thedrifter
06-12-03, 07:29 AM
Gold Gone to Waste
little-reported civil trial that just concluded in Washington, DC, makes me wonder if one of our most respected presidents was ill-served by some of the people who worked for him. The trial pitted family members of the 241 Marines murdered on October 23, 1983 in Beirut, Lebanon, against the government of Iran. The charge: that Iran sponsored the attack on the Marine barracks that killed more Marines than any single action since World War II.
Trial judge Royce Lamberth's 30-page ruling, issued on May 30, determined that the Government of Iran was responsible for the bombing and therefore liable for damages.
But that's not the real story. The real story was hidden in the testimony of retired Admiral James A. Lyons, Jr.
In 1983, Ace, as he is known, was the deputy chief of naval operations for plans, policy, and operations. As such, he saw copies of most of the significant intelligence documents also seen by the Joint Chiefs and other high government officials. Here's the money quote about Ace's testimony from Judge Lamberth's ruling:
"On October 25, the chief of naval intelligence notified Lyons of an intercept of a message between Tehran and Damascus that had been made on or about September 26, 1983. The message had been sent from MOIS [the Iranian Ministry of Information and Security] to the Iranian ambassador in Syria, Ali Akbar Mohtashemi….The message directed the ambassador to contact Hussein Musawi, the leader of the terrorist group Islamic Amal, and to instruct [Musawi to] have his group instigate attacks against the multinational coalition in Lebanon, and to take a spectacular action against the United States Marines."
The ruling continues: "Lyons testified that he has absolutely no doubt about the authenticity or reliability of the message, which he took immediately to the secretary of the navy and [the] chief of naval operations, who viewed it, as he did, as a '24-karat gold document'."
The implications of Ace Lyons's testimony are cosmic.
The intercept means the US had hard intelligence a month before the attack that the Marines were in danger. And yet, the Marines' rules of engagement in Beirut were never changed, their ThreatCons were never increased, and no one at the Pentagon did anything to proactively deflect the attack, even though there was specific intelligence in hand about the identities of both the prospective sponsor-the Iranian government-and the perpetrators-Islamic Amal.
Equally appalling, there was no follow-up investigation about why the intercept hadn't set off klaxon horns all over Washington. No one bothered to track the intercept's paper-trail to see who'd been sitting on it for a month. Nor was there any swift and strong retribution mounted against the perpetrators in Lebanon or their sponsors in Tehran. No one in the OSD or JCS was disciplined for these omissions. SECDEF Caspar Weinberger suffered no negative consequences either, even though those 241 Marines died on his watch.
Think about it. What if there had been an NSA intercept on August 16, 2001, documenting a conversation between Usama Bin Laden and Mohammed Atta in which UBL ordered Atta to mount an imminent "spectacular attack" against the World Trade Center in New York City. And what if the message had been allowed to float in limbo for a month.
There's no question in my mind that, had there had been such a pre-9/11 document at DOD in 2001, and the recipient did not act on it, the top Pentagon leadership--both civilian and military, should have been summarily fired for dereliction of duty. And rightly so.
Indeed, these days we watch our embassies shut down, our military installations button up, and our civilian threat level ratchet from yellow to orange whenever one or another intelligence agency senses increased, but nonspecific "chatter" from unspecified terrorist sources.
The 1983 NSA intercept was neither "chatter" nor "chaff." It was specific, credible evidence that U.S. personnel were being targeted. "Twenty-four karat gold" according to SECNAV and CNO.
But nothing was done to protect our Marines. No one was held accountable. And until this very day Iran has never suffered any consequences for its act of war.
Ace Lyons sees the Marine barracks bombing as a seminal event. And he insists that "by our failure to take tough action afterward, we gave birth to the level of international terrorism we see today."
Provocative words. But the Admiral is backed up by no less of an authority on global terror than Usama Bin Laden himself. In 1998, Bin Laden told ABC News, "We have seen in the last decade the decline of the American government and the weakness of the American soldier….This was proven in Beirut when the Marines fled after two explosions."
9/11 has been called the worst intelligence failure since Pearl Harbor. So far as I'm concerned, the 1983 Marine barracks bombing was a worse intelligence failure. Worse, because someone had in their hands specific intelligence indicating the attack would occur-and did nothing to prevent it.
And if that wasn't dereliction of duty, I don't know what is.
© 2003 John Weisman.
Sempers,
Roger
little-reported civil trial that just concluded in Washington, DC, makes me wonder if one of our most respected presidents was ill-served by some of the people who worked for him. The trial pitted family members of the 241 Marines murdered on October 23, 1983 in Beirut, Lebanon, against the government of Iran. The charge: that Iran sponsored the attack on the Marine barracks that killed more Marines than any single action since World War II.
Trial judge Royce Lamberth's 30-page ruling, issued on May 30, determined that the Government of Iran was responsible for the bombing and therefore liable for damages.
But that's not the real story. The real story was hidden in the testimony of retired Admiral James A. Lyons, Jr.
In 1983, Ace, as he is known, was the deputy chief of naval operations for plans, policy, and operations. As such, he saw copies of most of the significant intelligence documents also seen by the Joint Chiefs and other high government officials. Here's the money quote about Ace's testimony from Judge Lamberth's ruling:
"On October 25, the chief of naval intelligence notified Lyons of an intercept of a message between Tehran and Damascus that had been made on or about September 26, 1983. The message had been sent from MOIS [the Iranian Ministry of Information and Security] to the Iranian ambassador in Syria, Ali Akbar Mohtashemi….The message directed the ambassador to contact Hussein Musawi, the leader of the terrorist group Islamic Amal, and to instruct [Musawi to] have his group instigate attacks against the multinational coalition in Lebanon, and to take a spectacular action against the United States Marines."
The ruling continues: "Lyons testified that he has absolutely no doubt about the authenticity or reliability of the message, which he took immediately to the secretary of the navy and [the] chief of naval operations, who viewed it, as he did, as a '24-karat gold document'."
The implications of Ace Lyons's testimony are cosmic.
The intercept means the US had hard intelligence a month before the attack that the Marines were in danger. And yet, the Marines' rules of engagement in Beirut were never changed, their ThreatCons were never increased, and no one at the Pentagon did anything to proactively deflect the attack, even though there was specific intelligence in hand about the identities of both the prospective sponsor-the Iranian government-and the perpetrators-Islamic Amal.
Equally appalling, there was no follow-up investigation about why the intercept hadn't set off klaxon horns all over Washington. No one bothered to track the intercept's paper-trail to see who'd been sitting on it for a month. Nor was there any swift and strong retribution mounted against the perpetrators in Lebanon or their sponsors in Tehran. No one in the OSD or JCS was disciplined for these omissions. SECDEF Caspar Weinberger suffered no negative consequences either, even though those 241 Marines died on his watch.
Think about it. What if there had been an NSA intercept on August 16, 2001, documenting a conversation between Usama Bin Laden and Mohammed Atta in which UBL ordered Atta to mount an imminent "spectacular attack" against the World Trade Center in New York City. And what if the message had been allowed to float in limbo for a month.
There's no question in my mind that, had there had been such a pre-9/11 document at DOD in 2001, and the recipient did not act on it, the top Pentagon leadership--both civilian and military, should have been summarily fired for dereliction of duty. And rightly so.
Indeed, these days we watch our embassies shut down, our military installations button up, and our civilian threat level ratchet from yellow to orange whenever one or another intelligence agency senses increased, but nonspecific "chatter" from unspecified terrorist sources.
The 1983 NSA intercept was neither "chatter" nor "chaff." It was specific, credible evidence that U.S. personnel were being targeted. "Twenty-four karat gold" according to SECNAV and CNO.
But nothing was done to protect our Marines. No one was held accountable. And until this very day Iran has never suffered any consequences for its act of war.
Ace Lyons sees the Marine barracks bombing as a seminal event. And he insists that "by our failure to take tough action afterward, we gave birth to the level of international terrorism we see today."
Provocative words. But the Admiral is backed up by no less of an authority on global terror than Usama Bin Laden himself. In 1998, Bin Laden told ABC News, "We have seen in the last decade the decline of the American government and the weakness of the American soldier….This was proven in Beirut when the Marines fled after two explosions."
9/11 has been called the worst intelligence failure since Pearl Harbor. So far as I'm concerned, the 1983 Marine barracks bombing was a worse intelligence failure. Worse, because someone had in their hands specific intelligence indicating the attack would occur-and did nothing to prevent it.
And if that wasn't dereliction of duty, I don't know what is.
© 2003 John Weisman.
Sempers,
Roger