point was a VeriChip microchip that someone implanted in his right shoulder without his knowledge or permission.

We said that he didn’t know when or how the chip was implanted. However, as he has thought back through recent events, he has pieced together a number of things that paint a fairly incriminating portrait.

The first time he noticed what turned out to be the chip was on May 9 when he was working with an associate, Bob Potchen, of Precombustion Technologies Inc. (PTI), now “The Cell”. (Hereafter, “Bob” will refer to Bob Boyce, and “Potchen” will refer to Bob Potchen). Potchen was implementing Bob’s hydroxy gas booster technology into a product to take to market. Their relationship had been growing tense, and Bob was preparing to depart.

Bob had fallen asleep at a desk at PTI’s office, pulling an all-nighter. When he awoke, his right shoulder felt like it had been numbed; and when he rubbed it, he noticed a small, hard lump there. Having recently had some benign skin cancer removed, he assumed it was just another tumor, and thought no more of it, until the skin turned red and his shoulder became very sore many months later.

Related

Free energy inventor discovers mystery Verichip tracking implant in shoulder, caused cancer

Back at his own lab, he noticed that his shoulder was “transmitting” RF radiation. Then, when he had the tumor that formed there removed, he looked at the small-grain-of-rice-sized microchip before the doctor took the tissue away to be examined by pathology. He then researched various companies that manufacture implantable microchips, and he saw that the chip that had been removed from his shoulder matched the chip design by VeriChip. In particular, there is a thin, white rubber-like coating on one end that the tissue grows to so the chip won’t migrate. The pathology report did not mention the chip.

The reason for Bob’s falling out was that Potchen, who is ‘former’ Military Intelligence, had been making modifications to the hydroxy-generating device that Bob said were reducing the cell’s efficiency. Prior to those modifications, the cell was producing great results when installed in test vehicles. In one case, the mileage of a truck increased from 5.5 mpg to 11.7 mpg – more than double.

Bob described a number of modifications that Potchen made in the name of making the cell cheaper to produce, but which significantly worked against the efficiency. “It’s as if he was intentionally sabotaging the system to discredit the field.”

Bob withdrew his endorsement of Potchen’s device and published his concerns to some hydroxy forums, but later deleted those posts due to Potchen threatening legal action, not wanting to be dragged through court.

The input meter on the device was modified to read lower than reality. One truck’s alternator was burned out, because the device was pulling 195 amps, while the device meter read only “45 amps”.

In October, Bob had one of Potchen’s cells tested by a university on a dynamometer. The mileage of the truck with the cell installed went from 13 mpg before the install to 10 mpg after the install.

I talked to another former associate of Potchen’s and he made the same observation about the performance of the cell when Bob was involved verses after Potchen made all those changes that “didn’t make any sense.” He said that he knows of around 100 customers who have had complaints about the device. He also said that there are a number of people who sacrificed a lot of money to help launch the business, but who have not seen anything in return.

When people contact Potchen to complain about the performance of the cell they purchased, he tells them something to the effect, “That’s odd. You’re the only one who’s contacted me about having problems. It’s working well for everyone else.”

The former associate said that there are rumblings about some of those customers taking the matter up with their state attorney generals. He said that if Potchen threatens action against anyone at this point, that he will be further stirring up 100 customers to come forward with formal complaints. “At that point, he’ll probably jump on his plane and fly out of the country.”

When asked about the possibility that Potchen might have implanted the VeriChip in Bob Boyce’s shoulder, the former associate said, “I don’t put anything past Bob Potchen.”

Is Erik Prince ‘Graymailing’ the US Government?

The Nation | Dec 4, 2009

By Jeremy Scahill

The in-depth Vanity Fair profile of the infamous owner of Blackwater, Erik Prince, is remarkable on many levels–not least among them that Prince appeared to give the story’s author, former CIA lawyer Adam Ciralsky, unprecedented access to information about sensitive, classified and lethal operations not only of Prince’s forces, but Prince himself. In the article, Prince is revealed not just as owner of a company that covertly provided contractors to the CIA for drone bombings and targeted assassinations, but as an actual CIA asset himself.

While the story appears to be simply a profile of Prince, it might actually be the world’s most famous mercenary’s insurance policy against future criminal prosecution. The term of art for what Prince appears to be doing in the VF interview is graymail: a legal tactic that has been used for years by intelligence operatives or assets who are facing prosecution or fear they soon will be. In short, these operatives or assets threaten to reveal details of sensitive or classified operations in order to ward off indictments or criminal charges, based on the belief that the government would not want these details revealed. “The only reason Prince would do this [interview] is that he feels he is in very serious jeopardy of criminal charges,” says Scott Horton, a prominent national security and military law expert. “He absolutely would not do these things otherwise.”

There is no doubt Prince is in the legal cross-hairs: There are reportedly two separate Grand Juries investigating Blackwater on a range of serious charges, ranging from gun smuggling to extralegal killings; multiple civil lawsuits alleging war crimes and extrajudicial killings; and Congress is investigating the assassination program in which Prince and his company were central players. “Obviously, Prince does know a lot and the government has to realize that once they start prosecuting him,” says Melanie Sloan, a former federal prosecutor and the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “In some ways, graymail is what any good defense lawyer would do. This is something that’s in your arsenal.”

Perhaps the most prominent case of graymail was by Oliver North when he and his lawyers used it to force dismissal of the most serious charges against him stemming from his involvement in the Iran-Contra Affair. In another case, known as Khazak-gate, a US businessman, James Giffen, allegedly paid $78 million in bribes to former Khazakh Prime Minister Nurlan Balgimbayev in an attempt to win contracts for western oil companies to develop the Tengiz oil fields in the 1990s. In 1993, he was charged with violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in the largest overseas bribery case in history. After Giffen was indicted, he claimed that if he did what he was accused of, he did it in the service of US intelligence agencies. The case has been in limbo ever since.

“This is as old as the hills as a tactic and it has a long track record of being very effective against the government,” says Horton. “It’s basically a threat to the government that if you prosecute me, I’ll disclose all sorts of national security-sensitive information. The bottom line here is it’s like an act of extortion or a threat: you do X and this is what I’m going to do.” Horton said that the Vanity Fair article was Prince “essentially putting out the warning to the Department of Justice: ‘You prosecute me and all this stuff will be out on the record.’”

According to Ciralsky’s article, Prince was a “full-blown asset” of “the C.I.A.’s National Resources Division [which] recruited Prince in 2004 to join a secret network of American citizens with special skills or unusual access to targets of interest:

“Two sources familiar with the arrangement say that Prince’s handlers obtained provisional operational approval from senior management to recruit Prince and later generated a “201 file,” which would have put him on the agency’s books as a vetted asset. It’s not at all clear who was running whom, since Prince says that, unlike many other assets, he did much of his work on spec, claiming to have used personal funds to road-test the viability of certain operations…

Prince was developing unconventional means of penetrating “hard target” countries–where the C.I.A. has great difficulty working either because there are no stations from which to operate or because local intelligence services have the wherewithal to frustrate the agency’s designs. “I made no money whatsoever off this work,” Prince contends. He is unwilling to specify the exact nature of his forays. “I’m painted as this war profiteer by Congress. Meanwhile I’m paying for all sorts of intelligence activities to support American national security, out of my own pocket.”

“I think that [Prince] will use all of his information and his knowledge of these secret dealings in basically what is an extortion play: ‘You come after me, and I’ll spill the beans on everything,’” says Horton. “That’s the essence of graymail and the Department of Justice will usually get its feathers all ruffled up and they’ll say, ‘You can’t deal with the government like this. This is unfair and improper.’ But in the end, it usually works.”

In the Vanity Fair article, Prince alleges that he was outed–by whom he does not say, but the implication is that CIA Director Leon Panetta named him in a closed door hearing of the Intelligence Committee last June, and then the name was leaked by one of the attendees of that hearing. Sloan, the former federal prosecutor, said that if what Prince says in the Vanity Fair article about his role in secret CIA programs is true, he has a case that laws were broken in revealing his identity. “I’m not his fan, but he’s not wrong. For somebody to leak his identity as a CIA asset clearly merits a criminal investigation,” Sloan said. “Whether they should have ever hired Erik Prince or made him into an asset is a separate question. Assuming he really was a CIA asset, basically a spy, an undercover operative, and somebody decided to leak that, that’s not acceptable and that is a violation of the same law that leaking Valerie [Plame]’s identity was. If you can’t leak one person, you can’t leak any person, not just the people you like versus the people you don’t like.”

While much of the focus in the Vanity Fair story was on Prince’s work with the CIA, the story also confirmed that Blackwater has an ongoing relationship with the US Special Forces, helping plan missions and providing air support. As The Nation reported, Blackwater has for years been working on a classified contract with the Joint Special Operations Command in a drone bombing campaign in Pakistan, as well as planning snatch-and-grab missions and targeted assassinations. Part of what may be happening behind closed doors is that the CIA is, to an extent, cutting Blackwater and Prince off. But, as sources have told The Nation, the company remains a central player in US Special Forces operations in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Prince’s choice of Adam Ciralsky to tell his story is an interesting one as well. Ciralsky was a CIA lawyer who in 1997 was suspended under suspicion he was having unauthorized contacts with possible Israeli intelligence agents. Ciralsky vehemently denied the allegations, saying he was the victim of a “witch-hunt” at the Agency. In any case, there is no question that Prince would view Ciralsky through the lens of his own struggle against the CIA. “When I saw the article, the first thing that just leapt off the page was his name. I thought, ‘My god, why would he go to Adam?’” said Horton. “And then I read the article and I thought, of course he’d go to Adam. There is this legal theme being developed in the article and Adam, as a lawyer who had dealt with the CIA, fully understands that. I mean I think he fully understood he was going to do a piece that would help Prince develop his legal defense and that’s what this is. The amazing thing to me is that Vanity Fair printed it. Do the editors of Vanity Fair not understand what’s going on here?”

Erik Prince: Tycoon, Contractor, Soldier, Spy for the CIA

Erik Prince, founder of the Blackwater security firm (recently renamed Xe), at the company’s Virginia offices. Photograph by Nigel Parry.

Erik Prince, recently outed as a participant in a C.I.A. assassination program, has gained notoriety as head of the military-contracting juggernaut Blackwater, a company dogged by a grand-jury investigation, bribery accusations, and the voluntary-manslaughter trial of five ex-employees, set for next month. Lashing back at his critics, the wealthy former navy seal takes the author inside his operation in the U.S. and Afghanistan, revealing the role he’s been playing in America’s war on terror.

Vanity Fair | January 2010

Tycoon, Contractor, Soldier, Spy

By Adam Ciralsky

“I put myself and my company at the C.I.A.’s disposal for some very risky missions,” says Erik Prince as he surveys his heavily fortified, 7,000-acre compound in rural Moyock, North Carolina. “But when it became politically expedient to do so, someone threw me under the bus.” Prince—the founder of Blackwater, the world’s most notorious private military contractor—is royally steamed. He wants to vent. And he wants you to hear him vent.

Erik Prince has an image problem—the kind that’s impervious to a Madison Avenue makeover. The 40-year-old heir to a Michigan auto-parts fortune, and a former navy seal, he has had the distinction of being vilified recently both in life and in art. In Washington, Prince has become a scapegoat for some of the Bush administration’s misadventures in Iraq—though Blackwater’s own deeds have also come in for withering criticism. Congressmen and lawyers, human-rights groups and pundits, have described Prince as a war profiteer, one who has assembled a rogue fighting force capable of toppling governments. His employees have been repeatedly accused of using excessive, even deadly force in Iraq; many Iraqis, in fact, have died during encounters with Blackwater. And in November, as a North Carolina grand jury was considering a raft of charges against the company, as a half-dozen civil suits were brewing in Virginia, and as five former Blackwater staffers were preparing for trial for their roles in the deaths of 17 Iraqis, The New York Times reported in a page-one story that Prince’s firm, in the aftermath of the tragedy, had sought to bribe Iraqi officials for their compliance, charges which Prince calls “lies … undocumented, unsubstantiated [and] anonymous.” (So infamous is the Blackwater brand that even the Taliban have floated far-fetched conspiracy theories, accusing the company of engaging in suicide bombings in Pakistan.)

In Hollywood, meanwhile, a town that loves nothing so much as a good villain, Prince, with his blond crop and Daniel Craig mien, has become the screenwriters’ darling. In the film State of Play, a Blackwater clone (PointCorp.) uses its network of mercenaries for illegal surveillance and murder. On the Fox series 24, Jon Voight has played Jonas Hodges, a thinly veiled version of Prince, whose company (Starkwood) helps an African warlord procure nerve gas for use against U.S. targets.

But the truth about Prince may be orders of magnitude stranger than fiction. For the past six years, he appears to have led an astonishing double life. Publicly, he has served as Blackwater’s C.E.O. and chairman. Privately, and secretly, he has been doing the C.I.A.’s bidding, helping to craft, fund, and execute operations ranging from inserting personnel into “denied areas”—places U.S. intelligence has trouble penetrating—to assembling hit teams targeting al-Qaeda members and their allies. Prince, according to sources with knowledge of his activities, has been working as a C.I.A. asset: in a word, as a spy. While his company was busy gleaning more than $1.5 billion in government contracts between 2001 and 2009—by acting, among other things, as an overseas Praetorian guard for C.I.A. and State Department officials—Prince became a Mr. Fix-It in the war on terror. His access to paramilitary forces, weapons, and aircraft, and his indefatigable ambition—the very attributes that have galvanized his critics—also made him extremely valuable, some say, to U.S. intelligence. (Full disclosure: In the 1990s, before becoming a journalist for CBS and then NBC News, I was a C.I.A. attorney. My contract was not renewed, under contentious circumstances.)

But Prince, with a new administration in power, and foes closing in, is finally coming in from the cold. This past fall, though he infrequently grants interviews, he decided it was time to tell his side of the story—to respond to the array of accusations, to reveal exactly what he has been doing in the shadows of the U.S. government, and to present his rationale. He also hoped to convey why he’s going to walk away from it all.

To that end, he invited Vanity Fair to his training camp in North Carolina, to his Virginia offices, and to his Afghan outposts. It seemed like a propitious time to tag along.

Split Personality

Erik Prince can be a difficult man to wrap your mind around—an amalgam of contradictory caricatures. He has been branded a “Christian supremacist” who sanctions the murder of Iraqi civilians, yet he has built mosques at his overseas bases and supports a Muslim orphanage in Afghanistan. He and his family have long backed conservative causes, funded right-wing political candidates, and befriended evangelicals, but he calls himself a libertarian and is a practicing Roman Catholic. Sometimes considered arrogant and reclusive—Howard Hughes without the O.C.D.—he nonetheless enters competitions that combine mountain-biking, beach running, ocean kayaking, and rappelling.

The common denominator is a relentless intensity that seems to have no Off switch. Seated in the back of a Boeing 777 en route to Afghanistan, Prince leafs through Defense News while the film Taken beams from the in-flight entertainment system. In the movie, Liam Neeson plays a retired C.I.A. officer who mounts an aggressive rescue effort after his daughter is kidnapped in Paris. Neeson’s character warns his daughter’s captors:

If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don’t have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills … skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you [don’t] let my daughter go now … I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.

Prince comments, “I used that movie as a teaching tool for my girls.” (The father of seven, Prince remarried after his first wife died of cancer in 2003.) “I wanted them to understand the dangers out there. And I wanted them to know how I would respond.”

You can’t escape the impression that Prince sees himself as somehow destined, his mission anointed. It comes out even in the most personal of stories. During the flight, he tells of being in Kabul in September 2008 and receiving a two a.m. call from his wife, Joanna. Prince’s son Charlie, one year old at the time, had fallen into the family swimming pool. Charlie’s brother Christian, then 12, pulled him out of the water, purple and motionless, and successfully performed CPR. Christian and three siblings, it turns out, had recently received Red Cross certification at the Blackwater training camp.

But there are intimations of a higher power at work as the story continues. Desperate to get home, Prince scrapped one itinerary, which called for a stay-over at the Marriott in Islamabad, and found a direct flight. That night, at the time Prince would have been checking in, terrorists struck the hotel with a truck bomb, killing more than 50. Prince says simply, “Christian saved Charlie’s life and Charlie saved mine.” At times, his sense of his own place in history can border on the evangelical. When pressed about suggestions that he’s a mercenary—a term he loathes—he rattles off the names of other freelance military figures, even citing Lafayette, the colonists’ ally during the Revolutionary War.

Prince’s default mode is one of readiness. He is clenched-jawed and tightly wound. He cannot stand down. Waiting in the security line at Dulles airport just hours before, Prince had delivered a little homily: “Every time an American goes through security, I want them to pause for a moment and think, What is my government doing to inconvenience the terrorists? Rendition teams, Predator drones, assassination squads. That’s all part of it.”

Such brazenness is not lost on a listener, nor is the fact that Prince himself is quite familiar with some of these tactics. In fact Prince, like other contractors, has drawn fire for running a company that some call a “body shop”—many of its staffers having departed military or intelligence posts to take similar jobs at much higher salaries, paid mainly by Uncle Sam. And to get those jobs done—protecting, defending, and killing, if required—Prince has had to employ the services of some decorated vets as well as some ruthless types, snipers and spies among them.

Erik Prince flies coach internationally. It’s not just economical (“Why should I pay for business? Fly coach, you arrive at the same time”) but also less likely to draw undue attention. He considers himself a marked man. Prince describes the diplomats and dignitaries Blackwater protects as “Al Jazeera–worthy,” meaning that, in his view, “bin Laden and his acolytes would love to kill them in a spectacular fashion and have it broadcast on televisions worldwide.”

Stepping off the plane at Kabul’s international airport, Prince is treated as if he, too, were Al Jazeera–worthy. He is immediately shuffled into a waiting car and driven 50 yards to a second vehicle, a beat-up minivan that is native to the core: animal pelts on the dashboard, prayer card dangling from the rearview mirror. Blackwater’s special-projects team is responsible for Prince’s security in-country, and except for their language its men appear indistinguishable from Afghans. They have full beards, headscarves, and traditional knee-length shirts over baggy trousers. They remove Prince’s sunglasses, fit him out with body armor, and have him change into Afghan garb. Prince is issued a homing beacon that will track his movements, and a cell phone with its speed dial programmed for Blackwater’s tactical-operations center.

Full Story

Blackwater behind plan to kill or snatch

mail.live.com | Dec 2, 2009

by Akhtar Jamal

Islamabad—An American newsmagazine has revealed a detailed report on the secretive activities of Blackwater elements in Pakistan and claimed that they were working on a plan to kill suspected Taliban and Al-Qaeda operatives in Karachi.

The New York-based weekly The Nation in an extensive article claimed that the Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help direct a secret US military drone bombing campaign.

Quoting a reliable source the magazine said that “the programme is so ‘compartmentalized’ that senior figures within the Obama administration and the US military chain of command may not be aware of its existence.”

The Nation also claimed that “the previously unreported programme, the military intelligence source said, is distinct from the CIA assassination programme that the agency’s director, Leon Panetta, announced he had cancelled in June 2009.”

The news report quoted a spokesman of Xe as saying that “Xe Services has only one employee in Pakistan performing construction oversight for the U.S. Government.” Blackwater spokesperson Mark Corallo was also quoted as saying in a statement to The Nation, adding that the company has “no other operations of any kind in Pakistan.”

However, a former senior executive at Blackwater was quoted as confirming the “military intelligence source’s claim that the company is working in Pakistan for the CIA and JSOC, the premier counter terrorism and covert operations force within the military.”

He said that Blackwater is also working for the Pakistani government on a subcontract with an Islamabad-based security firm that puts US Blackwater operatives on the ground with Pakistani forces in counter-terrorism operations, including house raids and border interdictions, in the North-West Frontier Province and elsewhere in Pakistan.

He also confirmed that Blackwater has a facility in Karachi and has personnel deployed elsewhere in Pakistan. The former executive spoke on condition of anonymity.

According to the report the covert JSOC programme with Blackwater in Pakistan dates back to at least 2007, according to military intelligence source. The current head of JSOC is Vice Adm. William McRaven, who took over the post from Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who headed JSOC from 2003 to 2008 before being named the top US commander in Afghanistan.

Blackwater’s operations in Pakistan, the source told the The Nation, are not done through State Department contracts or publicly identified Defense contracts. “It’s Blackwater via JSOC, and it’s a classified no-bid [contract] approved on a rolling basis.”

The report added that “the main JSOC/Blackwater facility in Karachi, according to the source, is nondescript: three trailers with various generators, satellite phones and computer systems are used as a makeshift operations centre.”

According to the military intelligence source quoted by The Nation “Blackwater’s work for JSOC in Karachi is coordinated out of a Task Force based at Bagramme Air Base in neighbouring Afghanistan,. While JSOC technically runs the operations in Karachi, he said, it is largely staffed by former US special operations soldiers working for a division of Blackwater, once known as Blackwater SELECT, and intelligence analysts working for a Blackwater affiliate, Total Intelligence Solutions (TIS), which is owned by Blackwater’s founder, Erik Prince.

The US military intelligence source was quoted that Blackwater’s classified contracts keep getting renewed at the request of JSOC. Blackwater, he said, is already so deeply entrenched that it has become a staple of the US military operations in Pakistan. According to the former Blackwater executive, “The politics that go with the brand of BW is somewhat set aside because what you’re doing is really one military guy to another.” Blackwater’s first known contract with the CIA for operations in Afghanistan was awarded in 2002 and was for work along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

According to the source, Blackwater has effectively marketed itself as a company whose operatives have “conducted lethal direct action missions and now, for a price, you can have your own planning cell. JSOC just ate that up,” he said, adding, “They have a sizable force in Pakistan—not for any nefarious purpose if you really want to look at it that way—but to support a legitimate contract that’s classified for JSOC.”

The Nation quoted the source that “Blackwater’s Pakistan JSOC contracts are secret and are therefore shielded from public oversight, he said. The source is not sure when the arrangement with JSOC began, but he says that a spin-off of Blackwater SELECT “was issued a no-bid contract for support to shooters for a JSOC Task Force and they kept extending it.”

It further added that “some of the Blackwater personnel work undercover as aid workers. “Nobody even gives them a second thought.”

The military intelligence source was quoted as adding that the Blackwater/JSOC Karachi operation is referred to as “Qatar cubed,” in reference to the US forward operating base in Qatar that served as the hub for the planning and implementation of the US invasion of Iraq.

Blackwater, according to the military intelligence source, is not doing the actual killing as part of its work in Pakistan. “The SELECT personnel are not going into places with private aircraft and going after targets,” he said. “It’s not like Blackwater SELECT people are running around assassinating people.”

The American news magazine claimed that “instead, US Special Forces teams carry out the plans developed in part by Blackwater.”

A former Blackwater executive was also quoted as saying that “Blackwater works on a subcontract for Kestral Logistics, a powerful Pakistani firm, which specializes in military logistical support, private security and intelligence consulting. “

The magazine also quoted federal lobbying records as saying that “Kestral recently hired former Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roger Noriega, who served in that post from 2003 to 2005, to lobby the US government, including the State Department, USAID and Congress, on foreign affairs issues “regarding [Kestral’s] capabilities to carry out activities of interest to the United States.”

It added that “Noriega was hired through his firm, Vision Americas, which he runs with Christina Rocca, a former CIA operations official who served as assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs from 2001 to 2006 and was deeply involved in shaping US policy toward Pakistan.”

The New York-based news magazine said “As part of their strategy, Rumsfeld and Cheney also created the Strategic Support Branch (SSB), which pulled intelligence resources from the Defence Intelligence Agency and the CIA for use in sensitive JSOC operations.”

The magazine quoted Washington Post as reporting that the SSB was created using “reprogrammemed” funds “without explicit congressional authority or appropriation.” The SSB operated outside the military chain of command and circumvented the CIA’s authority on clandestine operations. Rumsfeld created it as part of his war to end “near total dependence on CIA.”

The Nation quoted Christian Science Monitor as recently reporting that Blackwater “provides security for a US-backed aid project” in Peshawar, suggesting the company may be based out of the Pearl Continental, a luxury hotel the United States reportedly is considering purchasing to use as a consulate in the city. It also quoted the Blackwater spokesperson Stacey DeLuke as saying recently that “We have no contracts in Pakistan,” and “We’ve been blamed for all that has gone wrong in Peshawar, none of which is true, since we have absolutely no presence there.”

The comprehensive story on “Blackwater’s secret war in Pakistan” is written by The Nation’s Special Correspondent Jeremy Scahill who is also the author of the best selling novel Blackwater.

Free energy inventor discovers mystery Verichip tracking implant in shoulder, caused cancer

Bob Boyce is a famous inventor in the world of ultra-efficient electrolysis and hydroxy research.  The chip found in his shoulder at the point of tumor formation turns out to be manufactured by VeriChip.

Bob Boyce, who has invented a super-efficient electrolysis method, as well as a self-looping electrical circuit capable of charging batteries, discovered a microchip implant in his shoulder when having a tumor removed from that spot, which metastasized.  It turns out the chip was made by VeriChip.

Pure Energy Systems News | Nov 28, 2009

Inventor’s terminal cancer courtesy of Verichip?

by Sterling D. Allan

On Nov. 12, we reported that a South African experimenter has modified an electrolysis circuit developed by Bob Boyce so that now it recharges his daughter’s electric vehicle riding toy. We said that what makes this remarkable is that the energy is not drawn from the wall but from the environment somehow; and that he’s done this around 35 times now and knows of three replications of the effect by others.  We created a feature page and a discussion list to facilitate additional replications and development of the technology.

We also reported in the same story that we had become aware the day before that Bob Boyce has “terminal” cancer, and that his days are numbered if some kind of remedy isn’t found.

On Nov. 12, Bob wrote:

The cancer that I have developed was not directly due to my research, as many have suggested. Having said that, it did occur under suspicious circumstances. When I was in Florida earlier this year, I noticed a small, hard lump had appeared under the skin of my right shoulder. I wondered where it came from, of course, but did not give it much thought. Over time, the skin over and around the lump turned reddish and became sore.

A few months ago, while working with an EMF meter on the bench in my lab, I noticed that I was picking up a weak signal. Nothing else was running at the time, so I tried locating the source, and traced it to the lump in my shoulder! I made arrangements with my doctor to have it removed, and he suspected a common skin cancer.

The object itself was tiny, about the size of a dry grain of rice, surrounded by a white fibrous shell. It had numerous nerves attached to it.

Once it had been removed, it ceased sending out a signal, as verified by my portable EMF detector.

I wanted to keep it and analyze it myself, but my doctor convinced me to let him send it off to the lab. My doctor sent it and the surrounding tissue off for pathology. Not surprisingly, there was absolutely no mention of the object itself in the pathology report.

The surrounding tissue turned out to be this rare form of cancer that has been linked to excessive x-ray exposure in x-ray technicians. The surgery had disturbed the cancer and sent cancer cells throughout my blood stream. The margins were not clear, indicating that the cancer was still present at the incision site, as well as clear indications now that the cancer has spread. I can’t blame the doctor really, as at the time we did not know that it was not a simple skin cancer.

What I really want to know is, what was this object, and how in the heck did it get imbedded in the skin of my shoulder without me knowing about it?

Many of you have sent us emails and made phone calls suggesting various possible cures.  We are hopeful that with the information that has come Bob’s way that he will be able to secure a complete cure from his cancer.

Meanwhile, on Thanksgiving evening Bob called and left a voice message in which he informed me that it turns out that the chip that was implanted in his shoulder was made by VeriChip, a company that makes implantable microchips.

According to the VeriChip VeriMed page:

About the size of a grain of rice, the microchip is inserted just under the skin and contains only a unique, 16-digit identifier. The microchip itself does not contain any other data other than this unique electronic ID, nor does it contain any Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking capabilities. And unlike conventional forms of identification, the Health Link cannot be lost, stolen, misplaced, or counterfeited. It is safe, secure, reversible, and always with you.

Close-up of a VeriChip implant device, the size of a small grain of rice.

Another page on their site describes the RFID technology, which is an essential component of their chips, and the proximity required for reading different kinds of chips, such as those used in automated toll collection.

In his message to me, Bob referred me to a website, AntiChips.com, which documents the link between embedded RFID microchips and tumor formation.  It cites a paper, Microchip-Induced Tumors in Laboratory Rodents and Dogs: A Review of the Literature 1990–2006, and summarizes it as follows:

CASPIAN’s new report … is a definitive review of research showing a causal link between implanted radio-frequency (RFID) microchip transponders and cancer in laboratory rodents and dogs. It was written in part to correct industry misstatements and misinformation circulating about the studies.

The report evaluates eleven articles previously published in toxicology and pathology journals. In six of the articles, between 0.8% and 10.2% of laboratory mice and rats developed malignant tumors around or adjacent to the microchips. Two additional articles reported microchip-related cancer in dogs.

In almost all cases, the malignant tumors, typically sarcomas, arose at the site of the implants and grew to surround and fully encase the devices. These fast-growing, malignant tumors often led to the death of the afflicted animals. In many cases, the tumors metastasized or spread to other parts of the animals. The implants were unequivocally identified as the cause of the cancers.

This is one story you will want to pass on to your networks to get the word out about the kinds of nefarious deeds going on to suppress new energy technology that could truly empower people to break free of the powers that be.

I’ve got a few questions for Bob the next time I talk to him.

* How did you find out the chip was made by VeriChip?
* Is your source willing to go on record?
* Are you planning legal action?
* Is it okay for Watkykjy1 to disclose to the B-Hex group the full details of how he built his charging device?

I’ll probably append his responses here.

I also tried to contact VeriChip for a comment, but being a holiday weekend, I haven’t heard back yet.

Full Story

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Related

Toronto Star: ‘One generation is all they need’
One day we will all happily be implanted with microchips, and our every move will be monitored. The technology exists; the only barrier is society’s resistance to the loss of privacy.

Bob Boyce Electrolyzer Plans

Report: Obama using Blackwater for assassinations in Pakistan

Raw Story | Nov 23, 2009

By Stephen C. Webster

The Obama administration is using mercenaries with the firm formerly known as Blackwater to kidnap and assassinate high value targets in Pakistan, according to a published report.

The program, operated out of the US Joint Special Operations Command, “is so ‘compartmentalized’ that senior figures within the Obama administration and the US military chain of command may not be aware of its existence,” an unnamed source with direct knowledge of the program told The Nation reporter Jeremy Scahill.

Xe Services, formerly known as Blackwater, is also allegedly involved in intelligence collection for a drone bombing campaign in the country.

Scahill’s report added: “A defense official, on background, specifically denied that Blackwater performs work on drone strikes or intelligence for JSOC in Pakistan. ‘We don’t have any contracts to do that work for us. We don’t contract that kind of work out, period,’ the official said. ‘There has not been, and is not now, contracts between JSOC and that organization for these types of services.’ The previously unreported program, the military intelligence source said, is distinct from the CIA assassination program that the agency’s director, Leon Panetta, announced he had canceled in June 2009. ‘This is a parallel operation to the CIA,’ said the source. ‘They are two separate beasts.’”

A Blackwater spokesman told The Nation that none of its forces are operating in Pakistan. However, a “former senior executive at Blackwater” told Scahill that Xe’s mercs are indeed working in Pakistan, sometimes employed by the country’s government to operate alongside soldiers. The arrangement allows the Pakistani government to deny any U.S. military presence in the country, while allowing them to tap former U.S. special forces members for high-risk missions.
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Scahill added that the CIA is also employing the firm in parallel operations.

“Targeted killings are not the most popular thing in town right now and the CIA knows that,” Scahill’s source reportedly said. “Contractors and especially JSOC personnel working under a classified mandate are not [overseen by Congress], so they just don’t care. If there’s one person they’re going after and there’s thirty-four people in the building, thirty-five people are going to die. That’s the mentality. They’re not accountable to anybody and they know that. It’s an open secret, but what are you going to do, shut down JSOC?”

During the Bush administration, the JSOC was reportedly being commanded by the vice president’s office, effectively making them Dick Cheney’s own “executive assassination squad,” according to investigative reporter Seymour Hersh.

President Obama’s top official on the occupation of Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, oversaw the JSOC from September 2003 to August 2008.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment, Scahill reported.

Irishman falsely convicted for Birmingham pub bombings tells of torture at hands of police

The Mulberry Bush pub in Birmingham, the day after it was bombed on 21 November 1974. getty images

Johnny Walker: A terrible injustice

Independent | Nov 22, 2009

Thirty five years ago, the IRA murdered 21 in the Birmingham pub bombings. Six Irishmen were jailed for crimes they did not commit, and spent 16 years in jail before their convictions were quashed. But how was life on the outside?

Jonathan Owen talks to Johnny Walker

As blows rained down on Johnny Walker’s stomach during a brutal beating at the hands of the police, he realised that in saying almost nothing, he had still said too much. “They were beating me up and my shirt came open and I told them I had stomach ulcers, so all the punches went down there… I should have shut my big mouth,” he says, his voice quavering.

Even now – 35 years after he was wrongly convicted of the Birmingham pub bombings – the trauma he endured has left raw mental scars to go with the physical marks left by torture and beatings at the hands of the police and prison officers. “I still got parts of my body that is not right… they knocked all my teeth out… I’ll carry these scars to my grave.”

Walker was one of six men – with Richard McIlkenny, Paddy Hill, Hugh Callaghan, Billy Power and Gerry Hunter – wrongly jailed for killing 21 people and injuring 182 others 35 years ago on 21 November 1974. Once the police and prison guards got their hands on him, they inflicted violent vengeance before the courts could even begin to consider justice.

He shakes at the memory of what happened to him: “I’m paying the price now [for] what they done to me…” According to the doctor who visited him all those years ago, his body was covered in cuts and bruises. But physical trauma paled compared to the mental assault. In a statement made to his solicitors at the time, he told of becoming “completely deranged” as a result of the repeated beatings and psychological torture of mock executions, where he was made to believe he would be shot in the head.

Then he spent more than 16 years in prison in what was later described as one of “the greatest disasters to have shaken British justice in my time” by the late Lord Devlin, a former law lord and Lord Justice of the Court of Appeal. It cost Walker his wife, children, home, health, almost his sanity.

Speaking at his home in a remote corner of Donegal, where the 74-year-old lives with his second wife, Paivi, 50, and son Martti, 15, he said: “I can remember it all from yesterday. I can tell you, from the day it happened, what happened that day, to the day I die. It’s planted in your mind – you never forget that.”

He added: “I’m standing here shaking like a leaf, so I am, oh aye, yes… it brings it all back. That’s why I try and keep it out. I don’t like talking about it too much, it all comes back to you… ” He slumps, bowed under the weight of every one of his 74 years. “… just like yesterday.”

When, finally, he was freed, he withdrew from mankind and stayed withdrawn. He lives a quiet life in a tiny village on the north-west coast of Ireland. “I don’t trust anybody any more. It’s a sad thing to say. When you meet people for the first time, you’re always a wee bit wary about them.”

The inside of his immaculate three-bed house – down the end of a dirt track overlooking the sea – gives no clue to his past. The nearest neighbour is a couple of minutes’ walk away. It is an isolated but beautiful setting, underpinned by calm and routine. Every morning, he takes his labrador cross, Mukka, for a walk along the beach before returning to his home.

But its walls and the idyllic surroundings are not enough to keep out savage, marauding memories. Terrifying flashbacks come regularly. He doesn’t want to give details: “You go to bed, you have these dreams. You wake up and you’re covered in sweat.”

Recalling this prompts bitterness at what was done to him and the insult added to injury when not a single police or prison officer was punished.

He has spent years escaping the notoriety of being one of the Birmingham Six. The only other member of the six he keeps in touch with is Gerry Hunter, and it has been 18 years since he last gave an interview to a national newspaper. “I haven’t spoken to anybody for years. This is my last interview… as we say, enough is enough. I’ve got to get on with life. I’m getting old now.

“I just want to walk into the pub, just be an individual. Go and have a drink with me friends and not people pointing you out and talking about you… I mean I think it would have stopped after all these years, but it’s still there.”

He was 39 and married with seven children when he was arrested on his way to the funeral of an IRA member, James McDade, on the night of the bombings. That the six were Irish and also knew McDade seemed to be all the evidence the police and courts needed. They were convicted in 1975 and sentenced to life.

By the time he finally got out, his family were strangers to him: he was divorced from his wife, Theresa, less than a year after being freed. “It was sad; two strangers living under the same roof.” He lost contact with most of his children – the worst thing of all, he says. His youngest daughter, Joanna, was two when he went to jail. He emerged to find her a grown woman: “I had seven children, but I didn’t know them.”

It was hard to adjust: “You would sit in a conversation where everybody’s laughing and joking, and you wouldn’t know what they were talking about… you’re not involved in it, you’re not a part of the family.”

He spent a year and a half drinking: at one point getting through two bottles of vodka a day. “If I was drunk, the whole world passed me by. I couldn’t handle life as I wasn’t part of that life.” Things began spiralling out of control. He told his sister he needed help. “They brought me down here to Donegal, in a wee house by the beach, kept me out of the pubs. Then, after six months, I met this second lady of mine, my wife now. She come over from Finland and looked after me.” That was 16 years ago.

These days “it all depends how you wake up in the morning… I’m like an Aborigine, I go walkabout for a couple of days in a world of my own sometimes… I’m not the nicest person sometimes to live with, but that’s not my fault; I can’t help it.

“Even now, talking about it, I do get a wee bit wired up… but I have got to bring it out now and again to get it out of my system.

“We’re getting older now and we’re getting sentimental. We look back at life and what we’ve lost… It’s hard enough to be locked away when you’ve done something… but if you’ve done nothing it’s very, very hard.”

The case is an indelible black mark on the British judicial system: confessions obtained by systematic beatings; statements doctored. The convictions were finally quashed on appeal in 1991, but they had to wait another decade before getting compensation. Incredibly, money was deducted for their stay in prison.

No one has been brought to justice for the bombings and case will not be reopened “in a million years”, he says: “There’s too much scandal. All I can say is that we never done it, the police know who done it – they knew from day one who done it, and still they put me in prison.”

He admits “hatred” for the British authorities: “Everybody’s a terrorist as far as they’re concerned now,” he adds, referring to the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes. “If you’re a coloured chap and you’re on a train and you’re carrying a bag, it’s ‘oh, like watch him, he’s a terrorist’… it’s awful.

“They all said what happened to us would never happen again… but the Pakistanis, the Indians, these different nationalities, they’re getting the backlash now. I don’t think there’s been much change, to be honest.”

The very notion of an apology from the Government fires him up further: “There’s no chance the British government is going to apologise to six Irish men, no chance! The justice we got was: after 16 and a half years they let us out of prison. They thought they were doing us a good turn. I don’t want their apology. I know I was right and they were wrong… that does me. We’ve got to bury the hatchet one day, and I think it is buried after tonight.”

His voice is quiet: “What happened to us should never happen again. We pray it never happens to anybody.”

The other convicted men

Hugh Callaghan, now 79

Lives in north London. Still married to his wife, Eileen, although they no longer live together. His autobiography, Cruel Fate, was published in 1994.

Gerry Hunter, 64

Now lives on the Algarve in Portugal. Has described how he has moved on: “I learned in prison that hatred and bitterness will only destroy you.”

Billy Power, 64

Regularly campaigns on miscarriage of justice cases. Had problems bonding with his children after his release from prison. Lives in east London.

Paddy Hill, 64

Remarried and lives in Scotland with his wife and three step-children. He runs the Miscarriages of Justice Organisation, which he co-founded in 1990.

Richard McIlkenny, dec

Said on his release from prison: “We waited a long time for this… But every dog has his day and we will have ours.” Died, aged 72, from cancer in 2006.

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Related

False Flag Terrorism: From Ireland to Iraq

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The Secret State: Britain’s Intelligence Agencies

MI5 & the IRA

This report examines the role played by British intelligence and the BritishIRA Army in collusion with the IRA and other paramilitary terrorist organizations in supplying weapons and explosives, allowing bombings to go forward, and even committing murder in the name of “fighting terror.”