Antony Loewenstein

Newly released documents from Wikileaks suggest that the internet giant has an agenda rather different to just a very fast search engine (via Al Akhbar):

Top Google execs, including the company’s CEO and one of Barack Obama’s major presidential campaign donors Eric Schmidt, informed the intelligence agency Stratfor about Google’s activities and internal communication regarding “regime change” in the Middle East, according to Stratfor emails released by WikiLeaks and obtained by Al-Akhbar. The other source cited was Google’s director for security and safety Marty Lev.

The briefings mainly focused on the movements of Jared Cohen, currently the director of Google Ideas, a “think/do-tank” billed as a vehicle for spreading American-style liberal democracy. Cohen was also a former member of US Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff and former advisor to Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton.

Email exchanges, starting February 2011, suggest that Google execs were suspicious that Cohen was coordinating his moves with the White House and cut Cohen’s mission short at times for fear he was taking too many risks. Stratfor’s vice-president of counter-terrorism Fred Burton, who seemed opposed to Google’s alleged covert role in “foaming” uprisings, describes Cohen as a “loose Cannon” whose killing or kidnapping “might be the best thing to happen” to expose Google.

The Cohen Conspiracy

Stratfor’s spotlight on Cohen began on 9 February 2012 after Burton forwarded to the secure email list a Foreign Policy article discussing Cohen’s move from the State Department to Google Ideas. With this article, Burton noted that Cohen had dinner in Cairo with Wael Ghonim on January 27, 2011 just hours before the Egyptian Google Executive was famously picked up by Egypt’s State Security. (doc-id 1122191)

On the same day, Stratfor’s staff make reference to a Huffington Post article which highlighted Cohen’s role in “delaying the scheduled maintenance on Twitter so the Iranian revolution could keep going” and a Foreign Policy article that noted that Cohen “was a Rhodes scholar, spent time in Iran, [and] hung out in Iraq during the war…”. These casual discovers further perked Stratfor’s curiosity about Cohen. (doc-id 1629270)

The following day, Burton forwarded a message to the secure email list from “a very good Google source” who claimed that Cohen “[was] off to Gaza next week”. Burton added, “Cohen, a Jew, is bound to get himself whacked….Google is not clear if Cohen is operating [with a] State Dept [or] WH [White House] license, or [is] a hippie activist.”

Korena Zucha, another senior analyst on the list, queried, “Why hasn’t Google cut ties to Cohen yet? Or is Cohen’s activity being endorsed by those higher up in the [company] than your contact?”

In turn, Burton replied, “Cohen’s rabbi is Eric Schmidt and Obama lackey. My source is trying to find out if the billionaire owners are backing Cohen’s efforts for regime change.” (doc-id 1111729)

Another tragedy in Afghanistan. And what do most of the corporate media focus on? How will this affect NATO strategy? What will US troops do? Will Obama’s supposed counter-insurgency tactics be derailed?

What about wondering about the Afghans themselves?

Here’s FAIR:

The news that a U.S. Army sergeant killed 16 civilians, most of them children, in southern Afghanistan early Sunday morning was treated by many media outlets primarily as a PR challenge for continued war and occupation of that country.

“Afghanistan, once the must-fight war for America, is becoming a public relations headache for the nation’s leaders, especially for President Barack Obama,” explained an Associated Press analysis piece (3/12/12). Reuters(3/12/12) called it “the latest American public relations disaster in Afghanistan.”

On the NBC Today show (3/11/12) the question was posed this way: “Could this reignite a new anti-American backlash in the unstable region?” The answer: “This is not going to bode well for the U.S. and NATO here in Afghanistan,” explained reporter Atia Abawi. “Obviously people here very fearful as to what’s going to happen next, what protests will come about throughout different parts of Afghanistan, and how the Taliban are going to use this to their advantage.” “People,” as used here, would not seem to include Afghans, who are presumably less frightened by protests against a massacre of children than they are by the massacre itself.

The front-page headline at USA Today (3/12/12) read, “Killings Threaten Afghan Mission.” The story warned that the allegations “threaten to test U.S. strategy to end the conflict.” In the New York Times (3/12/12), the massacre was seen as “igniting fears of a new wave of anti-American hostility.” The paper went on to portray occupation forces as victims:

“The possibility of a violent reaction to the killings added to a feeling of siege here among Western personnel. Officials described growing concern over a cascade of missteps and offenses that has cast doubt on the ability of NATO personnel to carry out their mission and has left troops and trainers increasingly vulnerable to violence by Afghans seeking revenge.”

The fact that the massacres occurred two days after a NATO helicopter strike killed four civilians was “adding to the sense of concern.”

This morning’s ABC Radio AM fit perfectly into the mould, playing quotes from Western leaders and White House flaks:

TONY EASTLEY: There are fears that the shooting rampage by a lone US soldier may derail the Afghan peace process and undo months if not years of work.

The Afghan army is on a higher alert after the American soldier killed 16 Afghan civilians and burnt their bodies. Nine of the dead were children.

The Afghan parliament has passed a resolution demanding the soldier face a public trial in Afghanistan, and already talks on a new strategic partnership between Kabul and Washington look like being put on ice.

Emily Bourke reports.

EMILY BOURKE: The deaths of 16 Afghan civilians at the hands of a rogue US soldier continues to outrage and worry world leaders, especially as the Taliban is now promising to strike back. 

The British prime minister David Cameron. 

DAVID CAMERON: Really is an absolutely appalling thing that has taken place and of course it will have its impact, but we must do everything we can to make sure that it doesn’t in any way derail the very good work that American and British and other ISAF forces are doing in Afghanistan. 

And it is worth remembering why we’re in Afghanistan – we’re there to train up the Afghan army and the police so that that country is able to look after its own security 

EMILY BOURKE: The Taliban has described the Americans as terrorists and barbarians, but White House spokesman Jay Carney says the US led mission will continue. 

JAY CARNEY: I’m sure there will be discussions ongoing between US military leaders as well as civilian leaders in Afghanistan and the Afghan government in the wake of this incident, but our strategic objectives have not changed and they will not change. 

My following book review appears in today’s Sydney Morning Herald:

A journalist with access to a superpower’s military machine refuses to toe the line.

“I went into journalism to do journalism, not advertising,” independent American journalist Michael Hastings told The Huffington Post in 2010. ”My views are critical but that shouldn’t be mistaken for hostile – I’m just not a stenographer.”

Such a mindset is what makes this book a compelling read and ensures its status as one of the most devastating and incisive works on the Afghanistan war since Washington and its allies invaded in 2001.

Hastings concludes, after spending extensive time with generals and military advisers, as well as reporters who hang on their every word, that the conflict was lost years ago. The warped logic of the war, the author states, is that, ”we’re there because we’re there. And because we’re there, we’re there some more.”

Afghanistan today has nothing to do with September 11, 2001, ”terrorist havens” or al-Qaeda. ”It didn’t matter that in Afghanistan, the US military had come up short again and again,” Hastings argues. ”What mattered is that they tried. The simple and terrifying reality, forbidden from discussion in America [and mostly in the mainstream media in Australia], was that despite spending $600 billion a year on the military, despite having the best fighting force the world had ever known, they were getting their asses kicked by illiterate peasants who made bombs out of manure and wood.”

Hastings is that rare journalist who doesn’t believe in venerating military figures who give him access in Washington and American war zones. A key aspect of his investigation is its brutal excoriation of embedded media and the lack of accountability in the pundit class. His staccato writing feels immediate in today’s war debate.

He cites a meeting with a German reporter in Berlin in 2010, where the man says he backs the Afghanistan war and acknowledges fears it may not work out. Hastings is stunned: ”Julian was prepared to take ownership of the position he took and the consequences of it. I’d rarely heard an American journalist express any such regrets or take responsibility for the politics they promoted. Maybe it was a European thing.”

Hastings was commissioned in 2010 to write a profile for Rolling Stone, where he’s now a contributing editor, of Stanley McChrystal, the lauded then-commanding general of international and US forces in Afghanistan. The journalist was given nearly full access to the general and his staff as they travelled across Europe attempting to sell their counter-insurgency plan.

What Hastings found both shocked and pleased him. Though he loved the buzz of being close to McChrystal and quickly felt like a trusted member of the team – the allure of ”access” is what makes most corporate journalists little better than transcribers – he quickly remembered he was a reporter there to write a story. Despite being asked by senior military staff to exclude details of drunken adventures in European bars and meeting rooms, disparaging comments about President Barack Obama’s team are openly expressed and Hastings knew his aim: ”The access I’d gotten was unprecedented. But what do you do with it? Bury the story? Write a puff piece to ensure further access? Or write what actually happened?”

Hastings was under no illusion about how McChrystal and his team saw him. ”They weren’t talking to me because they liked me or because I impressed them; they were talking to me because they wanted the cover of Rolling Stone.” The magazine chose Lady Gaga for this coveted position, damaging the general’s desire to impress a younger generation with his prowess.

Hastings’s scoop was seen as shocking not because he was an anti-war activist but because he had seen the human cost of Iraq and Afghanistan on soldiers and civilians and refused to provide cover for those responsible.

The story was explosive and McChrystal was forced to resign. He was replaced by General David Petraeus (now CIA director), a man Obama believed could help salvage the failing Afghanistan war through an innovative counter-insurgency strategy. It failed spectacularly and Hastings explains why by quoting a former UN official in Kabul. ”There has never been a strategy to get rid of the warlords, who are the key problem,” John Matisonn says. ”The average Afghan hates them, whether they’re backed by the Taliban or the Americans. They see them as criminals. They know that the warlords are fundamentally undermining the rule of law.”

The Rolling Stone feature was expanded into this book and Hastings retains high-level access to a military and political establishment that often can’t speak for itself against misguided policies. Like Julian Assange and his WikiLeaks, Hastings believes in full transparency for our political class. The American and Australian mainstream media continue giving air time to people such as Petraeus and Australian counter-insurgency ”expert” David Kilcullen – who now runs the Caerus Associates consultancy firm in Washington DC – despite their disastrous records in Iraq and Afghanistan. In both nations, foreign forces merely empowered one group of thugs over another, with money and guns, and now the results are clear to see.

Hastings, whose first book, I Lost My Love in Baghdad, details his war reporting in post-2003 Iraq and the murder of his partner by a suicide bomber, doesn’t drink the Kool-Aid enjoyed by many of the ”national security” correspondents who populate our media landscape. For them, the ”war on terror” has been a wild decade of conflict. Private chats with generals and their minions constitute much journalism, while the public wonders why ”our” boys continue being killed by an effective insurgency. Afghan deaths and voices are largely invisible.

Hastings’s article about McChrystal was instructive, he writes, ”as the political and media class saw the story as a threat to their schmoozy relationship – their very existence and social life”.

After a decade observing the US in conflict, a superpower both uninterested in understanding its opponents and confused when being beaten by smarter forces, Hastings concludes that our leaders lie about the real purpose of the ”war on terror”. Embedded journalists must take their share of the blame for perpetuating the delusion.

Antony Loewenstein is a freelance journalist working on a book about disaster capitalism.

THE OPERATORS

Michael Hastings

Orion, 432pp, $35

This really a remarkable piece in The Economist that requires no explanation:

News flash: Israel is not master of its fate. It’s not terribly surprising that a country with less than 8m inhabitants is not master of its fate. Switzerland, Sweden, Serbia and Portugal are not masters of their fates. These days, many countries with populations of 100m or more can hardly be said to be masters of their fates. Britain and China aren’t masters of their fates, and even the world’s overwhelmingly largest economy, the United States, isn’t really master of its fate.

But Israel has even less control over its own destiny than Portugal or Britain do. The main reason is that, unlike those countries, Israel refuses to give up its empire. Israel is unable to sustain its imperial ambitions in the West Bank, or even to articulate them coherently. Having allowed its founding ideology to carry it relentlessly and unthinkingly into what Gershom Gorenburg calls an “Accidental Empire” of radical religious-nationalist settlements that openly defy its own courts, Israel is politically incapable of extricating itself. The partisan battles engendered by its occupation of Palestinian territory render it less and less able to pull itself free. It is immobilised, pinned down, in a conflict that is gradually killing it. Countries facing imperial twilight, like Britain in the late 1940s, are often seized by a sense of desperate paralysis. For over a decade, the tone of Israeli politics has been a mix of panic, despair, hysteria and resignation.

No one bears greater responsibility for the trap Israel finds itself in today than Mr Netanyahu. As prime minister in the late 1990s, he did more than any other Israeli leader to destroy the peace process. Illegal land grabs by settlers were tolerated and quietly encouraged in the confused expectation that they would aid territorial negotiations. Violent clashes and provocations erupted whenever the peace process seemed on the verge of concrete steps forward; the most charitable spin would be that the Israelis failed to exercise the restraint they might have shown in retaliating against Palestinian terrorism, had they been truly interested in progress towards a two-state solution. Mr Netanyahu believed that the Oslo peace agreements were a mirage, and his government’s actions in the late 1990s helped make it true.

Having trapped themselves in a death struggle with Palestinians that they cannot acknowledge or untangle, Israelis have psychologically displaced the source of their anxiety onto a more distant target: Iran. An Iranian nuclear bomb would not be a happy development for Israel. Neither was Pakistan’s, nor indeed North Korea’s. The notion that it represents a new Holocaust is overstated, and the belief that the source of Israel’s existential woes can be eliminated with an airstrike is mistaken. But Iran makes an appealing enemy for Israelis because, unlike the Palestinians, it can be fitted into a familiar ideological trope from the Jewish national playbook: the eliminationist anti-Semite. With brain-cudgeling predictability, Mr Netanyahu marked his meeting with Mr Obama by presenting him with a copy of the Book of Esther. That book concerns a plot by Haman, vizier of King Ahasuerus of Persia, to massacre his country’s Jews, and the efforts of the beautiful Esther, Ahasuerus’s secretly Jewish wife, to persuade the king to stop them. It is a version of the same narrative of repression, threatened extermination and resistance that Jews commemorate at Passover in the prayer “Ve-hi she-amdah”: “Because in every generation they rise up to destroy us, but the Holy One, Blessed be He, delivers us from their hands.”

Mr Netanyahu is less attractive than Esther, but he seems to be wooing Mr Obama and the American public just as effectively. The American-Israeli relationship now resembles the sort of crazy co-dependency one sometimes finds in doomed marriages, where the more stubborn and unstable partner drags the other into increasingly delusional and dangerous projects whose disastrous results seem only to legitimate their paranoid outlook. If Mr Netanyahu manages to convince America to back an attack on Iran, it is to be hoped that the catastrophic consequences will not be used to justify the attack that led to them.

Mr Netanyahu thinks the Zionist mission was to give the Jewish people control over their destiny. No people has control over its destiny when it is at war with its neighbours. But in any case, that is only one way of thinking of the Zionist mission. Another mission frequently cited by early Zionists was to help Jews grow out of the “Ghetto mentality”. Mr Netanyahu’s gift to Mr Obama shows he’s still in it.

Last night I appeared on ABCTV’s The Drum (video here) discussing both domestic and international affairs.

The key part of the show began when this week’s meeting between Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu was discussed. The New York Times tells the world that, “Israel should not doubt this president’s mettle. Neither should Iran.” Netanyahu, speaking at the Zionist lobby AIPAC conference, used the Holocaust analogy to argue that, “Never again will … the Jewish people be powerless and supplicants for our fate and our very survival. Never again.”

I argued that a military strike against Iran would be illegal, counter-productive and unsuccessful. Most importantly, there’s no hard evidence that Tehran is actually building a nuclear weapon. This is the assessment of America’s intelligence agencies rather than the clueless rantings of neo-conservatives, mad Zionists and the Israelis.

Too much of the public debate around this issue involves arguing when Israel would have the right to attack a sovereign nation such as Iran. It’s vital to re-frame the discussion and question who is seriously threatening whom. Obama apparently wants to avoid direct military contact. For now, anyway. But what a sight, I said, for the mainstream Jewish community to back Israel in yet another military adventure in the Middle East. This is how us Jews are seen; constantly desperate for war.

The debate then shifted to Syria. The humanitarian situation there remains dire, to be sure, but foreign military intervention is a mistake. Too many people are keen to be seen to “do something”. Let’s not forget that Libya, the latest so-called noble war, has turned into a conflict between brutal militias.

Too much talk about foreign affairs ignores the locals directly affected. Leave the Middle East alone for a while, I stated, haven’t we caused enough mayhem over the last decades?

Naturally enough it takes two astute American academics, Steve Walt and John Mearsheimer, authors of The Israel Lobby, to explain in the Financial Times that Iran isn’t the real issue for Israel:

On Iran, Mr Netanyahu is convinced it wants nuclear weapons, and that this goal threatens Israel’s existence. He does not think diplomacy can stop Iran, and wants the US to destroy its nuclear facilities. If Mr Obama refuses to order an attack, the Israeli leader would like a green light to do so.

Mr Obama and his advisers – including the military – see things differently. They do not want Iran to obtain nuclear weapons, but they do not believe a nuclear-armed Iran would pose an existential threat to Israel. After all, Israel has its own nuclear arsenal, and could obliterate Iran if attacked. US intelligence is also confident Tehran has not yet decided to build nuclear weapons. Indeed, US leaders worry that, no matter who does it, an attack would convince Iran it needs its own nuclear deterrent. They are correct.

…

Sorry what? If true (via Associated Press) this is the kind of insane idea that simply reinforces the belief across the Muslim world that Washington is determined to occupy Afghanistan indefinitely:

Top Pentagon officials are considering putting elite special operations troops under CIA control in Afghanistan after 2014, just as they were during last year’s raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan, sources told The Associated Press.

The plan is one of several possible scenarios being debated by Pentagon staffers. It has not yet been presented to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, the White House or Congress, the sources said.

If the plan were adopted, the U.S. and Afghanistan could say there are no more U.S. troops on the ground in the war-torn country because once the SEALs, Rangers and other elite units are assigned to CIA control, even temporarily, they become spies.

No matter who’s in charge, the special operations units still would target militants on joint raids with Afghans and keep training Afghan forces to do the job on their own.

The idea floated by a senior defense intelligence official comes as U.S. defense chiefs try to figure out how to draw down troops fast enough to meet the White House’s 2014 deadline. Pentagon staffers already have put forward a plan to hand over much of the war-fighting to special operations troops. This idea would take that plan one step further, shrinking the U.S. presence to less than 20,000 troops after 2014, according to four current and two former U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the program involves classified operatives.

…

But a CIA-run war would mean that the U.S. public would not be informed about funding or operations, as they are in a traditional war. Oversight would fall to the White House, top intelligence officials, and a few congressional committees. Embedding journalists would be out of the question.

The last decade has seen an explosion in private security and intelligence companies making a killing in the “war on terror”.

And now, with growing anger towards both mercenaries and the Western occupying forces that use them, this suggestion seems both delusional and symptomatic of the rot that imperial thinking guarantees:

The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee is intent on barring private security contractors and Afghans from guarding U.S. bases in Afghanistan, a move that could complicate President Barack Obama’s timetable for withdrawing American forces after more than a decade of war.

Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif., introduced the legislation on Thursday in response to the insider attacks by Afghan security forces against U.S. and other coalition troops. McKeon held a hearing last month in which the military said more than 45 insider attacks have occurred since 2007 – 75 percent in the past two years.

In a recent spate of anti-American violence touched off by the burning of Muslim holy books at a U.S. base last week, two U.S. troops were gunned down by two Afghan soldiers and an accomplice on Thursday. All told, six Americans have been killed by their Afghan partners in recent days.

“War is bad enough that we put our young people out there at risk,” McKeon said in an interview taped for C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers.” “They shouldn’t have to worry about security within the base.”

The legislation would require the president to ensure that there are enough trained members of the military to fight the war in Afghanistan as well as provide security for American troops. If the president refuses, he must certify to Congress that private security contractors or the Afghan Public Protection Force can provide protection that is at least equal to the U.S. military.

The bill would prohibit the president from shifting troops from current operations in Afghanistan to protect bases. Such a step would force the president to increase the number of troops in the country – a move certain to face strong opposition in a war-weary Congress.

 

Or not (seriously, is this emptiness what rusted-on Democrats need to hear to vote for The One in November this year?) And then this:

A supporter at fundraiser urged President Barack Obama to avoid a war with Iran over its disputed nuclear program. “Nobody has announced a war,” Obama cautioned. “You’re jumping the gun a little bit.”

So finally we learn, via the Sydney Morning Herald, that the Obama administration wants to crush Julian Assange and Wikileaks for the “crime” of revealing a litany of wrongs committed by Washington. And here’s the irony; after demanding answers from governments in America, Britain, Australia and elsewhere about the legal status of Assange, it takes a Wikileaks release to discover the truth:

United States prosecutors have drawn up secret charges against the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, according to a confidential email obtained from the private US intelligence company Stratfor.

In an internal email to Stratfor analysts on January 26 last year, the vice-president of intelligence, Fred Burton, responded to a media report concerning US investigations targeting WikiLeaks with the comment: ”We have a sealed indictment on Assange.”

He underlined the sensitivity of the information – apparently obtained from a US government source – with warnings to ”Pls [please] protect” and ”Not for pub[lication]”.

Mr Burton is well known as an expert on security and counterterrorism with close ties to the US intelligence and law enforcement agencies. He is the former deputy chief of the counter-terrorism division of the US State Department’s diplomatic security service.

Stratfor, whose headquarters are in Austin, Texas, provides intelligence and analysis to corporate and government subscribers.

On Monday, WikiLeaks began releasing more than 5 million Stratfor emails which it said showed ”how a private intelligence agency works, and how they target individuals for their corporate and government clients”.

The Herald has secured access to the emails through an investigative partnership with WikiLeaks.

…

The Stratfor emails show that the WikiLeaks publication of hundreds of thousands of US diplomatic cables triggered intense discussion within the ”global intelligence” company.

In the emails, an Australian Stratfor ”senior watch officer”, Chris Farnham, advocated revoking Mr Assange’s Australian citizenship, adding: ”I don’t care about the other leaks but the ones he has made that potentially damage Australian interests upset me. If I thought I could switch this dickhead off without getting done I don’t think I’d have too much of a problem.”

But Mr Farnham also referred to a conversation with a close family friend who he said knew one of the Swedish women who had made allegations of sexual assault against Mr Assange, and added: ”There is absolutely nothing behind it other than prosecutors that are looking to make a name for themselves.”

While some Stratfor analysts decried what they saw as Mr Assange’s ”clear anti-Americanism”, others welcomed the leaks and debated WikiLeaks’s longer-term impact on secret diplomacy and intelligence.

Stratfor’s director of analysis, Reva Bhalla, observed: ”WikiLeaks itself may struggle to survive but the idea that’s put out there, that anyone with the bandwidth and servers to support such a system can act as a prime outlet of leaks. [People] are obsessed with this kind of stuff. The idea behind it won’t die.”

Stratfor says it will not comment on the emails obtained by WikiLeaks. The US embassy has also declined to comment.

This week Wikileaks launched a massive new treasure trove and Mother Jones assesses what it says about corporate power in the modern age:

Coca-Cola asked about stability problems in China in advance of the Beijing Olympics. Northrup Grumman asked—twice—about the possibility of Japan getting nuclear weapons. Intel asked about Hezbollah’s presence in Latin America “and their general ability to blow things up.” And the owner of the Radisson Hotel chain inquired: ”[D]o you have an expected completion date for the Militant Islamist Perception Report we ordered?”

The 200-plus emails that have been released from WikiLeaks’ cache of “Global Intelligence Files“—more than 5 million messages lifted from Stratfor, a private “global intelligence” firm—are a comical mix of breathless geopolitical intrigue and workplace chitchat, equal parts Tom Clancy and Office Space. But the trove also offers insights into the business of corporate intelligence, showing how multinational companies paid Stratfor tens of thousands of dollars to watch global hotspots, cover their competitors, and even monitor pesky activists.

It was all part of Stratfor’s “Global Vantage” plan, a subscription-based program for companies to obtain personalized intelligence briefings. Launched in 2006, the service became an overnight success: Organizations as diverse as Coke, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, the Marine Corps, Duke Energy, and Georgetown University plunked down $20,000 or more a year to get their hands on tailored sensitive information. As Stratfor’s leaked master client list shows, major military contractors were well represented, as were Big Oil and agribusiness.

Internal documents show how Global Vantage helped build the reputation—and the 300,000-strong client list—of Stratfor, a Texas-based private intelligence company. In an email last year, CEO and founder George Friedman told his employees that the CIA saw them as direct competitors: “Everyone in Langley knows that we do things they have never been able to do with a small fraction of their resources. They have always asked how we did it. We can now show them and maybe they can learn.” After Osama bin Laden was killed, Stratfor’s vice president for intelligence (a former State Department security agent) claimed in an internal email, “I can get access to the materials seized from the OBL safe house.”