If you’re looking for pieces on Jack Idema and his team, please click on this link.
Picking it up from where we left off, let’s keep ripping up Mariah Blake’s garbage hit piece from the Smear Jack Cabal on Idema called “Tin Soldier”.
After leaving active-duty service, Idema ran a series of businesses related to special operations — including a counterterrorism training school and a traveling special-operations exposition — in partnership with another former Green Beret, Thomas Bumback. During this period, which spanned the 1980s and early ’90s, he claims to have been involved in a series of “black ops,” or secret military missions.
Interestingly, I stumbled across the story of Jack inventing the Demon STABO extraction harness. It was an update from the Vietnam one and is the one that Jack is putting on Paddy Baker in the picture below which is also on the www.superpatriots.us/jacksback.htm webpage. Jack’s version, designed in the early 80’s or very late 70’s is still the primary exfil harness for Rangers, SEALS, and Delta Force today.
Yeah. THAT’s a taste of the true history of Idema in SF. The more that comes out, the more I discover how the story coverage on Idema has been slanted in a horrible and derogatory manner. I notice how these little details that support his long history in SF is simply omitted.
Instead, you do not only smear Idema, but you also take a stab at Bumback, one of the most loyal, honorable guys–who has a devastating knowledge of not only SF Ops but of the gear that they need to succeed and the designs that would improve that gear. That’s what those trade shows were all about, and you were told about that in detail, having met with Bumback personally on your all-expenses-paid-trip to North Carolina. Interestingly, however, the pretenses under which you met with him were false, and the things he told you about you omitted in this piece–including the info you obtained by watching 10 minutes of video footage which explained exactly what they were doing. These guys were ahead of their time! The designs they were proposing for the gear that SF Ops uses ultimately would increase an operator’s effectiveness in the field! Putting the end user in touch with manufacturers so that the manufacturers understood exactly what they needed and why, is a brilliant concept–and not only that–but they also had the capability to USE the equipment! USE the scuba gear in a pool, drive a vehicle, etc..
ummm…you wouldn’t be referring to the time frame in which these pictures were taken, would you? I mean since he was thrown out of the army in the ’70’s for being an “unremarkable” rear radio operator and all.
Idema as a principle Senior Instructor the the British 22 SAS Commandos. He is seen here placing a STABO extraction harness (that he designed) on Colonel Patty Baker- the British SAS Commando who became legendary during the battle of Oman. Colonel Baker later wrote of Idema as the finest young Green Beret he had ever worked with and invited Idema to SAS Headquarters in Hereford in the mid-80’s. The rope you see is attached to a hovering helicopter. In other words Colonel Baker was trusting Idema with his life.
With Ronald Reagan as the President from 1980 until 1988, clandestine and covert Ops, as was Special Forces, were at an all time high. Idema formed the Counter-Terrorist Group, and developed counter-terrorist and hostage rescue concepts and doctrine which would be followed by counter-terrorist units all over the world. He is seen here training the President’s son, Ronald Reagan, Jr., in combat pistol techniques.
Idema being awarded Royal Thai Commando Wings in 1985 by the Commander of the Thai Special Warfare Command in LopBuri Thailand. The man on the left is holding a Royal award device reserved for awards authorized by the King. The row of men standing are all Thai General Officers. This picture was taken in 1985 when there were supposed to be no Green Berets in South East Asia.
He was also compiling a long arrest record on charges including bad checks, assault, possession of stolen property, and discharging a firearm into a dwelling. Then, in 1994, Idema was tried and convicted of defrauding fifty-eight companies of about $260,000, according to The Fayetteville Observer. He served three years in prison. It was while awaiting sentencing that Idema launched his first media offensive, trying to sell a story about nuclear material being smuggled out of Russia. Gary Scurka, an investigative journalist and recipient of numerous prestigious awards, eventually produced a 60 Minutes piece based, at least in part, on information Idema had provided.
*yawn*…the charge was “aiding and abetting” and the principles were let go. Idema has not only spent over $1 million in that case to clear his name, and he paid the fine even though he maintains he didn’t do it. That says volumes to me in terms of the validity of the charges, yet he spent 3 years in jail for something he didn’t do. His ex-wife says he didn’t do it, and people who know him and knew him during that period also are of that opinion.
As far as discharging a firearm into a dwelling, I suppose that would appeal to all the gun control advocates and anti-military people out there, but those are the kind of people this piece are aimed at, isn’t it?
The situation with the “bad checks” is quite interesting, because that had to do with a certain PI/felon by the name of Hagler who is only in this for the money. As a matter of fact, I would credit some of what’s beginning to happen to me in terms of a report run from Autotrack and the information gleaned from that report showing up on a website- as a result of my reporting this story. This is the type of underhanded methods the other side uses to prevent the truth from coming out. Can you imagine? They don’t have facts to back up their claims about Idema, so they resort to name-calling, threats of lawsuits, and dredging up what they perceive is dirt in my past. Let’s make one thing perfectly clear; ANYTHING they dredge up about me, my family, or my past is totally irrelevant to the Idema story. Focus on what’s relevant, people, and tune out the noise.
Over the next decade, Idema continued to court the media with help from a faithful cadre of friends — among them Scurka, the best-selling author Robin Moore, and Edward Caraballo, the cameraman who would later be imprisoned with Idema in Afghanistan. He met with little success, though, until September 11, 2001, when a shell-shocked public, desperate to make sense of the senseless, began groping for information. Idema gladly obliged.
The is disingenuous. There are many SF operators who can attest to his version of events. To make it seem as though he’s the only one telling these stories is a terrible distortion of facts.
On September 12, 2001, Idema appeared on KTTV, Los Angeles’s Fox affiliate, which billed him as a “counterterrorism adviser.” He told audiences that three Canadian jetliners might have been hijacked, along with the four U.S. planes. By late October, Idema was in Afghanistan, telling associates that he planned to help two humanitarian groups — Partners International Foundation and Knightsbridge International — distribute food to hungry Afghans, and he brought along a National Geographic film crew, headed by Scurka, to make a film about his efforts. (Both aid groups say he misrepresented his plans in order to get them to cooperate.)
That is, in fact, what he did. He didn’t “misrepresent” his plans at all. From what I gather as far as the desiccants story is concerned, many of the players involved tried to take credit for what Jack did in that humanitarian effort.
From Dan, a Special forces operator who knows Jack personally:
If you check the early October 2001 Reports from the DOD, I think you will find that it was the DOD PAO and an ASD who stated at a PRESS CONFERENCE that THEY believed the Taliban was poisoning the airdrops in Northern Afghanistan (I was already in the ISOFAC preparing to deploy when we were briefed on it).
During the press conference the DOD was defending dropping food and not bombs on Northern Afghanistan, which was of course the RIGHT thing to do because these people were, and are still, our allies, even if the American State Department has now deserted them and has us working with the new ANA (a joke of a Keystone Cop army).
The press and the NGOs were spreading unsubstantiated rumors and propaganda by the bushel basket. If the propaganda was successful then the Northern Alliance would think we were trying to poison them and fight against them. We could have easily lost them as a trusted ally, endangering all of the small 10 to 12 man SF teams which were just about to arrive on the ground. The HDR food packs were also yellow and resembled Soviet air drop mines. This was just one of the many problems. Jack Idema went into Northern Afghanistan with a primary mission to find out who WAS poisoning the food drops and to get more food drops to the Northern Alliance and get the right kind of food landing on actual drop zones instead of USAF “blind drops.” This was secretly coordinated by the DAT at both the American and Afghan Embassies in Dushanbe, Tajikistan.
Jack Idema found out the real cause of the poisoning and HDR problems. Idema FIXED the problem single handily, through initiative, ingenuity, and pure guts.
One night he set up an ambush on an HDR airdrop site expecting to engage the Taliban “poison saboteurs.” Instead Idema saw airdrops hitting allied mud huts and landing in minefields where children would then run into so they could collect their “presents” from America. He got that word back to DOD and USASOC asap.
I don’t think anyone that was truly in Northern Afghanistan can overlook the positive impact that Idema had on allied relations. So powerful that on Northern Alliance commander, who’s entire family had been killed by a US bombing in error, and then promised revenge against America, did not just embrace Idema, he actually became his chief bodyguard and fought next to him for months. It is my understanding from one of Massoud’s bodyguards that the same commander remains his close friend today.
Idema’s original HDR CRISIS report transmitted from Northern Afghanistan to Task Force Dagger Headquarters, USASOC, USSOCOM, SECDEF Rumsfeld, and General Powell, resulted in saving many lives, and completely changed the airdrop policy. It is also my understanding, from a third party source, that Major James Morris, who you interviewed, knew all about this because he was friends with Powell’s speechwriter, Joe Galloway (same fellow from General Hal Moore’s WE WERE SOLDIERS book and film). Another person who knew the story was a Special Forces Captain at the Counter-Terrorist Task Force, Kevin or Ken Harington, I think.
Major Jim Morris (probably more Purple Hearts and Bronze Stars in Vietnam then any General), was credited by Idema in a cable to TFD HQ as coming up with the idea to airdrop rice bags in larger wheat bags, so that when the rice exploded on impact it was contained by the outer bag instead of disappearing into the sand (quote from actual cable: “Major Jim Morris and General Hienie Aderholt used this technique in Vietnam when they were airdropping rice to Montagnards in the mountains of Vietnam- if it worked then it will work now so send the HDRs to Bosnia and drop us rice.”).
This solved the problem of the new airdrops and even the South African UN World Food Program pilots sent their thanks and accolades to Idema. After similar problems happened in Bamian, Idema briefed the team there and SOCEUR started doing the same thing with USAF drops there.
The way I see it is total jealousy. Everyone within a hundred miles wants to take credit for what Idema did, not just on the HDR investigation and resolution of the crisis, but on anything else they can.
Robert Morris (NOT Jim Morris) slightly rewrote Idema’s HDR report, put his name on it, and then submitted it (certainly that was illegal) for a USAID million dollar grant to his phony aid group “Partners International.” I still have a copy of the original report written by Idema but it is FOUO (marked For Official Use Only), so you can FOIA the real report from DOD PAO ASD (dated Nov. 4, 2001). Compare the two and you will puke. Robert Morris was even stupid enough to use pictures of Idema in it (he still has it downloadable on the Partners International website).
Ed Artis, who tried desperately to meet and “hang out” with SF teams in Northern Afghanistan, also claimed he “did it.” (Skurka, who you mention, should be asked about this, he was there, as was DIA LTC Long- who was not really “retired” at the time).
A mousy little USA Today reporter, Tim something, also tried to take credit for it in USA Today. Little Timmy got caught leaving Afghanistan with stolen art objects and smuggling antiquities, but USA Today never told you that story did they? I was at Bagram when that happened, and it was only him getting on his knees and crying that saved him from jail that day. Later he claimed the Afghans “robbed” him of his purchases. He was obviously smoking too much hash (also found on him that day).
Make no mistake about it, four of the men on my team currently here in Afghanistan know for absolute fact that Jack Idema’s version of the HDR story is true.
Idema, a stocky man who even in the Afghan hinterlands kept his salt-and-pepper hair died black, quickly adopted a quasi-military look — dark sunglasses, dust-colored fatigues, a black-and-white kaffiyeh draped around his neck. The style reflected his expanding repertoire of roles. Along with the human rights work and the documentary making, he claimed he was offering military advice to the Northern Alliance, which was fighting the Taliban. Meanwhile, he sold a variety of services to reporters, telling them he was Donald Rumsfeld’s special representative to the Northern Alliance, or insinuating that he was working for the CIA or the Army Special Forces.
bwahahahaha! Whatever.
Jack leading a patrol of Afghan MOD and Ministry of Interior Troops during the 2002 War. From Rotty Pup: Here we see Idema leading a column of Afghan Ministry of Interior troops in 2002. Doubtless, it was the sunglasses and gun that fooled the large number of government soldiers into following him. After all, we’re sure this kind of thing happens all the time. You know, an American guy turns up at the barracks and everyone just follows him out for a quick romp across the desert. Why, Idema must have felt like a kind of heavily-armed Pied Piper. Hmm.
From Rotty Pup: Apparently not content with working these miraculous deceptions on credulous Iraqi and German troops, this time Jack’s convinced top Afghan Corps Commanders of his legitimacy. From left to right: 1- Afghan CIA officer (required to be cropped out of picture before publication), 2) General Wassiq - Mazar, 3) Jack, 4) General Daoud - Kunduz & Taliqon, 5) General Atta - Mazar, 6, General Hazrat Ali - Jalalabad, 7) General Gulhaider- Southern Front command. Apparently, the military top brass on show here all believed they were meeting to coordinate Idema’s operations throughout Afghanistan. It’s a good thing the chattering classes who run the BBC were around to put them straight!
Thanks, Mariah, your “setting us straight” has just sent your credibility to the tank. If I were you, I’d start sending out my resume to the National Inquirer and Star Magazine, since they can use your kind of talent and the impeccable standards of journalism and ethics that you’ve demonstrated throughout this piece. Columbia School of Journalism ought to have pictures of People, Star, and the National Inquirer to prepare students for the incredible future they have lying ahead of them.
By December, Idema was serving as a commentator for Fox News, which paid him $500 per appearance, and charging journalists $1,000 a head for tours to Tora Bora, the sprawling cave complex where U.S. forces were battling Al Qaeda troops. According to reporters, the trips included press conferences with Idema himself. Some of Idema’s media schemes showed extraordinary enterprise. In one case, he reportedly lured a local warlord named Hazrat Ali to the Spin Ghar Hotel in Jalalabad for a press briefing and charged reporters $100 each to attend. It later emerged that he had told Ali that the journalists were Pentagon officials.
Is this paragraph a joke? Jack’s “scheming”, lol, “lured a warlord”..lol..like we’re supposed to swallow the bs that all of these people were “duped” by the guy with the sunglasses. Generals, members of Parliament, the whole nine yards. And I’m the queen of England.
At a press conference with General Hazrat Ali in December 2002- Hazrat Ali is one of the smartest men in Afghanistan, and one of America’s best friends– he gave press conferences weekly, sometimes daily, but Mariah Blake wants you to believe that Jack conned not only the reporters, but Hazrat Ali himself- yeah, right. Hazrat Ali is STILL one of Jack’s good friends. But Mariah Blake would have you believe that guy with the sunglasses sure is some slick New Yorker! (The press also claimed that Jack was publicity hungry during the war– TRY to find this picture ever before with Jack in it. Not possible. Jack had himself cut from all pics that day, and the only agreement the press there made, contrary to lies by stupid journalists we are sure Jack will see in court one day, is that they would agree not to have Jack in their pictures- check the book THE HUNT FOR BIN LADEN - Jack is clipped OUT of the picture)
It should also be worth noting that the Afghan people in many cases are starving. American business’ entrance and existence in Afghanistan has driven the price of goods and services through the roof. That in itself has not been a good thing for Afghans who only make about $50.00 a month. Could it be that the price of admission was the AFGHAN price of admission rather than money that would go into Jack’s pocket? Considering all that I’ve learned, I’m inclined to believe that would be the case.
Here’s yet another example of Jack “fooling” people in Tora Bora.
It’s not difficult to understand why Idema — a self-proclaimed government operative with a silver tongue, striking looks, and a love of the spotlight — would appeal to reporters who, in late 2001, poured into war-ravaged Afghanistan desperate for stories. The war was being fought largely by Special Forces soldiers, who call themselves “quiet professionals” and assiduously avoid the press. Lack of information bred a sense of urgency. “The media were in a frenzy,” explains Artis of Knightsbridge International. “They were interviewing each other about what they’d interview someone about if they had someone to interview.” Idema also seems to have capitalized on the U.S. military’s increasing reliance on contractors, and the confusion over who had authority to speak on the government’s behalf.
hehehe “self proclaimed government operative”. The pictures so far have completely refuted that allegation. And “silver tongue”?…”striking looks”? ….”love of the spotlight”?…there are many times when he had himself cut out of pictures, and was standing out of view of the camera. Now, though, it appears as though he’s been trying tell the story that those in the media have failed so miserably to do; Jack has witnessed these events firsthand and is friends with some incredible people–not the least of which are people like Yunus Qanuni, Hazrat Ali, and General Fahim and even General Dostum and many other high ranking generals and now officials in parliament.
The only people in a frenzy were Bob Morris of Partners International because Jack wouldn’t write up the report in order for him to be able to send his people into Afghanistan and start capitalizing on the humanitarian aid going in–and Ed Artis, because the publicity that seemed to be generated as a result of Jack’s efforts didn’t mention him, his phony Knights of Malta, and Knightsbridge. Both of them have a monetary angle, and both of them stood to benefit if they could manipulate Jack to do what they wanted in terms of their phony “humanitarian” causes. Joe Cafasso, of course, was maneuvering to get his hands on the Al Qaeda tapes, but nobody has complained about his talk of assassinating Jack in order to get his mits on them. The depiction of Jack being money-hungry and publicity hungry over all of this is COMPLETELY disingenuous, from what I can see.
In addition to courting reporters, Idema sometimes threatened them. Tod Robberson of The Dallas Morning News reported that Idema shot at him “point-blank” during an argument. And some journalists were put off by his violent tendencies and overblown swagger. A group of photographers referred to Idema, who adopted the nickname “Jack” in Afghanistan, as Jack Shit.
Wow, we’re supposed to believe that Jack shot at him “point-blank” and missed. bwahahahaha! Tell me another one. Although it IS a funny picture–this pansy crapping his pants.
After only two months in Afghanistan, Idema claimed to have found what would become the lynchpin of his widening media offensive: seven hours of footage that purportedly shows Al Qaeda training camps in action. Before long, Idema had sold video stills to several publications and enlisted the William Morris Agency to auction off the first-time U.S. broadcast rights. “The intent is to sell the tapes to the highest bidder at terms that are ultimately satisfactory to Mr. Idema,” explained a letter signed by Wayne S. Kabak, chief operating officer of William Morris, and hand-delivered to Fox News’s New York offices on January 9 — one day before the auction was slated to take place. The terms included giving Idema “on-air credit as the person who procured these tapes” and the right to refuse any bid under $150,000.
You know, this makes me ill. First, even though it’s apparent that there are more contractors in Iraq than there are active military over there, yet on the basis of his not being “active military”, you paint him with this fraudster brush. Would you paint an employee of Blackwater with a fraudster brush? Why is it that in order to gain some sort of legitimacy with people, you have to either be a government employee or a contractor?
“My President told our nation he was going to unleash hell on the terrorists, and that is exactly what I did… so what’s the problem?” Jack Idema, in an interview.
These conditions, along with Idema’s dark past, gave some networks pause. NBC Nightly News was put off by the hefty price tag and the lack of signs of authenticity, such as a logo from As-Sahab, Al Qaeda’s video production house, which appears on the tapes Al Qaeda releases to the public. “There was no way to verify them,” says Robert Windrem, investigative producer for NBC Nightly News. “It was either you trust Keith Idema or you don’t.”
“No way to verify them”? Give me a break. Eric Campbell of ABC News said this:
One of my colleagues was Elizabeth Neuffer, an experienced and highly regarded correspondent with the Boston Globe. She had impeccable contacts in the US military, and volunteered to check out his credentials to comment on the tapes. Her conclusion was that he was a highly unsavoury character but was “one of the best people in the world to be talking about this.” Elizabeth was later killed in Iraq, but the articles she wrote about the tapes and about Jack attest to her conclusions about him.
And this:
I chose to include Jack in the stories as he had been central to obtaining the tapes, he had viewed them in their entirety, he had the expertise to comment on them and his dealings with the Northern Alliance gave him a good sense of the military situation in Afghanistan and the activities of foreign militants.
To state the obvious, the conclusions Jack drew from the tapes…that al Qaeda was training militants for kidnapping foreigners and conducting urban warfare…has turned out to be perfectly correct in Iraq, something the “expert” quoted in the Columbia Journalism Review chooses to ignore.
And this:
Mir Bacheh Kowt was a 40-minute drive north of Kabul along a half-destroyed road, the same road on which Tim and I had been stoned by the Taliban’s Vice and Virtue Police four years earlier. The Taliban had poisoned the wells and the villages had been destroyed as the frontline shifted back and forth between Kabul and the Panjshir Valley. We drove through now deserted remnants of mud villages that had been caught in the crossfire. Then we saw the mountains behind the village. Sure enough, they were almost bare of snow, meaning that the footage could not have been shot in the warmer weeks since the Taliban had fled.
The villagers in Mir Bacheh Kowt waved al-Qaeda detritus at us, hoping to sell it as souvenirs. A charred copy of the Koran, ammunition casings and even man-shaped shooting targets were among the offerings. They told us that the Taliban had ordered them to leave three years earlier to make way for the foreign fighters. They had just returned to the delapidated remains of their homes to find they had been used for target and bombing practice.
The village school was in a two storey-building I recognised from the tapes. It had been the main training centre. It was eerie to walk through the rooms where Arab and Pakistani militants had been learning to kill and maim. The walls were pockmarked with bullet and mortar holes from live-fire exercises. A blackboard still had a chalk diagram showing the correct shooting stance for close-quarter assassination.
The militants had used the entire village as a training range, blasting each building with machine-gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades. Some buildings were still filled with live shells. Ragged children followed us around the village and toyed with the al-Qaeda debris, playing happily with Zeppelin-shaped grenades. A man with one leg pointed to a row of buildings and told us not to go near them. “Mines”, he said, gesturing at his stump.
If the US military knew of this base, it had certainly not investigated it. Wandering around, we found an extraordinary range of terrorist debris, including instruction manuals, notebooks filled with what looked like chemistry lessons and an Arabic translation of a US taskforce paper on counter-terrorism.
So we’re supposed to believe that this slick New York dude with the sunglasses somehow waved a magic wand, made the snow on the mountains match, brought Arabs into the area and made these tapes up himself, and was brilliant enough to get the villagers to corroborate what was on the tapes and gave them the paraphernalia to sell from the tapes, although they’ve never even seen them. GIVE ME A BREAK. And then he says:
the intriguing thing about Jack was how much of what he said checked out. He definitely HAD wrangled himself a position as military adviser to the Afghans. We had seen enough of his dealings with Hazrat Ali and other Northern Alliance officials to be sure of that. He had extraordinary good contacts in the new government and was able to get us any interview or access to any location we wanted. US journalists bidding for the footage were able to confirm that he had served in Special Forces. Above all, the tapes of the al-Qaeda training camp were genuine. We had confirmed that from the detritus left at Mir Bacheh Kowt and the accounts of the villagers.
If Neuffer and Campbell isn’t enough, there’s Peter Bergen:
Last October, New York magazine raised the possibility that the Al Qaeda videotapes Idema supplied to 60 Minutes II were faked, a seemingly plausible scenario given Idema’s previous fraud conviction. But when I visited the town of Mir Bacha Kot, about a half-hour north of Kabul, Deputy Police Chief Mohammed Araf told me that Arabs had indeed used the town as a military base under the Taliban, and the buildings in Mir Bacha Kot match those on the Idema-supplied tapes. A journalist from a leading U.S. media organization who evaluated the tapes told me he had no doubt they were authentic…
I see plenty of people -journalists–who WERE THERE and claimed they were authentic because they helped vet them. And that doesn’t even include the General at Bagram AFB in Kabul who also attests to their authenticity.
CNN backed off precisely because it decided Idema could not be trusted. This was after the network’s national security analyst, Ken Robinson, searched Google and LexisNexis and discovered that Idema not only had a criminal record, but also liked to batter his rivals with lawsuits. In addition to turning down the tapes, the network decided to shun Idema as a source. It was the only network to do so.
CNN wasn’t even involved. And if it was, I’d like to see the documentation and hear the names of the people providing it.
On January 17, CBS’s 60 Minutes II ran a story about the tapes. Dan Rather traveled to Afghanistan to interview Idema and visit the dusty, bullet-scarred compound called Mir Bacha Kot, where the filming had been done. At a time when workers were still sifting through the gnarled wreckage of the World Trade Center, the story reinforced the prevailing sense of panic. Men in camouflaged tunics and ski masks were shown storming buildings, staging drive-by shootings, and laying siege to golf courses. Sometimes the men laughed as they rehearsed maneuvers, which Rather interpreted as evidence that they approached their grim mission with “glee.” The footage also contained numerous exchanges in English, “a sign,” Rather told viewers, “that they want to take scenes like this to the West.”
This was also verified by other REAL journalists, lol…who weren’t being fed lies and documents by the Smear Jack Cabal.
ABC, MSNBC, NBC, and the BBC subsequently paid thousands of dollars to air the training-camp footage, according to Idema’s bank records. These records, interviews with Idema’s associates and Idema’s own e-mails, suggest that money from media activities, including the tapes, helped fund his 2004 operations in Afghanistan.
More creative storytelling, no doubt. If he found a way to fund his operation, I don’t see what the big deal is. He hasn’t signed allegiance to a foreign country, he hasn’t given up his US citizenship, which is certainly something many of the Afghan officials should do but haven’t. AND, he’s not rolling in money, driving a Rolls Royce with an expensive exotic bird collection, but is giving the money he gets back to the Afghans he works with in terms of food and medical supplies, among many other things.
Does this paragraph ring any alarm bells for anyone besides li’l ole me? Where did you get these “e-mails” and “bank records”, Mariah? And who exactly would these “associates” be?
Could it possibly be a certain blogger in Romania who published certain attorney-client privileged information and emails (which in itself is frightening because it outlined the legal strategy for the trial in Afghanistan.)? Or could it be connected with your relationship with Hagler, who was surprisingly present when you met with MSgt Bumback? Or perhaps Tod Robberson, who broke into their Afghan cell and stole personal effects and documents while they were in an Afghan court and left a note that he’d been there? Or could you be referring to private correspondence and records that you yourself stole from Jack’s office when you were given a tour and an interview by one of his associates? Actually, I don’t recall the chronology of all these events, but there is enough here that stinks to indicate there is some serious “spinning” of the facts in this story in this piece.
Along the way, Idema gave varying accounts of how he got the tapes. He told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Eric Campbell that he bought them from one of his intelligence assets after a series of “back-alley meetings at midnight.” In contrast, he told NBC’s Today show that he and a group of Northern Alliance fighters “took over” Mir Bacha Kot, then went to the house of the camp’s commander, where they found some of the tapes. They then hunted down “soldiers” (presumably Al Qaeda recruits) to get the others.
WOW that one is really incredible. A clear example of more obfuscation of the truth with no facts to back it up. Hmmm. In all that I’ve read of Campbell’s accounts, including the several chapters in his book Absurdistan, I haven’t seen anything he’s written that alludes to “back-alley meetings at midnight”. Obviously I’ve missed something, lol…tell me another one!
Tracy-Paul Warrington, former deputy commander of a Special Forces counterterrorism team and a civilian intelligence analyst for the Defense Department, believes there’s a good reason Idema’s story changed. “In a nutshell, the videotapes are forgeries,” he says. He explains that the tactics shown in the tapes (such as the way the trainees handle their weapons) were developed in the 1970s but abandoned shortly thereafter, and are not used by modern-day Al Qaeda troops. Also, Warrington points out that the tapes depict mostly raids, whereas “Al Qaeda almost exclusively uses bombs.” Finally, Idema claimed in most accounts to have found the tapes around Mir Bacha Kot, an area that Warrington contends was already under coalition control and had been thoroughly searched by coalition forces. “This man who was convicted of fraud says he finds these tapes where nobody else found them,” says Warrington. “That should have set some alarm bells off.”
What should be setting alarm bells off is Tracy Warrington being quoted as a terrorism “expert”, lol.
There are conflicting reports about the CIA’s stance on the tapes. A retired senior special operations officer with nearly two decades of counterterrorism experience says that while he was on active duty he learned from a CIA contact that the agency had evaluated the tapes. “They did a voice analysis and a technical analysis,” reports the man, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Not only were they staged, but you could single Idema’s voice out directly.” On the other hand, the CIA public affairs office says the agency “did not conduct voice analysis of the tape or draw any conclusion regarding its authenticity.”
Now who would that supposed source be? uh…doh! Joe Cafasso (the Colonel that wasn’t)! Gee Mariah, you’re brilliant *snort*…I wouldn’t have printed his name, either.
CBS employees received the tapes from Idema directly, and vetted them on the ground in Afghanistan at a time when the country was still in shambles and the network’s Kabul bureau was operating out of a house with spotty phone service. The network’s spokesperson, Kelli Edwards, says CBS nevertheless went to great lengths to ensure the tapes were authentic before airing them. This included “confirming with U.S. military officials that the camp in the video was, in fact, an Al Qaeda training camp . . . showing the tapes to three former British Special Forces officers, who verified the tactics being practiced in the video were consistent with those of Al Qaeda, and to a top U.S. military official in Afghanistan who told us that, in his opinion, the video was authentic.” The network says it can’t reveal those officials’ names because they offered their opinions on condition of anonymity.
hehehe “can’t reveal those officials’ names”. I already talked about CBS’ involvement in this–and their denial of the facts, of their being present, are getting them sued, but the fact remains; they were printing the same line the other media printed because otherwise they would have been implicated in another “scandal”, which they didn’t think they could afford after Rathergate and the fiasco with the Bush memos (among other things).
Of all the networks, CBS had the longest-standing relationship with Idema. It had used him as a source or consultant on two projects before his arrival in Afghanistan. The first was the 1995 nuclear-smuggling story, called “The Worst Nightmare,” which was produced by Scurka and aired on 60 Minutes.
Yes, I suppose there HAS to be SOME truth in this entire rag piece…otherwise it would be more glaring propaganda than it already is!
Scurka had initially heard that Idema, who was then awaiting sentencing on fraud charges, had a lead on a hot story about the smuggling that he had picked up while operating his traveling exposition. Idema agreed to share information with Scurka. Scurka, meanwhile, lent a sympathetic ear to Idema’s story about an injustice he felt he had suffered. Idema claimed the FBI had framed him on the fraud charges because he had refused to tell the agency where he learned about the nuclear smuggling, fearing leaks could hurt his sources.
This is also misleading, but what do you expect?
The 60 Minutes piece, and a companion story in U.S. News & World Report, won that year’s Renner Award from Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. Idema never got any credit, though. This came as a blow to Scurka, who has maintained Idema was a key source and that CBS decided to cut any reference to him largely because he was imprisoned for fraud by the time the story aired. Edwards, the CBS spokesperson, suggests Idema’s contributions didn’t necessarily merit credit, since the final story, which took six months to investigate, was “much different than the story we initially began pursuing.”
After “The Worst Nightmare” aired, Scurka and Caraballo started work on a film about Idema, called Any Lesser Man, “the Real story of one lone Green Beret’s private war against KGB Nuclear Smuggling, Soviet spies, Arab terrorists, and the FBI,” according to promotional materials. Despite years of effort, they were never able to scrape together enough money to complete it.
In 2000, Idema hooked up with CBS again. This time he and Scurka served as consultants to 48 Hours, then anchored by Dan Rather. They worked on an investigative story about Colonel George Marecek, a highly decorated Special Forces officer accused of murdering his wife, Viparet. But the two were eventually fired from the project. “48 Hours determined they had taken on an advocacy role for the defense,” explains Edwards of CBS. Indeed, Idema and Scurka had opened a “Free Marecek” office in Wilmington, North Carolina, where the trial was taking place, and one witness alleged that Idema and another man came to his house to harass him the night before he was slated to testify. Idema also told several associates he was detained for impersonating a police officer in an effort to get into a Detroit prison and convince a convicted serial killer to confess to Viparet’s murder. Despite concerns about Idema and Scurka’s objectivity, in December 2000, 48 Hours ran a story on Marecek, with much of the exculpatory evidence drawn fr
If you’re a leftist, I’m sure you’ll want the terms explained to you. Well forget it. Do your own research or sod off. This is a prime example of why I get so irritated with people who don’t understand the Idema story; they don’t take the time to find out. They find one piece of information (like Wikipedia) and conclude they have an understanding of the whole thing. This is one such example.