Hezbollah identifies undercover CIA officers

[P F Tinmore]

WASHINGTON (AP) — The militant group Hezbollah has revealed the identities of CIA officers working undercover in Lebanon, a blow to agency operations in the region and the latest salvo in an escalating spy war.

Hezbollah made the names public in a broadcast Friday night on a Lebanese television station, al-Manar. Using animated videos, the station recreated meetings purported to take place between CIA officers and paid informants at Starbucks and Pizza Hut.

The disclosure comes after Hezbollah managed to partially unravel the agency's spy network in Lebanon after running a double agent against the CIA, former and current U.S. intelligence officials said. They requested anonymity to discuss matters of intelligence.

The fiasco happened despite top CIA officials being warned to be extra careful when handling informants after Hezbollah and Lebanese officials arrested scores of Israeli spies in 2009.

Hezbollah identifies undercover CIA officers - Yahoo! News

 

[P F Tinmore]

Lebanon's Hezbollah-dominated government on Wednesday announced it would summon the US ambassador to Beirut after the powerful Shiite group said it had succeeded in exposing CIA operatives.

"The cabinet has decided to summon US Ambassador Maura Connelly to question her on this issue," said Agriculture Minister Hussein Hajj Hassan, who represents the Iran-backed Hezbollah in the 30-seat government.

"This is not the first aggression of its kind on Lebanon... and cannot be divided from Israeli (spies)," Hajj Hassan told reporters during a break from a cabinet meeting.

More than 100 people in Lebanon have been arrested on suspicion of spying for Israel since April 2009, including military personnel and telecoms employees.

Lebanon and Israel technically remain in a state of war, and convicted spies face life imprisonment or the death sentence if found guilty of contributing to Lebanese loss of life.

Lebanon has protested to the United Nations over the alleged Israeli spy networks.

Lebanon to summon US envoy over 'CIA operatives' - Yahoo! News

 

[JStone]

Lebanon was a good place before muhammad came in and crapped on its carpet

 

[waltky]

Hezbollah caught laundering funds in the US...

US sues Lebanese firms for 'laundering Hezbollah funds'
16 December 2011 - Hezbollah is designated as a terrorist group by the US authorities

Three Lebanese financial institutions linked to Hezbollah laundered more than $300m (£193m) through the US second-hand car market, US prosecutors say. A civil suit says the Lebanese Canadian Bank and two money-exchange firms used drug-trafficking and criminal proceeds to buy and ship cars to West Africa. Cash from their sale was allegedly then smuggled to Lebanon, along with funds from Colombian and Mexican cartels.

Prosecutors are seeking $480m in penalties from the three institutions. They say this represents the total amount of money laundered. Prosecutors are also seeking to freeze and seize the assets of the companies, along with those of about 30 US car dealers and a US shipping company, which are accused of facilitating the crime. Hezbollah, a Shia Islamist movement, was designated as a foreign terrorist organisation by the US government in 1997.

'Intricate scheme'

The civil suit filed at Manhattan federal court on Thursday alleges that between January 2007 and early 2011 at least $329m of drug-trafficking and criminal proceeds was wired from Lebanon to the US to buy second-hand cars, which were then transported to West Africa. "Cash from the sale of the cars, along with the proceeds of drug-trafficking, were then funnelled to Lebanon through Hezbollah-controlled money-laundering channels," the US Attorney's Office said. Couriers, smugglers and currency brokers brought the cash to two money-exchange companies in Beirut - the Hassan Ayash Exchange Company and Ellissa Holding - which then deposited it at the Lebanese Canadian Bank, it added.

Prosecutors said the bank had allowed other Hezbollah-related entities to conduct massive transactions, sometimes worth as much as $260,000 per day, without disclosing the source or purpose of the money. "Substantial portions of the cash were paid to Hezbollah," the US Attorney's Office said. US Attorney Preet Bharara said the "intricate scheme" revealed the "deviously creative ways that terrorist organisations are funding themselves and moving their money, and it puts into stark relief the nexus between narcotics trafficking and terrorism". "We are putting a stranglehold on a major source of that funding by disrupting a vast and far-flung network that spanned three continents."

In February, the Lebanese Canadian Bank merged with a subsidiary of Societe Generale after the US treasury designated it as a "primary money laundering concern", forbidding US institutions to deal with it. A lawyer for the Lebanese Canadian Bank's former owners has denied any wrongdoing, as have the money-exchange companies. Hezbollah has dismissed the charges as American propaganda. The suit was filed two days after a Lebanese man linked to Hezbollah, Ayman Joumaa, was indicted in Virginia on charges of conspiracy to distribute narcotics and commit money-laundering related to trafficking by Mexican and Colombian cartels. His whereabouts are unknown.

BBC News - US sues Lebanese firms for 'laundering Hezbollah funds'

 

[waltky]

Hezbollah hard up for cash...

Report: Hezbollah in dire financial straits
12.18.11, French daily Le Figaro says Lebanese terror group hit hard by civil uprising in Syria, sanctions against Iran

While Hezbollah General Secretary Hassan Nasrallah appeared to be in high spirits recently during a rare public appearance in a suburb of Beirut, his organization is experiencing a severe financial crisis, French daily Le Figaro reported over the weekend. According to the article, which was based on information obtained by French intelligence agencies, the civil uprising against President Bashar Assad in Syria has significantly reduced the flow of money to the Lebanese terror group. Moreover, the report said, Iran has recently cut its financial aid to Hezbollah by 25% due in part to the international sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic over its nuclear program.

Le Figaro said the financial crisis has led some Hezbollah terrorists to deal drugs in north Lebanon. Just last week US prosecutors indicted a Lebanese national who they said led a massive international drug smuggling ring with links to Hezbollah. The US Treasury and the FBI have banned American organizations from donating to Hezbollah, which is designated under US law as a terrorist organization. Last month Nasrallah claimed Hezbollah had unraveled a web of CIA informants and officers in Iran and Lebanon. According to Le Figaro's report, the network caused significant damage to the Shiite group.

Hezbollah's financial woes are also the result of corruption, the report said. According to Le Figaro, the terror group's investment manager had embezzled close to $1.6 billion. The report said that during a speech in Beirut two weeks ago Nasrallah chastised the organization's female members for becoming, as he put it, too "bourgeois" and spending too much of the organization's money. Le Figaro said this was yet another indication of Hezbollah's dire financial situation. The French daily claimed that the murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri in 2005 was planned by top Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh, without Nasrallah's knowledge.

Report: Hezbollah in dire financial straits - Israel News, Ynetnews

 

[hortysir]

duh....

Who do you think killed Qudaffi?

 

[waltky]

The jihadis are coming!, the jihadis are coming!...

Former DEA Chief: Hezbollah Eyeing Southwest Border, ‘Hell to Pay in the Not Too Distant Future’
February 2, 2012 – The Iranian-supported Shi’ite terrorist group Hezbollah has spread its influence all the way to the U.S. border with Mexico, a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Iran’s influence in the Western Hemisphere heard on Thursday.

Michael Braun, a former chief of operations at the Drug Enforcement Agency, said Hezbollah had developed relationships with the powerful Mexican drug cartels to “move their agenda forward.” He cited a plot, recently uncovered by the DEA, involving an Iranian operative in Mexico allegedly planning to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington, D.C. “Hezbollah are absolute masters at forming close relationships with existing organized crime groups around the world that helps them facilitate what they need to do to move their agendas forward,” Braun told CNSNews.com following the hearing. “And if anyone thinks for a moment that they don’t have their eye on the southwest border and all of our country, then they couldn’t be more wrong.”

In his prepared remarks Braun, who also served as interim director of the Department of Justice’s Drug Intelligence Fusion Center, said Hezbollah and other terrorist groups understand that the Mexican cartels are already operating successfully inside the United States. “If anyone thinks for one moment that these terrorist organizations do not understand that the Mexican drug trafficking cartels now dominate drug trafficking in our country – reportedly in more than 250 cities – than they are very stupid or very naive,” he said. “And these groups most assuredly recognize the strategic value of exploiting that activity, and all that has been built to support it, for moving their vision forward in this part of the world.”

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), chairwoman of the committee, cited Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force and its connections to the Zeta drug cartel in the foiled assassination attempt on U.S. soil. She asked Braun whether he believed Iran had “strategic interests” in Central America and the southwest border. Braun said Quds Force and Hezbollah work “very, very hard” to develop relationships with criminal groups that already have in place systems for illegal activities, including drug and human trafficking, money laundering and forged document operations. “And by developing those relations it provides them with the ability to operate far from home in our neighborhood and – as I said earlier – on our doorstep,” he replied.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), committee member and chairman of the Homeland Security Committee’s subcommittee of oversight and investigations, asked about Hezbollah’s relationship to criminal organizations in the Western Hemisphere and what it means for U.S. security. Braun warned that those relationships allow “these groups to operate freely in our neighborhood” and said the U.S. would regret it if the threats were not taken seriously. “I don’t want to sound too crude, but I think there’s going to be hell to pay in the not too distant future,” he said.

MORE

See also:

Holder Admits ‘National Security Crisis Along Our Southwest Border’
February 2, 2012 - There is a “national security crisis” along the U.S.-Mexico border, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, head of Obama’s Department of Justice (DOJ), told lawmakers on Thursday.

Nevertheless, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has said that the southwest border is “as secure now as it has ever been” due to the Obama administration efforts. “I reiterate my willingness to work with Congress generally and with this committee more specifically to address the public safety and national security crisis along our southwest border that has taken far too many lives,” said Holder during a contentious hearing on the botched gun-running Operation Fast and Furious held by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Earlier this week, during her State of America’s Homeland Security address from the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Napolitano said, “The Obama administration has undertaken the most serious and sustained actions to secure our borders in our nation’s history, and it is clear from every measure we currently have that this approach is working.” The latest Drug Threat Assessment from DOJ conceded that Mexican criminals “control access to the U.S.-Mexico border” and the “smuggling routes across” it, “resulting in unprecedented levels of violence in Mexico” and allowing those drug trafficking organizations and their associates to “dominate the supply and wholesale distribution of most illicit drugs in the United States.”

On the Mexican side of the border, almost 50,000 people have died since Mexican President Felipe Calderon started a war against narco-traffickers in December 2006. Operation Fast and Furious was headed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), a component of the DOJ. It involved ATF knowingly allowing almost 2,000 weapons to walk into the hands of Mexican criminals with the intention of tracing the weapons to build cases. However, ATF lost track of the firearms. One of the Fast and Furious weapons has been linked to the December 2010 murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

Source

 

[waltky]

Hezbollah Threat Growing In US...

Iran-backed Hezbollah's Threat Growing in US
Thursday, 05 Apr 2012 - The warning last month from Representative Peter King, the chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security, was blunt: An investigation by his staff had determined that "hundreds" of people he described as "Iranian and Hezbollah terrorists" were in the United States.

But interviews with U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials, as well as private experts, about the Iranian-sponsored group paint a more nuanced picture. There is a threat, though whether it is imminent or extensive is far from clear, they say. An alarming part of the officials' assessments focuses on the apparent surveillance missions that Iranian diplomats and possible Hezbollah operatives have been seen conducting at sensitive targets such as New York subways and bridges, and at nuclear power plants and tunnels elsewhere in the United States in the past 10 years. At the same time, U.S. officials caution that Hezbollah, a Shiite militia based in Lebanon, has largely avoided attacking U.S. targets since it carried out mass-casualty bombings in the 1980s against the U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut. One reason may be that it does not want to endanger its lucrative North American fund-raising operations.

The renewed focus on Hezbollah - which U.S. counter-terrorism officials regard as the most potent and disciplined of Islamic militant groups, even more so than al Qaeda - comes amid a growing confrontation over Iran's nuclear program. An Israeli or U.S. strike on Iran's nuclear sites could prompt Hezbollah to change strategy, moving from surveillance and fund-raising in North America to launching retaliatory attacks on either country, several U.S. officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss security matters.

BROADER RISKS DOWNPLAYED

Israel's leaders, while acknowledging the likelihood of retaliation by Iran or its agents, have sometimes downplayed the risk of a broader conflict. Iranian-inspired surveillance missions in the United States have been scattered over a period of years. But, when combined with a handful of recent attacks or plots around the world, they have contributed to an assessment within the U.S. government that considerable violence directed against U.S. targets - at overseas installations or businesses, or at American soil - could follow any strike on Iran's nuclear program. U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials, along with private experts, say there is little doubt Hezbollah has an extensive network of supporters, fund-raisers and potential operatives in the United States. A law enforcement official said that the New York Police Department, whose monitoring of Muslim communities has prompted political controversy, believes that between 200 and 300 Hezbollah sympathizers live in New York City. Between 10 and 20 of those are relatives of Hezbollah leaders or fighters who were killed in action, said the official.

The NYPD's knowledge of Hezbollah's infrastructure is sufficiently detailed that it has identified three Lebanese towns - Bint Jbeil, Yanoun and Yatar - to which suspected sympathizers of the group have ties. At least a handful of people in New York connected with Hezbollah have also undergone military training in Lebanon, the official said. A preliminary report issued by investigators for King, a New York Republican, said that pinpointing the number of Hezbollah operatives inside the United States was difficult because of the group's operational security. The committee report nonetheless cited the estimates of "some officials" that the group "likely" has "several thousand sympathetic donors" in the United States as well as "hundreds" of operatives. But other officials familiar with up-to-date U.S. intelligence on Hezbollah said there was a big difference between a Hezbollah "supporter" and someone who would be willing to engage in violent activity. The officials said such distinctions have been blurred in public discussions about the domestic threat the group allegedly poses.

CRIMINAL CASES

 

[Jos]

Written by a supporter of the Terrorist IRA?

Peter T. King (born April 5, 1944) is the U.S. Representative for New York's 3rd congressional district, serving since 1993. He is a member of the Republican Party, known for his active support for the Irish republican movement.

Peter T. King - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Ropey]

Hezbollah and Hamas will work together in concert to define Iran's strategies against Israel.

What Are Hamas and Hezbollah?

Hamas is an acronym for the Arab words for Islamic Resistance Movement; the word itself means "zeal." It was founded in 1987 at the time of the Palestinian uprising, the intifada, in Gaza and the West Bank. It is one of 28 groups officially declared a "foreign terrorist organization" by the State Department. Its goal is to destroy Israel and to put in place an Islamic Palestinian state. Its methods include assassination, raids, bombing, and suicide bombing. It also runs a network of mosques and social service organizations, such as medical clinics.

Hezbollah, also spelled Hizballah, means "party of God." It is a Shiite Muslim organization headquartered in Lebanon whose goal is a fundamentalist Islamic state there and beyond and the obliteration of Israel. It was created in 1982 after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and last May forced the Israeli withdrawal from that country. Hezbollah is also on the State Department's foreign terrorist organization list, and its head, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, received his own title as a Specially Designated Terrorist, meaning he has supported violent means to threaten the Middle East peace process.

Hezbollah has extremely close ties with Iran, from which it gets everything from diplomatic aid to weapons to an estimated $100 million a year; Syria is a substantial supporter as well. Hezbollah also runs social service organizations and has its own satellite television station, which broadcasts training of suicide bombers.

Onto others...

What Is Fatah?

Fatah, also known as Al-Fatah, is an acronym for Palestine National Liberation Movement; the word itself means "conquest." Founded in the 1950s by, among others, Yasser Arafat, its goal was the creation of a Palestinian state; its means were terrorist war largely against Israeli civilians. It was a rival with the PLO, which was founded in 1964 by then Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser, until Arafat took over the PLO in 1969, joining the two groups. Fatah remains a Palestinian political faction and in recent days has called for a renewed intifada. An increasingly active offshoot is the Tanzim, which means "organization." It is a hard-line militia group responsible for the destruction of the Jewish site Joseph's Tomb. Made up of an estimated 50,000 young men in the occupied territories, Tanzim members fire at Israeli soldiers from crowds.

What Is Islamic Jihad?

Islamic Jihad means "Islamic Holy War." It is a name used by many disparate groups throughout the Arab world, some of which have been designated as foreign terrorist organizations by the State Department. The first Jihad movement was founded in Egypt in the 1960s, but with the Iranian revolution in the late 1970s, the movement gained momentum. The groups' goal is to conquer secular Arab governments and replace them with a fundamentalist Islamic one. They see the destruction of Israel as the first step toward that goal.

What Are Hamas and Hezbollah?