Jundallah is a radical Sunni group based in Baluchistan near the Pakistani-Iranian border. It has attacked Iranian soldiers as well as civilians. There were many rumors in the media that some U.S. operation was utilizing the group for terror attacks against Iran. But a 2012 story claimed that it was not the U.S. but Israel which sponsored the group's attacks. A story published yesterday refutes this and admits U.S. involvement though it tries, unconvincingly, to blame this on one "bad apple" rogue actor.
In January 2012 Mark Perry wrote an impressive story about the Jundallah group:
A series of CIA memos describes how Israeli Mossad agents posed as American spies to recruit members of the terrorist organization Jundallah to fight their covert war against Iran.
Several bloggers, including me, expressed doubt about the story:
Why is this whitewash of the CIA coming out right now, just two days after the assassination of another Iranian engineer?
Why is there no mention at all of JSOC, the U.S. military Joint Special Operations Command forces who are, according to Sy Hersh, operating in Iran? What is their relation to the Israelis?
Why is the U.S. now doing so much to say it has nothing to do with the assassination? Notice that this changed. State Department spokesperson Nuland when asked on January 11 immediately after the event issued no denial at all.
As Marc Wheeler pointed out:
Israelis and Americans have long hidden behind each other when working with Iranians, going back at least to the Iran-Contra ops that Dick Cheney had a fondness for. Hiding behind Israelis lets American officials pretend we’re not doing the taboo things we’re doing. Hiding behind Americans lets Iranian partners working with Israelis pretend they aren’t working with the Zionist enemy. That false flag business works in many different directions, after all.
I concluded:
The Mark Perry story may well be right in the detail. I doubt its value in telling something of the bigger picture though. It it does not tell us anything of what the U.S. agencies and military are currently doing in Iran and it certainly should not be used to exculpate the U.S. from the killing of the Iranian scientists.
Nearly three years after the Mark Perry story blamed Israel for cooperation with Jundallah a new story by James Risen and Matt Apuzzo now admits intense U.S. involvement with the group. The guy allegedly culpable for running Jundallah is claimed to be a New York Port Authority officer:
The Port Authority police are responsible for patrolling bridges and tunnels and issuing airport parking tickets. But the detective, a hard-charging and occasionally brusque former ironworker named Thomas McHale, was also a member of an F.B.I. counterterrorism task force. He had traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan and developed informants inside Jundallah’s leadership, who then came under the joint supervision of the F.B.I. and C.I.A.
So a local officer from New York is working with the FBI, the CIA and the military Joint Special Operations Command in Pakistan and Afghanistan to run operations with an anti-Iranian Jihadist group? Does he also sell bridges?
Reading the report, the C.I.A. officer became increasingly concerned. Agency lawyers he consulted concluded that using Islamic militants to gather intelligence — and obtaining information about attacks ahead of time — could suggest tacit American support for terrorism. Without specific approval from the president, the lawyers said, that could represent an unauthorized covert action program. The C.I.A. ended its involvement with Mr. McHale’s informants.
Yeah. Sure. The U.S. would never ever run operations that would suggest "tacit support for terrorism" or have itself operational responsibility for terrorist acts. That the CIA ended its involvement after several years of running it with Mr. McHale as "rogue actor" is also not convincing:
Some federal officials blame Mr. McHale for what they describe as an operation that veered out of control. They said that if the United States and Jundallah had too close a relationship, Mr. McHale’s go-it-alone attitude was to blame.
But friends and former colleagues say this characterization of Mr. McHale as a rogue operator is unfair. They point out that the relationship persisted for more than a decade, and Mr. McHale’s actions were approved and applauded by several United States agencies over those years. “I’m not sure what to say about this case,” said Mr. Holt, who is retiring from Congress this year. “Everything is plausible in the freewheeling intelligence world.”
The last sentence is correct. It is entirely plausible that the CIA some three years ago fed some papers to Mark Perry to claim the Israelis are running Jundallah. It is also entirely plausibly that the CIA now fed the "rogue guy" material for the new story to James Risen to again exculpate itself from the terrorism it committed. What is not plausible though is that both stories are correct. They contradict each other.
Also plausible and even very likely is a third story hidden behind the limited hangouts the above two stories provide. That the CIA and JSOC, with presidential support, ran Jundallah to commit terrorism against Iran.
Obama may hope that the current negotiations with Iran will be successful and renewed cooperation with Iran will rescue him from the dilemma of the failed invasion of Iraq and the failed operation against the Syrian state. Within that context the publishing of the new story about a "rogue actor", even though its content is more half-truth than truth, makes at least some political sense.
