Sudan: Prosecution says jihadist suspects charged with the murder of U.S. aid worker misunderstood Islam

Funny, POTUS keeps telling Americans the same: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010917-11.html

another case where you see how brave muslim men can
be when attacking unarmed civilians by ambush. koran teaches weak men to attack this way, and to keep down their women, such low life cowards are attracted to this death cult.

"The prosecution said the five men were religious extremists who had been misled by "Satan" into thinking their attack was in line with the teaching of the Koran...."

That's easy enough to do; even Mohammed admitted he was misled by Satan on one occasion. The other occasions he never admitted to, or perhaps never even realized.

Yeah, there seems to be alot of "misunderstanding" going around.

The article above contains this curiously laconic sentence:

“Granville was the first U.S. government official to be killed in Khartoum in more than three decades.”

The reporter or his editors apparently did not see fit to remind readers that the "U.S. government officials" who were "killed in Khartoum" previously were not minor figures; they were the Americans Ambassador, Cleo Noel, Jr., and one of his highest aides, George Moore, who were seized, along with Belgian diplomat Guy Eid, at a goodbye party for Moore who was leaving Khartoum – this likely gave the killers of Granville the idea of attacking a New Year’s Day gathering of foreigners – and killed. They were killed not by some separate group called “Black September” (Black September was merely a fake, cut-out group, under Fatah, part of the PLO, just as “Islamic Jihad” today is essentially under the control of Fatah, and therefore of Mahmoud Abbas), but by the PLO of which Black September was a part, on the direct orders of Yassir Arafat. And at the time, and undoubtedly fully in the know, was Arafat’s closest henchman, the man now allowed to get away with his no-one-here-but-us-mild-mannered-accountants routine, Mahmoud Abbas.

Back in 2003 a Minneapolis lawyer, Scott Johnson, who had been following and doing research on the case for years, wrote the most complete summary (“Who Murdered Cleo Noel?”)of what he had learned up till then:
“Is the State Department covering Yasser Arafat's tracks for his involvement in the 1973 murder of the late U.S. Ambassador to Sudan Cleo Noel Jr. and a foreign diplomat? The evidence this writer has uncovered during a comprehensive investigation stretching over more than a year seems to confirm the suspicion.
In June 2002, I wrote a column for the Minneapolis Star Tribune regarding Yasser Arafat's responsibility for the 1973 assassination of two United States State Department officers in Khartoum, Sudan. The column was based on accounts of the events in David Korn's Assassination in Khartoum, Neil Livingstone and David Halevy's Inside the PLO, and the testimony of former National Security Agency analyst Jim Welsh. The column provided a condensed version of the operation resulting in the officers’ deaths along the following lines.
In late February 1973, the National Security Agency listening post in Cyprus picked up radio traffic of a planned PLO operation in Khartoum. According to Welsh, who received the radio intercepts at the NSA in Washington, the NSA issued an urgent warning intended for the American Embassy in Khartoum to the State Department on February 28. This warning was inexplicably held up and downgraded as a result of a bureaucratic snafu.
On March 1, 1973, a gang of eight operatives of the Black September Organization stormed a party at the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Khartoum. The party had been held in honor of the imminent departure of George Curtis Moore, the American charge d'affaires at the United States Embassy in Khartoum. The Black September gang took Moore and two others hostage -- Cleo Noel Jr., the United States ambassador to Sudan; and Guy Eid, the Belgian embassy's charge d'affaires. (Two other diplomats taken by the Black September operatives were released.)
The Black September gang demanded the release of Sirhan Sirhan, the assassin of Robert Kennedy; the release of a Black September leader held in Jordan; and the release of several members of the Baader-Meinhof gang held in Germany. On March 2, President Nixon and representatives of the other two governments announced that they would not negotiate with terrorists for the release of the diplomats. That evening the Black September operatives marched Noel, Moore and Eid to the embassy basement and brutally murdered them.
From beginning to end the operation leading to the assassination of Noel and Moore was an Arafat/Fatah operation. While working on the column last year, I sought out a State Department spokesman to tell me if the Department had undertaken any efforts to bring Arafat to justice for the murder of Noel and Moore. I sent an e-mail message with a draft of my column to State Department Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs deputy director of press affairs Gregory Sullivan.
I wrote Sullivan: "I have been leaving messages with you and other department officers over the past day or two seeking any information about department efforts to bring to justice Yasser Arafat and others involved in the 1973 assassination of former American Ambassador to Sudan...Cleo Noel and his charge d'affaires, George Curtis Moore. Attached is the op-ed piece I have written on the subject, including criticism of the Department for its apparent inaction...regarding its own former officers. If my assertions regarding the Department's inaction are wrong, I would like to rewrite the piece to make it accurate. I wonder if you would be willing to take a moment to review the piece and provide me with any information on behalf of the department if I am mistaken."
In response Sulllivan wrote: "I can't say I'm impressed with your research or argumentation. You're obviously writing a piece designed to elicit a certain reaction rather than one based on factual accounts or actual comments made by the U.S. government. I really don't have the time to do the research for you, but I do find myself compelled to point out...Evidence clearly points to the terrorist group Black September as having committed the assassinations of Amb. Noel and George Moore, and though Black September was a part of the Fatah movement, the linkage between Arafat and this group has never been established.”
Following the publication of my piece, I filed a Freedom of Information Act request for State Department cables and reports on the assassination of Ambassador Noel. A year later – in July 2003 -- I received copies of 27 previously classified cables, all dating to 1973 . The cables directly contradict the Department’s assertion that Arafat’s connection to Black September and to the assassinations is in doubt.
The eight Black September terrorists who executed the operation had themselves proclaimed their membership in Black September at the time of the operation and after they surrendered to Sudanese authorities on March 3, 1973. Their membership in the organization has never been in doubt. Through Sullivan, however, the State Department has indignantly denied that the evidence linked Yasser Arafat to the operation. According to Sullivan, "though Black September was a part of the Fatah movement, the linkage between Arafat and this group has never been established."
On its face, this claim is suspect. In 1973, as now, Arafat was the undisputed leader of Fatah. In the light of the contemporaneous State Department cables that have now been declassified and released by the department, Sullivan's statement is both false and inexplicable.
The cables reflect the intense concern within the State Department regarding the security issues raised by the Khartoum operation. The Department received reports from its embassies and missions conveying the results of intelligence inquiries and the Secretary of State (William Rogers) himself promptly disseminated his conclusions regarding responsibility for the operation based on these reports and other intelligence sources.
Contrary to Sullivan's assertions, the cables demonstrate that in March 1973 the State Department had promptly concluded that Black September was nothing more than a front for Fatah and that Arafat himself had directed the operation resulting in the assassination of Noel and Moore. Both points are made over and over again in the cables to and from the Secretary of State.
To take one example, in early March the U.S Mission in Vienna reported to Secretary Rogers: "The Black September Organization (BSO) is a cover term for Fatah's terrorist operations executed by Fatah's intelligence organization, Jihaz al-Rasd...For all intents and purposes no significant distinction now can be made between the BSO and Fatah...Fatah leader Yasir Arafat has now been described in recent intelligence as having given approval to the Khartoum operation prior to its inception."
As the State Department came to its conclusions regarding the ultimate responsibility for the operation, it dispatched its representatives to meet with sympathetic governments and attempt to persuade them to take appropriate precautionary measures. The American ambassador to Tunisia, for example, met with the then-Tunisian President Bourguiba on March 10 to convey the Department's concerns about Fatah in light of the Black September Khartoum operation: "I referred to Sudanese government's revelation that head of Fatah office in Khartoum masterminded Khartoum assassinations...I noted that there is Fatah office in almost every Arab capital operating openly and, in light of Khartoum tragedy, this has clear implications."
On March 13 Secretary Rogers issued a comprehensive cable summarizing the department's conclusions and sent the cable to American embassies around the world. (Welsh provided me a copy of this previously unpublished cable, discovered by researcher Russ Braley in the Nixon archives.) Secretary Rogers' cable states: "Question of link between Black September Organization (BSO) has been subject of much public discussion since murder of U.S. diplomats in Khartoum. Fatah leader Arafat has disavowed connection with BSO...."
The cable then attributes the following paragraphs to an intelligence brief prepared by the department and the CIA: "The Black September Organization (BSO) is a cover term for Fatah's terrorist operations executed by Fatah's intelligence organization...Fatah funds, facilities, and personnel are used in these operations....
"For all intents and purposes no siginificant distinction now can be made between the BSO and Fatah...Fatah leader Yasir Arafat has now been described in recent intelligence as having given approval to the Khartoum operation prior to its inception."
Why does the State Department cover up for the chief assassin of its officers thirty years after the fact? The State Department cables themselves provide no ground whatsoever to challenge the premise of the question -- indeed, they corroborate it. One can only speculate what the answer could be.”
Johnson turned out to be completely right, and more became clear when the papers of former C.I.A. director and former Ambassador to Iran Richard Helms were made public: :

"Henry Kissinger instructed the CIA to continue diplomatic contacts with Yassir Arafat's PLO representatives before the 1973 Yom Kippur War, even after Arafat ordered the kidnapping and murder of the American ambassador and his deputy in Khartoum, Sudan.

The diplomatic contacts, described only as related to security issues ¬ which had been revealed previously but not their contents - were exposed in the papers of former CIA chief Richard Helms that were made available to the public last week.

The documents mainly relate to the period Helms was the U.S. ambassador in Iran, 1973-1976, after he completed six years as the head of the CIA.
Advertisement

The newly-released material contains, among other things, information on the Egyptian effort in the spring of 1973 to plead with the U.S., through Iranian channels, to reach a peace arrangement with Israel "on the basis of the Rogers plan," a withdrawal from the occupied territories captured in 1967 and placing them under international supervision.

The Shah of Iran recommended to then-Egyptian foreign minister Muhammad Hassan al-Zayyat that Egypt make do with an artillery barrage against Israeli positions on the Suez Canal instead of an attack crossing the canal.

In a telegram Helms sent Kissinger - then Richard Nixon's National Security Advisor - on July 5, 1973, Helms reported that King Hussein of Jordan told him that Jordanian intelligence had learned of a Syrian attack to recapture the Golan Heights originally planned for June, that had been delayed but could take place at any time soon. One of the Jordanian intelligence sources was the commander of a Syrian armored brigade, and the Jordanians had obtained a copy of the battle plans, which had been coordinated with Egypt and Iraq.

The most sensational revelation in the documents was the contents of the diplomatic negotiations held between Robert Ames of the CIA and the head of the Fatah's security apparatus, Ali Hassan Salameh, who was also the commander of the Fatah's Black September organization. Salameh was killed in Beirut in 1979 in an operation conducted by the Mossad and naval commandos….

Since the contacts between the CIA and the Fatah were revealed, their purpose has been described as obtaining intelligence information to warn of terrorist attacks against Americans; but the Helms' documents reveal that Arafat sent Salameh to the talks without hiding his responsibility for killing American diplomats in Khartoum in March 1973. Ames also agreed to Salameh's requests and asked Washington about various diplomatic issues, such as the Nixon administration's intentions relating to Palestinian interests.

Salameh told Ames that the PLO was working to topple King Hussein and establish a Palestinian state in Jordan. The response from Washington was: If the Palestinians want to negotiate a settlement, the U.S. would be happy to hear their proposals, but the toppling of existing governments through the use of force did not seem to be the most promising way.

Arafat, for his part, was unmoved: He threatened, via Ames, that he would burn Beirut if the Lebanese government acted against the PLO."

Note that by July of 1973, the Americans had learned that the Jordanians knew for certain that the Syrians were planning – with Egyptian forces – to soon attack Israel. What would Israel have done, if it had learned, say, of not a full-scale war, but even of a small-scale terrorist attack on Americans – would Israel have warned the American government? Of course it would. So what did the mighty American government do when it learned from the Jordanians of this impending attack? Did it pass on that warning, with urgency, to the Israelis? Or did Henry Kissinger, that tinpot Machiavel, decide not to do so?

And take careful note this:

“The most sensational revelation in the documents was the contents of the diplomatic negotiations held between Robert Ames of the CIA and the head of the Fatah's security apparatus, Ali Hassan Salameh, who was also the commander of the Fatah's Black September organization. ….the Helms' documents reveal that Arafat sent Salameh to the talks without hiding his responsibility for killing American diplomats in Khartoum in March 1973. Ames also agreed to Salameh's requests and asked Washington about various diplomatic issues, such as the Nixon administration's intentions relating to Palestinian interests.

Ames, who headed the CIA's Middle Eastern department, was killed in an Iranian-ordered attack on the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in 1983.”

The naivete, and pusillanimity, of Henry Kissinger, and of the American C.I.A. agent Robert Ames in dealing with Salameh did not win the Americans any friends or, since friends are not what it seeks, did not mollify in any way the PLO, nor later did it have any affect on the regime of Ayatollah Khomoeini that the PLO had done more than any other foreign group to put into power (this needs to be remembered, not least by Iranians enduring the Islamic Republic of Iran).. The failure to go after Salameh, or after Arafat who did not bother to hide “his responsibility for killing American diplomats in Khartoum in March 1973,” and the willingness even of Robert Ames, the C.I.A.’s top Middle Eastern hand.

How long had Ames studied, and pondered Islam, its texts, tenets, its meaning and menace? I suspect he never did, not for a minute. It was all secret meetings and hush-hush acts of derring-do, but acts that were essentially disjointed, ill-connected, not prompted by a grand strategy. It was up to the Henry Kissingers to formulate a grand strategy, having first studied Islam – why did Kissinger never do so? Why has he learned only latterly what little he now knows, and has now begun to sound the alarm that more than three decades ago he should have foreseen, and should have sent himself and others to school to learn about Islam? Why, in other words, in the great challenge that was immediately to come, did Henry Kissinger fail so completely? Because he was, even then, Yesterday’s Man, enmeshed in the day-to-day of the Vietnam War and its aftermath, still someone who saw only one enemy at a time, and that enemy was the dying Soviet regime, dying not because of the supposed efforts of someone—Reagan or The Pope or Wojtyla but because the very thing the Soviet Union promised, economic prosperity, could not be delivered under the Soviet system, and eventually enough of those high up in the Party became disenchanted, and their own disenchantment would lead to the undoing of the Soviet Union fifteen years after the killings in Khartoum.

Statesmen , as opposed to what Kissinger was, learn to consider not merely the matter at hand, but to see what is coming, what will be, or is already, the great threat. This Kissinger, who was all for “settling” the “Arab-Israeli dispute,” – he was a great shuttle diplomatist, failing to recognize what that “Arab-Israeli dispute” really was, and why it was not susceptible of “solution” (how many millions of miles have been flown by those American diplomats, peace-processing all the way, how many Kissinger plans, and Rogers plans, and Baker plans, and this-and-that plans, have been offered, how many endless visits of Arafat to Bill Clinton, how many phony smiles, and wiles, and how many solemn articles have been proudly published ed in “Foreign Affairs” all of them, today, bearing the stench of failure, irrelevance, and even absurdity?). And yet, how many of Yesterday’s Men, the men who Ignore Islam, the men who think, in their touching American fashion, that everything has a “solution,” if only we put our shoulders to the wheel, never say die, keep on trying, etcetera – the world, you see, for such people is merely a nineteenth-century tale for boys, who by luck and pluck and hard work manage to see things through, and solve everything. The world, however, is not like that. The meaningof the Jihad must be recognized, its deep natural immutable roots in Islam also recognized, and the menace to Infidels is not a “problem” to be “solved” but a “situation” to be mitigated, through keeping the enemy at bay, and countering, in the main, the instruments of Jihad, such as the Money Weapon, campaigns of Da’wa, and demographic conquest, not through “boots on the ground” but through the exercise of intelligence and also a new willingness to undertake what would, in an earlier age, have been regarded as the most obvious measures of self-defense.

So back in 1973-- before the OPEC trillions, before the Muslim migrant millions in Infidel lands – when the Islamic threat was not yet what it has become, and the main target appeared to be, to the Kissingers and Ameses of this world, merely little Israel, which could be pressured and bullied, a deal was made, for Arafat could with impunity kill the American ambassador and an aide in Khartoum, and afterwards send Ali Salameh, the very leader of the grouplet (“Black September”) within the PLO directly responsible for the killings to negotiate with, and even brazenly make demands on, the American government, in the person of Robert Ames.

And what happed to Robert Ames, the C.I.A.’s head of Middle East operations, who like so many C.I.A. “experts” on the Middle East, never sat down to study, and grasp, the nature, the contents, the immutable menace to the wellbeing of Infidels (both the texts – Qur’an, Hadith, and Sira --, and 1350 years of Islamic history, are the evidence)—whose name is engraved with that of others, one presumes, at Langley? What happened to him? Well, on April 18, 1983, the Iranians, helped by the PLO that had always been Khomeini’s most helpful and unswervably loyal supporters, blew up the American Embassy – six months later it would be the turn of the Marine Barracks, killing nearly 300 Marines – and killed 16 people, including six members of the C.I.A. Among them was Robert Ames, the C.I.A.’s most important Middle Eastern specialist, who had long ago listened patiently to, and granted the demands of, Ali Salameh, the man immediately responsible for the deaths of American diplomats in Khartoum.

Which deaths of which diplomats are those, again? Oh, those are the deaths that are referred to in the article above on the killing of Granville. Referred to this way:

"[Aid worker John]Granville was the first U.S. government official to be killed in Khartoum in more than three decades.”

A little more detail, I thought, would be useful. So I supplied it myself.

"The prosecution said the five men were religious extremists who had been misled by "Satan" into thinking their attack was in line with the teaching of the Koran, and that they chanted religious slogans after killing Granville and Rahama."

Then "Satan" must reside in the mosque. SOMEONE taught these men that their actions were in keeping with the Koran and the mark of a good Muslim. Go to the source: the imams. Given the number of countries where supposed misunderstanders have acted, this is a problem within Islam that is widespread. Someone is deliberately teaching the imams that violence is not only good but preferable and they are passing it down to their children. These men weren't born with an intact knowledge of Islam. They learned it from SOMEONE ELSE.

Earlier, Sudanese officials assured the media that they're "just lads."

Which doesn't make their victims any less dead. I hope we get to see how their attorney prepares a "the Devil made us do it" defense.

There is so much "misunderstanding" of Islam. To me, each "misunderstanding" seems to make the picture clearer.