At root of Argentina spy intrigue: a deal with Iran

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2015
I N T E R N AT I O N A L
At root of Argentina spy intrigue: a deal with Iran
‘The Secret Argentina’ on the intelligence community
BUENOS AIRES: President Cristina Fernandez
has portrayed Argentina’s spy agency as sinister,
accountable to no one, and possibly responsible
for the mysterious death of a prominent prosecutor in his Buenos Aires apartment. As a result,
Fernandez declared last week, the Intelligence
Secretariat needs to be totally shut down - and a
new agency built from scratch.
“You can’t extort me. You can’t intimidate me.
I’m not afraid of you,” she said, speaking directly
to the agency’s leaders, in a nationally televised
address on Monday. But the underlying story of
the dispute, sources close to both the agency
and Fernandez’s leftist government tell Reuters,
is more complicated, with roots in Iran and a terrorist attack two decades ago that has never
been fully solved. They say Fernandez has been
in open conflict with her own spy agency for two
years, following a deal in which she enlisted Iran’s
help to investigate the 1994 bombing of a Jewish
community center in Buenos Aires that killed 85
people.
Fernandez has portrayed the agreement as
the only way to confirm whether Iran’s government was behind the attack, as Argentine prosecutors have alleged. Without Tehran’s cooperation, the investigation would have remained
stalled and it would have been impossible to
question Iranian suspects, Fernandez has said.
Iran has vigorously denied any role in the bombing. However, some of the spy agency’s leaders
felt betrayed by the deal, a source with knowledge of the agency’s affairs said on condition of
anonymity. They had spent many years helping
prosecutors build the case against Iran, and saw
Fernandez’s agreement as an attempt to whitewash their investigation.
“It was like she switched sides ... and was suddenly friends with Iran,” the source said. “That’s
what this (dispute) is all about.” A government
official confirmed the Iran deal was the origin of
the conflict, which he described as a grave threat
to Fernandez. “When (the spy agency) stops supporting you, you’re screwed,” the official said.
Repeated efforts to contact the Intelligence
Secretariat, or SI, were unsuccessful. No one
answered a doorbell this week at the mirrored
entrance to its headquarters in a stately building
across the street from Fernandez’s palace in
Buenos Aires.
Argentines horrified
The conflict exploded into public view on Jan
18, when Alberto Nisman, the chief prosecutor
investigating the 1994 bombing of the Argentine
Israelite Mutual Association, or AMIA, was found
dead in his bathroom with a bullet in his head.
Nisman had been due the next day to present
new findings to Congress regarding Fernandez’s
deal with Iran. His death horrified many
Argentines, as well as Jewish groups around the
world, denting Fernandez’s popularity at a time
when she is already dealing with an economy on
the verge of recession and a long-running battle
Money already paving the
way to 2016 White House
WASHINGTON: A year remains before
party primaries for the US presidential
election-and 21 months until the vote
itself-but potential candidates are
already cranking on a core task: raising
cash. Jeb Bush, for example, has yet to
lay out his vision for America. That
hasn’t stopped executives, consultants
and wealthy donors from seeking
access to the would-be candidate at
closed-door meetings and swish receptions. US media reports reveal how
Bush, the likely Republican frontrunner,
may dominate potential rivals in the
money stakes. Politico reported that the
son and brother of two presidents this
week travelled to New York, where
admissions to a Bush event hosted by
private equity mogul Henry Kravis sold
for a staggering $100,000 apiece.
BUENOS AIRES: Combo picture shows Argentine President Cristina Kirchner (left) and of
Argentina’s deceased Public Prosecutor Alberto Nisman taken. Nisman, who on January 14,
2015 accused President Cristina Kirchner of obstructing a probe into a 1994 Jewish center
bombing, was found shot dead on January 19, 2015, just hours before he was due to testify at
a congressional hearing. — AFP
with foreign creditors over defaulted debt.
Fernandez has said she believes Nisman was
murdered, although she has not detailed how,
and no one has been arrested in connection with
the case. Officials admit privately the truth may
never be known. Meanwhile, the depth and complexity of her dispute with the spy agency suggests the case could drag on for months or
longer, with unpredictable consequences for all
parties. “This will go on and on and on, and we
won’t stop asking questions, no matter who is
involved,” Patricia Bullrich, an opposition legislator who was Nisman’s main contact in Congress,
said in an interview. “The roots are very deep.”
Dirty war
The SI and its 3,000 or so employees report, in
theory, to the president. But in practice, it has
long operated in a murky world of its own, critics
say. The agency played an important role in the
military government’s “dirty war” against suspected leftists in the 1970s. As many as 30,000 died at
the hands of the state during the dictatorship,
human rights groups say. Many of the agency’s
junior officers then are its leaders now, according
to Gerardo Young, a journalist who wrote a book
titled “The Secret Argentina” on the intelligence
community. Today, the agency still enjoys “unacceptable autonomy” and has continued to spy on
politicians, leaders of social movements and oth-
ers in recent years while resisting attempts at
greater oversight, according to a recent report by
the Association for Civil Law, a local non-profit
group.
Nonetheless, Fernandez once believed she
could use the SI in constructive fashion. When
her late husband Nestor Kirchner became president in 2003, he ordered the agency to help
prosecutors uncover who bombed the Argentine
Israelite Mutual Association, or AMIA, the worst
attack on a Jewish institution since World War
Two. The collaboration produced results. With the
SI’s help, Nisman published a report in 2006 saying Hezbollah agents had carried out the attack
with financial and logistical support from Iran.
Nisman cited witness testimony, information
from wire taps and the bank records of Iranians,
and a photo that allegedly showed a then-official
at the Iranian embassy in Buenos Aires looking
for the kind of truck eventually used in the
bombing. In 2007, at Argentina’s request,
Interpol put five Iranians and a Lebanese national
on its most-wanted list in connection with the
bombing. Many in Argentina’s Jewish community, Latin America’s largest, believed that justice
was finally at hand. “It seemed like the government was finally on our side,” said Eliana Hoel, 43,
at an event to commemorate AMIA victims this
week. “ There was so much hope in those
years.”—Reuters
Shadow of Clinton’s war vote
hangs over 2016 contenders
WASHINGTON: In 2002, Sen Hillary
Rodham Clinton cast a vote in favor of
the Iraq war that would later come to
haunt her presidential campaign.
Now, a new crop of senators eying the
White House - Republicans Marco
Rubio of Florida, Rand Paul of
Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas - will
face a similar choice over authorizing
military action in the Middle East. A
vote in favor of President Barack
Obama’s use -of-force resolution
would give the potential candidates a
share of the responsibility for the outcome of military action in a combustible region. And as Clinton
learned well, the public’s support for a
military campaign can quickly fade,
making the long-term implications of
the vote difficult to predict.
Obama asked lawmakers this week
to approve a three-year offensive
against the Islamic State group and
affiliated forces. His request includes
no constraints on geographical
boundaries but would bar “enduring
offensive combat” - intentionally
vague language that some lawmakers
fear leaves open the prospect of a USled ground war. So far, most of the
2016 hopefuls currently in Congress
have sidestepped questions about
how they would vote on Obama’s
measure, which could be amended
before they have to say yes or no.
Among Republicans, Rubio has been
perhaps the most specific in outlining
his views, saying he opposes the president putting constraints on his ability
to use military force against an enemy.
“What we need to be authorizing
the president to do is to destroy them
and to defeat them, and allow the
commander in chief - both the one we
have now and the one who will follow
- to put in place the tactics, the military tactics, necessary to destroy and
defeat ISIL,” Rubio said, using a common acronym for the Islamic State
group. A spokesman for Paul said
Friday that the senator is reviewing
the legislation but has not decided
how he would vote. Cruz has called
for Congress to “strengthen” the legislation by making sure the president is
committed to clear objectives. He also
has suggested the authorization
should include a provision to directly
arm the Iraqi Kurds, but it is unclear
what other changes he wants to see.
Despite Americans’ war weariness,
there is public support for formally
authorizing the mission. An NBC
News/Marist poll released Friday
showed that 54 percent of respondents want their member of Congress
to vote for Obama’s request. Clinton,
who is laying the groundwork for
another presidential run, will also be
pressed to take a position. But this
time around, she will have the advantage of weighing in from the outside,
without the pressure of voting. “You
can talk about the subject without
actually being pinned down on a particular vote that you’re going to have
to defend for years to come,” said Jim
Manley, a longtime aide to the late
HILLSBORO: In this file photo, Oregon Secretary of State Kate Brown waits
to shake Hillary Clinton’s hand as she enters Liberty High School in
Hillsboro, Ore. —AP
Edward Kennedy, the Massachusetts
Democrat who worked to get Clinton
and other Democrats to vote against
the 2002 war authorization.
Clinton has made no public comments since Obama sent lawmakers
the draft legislation earlier this week,
and her spokesman did not respond
to a fresh request for her position
Friday. The former secretary of state
has previously called the fight against
the Islamic State a “long term struggle” and has said military action is
essential to prevent the group from
making further advances. The military
campaign against the Islamic State
militants began six months ago, and
Obama is, in effect, seeking Congress’
approval retroactively. He has said the
current mission is legally justified
under the 2002 authorization
President George W Bush used to start
the Iraq war - the resolution Clinton
voted for.
By the time Obama and Clinton
faced off in the 2008 Democratic primary, the Iraq war was deeply unpopular. Obama saw Clinton’s vote for the
military conflict as a way to draw a
distinction with his better-known
rival, arguing that while he was not in
the Senate in 2002, he would have
voted against giving Bush the war
powers. The 2002 vote and its political
implications have continued to shadow the way lawmakers have responded to war-power requests. In 2013,
Congress balked at Obama’s request
to authorize strikes in Syria and never
held a vote. And while congressional
leaders pushed the president for
months to seek authorization for the
Islamic State campaign, lawmakers
insisted Obama be the one to actually
draft a resolution.
As with Obama’s current request,
there was public support for Bush’s
Iraq resolution in 2002. A Gallup Poll a
few weeks before the high-stakes vote
found that 57 percent of Americans
said Congress should “pass a resolution to support sending American
ground troops to the Persian Gulf in
an attempt to remove Saddam
Hussein from power in Iraq.” About 38
percent said it should not. As the Iraq
war dragged on, and the death toll
and financial costs mounted, the conflict became deeply unpopular. By the
time Clinton and Obama were facing
off for the Democratic nomination,
sur veys showed a majority of
Americans believed going into Iraq
was the wrong decision - a warning
for potential 2016 candidates trying
to read the tea leaves ahead of their
own war powers vote.—AP
Billionaires’ influence
For America’s billionaires, a potential
candidate’s line is always open. Several
in the top tier of the ultra wealthy are
aggressively courted: industry titans
Charles and David Koch; casino magnate Sheldon Adelson; hedge fund
bosses Robert Mercer and Paul Singer;
billionaire investor Tom Steyer, and former New York mayor Michael
Bloomberg. These elites are not expected to be satisfied with pumping a few
hundred thousand dollars into a
favorite candidate’s campaign; often
they seek broader influence on election
results up and down the ballot.
The Koch brothers, through a network of organizations they control, are
trying to raise $889 million-more than
the Democratic and Republican national committees spent between them in
2012 - to help elect as many libertarianleaning Republicans as possible. Their
reach is long. Three ambitious senatorsTed Cruz, Rand Paul and Marco Rubioparticipated in a January debate organized by the Koch-affiliated Freedom
Partners and conducted before hundreds of donors and entrepreneurs.
How much for a president?
Mounting a successful 21st century
US presidential campaign requires spectacular financial reserves, and each
check written by a Koch or Adelson or
Steyer can equate to the contributions
of hundreds of thousands of individual
donors. In 2012, according to the Center
for Responsive Politics, a grand total of
$2.6 billion was spent on the race that
saw President Barack Obama stave off
Republican challenger Mitt Romney.
About $1.1 billion of that was raised
directly by candidates. Such donations
are capped and tightly regulated, with
only individuals allowed to make them.
Another billion was raised through socalled outside organizations that are
officially independent from candidates.
Such contributions have been helped
by a wave of campaign finance de-regulation, including a 2010 Supreme Court
decision that lifted restrictions on political election spending by corporations.
For outside groups like these, there is
no limit on donations, which can
include direct corporate contributions.
And some organizations are allowed to
shield donors’ names, leading to the
cynical term for their contributions:
“dark money.”
Funding limits?
The coming election will be marked
by unstoppable growth in contributions
from non-institutional sources, money
that will likely be used to saturate
broadcast and online screens with political adver tising. Strict regulations
adopted in the 1970s-and again in 2002
after corruption scandals in the 1990shave rapidly eroded, said Paul Ryan, an
election finance exper t at The
Campaign Legal Center, which exposes
campaign finance abuse. “The candidate contribution limit that has been on
the books for decades, which in this
cycle is $2,700 per donor, will largely be
rendered meaningless,” he said. “Post2010, we really see a re-creation of the
corrupting, unlimited money in politics
that we had in the late 1990s” and earlier. Many critics see the shift as deeply
unsettling, but White House hopefuls
are in no position to ignore the money
train. The New York Times recently
reported that Hillary Clinton, as of now
still a non-candidate for 2016, was
appointing a trusted aide, Dennis
Cheng, as a key fundraiser.— AFP