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Founded | 2006 |
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Founder | John Loftus Chairman's name withheld for security reasons |
Type | Political, Inellligence, International Security, Cryptology |
Focus | terrorism |
Location |
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Area served | United States |
Method | conferences |
Key people | John Loftus, Michael Cherney |
Revenue | private donations (primarily from Michael Cherney) |
Website | www.intelligencesummit.org via Archive.org |
The Intelligence Summit is an annual conference run principally by John Loftus and funded by an organization he controls, the Intelligence and Homeland Security Educational Center (IHEC). The stated purpose of these regular meetings is "to provide an opportunity for the international intelligence community to listen to and learn from each other, and to share ideas in the common war against terrorism."
According to the Intelligence Summit's website, the meetings are run by organizers (Robert Katz and John Loftus) and an Advisory Council, which includes or included in the past "two former heads of CIA, the head of British Joint Intelligence, senior officials of the Mossad, the former Director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism, the former director of the Indian Counter Intelligence Service, generals of the US Army and Air Force intelligence services, and academic experts". Among the Advisory Council members are the author and consultant Yossef Bodansky, special operations expert Richard Marcinko, and retired generals and Fox News military analysts Paul E. Vallely and Tom McInerney.
Ron Jacobs notes that the primary sponsor of the conference, Michael Cherney, "is the subject of controversy and is currently denied entry into the United States because of his indictment on various charges in Russia and Israel." Jacobs points out that "Cherney is well-known among supporters of Israel and has contributed millions of dollars to various organizations on the right end of Israel's political spectrum, as well as several thousands to the US Republican Party." [1] St. Petersburg Times confirms that Cherney is the main contributor to the Summit and notes that "the United States has denied Cherney a visa since 1999 because of alleged ties to the Russian mafia." Cherney was listed for organized crime and money laundering on the Interpol Red List of wanted persons. [2] [3] Loftus counters that Cherney "was framed by [former Director of the Office of National Intelligence John] Negroponte." [4]
John Loftus has come under fire from former representatives of the International Holocaust Education Center, who are concerned about him using the organization's tax-exempt status improperly to promote his intelligence activities. The St. Petersburg Times noted that "Walter Loebenberg, who founded the Holocaust Education Center and approved of turning the name over to Loftus in 2005 because of his high regard for him, says that he knew Loftus was doing intelligence work at the time. 'But ... we agreed he would change the name if he did his intelligence work under the name of the Holocaust Education Center. It has gone farther than we expected,' said Loebenberg. 'We never would have organized or sponsored an intelligence conference.'" An Internal Revenue Service spokesperson explained the impropriety: "If a tax-exempt charitable organization changes the name, the purpose or the structure, it must let IRS know by corresponding with us. And, it must remain neutral and nonpartisan." [4]
Loftus has also been criticized for listing sponsors of the Summit who never consented to being so listed, including Konica Minolta and Florida Holocaust Museum board member Bruce Epstein. [4]
The Intelligence Summit's emphasis is upon terrorism and jihad related issues; [5] former Jamaa Islamia terrorist and author Tawfik Hamid is on the Summit's Advisory Council. Ahmed Bedier of the Council on American-Islamic Relations noted of Hamid's participation in the Summit, "The Intelligence Summit is a group of neoconservatives and private intelligence agencies that are benefiting from the war on terrorism. And opportunists like Hamid and others at this event are bashing and cashing and making money from it." [6] Legal analyst Victoria Toensing said, "This is not a mainstream conference with recognized names in the field. I've been in the intelligence and terrorism world a long time, and I would not suggest going to this conference for intelligence or terrorism information." [4]
The Intelligence Summit gained prominence in February 2006, [7] when a conference speaker, former US Deputy Undersecretary of Defense John A. Shaw, asserted that Russia had helped Saddam Hussein smuggle out his WMDs; he also claimed that the DIA and CIA had interfered with his investigations. Shaw's accusations became part of the controversy surrounding the Iraq War. [4] Shaw had been fired from the Department of Defense in 2004 in the wake of an FBI corruption probe allegedly tied to false accusations being used to manipulate contract awards in Iraq. [8] Numerous examples of Shaw's claims were public, including placing stories in the Financial Times [9] and Washington Times, [10] an "official" DoD Report that Shaw produced without authorization [8] [11] and an official DoD press release that was subsequently withdrawn, [12] allegedly with the intent to damage specific competitors and help his "friends" bidding for reconstruction contracts in Iraq. [8] Shaw made these statements in the face of several official investigations to the contrary, most notably the Report of the Iraq Study Group led by Charles Duelfer published on 30 September 2004. [13]
Shortly after the 2006 event, the Bush Administration purportedly ordered government personnel not to associate with The Intelligence Summit or attend its conferences; The New York Sun reported, "(B)oth John Deutch and James Woolsey abruptly left their positions at Intelligence Summit, according to its president, John Loftus, who said their departure is part of a campaign by the Directorate of National Intelligence to punish him for releasing the recordings [of Saddam Hussein]...." [14] Woolsey denied that there had been any pressure to withdraw, stating that "If Loftus is saying that anyone pressured me about this issue he is quite wrong." [15] UPI reported that Deutch and Woolsey resigned from the Board after learning that the conference's primary sponsor was Michael Cherney, who "has been investigated or blacklisted on suspicion of money laundering, illegal business deals and connections to the Russian mafia by half a dozen European countries and barred from entry by the U.S. authorities" [16]
The 2007 summit was organized with the Secular Islam Summit, which was held simultaneously with the Intelligence Summit. [17] UPI reported of the 2007 conference that "most, if not all panelists seemed to be preaching to the choir. The conference, at times, had an air of a reunion of good ol' boys; all in sync with the program, rather than a group of very serious professionals out to warn the free world of the dangers facing democracies.... Many would rather 'not waste time' talking with a government they say will never keep its word. Instead, they would prefer to simply 'kick butt,' as one speaker put it, and making realistic plans to enable regime change in Syria and Iran through assassinations and intimidation. His comments were received with applause and cheers from the audience." [18]
Iraq actively researched and later employed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) from 1962 to 1991, when it destroyed its chemical weapons stockpile and halted its biological and nuclear weapon programs as required by the United Nations Security Council. The fifth president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, was internationally condemned for his use of chemical weapons against Iranian and Kurdish civilians during the Iran–Iraq War in the 1980s. Saddam pursued an extensive biological weapons program and a nuclear weapons program, though no nuclear bomb was built. After the Gulf War, the United Nations located and destroyed large quantities of Iraqi chemical weapons and related equipment and materials; Iraq ceased its chemical, biological and nuclear programs.
During the 2003 invasion of Iraq by a United States–led coalition, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency developed a set of playing cards to help troops identify the most-wanted members of President Saddam Hussein's government, mostly high-ranking members of the Iraqi Regional Branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party or members of the Revolutionary Command Council; among them were some of Hussein's family members. The cards were officially named the "personality identification playing cards". As of 2021, all but four of the 52 most wanted have either died or been captured, eleven of whom have been released.
The Iraq Survey Group (ISG) was a fact-finding mission sent by the multinational force in Iraq to find the weapons of mass destruction alleged to be possessed by Iraq that had been the main ostensible reason for the invasion in 2003. Its final report, Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the Director of Central Intelligence on Iraq WMD, was submitted to Congress and the president in 2004. It consisted of a 1,400-member international team organized by the Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency to hunt for the alleged stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and biological agents, and any supporting research programs and infrastructure that could be used to develop WMD. The report acknowledged that only small stockpiles of chemical WMDs were found, the numbers being inadequate to pose a militarily significant threat.
The Office of Special Plans (OSP), which existed from September 2002 to June 2003, was a Pentagon unit created by Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, and headed by Feith, as charged by then–United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to supply senior George W. Bush administration officials with raw intelligence pertaining to Iraq. A similar unit, called the Iranian Directorate, was created several years later, in 2006, to deal with intelligence on Iran.
The director of central intelligence (DCI) was the head of the American Central Intelligence Agency from 1946 to 2004, acting as the principal intelligence advisor to the president of the United States and the United States National Security Council, as well as the coordinator of intelligence activities among and between the various US intelligence agencies.
After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, evidence began to emerge of failed attempts by the Iraqi government to bring the conflict to a peaceful resolution.
Laurie Mylroie is an American author and analyst who has written extensively on Iraq and the War on Terror. The National Interest first published this work in an article entitled, "The World Trade Center Bombing: Who is Ramzi Yousef? And Why it Matters." In her book Study of Revenge (2000), Mylroie laid out her argument that the Iraqi regime under Saddam Hussein had sponsored the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and subsequent terrorist attacks. She claimed those attacks were part of an ongoing war that Saddam waged against America following the cease-fire to the 1991 Gulf War. Less than a year after her book was published, the September 11 attacks occurred. Mylroie subsequently adopted the view that Saddam had been responsible for the attacks, defending it on many occasions, including before the 9/11 Commission.
John Mark Deutch is an American physical chemist and civil servant. He was the United States Deputy Secretary of Defense from 1994 to 1995 and Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) from May 10, 1995, until December 15, 1996. He is an emeritus Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and serves on the boards of directors of Citigroup, Cummins, Raytheon, and Schlumberger Ltd. Deutch is also a member of the Trilateral Commission.
The Senate Report on Iraqi WMD Intelligence was the report by the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concerning the U.S. intelligence community's assessments of Iraq during the time leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The report, which was released on July 9, 2004, identified numerous failures in the intelligence-gathering and -analysis process. The report found that these failures led to the creation of inaccurate materials that misled both government policy makers and the American public.
The Saddam–al-Qaeda conspiracy theory was based on false claims by the United States government alleging that a secretive relationship existed between Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and the Sunni pan-Islamist militant organization al-Qaeda between 1992 and 2003. U.S. president George W. Bush used it as a main reason for invading Iraq in 2003.
The Downing Street memo, sometimes described by critics of the Iraq War as the smoking gun memo, is the note of a 23 July 2002 secret meeting of senior British government, defence and intelligence figures discussing the build-up to the war, which included direct reference to classified United States policy of the time. The name refers to 10 Downing Street, the residence of the British prime minister.
There are various rationales for the Iraq War, both the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the subsequent hostilities. The George W. Bush administration began actively pressing for military intervention in Iraq in late 2001. The primary rationalization for the Iraq War was articulated by a joint resolution of the United States Congress known as the Iraq Resolution. The US claimed the intent was to "disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein's support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people".
A dispute exists over the legitimacy of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The debate centers around the question whether the invasion was an unprovoked assault on an independent country that may have breached international law, or if the United Nations Security Council authorized the invasion. Those arguing for its legitimacy often point to Congressional Joint Resolution 114 and UN Security Council resolutions, such as Resolution 1441 and Resolution 678. Those arguing against its legitimacy also cite some of the same sources, stating they do not actually permit war but instead lay out conditions that must be met before war can be declared. Furthermore, the Security Council may only authorise the use of force against an "aggressor" in the interests of preserving peace, whereas the 2003 invasion of Iraq was not provoked by any aggressive military action.
John Arthur "Jack" Shaw was an American former civil servant who held positions under several presidents: Senior Staff under Richard Nixon, White House liaison under Gerald Ford, and in the State Department under Ronald Reagan. Additionally, President George H. W. Bush gave him a recess appointment as Assistant Secretary of Commerce.
Operation Iraqi Freedom 2003 documents are some 48,000 boxes of documents, audiotapes and videotapes that were discovered by the U.S. military during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The documents date from the 1980s through the post-Saddam period. In March 2006, the U.S. government, at the urging of members of Congress, made them available online at its Foreign Military Studies Office website, requesting Arabic translators around the world to help in the translation.
The Iraqi Perspectives Project is a research effort conducted by United States Joint Forces Command, focusing on Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and the U.S.-led Iraq Survey Group (ISG) failed to find any of the alleged stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that were used as an impetus for the 2003 invasion. The United States effectively terminated the search effort for unconventional weaponry in 2005, and the Iraq Intelligence Commission concluded that the judgements of the U.S. intelligence community about the continued existence of weapons of mass destruction and an associated military program were wrong. The official findings by the CIA in 2004 were that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein "did not possess stockpiles of illicit weapons at the time of the U.S. invasion in March 2003 and had not begun any program to produce them."
This article is a chronological listing of allegations of meetings between members of al-Qaeda and members of Saddam Hussein's government, as well as other information relevant to conspiracy theories involving Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.
Michael Cherney is an Uzbek-born Israeli entrepreneur and industrialist. He is known for his significant role in the 1990s aluminium industry in Russia, and his business ventures in Israel. He is also the founder of the Michael Cherney Foundation and a sponsor of The Intelligence Summit.
The interrogation of Saddam Hussein began shortly after his capture by U.S. forces in December 2003, while the deposed president of Iraq was held at the Camp Cropper detention facility at Baghdad International Airport. Beginning in February 2004, the interrogation program, codenamed Operation Desert Spider, was controlled by Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents. Standard FBI FD-302 forms filed at the time were declassified and released in 2009 under a U.S. Freedom of Information Act request filed by the National Security Archive. Saddam, identified as "High Value Detainee #1" in the documents, was the subject of 20 "formal interviews" followed by five "casual conversations." Questioning covered the span of Saddam's political career, from 2003 when he was found hiding in a "spider hole" on a farm near his home town of Tikrit, back to his role in a failed 1959 coup attempt in Iraq, after which he had taken refuge in the very same place, one report noted.
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