Wayne Madsen Reports - WMR has learned from U.S. and foreign intelligence sources that the B-52
transporting six stealth AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missiles, each armed with a
W-80-1 nuclear warhead, on August 30, were destined for the Middle East via
Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana., the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Libya, Latvia, Poland and Uzbekistan.

However, elements of the Air Force, supported by U.S. intelligence agency
personnel, successfully revealed the ultimate destination of the nuclear weapons
and the mission was aborted due to internal opposition within the Air Force and
U.S. Intelligence Community.

Yesterday, the Washington Post attempted to explain away the fact that
America's nuclear command and control system broke down in an unprecedented
manner by reporting that it was the result of "security failures at multiple
levels." It is now apparent that the command and control breakdown, reported as
a BENT SPEAR incident to the Secretary of Defense and White House, was not the
result of a command and control chain-of-command "failures" but the result of a
revolt and push back by various echelons within the Air Force and intelligence
agencies against a planned U.S. attack on Iran using nuclear and conventional
weapons.

The Washington Post story on BENT SPEAR may have actually been an effort in
damage control by the Bush administration. WMR has been informed by a
knowledgeable source that one of the six nuclear-armed cruise missiles was, and
may still be, unaccounted for. In that case, the nuclear reporting incident
would have gone far beyond BENT SPEAR to a National Command Authority alert
known as EMPTY QUIVER, with the special classification of PINNACLE.

Just as this report was being prepared, /Newsweek/ reported that Vice President
Dick Cheney's recently-departed Middle East adviser, David Wurmser, told a small
group of advisers some months ago that Cheney had considered asking Israel to
launch a missile attack on the Iranian nuclear site at Natanz. Cheney reasoned
that after an Iranian retaliatory strike, the United States would have ample
reasons to launch its own massive attack on Iran. However, plans for Israel to
attack Iran directly were altered to an Israeli attack on a supposed
Syrian-Iranian-North Korean nuclear installation in northern Syria.

WMR has learned that a U.S. attack on Iran using nuclear and conventional
weapons was scheduled to coincide with Israel's September 6 air attack on a
reputed Syrian nuclear facility in Dayr az-Zwar, near the village of Tal Abyad,
in northern Syria, near the Turkish border. Israel's attack, code named
OPERATION ORCHARD, was to provide a reason for the U.S. to strike Iran. The
neo-conservative propaganda onslaught was to cite the cooperation of the George
Bush's three remaining "Axis of Evil" states -- Syria, Iran, and North Korea --
to justify a sustained Israeli attack on Syria and a massive U.S. military
attack on Iran.

WMR has learned from military sources on both sides of the Atlantic that there
was a definite connection between Israel's OPERATION ORCHARD and BENT SPEAR
involving the B-52 that flew the six nuclear-armed cruise missiles from Minot
Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barksdale. There is also a connection between
these two events as the Pentagon's highly-classified PROJECT CHECKMATE, a
compartmented U.S. Air Force program that has been working on an attack plan for
Iran since June 2007, around the same time that Cheney was working on the joint
Israeli-U.S. attack scenario on Iran.

PROJECT CHECKMATE was leaked in an article by military analyst Eric Margolis in
the Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper, the Times of London, is a program that
involves over two dozen Air Force officers and is headed by Brig. Gen. Lawrence
Stutzriem and his chief civilian adviser, Dr. Lani Kass, a former Israeli
military intelligence officer who, astoundingly, is now involved in planning a
joint U.S.-Israeli massive military attack on Iran that involves a
"decapitating" blow on Iran by hitting between three to four thousand targets in
the country. Stutzriem and Kass report directly to the Air Force Chief of Staff,
General Michael Moseley, who has also been charged with preparing a report on
the B-52 nuclear weapons incident.

Kass' area of speciality is cyber-warfare, which includes ensuring "information
blockades," such as that imposed by the Israeli government on the Israeli media
regarding the Syrian air attack on the alleged Syrian "nuclear installation."
British intelligence sources have reported that the Israeli attack on Syria was
a "true flag" attack originally designed to foreshadow a U.S. attack on Iran.
After the U.S. Air Force push back against transporting the six cruise
nuclear-armed AGM-129s to the Middle East, Israel went ahead with its attack on
Syria in order to help ratchet up tensions between Washington on one side and
Damascus, Tehran, and Pyongyang on the other.

The other part of CHECKMATE's brief is to ensure that a media "perception
management" is waged against Syria, Iran, and North Korea. This involves
articles such as that which appeared with Joby Warrick's and Walter Pincus'
bylines in yesterdays Washington Post. The article, titled "The Saga of a Bent
Spear," quotes a number of seasoned Air Force nuclear weapons experts as saying
that such an incident is unprecedented in the history of the Air Force. For
example, Retired Air Force General Eugene Habiger, the former chief of the U.S.
Strategic Command, said he has been in the "nuclear business" since 1966 and has
never been aware of an incident "more disturbing."

Command and control breakdowns involving U.S. nuclear weapons are unprecedented,
except for that fact that the U.S. military is now waging an internal war
against neo-cons who are embedded in the U.S. government and military chain of
command who are intent on using nuclear weapons in a pre-emptive war with Iran.

CHECKMATE and OPERATION ORCHARD would have provided the cover for a pre-emptive
U.S. and Israeli attack on Iran had it not been for BENT SPEAR involving the
B-52. In on the plan to launch a pre-emptive attack on Iran involving nuclear
weapons were, according to our sources, Cheney, National Security Adviser
Stephen Hadley; members of the CHECKMATE team at the Pentagon, who have close
connections to Israeli intelligence and pro-Israeli think tanks in Washington,
including the Hudson Institute; British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, a
political adviser to Tony Blair prior to becoming a Member of Parliament;
Israeli political leaders like Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Likud leader
Binyamin Netanyahu; and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, who did his
part last week to ratchet up tensions with Iran by suggesting that war with Iran
was a probability. Kouchner retracted his statement after the U.S. plans for
Iran were delayed.

Although the Air Force tried to keep the B-52 nuclear incident from the media,
anonymous Air Force personnel leaked the story to /Military Times/ on September
5, the day before the Israelis attacked the alleged nuclear installation in
Syria and the day planned for the simultaneous U.S. attack on Iran. The leaking
of classified information on U.S. nuclear weapons disposition or movement to the
media, is, itself, unprecedented. Air Force regulations require the sending of
classified BEELINE reports to higher Air Force authorities on the disclosure of
classified Air Force information to the media.

In another highly unusual move, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has asked an
outside inquiry board to look into BENT SPEAR, even before the Air Force has
completed its own investigation, a virtual vote of no confidence in the official
investigation being conducted by Major General Douglas Raaberg, chief of air and
space operations at the Air Combat Command.

Gates asked former Air Force Chief of Staff, retired General Larry Welch, to
lead a Defense Science Board task force that will also look into the BENT SPEAR
incident. The official Air Force investigation has reportedly been delayed for
unknown reasons. Welch is President and CEO of the Institute for Defense
Analysis (IDA), a federally-funded research contractor that operates three
research centers, including one for Office of Science and Technology Policy in
the Executive Office of the President and another for the National Security
Agency. One of the board members of IDA is Dr. Suzanne H. Woolsey of the Paladin
Capital Group and wife of former CIA director and arch-neocon James Woolsey.

WMR has learned that neither the upper echelons of the State Department nor the
British Foreign Office were privy to OPERATION ORCHARD, although Hadley briefed
President Bush on Israeli spy satellite intelligence that showed the Syrian
installation was a joint nuclear facility built with North Korean and Iranian
assistance. However, it is puzzling why Hadley would rely on Israeli imagery
intelligence (IMINT) from its OFEK (Horizon) 7 satellite when considering that
U.S. IMINT satellites have greater capabilities.

The Air Force's "information warfare" campaign against media reports on
CHECKMATE and OPERATION ORCHARD also affected international reporting of the
recent International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) resolution asking Israel to
place its nuclear weapons program under IAEA controls, similar to those that the
United States wants imposed on Iran and North Korea. The resolution also called
for a nuclear-free zone throughout the Middle East. The IAEA's resolution,
titled "Application of IAEA Safeguards in the Middle East," was passed by the
144-member IAEA General Meeting on September 20 by a vote of 53 to 2, with 47
abstentions. The only two countries to vote against were Israel and the United
States. However, the story carried from the IAEA meeting in Vienna by Reuters,
the Associated Press, and Agence France Press, was that it was Arab and Islamic
nations that voted for the resolution.

This was yet more perception management carried out by CHECKMATE, the White
House, and their allies in Europe and Israel with the connivance of the media.
In fact, among the 53 nations that voted for the resolution were China, Russia,
India, Ireland, and Japan. The 47 abstentions were described as votes "against"
the resolution even though an abstention is neither a vote for nor against a
measure. America's close allies, including Britain, France, Australia, Canada,
and Georgia, all abstained.

Suspiciously, the IAEA carried only a brief item on the resolution concerning
Israel's nuclear program and a roll call vote was not available either at the
IAEA's web site -- www.iaea.org -- or in the media.

The perception management campaign by the neocon operational cells in the Bush
administration, Israel and Europe was designed to keep a focus on Iran's nuclear
program, not on Israel's. Any international examination of Israel's nuclear
weapons program would likely bring up Israeli nuclear scientist Mordechai
Vanunu, a covert from Judaism to Christianity, who was kidnapped in Rome by a
Mossad "honey trap" named Cheryl Bentov (aka, Cindy) and a Mossad team in 1986
and held against his will in Israel ever since.

Vanunu's knowledge of the Israeli nuclear weapons program would focus on the
country's own role in nuclear proliferation, including its program to share
nuclear weapons technology with apartheid South Africa and Taiwan in the late
1970s and 1980s. The role of Ronald Reagan's Director of the Arms Control and
Disarmament Agency Ken Adelman in Israeli's nuclear proliferation during the
time frame 1983-1987 would also come under scrutiny. Adelman, a member of the
Reagan-Bush transition State Department team from November 1980 to January 1981,
voiced his understanding for the nuclear weapons programs of Israel, South
Africa, and Taiwan in a June 28, 1981 /New York Times/ article titled, "3
Nations Widening Nuclear Contacts." The journalist who wrote the article was
Judith Miller. Adelman felt that the three countries wanted nuclear weapons
because of their ostracism from the West, the third world, and the hostility
from the Communist countries. Of course, today, the same argument can be used by
Iran, North Korea, and other "Axis of Evil" nations so designated by the neocons
in the Bush administration and other governments.

There are also news reports that suggest an intelligence relationship between
Israel and North Korea. On July 21, 2004, New Zealand's /Dominion Post/ reported
that three Mossad agents were involved in espionage in New Zealand. Two of the
Mossad agents, Uriel Kelman and Elisha Cara (aka Kra), were arrested and
imprisoned by New Zealand police (an Israeli diplomat in Canberra, Amir Lati,
was expelled by Australia and New Zealand intelligence identified a fourth
Mossad agent involved in the New Zealand espionage operation in Singapore). The
third Mossad agent in New Zealand, Zev William Barkan (aka Lev Bruckenstein),
fled New Zealand -- for North Korea.

New Zealand Foreign Minister Phil Goff revealed that Barkan, a former Israeli
Navy diver, had previously worked at the Israeli embassy in Vienna, which is
also the headquarters of the IAEA. He was cited by the /Sydney Morning Herald/
as trafficking in passports stolen from foreign tourists in Thailand, Myanmar,
Laos, and Cambodia. New Zealand's One News reported that Barkan was in North
Korea to help the nation build a wall to keep its citizens from leaving.

The nuclear brinkmanship involving the United States and Israel and the
breakdown in America's command and control systems have every major capital
around the world wondering about the Bush administration's true intentions.

Cracking the nuclear code

Broken Arrow A nuclear weapons accident that does not risk war but involves a nuclear detonation or burning of a weapon and a hazard to the public

Empty Quiver The loss, seizure, or destruction of a nuclear weapon or the 'inadvertent release' of such a weapon

Bent Spear An incident involving radioactive contamination

Dull Sword A nuclear safety deficiency that involves minor damage to the weapons

Nucflash A nuclear weapons systems accident leading to possible detonation and the risk of war

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