The Voice of the White House

 

            Washington, D.C. June 2, 2013: “Although in the War of 1812, the British invaded the United States and burned Washngton, no one else has ever invaded the United States although Roosevelt falsely claimed that both Hitler’s Germany and Imperial Japan had such plans. Now, however, the United States has indeed been invaded by an implacible enemy whose stated intentions are to destroy her power, murder her people and obliterate her memory, 

            We speak here of the radical Muslims who now number over seven million and whose community harbors a multitude of fanatical religious terrorists who have planted bombs such as the one that blew up at the recent Boston Marathon and, most infamously, were responsible for the 9/11 attack that destroyed two huge office buildings and killed over 3,000 American.

            Here we present a most comprehensive, easily understood, catalog of the aims and motivations of our invaders.”

Jihadists in America

by Chris Mason

 

            The international communities with large Muslim populations have been secretly meeting to agree upon corrective steps to deal with this problem. The commission is called ‘Energy Control Commission’  and its members are: The United States, India, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy.

 

 This commission has been meeting on a monthly basis in Copenhagen since July of 2008. Its sole purpose is to address the flood of potentially dangerous Muslims into Western countries.

 

 A good deal of intelligence material has surfaced in which telephone and internet communications between various Muslim activist groups point very clearly to deliberate infiltration of non-Muslim countries with the double goal of overwhelming the native populations with numbers and threats of physical violence.

 Muslim groups are strongly anti-Christian and are most especially vindictive towards any country that has engaged in military action against any Muslim country. The United States is considered a prime target for infiltration and domestic terrorism while Great Britain, Ireland, Sweden and France are also high on activist terrorist lists.

 

 The general agreement between all parties is that Muslims cannot remain in basically Christian countries because of their often-stated desire to not only take over these countries by population increase but also by the on-going threat of terrorism. At this time, the Commission has taken into account the death of Libya’s Muammar al-Gaddafi, and if sufficient Western control can be obtaioned,  Libya can now be opened up as a designated ‘Country of Welcome’, When this happens, mass deportations of Europe, and America’s, Muslims will begin.

 

 This Islamic Diaspora will be implemented by a joint team of multi-national military personnel using aircraft and shipping that has already been allotted.  

 

Jihad

 

The usual translation of jihad as ‘holy war’ is misleading; ‘exertion ‘or ‘struggle’ is more accurate: “A general injunction to strive in the way of God”

 As a movement for the establishment of Muslim governance, Islamic radicalism was born in the 1920s with the creation of an organization of Egyptian origin known as the Muslim Brotherhood. From the outset, Islamic radicalism opposed not only colonialism, but also Western modernism and non-Islamic Arab governments. The radicalization process intensified with the formation of the State of Israel and the movement itself gradually internationalized, facilitated by the emergence of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the Gulf War, to the point of reaching its current dynamism.

 

• Hizballah (or Party of God,) Shia, Egyptian, and pro-Iranian, operational since the 1980s;
• Hamas or Islamic Resistance Movement
• Palestine Islamic Jihad, both Sunni, operating in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank since the late 1980s the former and since the late 1970s the latter
• Armed Islamic Group (GIA), Sunni and Algerian, in existence since the early 1990s,
• Salafi Group for Call and Combat; al-Jihad or Holy War
• al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya or Islamic Group, both Sunni and Egyptian, formed in the late 1970s
• Abu Sayyaf Group, Sunni and southern Filipino, a spin-off of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front since 1991
• Harakat ul-Mujahidin or Movement of Islamic Fighters
• Jaish-e-Mohammed or Army of Mohamed
• Lashkar-e-Tayyba or Army of the Righteous
• Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a coalition of Islamic militants from Uzbekistan and other Central Asian states.

 

 Besides aiming at the creation of an Islamic theocratic government in their own country or even in their geopolitical area, all of the above-listed aggregations share one or more of the following char-acteristics: a dual structure, overt, on the one hand, for political action, religious ministry, proselytizing, fundraising, and social assistance, and covert, on the other hand, for terrorist initiatives; hatred for Israel; the presence of representative organs abroad; terrorist action beyond their own national boundaries; and holy war without quarter against the infidel at the universal level. Some of these groups have enjoyed or still enjoy to this day forms of support from sponsor states governed by either theocratic or secular regimes. Iran has been supporting Hizballah, Hamas, and Palestine Islamic Jihad and is accused by Egypt of supporting also Holy War and the Islamic Group.

 

 Sudan has granted asylum to Holy War, the Islamic Group, Hamas, and Palestine Islamic Jihad, which exploit-ed it as an operational base. Algeria has charged Sudan with support-ing the GIA. Syria has been assisting on its own territory Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad and allows them, as well as Hizballah, to use the Bekaa Valley in Lebanese territory. The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan utillizes the Iranian radio system to broadcast propaganda. India accuses Pakistan of assisting Islamic terrorist organizations that operate in Kashmir.

 

 Other forms of assistance, primarily financial, issue from private benefactors aware or unaware of supporting domestic and international terrorism, given the dual structure utilized by several of these groups, which, thanks precisely to their dual structure, respond to a socio-economic void unfilled by government or society in many Third World countries. This aspect increases popular following and the relative danger posed by Islamic radicalism.

 

 The most radical Islamic activists, in order to wage holy war against the infidel, have given birth to an international network, not to be confused with the mild concept of ummah that unites the Muslim faithful in the conviction of belonging all to one nation, that is, the nation of Islam. The internationalization of Islamic radicalism draws its origins from the Afghani resistance against the Soviet Union, followed by a further resistance conceived as a struggle against the American and Western occupation of the holiest places of Islam and against West-ern polluting of the Islamic world, nefariously allowed by local regimes viewed as corrupt.

 

 In this context, a series of well known events has taken place: the constitution in the late 1980s of al-Qaida, or The Base, as an umbrella for coordinating, training and supporting various subordinate, semi-autonomous, and autonomous organizations dedicated to holy war at the global level; the training in Afghanistan of approximately 11,000 militants, who subsequently either fought in Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, and Dagestan or returned to their respective countries to conduct an internal struggle or took up residence in the West to set up operational and logistical cells; the issuance of numerous anti-Western fatwas or religious decrees, among which stands out the one of February 1998 undersigned by representatives of al-Qaida, Holy War (Egypt), Islamic Group (Egypt), Jamat-ul-Ulema (Pakistan), and Jihad Movement (Bangladesh), in which all Muslims are called upon to kill Americans and their allies, civilians as well as military, wherever possible; the creation of the World Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders; the fine tuning, until the recent Western military intervention in Afghanistan, of a triad consisting of Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida, and the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan; and about twenty anti-Western terrorist attacks that culminated in the destruction of the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon.

 

            The main mission of all Jihadists is the overthrow of the godless regimes and their replacement with an Islamic regime.

 

 

Muslims in the United States
           

 Once very small, the Muslim population of the US increased greatly in the twentieth century, with much of the growth driven by rising immigration and conversion. In 2005, more people from Islamic countries became legal permanent United States residents — nearly 96,000 — than in any year in the previous two decades.

 

Recent immigrant Muslims make up the majority of the total Muslim population. South Asians Muslims from India and Pakistan and Arabs make up the biggest group of Muslims in America at 60-65% of the population. Native-born American Muslims are mainly African Americans who make up a quarter of the total Muslim population. Many of these have converted to Islam during the last seventy years. Conversion to Islam in prison, and in large urban areas has also contributed to its growth over the years. American Muslims come from various backgrounds, and are one of the most racially diverse religious group in the United States according to a 2009 Gallup poll.

 

A Pew report released in 2009 noted that nearly six-in-ten American adults see Muslims as being subject to discrimination, more than Mormons, Atheists, or Jews. Modern immigration

 

There is no accurate count of the number of Muslims in the United States, as the U.S. Census Bureau does not collect data on religious identification. There is an ongoing debate as to the true size of the Muslim population in the US. Various institutions and organizations have given widely varying estimates about how many Muslims live in the U.S. These estimates have been controversial, with a number of researchers being explicitly critical of the survey methodologies that have led to the higher estimates.

 

Others claim that no scientific count of Muslims in the U.S. has been done, but that the larger figures should be considered accurate. Some journalists have also alleged that the higher numbers have been inflated for political purposes. On the other hand, some Muslim groups blame Islamophobia and the fact that many Muslims identify themselves as Muslims, but do not attend mosques for the lower estimates.

 

According to a 2007 religious survey, 72% of Muslims believe religion is very important, which is higher in comparison to the overall population of the United States at 59%. The frequency of receiving answers to prayers among Muslims was, 31% at least once a week and 12% once or twice a month. Nearly a quarter of the Muslims are converts to Islam (23%), mainly native-born. Of the total who have converted, 59% are African American and 34% white. Previous religions of those converted was Protestantism (67%), Roman Catholicism (10%) and 15% no religion.

 

Mosques are usually explicitly Sunni or Shia. There are over 1,209 mosques in the United States and the nation’s largest mosque, the Islamic Center of America, is in Dearborn, Michigan. It caters mainly to the Shi’a Muslim congregation; however, all Muslims may attend this mosque. It was rebuilt in 2005 to accommodate over 3,000 people for the increasing Muslim population in the region.

 

In many areas, a mosque may be dominated by whatever group of immigrants is the largest. Sometimes the Friday sermons, or khutbas, are given in languages like Urdu or Arabic along with English. Areas with large Muslim populations may support a number of mosques serving different immigrant groups or varieties of belief within Sunni or Shi’a traditions. At present, many mosques are served by imams who immigrate from overseas, as only these imams have certificates from Muslim seminaries. The influence of the Wahhabi movement in the US has caused concern.

 

Muslim Americans are racially diverse communities in the United States, two-thirds are foreign-born. The majority, about three-fifths of Muslim Americans are of South Asian and Arab origin, a quarter of the population are recent converts of whites and indigenous African Americans, while the remaining are other ethnic groups which  includes Turks, Iranians, Bosnians, Malays, Indonesians, West Africans, Somalis, Kenyans, with also small but growing numbers of white and Hispanic converts.

 

A survey of ethnic comprehension by the Pew Forum survey has shown that 37% respondents viewed themselves white(mainly of Arab and South Asian origin), 24% were Africans and White converts in the ratio 2:1, 20% Asian (mainly South Asian origin), 15% other race (includes mixed Arabs or Asians) and 4% were of Hispanic descent. Since the arrival of South Asian and Arab communities during the 1990s there has been divisions with the African Americans due to the racial and cultural differences, however since post 9/11, the two groups joined together when the immigrant communities looked towards the African Americans for advice on civil rights.

 

 Remembering the fact that Arabs are generally counted among Whites and majority of Arabs in U.S. are Christians; the more accurate figure would be 65-70% South Asians and Arabs in the ratio 1:1 to 2:1 (includes mixed Arabs and Asians which comprise a significant 25% of the total Asian population) 20-25% Blacks belonging to traditional and Nations Of Islam sect and 4% were of Hispanic descent. Only about a quarter of the Arab American population is Muslim. The 2000 census reported about 1.25 million Americans of Arab ancestry. Contrary to popular perceptions the condition of Muslims in U.S. is very good. Among South Asians in this country, the large Indian American community stands out as particularly well educated and prosperous, with education and income levels that exceed those of U.S.-born whites. Many are professionals, especially doctors, scientists, engineers, and financial analysts, and there are also a large number of entrepreneurs. The five urban areas with the largest Indian populations include the Washington/Baltimore metropolitan area as well as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

 

The 10 states with the largest Muslim populations are California, New York, Illinois, New Jersey, Indiana, Michigan, Virginia, Texas, Ohio, and Maryland. 45 percent of immigrant Muslims report annual household income levels of $50,000 or higher. This compares to the national average of 44 percent. Immigrant Muslims are well represented among higher-income earners, with 19 percent claiming annual household incomes of $100,000 or higher (compared to 16 percent for the Muslim population as a whole and 17 percent for the U.S. average). This is likely due to the strong concentration of Muslims in professional, managerial, and technical fields, especially in information technology, education, medicine, law, and the corporate world.

 

 Approximately half (50%) of the religious affiliations of Muslims is Sunni, 16% Shia, 22% non-affiliated and 16% other/non-response. Muslims of Arab descent are mostly Sunni (56%) with minorities who are Shia (19%). Pakistanis (62%) and Indians (82%) are mainly Sunni, while Iranians are mainly Shia (91%).Of African American Muslims, 48% are Sunni, 34% are unaffiliated, 2% Shia, the remaining are others.

 

During the past decade, more people from Muslim countries became legal permanent United States residents — nearly 96,000 — than in any year in the previous two decades. In addition to immigration, the state, federal and local prisons of the United States may be a contributor to the growth of Islam in the country. Muslim inmates comprise 17-20% of the prison population, or roughly 350,000 inmates in 2003. 80% of the prisoners who “find faith” while in prison convert to Islam. These converted inmates are mostly African American, with a small but growing Hispanic minority. Many converts are radicalized by outside Islamist groups linked to terrorism.

 

U.S. Muslim groups

 

5 million+ U.S. News and World Report

7 million Council on American-Islam Relations

There is no accurate count of the number of Muslims in the United States, as the U.S. Historically, Muslim Americans tend to support the Republican Party.

 

Some Muslim Americans have been criticized for letting their religious beliefs affect their ability to act within mainstream American value systems. Muslim cab drivers in Minneapolis, Minnesota have been criticized for allegedly refusing passengers for carrying alcoholic beverages or dogs. The Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport authority has threatened to revoke the operating authority of any driver caught discriminating in this manner. There are reported incidents in which Muslim cashiers have refused to sell pork products to their clientèle.

 

Public institutions in the U.S. have also been criticized for accommodating Islam at the expense of taxpayers. The University of Michigan–Dearborn and a public college in Minnesota have been criticized for accommodating Islamic prayer rituals by constructing footbaths for Muslim students using tax-payers’ money. Critics claim this special accommodation, which is made only to satisfy Muslims’ needs, is a violation of Constitutional provisions separating church and stateAlong the same constitutional lines, a San Diego public elementary school is being criticized for making special accommodations specifically for American Muslims by adding Arabic to its curriculum and giving breaks for Muslim prayers. Since these exceptions have not been made for any religious group in the past, some critics see this as an endorsement of Islam.

 

The first American Muslim Congressman, Keith Ellison, created controversy when he compared President George W. Bush’s actions after the September 11, 2001 attacks to Adolf Hitler‘s actions after the Nazi-sparked Reichstag fire, saying that Bush was exploiting the aftermath of 9/11 for political gain, as Hitler had exploited the Reichstag fire to suspend constitutional liberties. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Anti-Defamation League condemned Ellison’s remarks. The congressman later retracted the statement, saying that it was “inappropriate” for him to have made the comparison.

 

At Columbus Manor School, a suburban Chicago elementary school with a student body nearly half Arab-American, school board officials have considered eliminating holiday celebrations after Muslim parents complained that their culture’s holidays were not included. Local parent Elizabeth Zahdan said broader inclusion, not elimination, was the group’s goal. “I only wanted them modified to represent everyone,” the Chicago Sun-Times quoted her as saying. “Now the kids are not being educated about other people.” However, the district’s superintendent, Tom Smyth, said too much school time was being taken to celebrate holidays already, and he sent a directive to his principals requesting that they “tone down” activities unrelated to the curriculum, such as holiday parties.

 

A Pew poll reported that 15% of American Muslims under the age of 30 supported suicide bombings against civilian targets in at least some circumstances, while a further 11 percent said it could be “rarely justified.” Among those over the age of 30, just 6% expressed their support for the same. (9% of Muslims over 30 and 5% under 30 chose not to answer).

 

Some Muslims in the U.S. have adopted the strong anti-American opinions common in many Muslim-majority countries. In some cases, these are recent immigrants who have carried their anti-American sentiments with them. The Egyptian cleric, Omar Abdel-Rahman is now serving a jail sentence for his involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He had a long history of involvement with Islamist and jihadi groups before arriving in the US.

 

 There is an openly anti-American Muslim group in the U.S. The Islamic Thinkers Society found only in New York City, engages in leafleting and picketing to spread their viewpoint.

 

 Young, immigrant Muslims feel more frustrated and exposed to prejudice than their parents are. Because most U.S. Muslims are raised conservatively, and won’t consider rebelling through sex or drugs, many experiment with their faith.

 

Other notable cases include:

 

• The Buffalo Six: Shafal Mosed, Yahya Goba, Sahim Alwan, Mukhtar Al-Bakri, Yasein Taher, Elbaneh Jaber. Six Muslims from the Lackawanna, N.Y. area were charged and convicted for providing material support to al Qaeda.
• Iyman Faris In October 2003 Iyman Faris was sentenced to 20 years in prison for providing material support and resources to al Qaeda and conspiracy for providing the terrorist organization with information about possible U.S. targets for attack.
• Ahmed Omar Abu Ali In November 2005 he was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison for providing material support and resources to al Qaeda, conspiracy to assassinate the President of the United States, conspiracy to commit air piracy and conspiracy to destroy aircraft
• Ali al-Tamimi was convicted and sentenced in April 2005 to life in prison for recruiting Muslims in the US to fight U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

 

The following material is excerpted directly from a manual on terrorism and taken from a computer confiscated by American counter-intelligence in 2013. Long sections quoting the Koran have been omitted.

 

 

 

DECLARATION OF JIHAD AGAINST THE COUNTRY’S TYRANTS MILITARY SERIES

“Ye who believe! Fear Allah as He should be feared, and die not except in a state of Islam”

 

“O mankind! Fear your guardian lord who created you from a single person. Created, out of it, his mate, and from them twain scattered [like seeds] countless men and women; fear Allah, through whom ye demand your mutual [rights], and be heedful of the wombs [that bore you]: for Allah ever watches over you.”

 

“0 ye who believe! Fear Allah, and make your utterance straight forward: That he may make your conduct whole and sound and forgive you your sins. He that obeys Allah and his messenger, has already attained the great victory.”

 

Afterward, The most truthful saying is the book of Allah and the best guidance is that of Mohammed, God bless and keep him. Therefore,the worst thing is to introduce something new, for every novelty is an act of heresy and each heresy is a deception.

 

Missions Required of the Military Organization:

 

The main mission for which the Military Organization is responsible is:

 

The overthrow of the godless regimes and their replacement with an Islamic regime. Other missions consist of the following:

 

 

 

• Attack targets of importance such as military bases, major cities, food producing areas by various means.

 

• A balloon filed with helium gas, which can be rented from many commercial places, and which has a small mortar shell suspended from it can be released into the air from a point some distance from a target area, such as a large city or a military base, and after a time, the shell is released from the carrier and drops to the ground, exploding when it lands. A large city is considered the better target. It will cause casualties among the public and confusion as to where the missiles are coming from.

 

• A suitable metal container that is marked as to having hazardous material can be filled with a white powder and left at a water reservoir near a large city. Better if the container is opened and some of the powder spilled into the water. Then the newspapers are told about this and the police. This will cause a panic and water use will stop for a time.

 

• Also from a balloon, poisonous material can be scattered over fields where cattle are feeding, causing many of the cattle to die.

 

• Putting a trunk full of explosive material onto a large cruise ship so that when the boat that can have as many as five thousands on board, has an explosion in the baggage hold, the boat can sink and many will drown.

 

• A large glass bottle can have pure sulfuric acid poured into it, about an inch or so, and then commercial gasoline poured into the rest. This can be sealed at the top. Then some paper towels soaked in a heated mixture of potassium chlorate can be affixed to the outside. If the bomb is placed into the kind of commercial garbage container, when the garbage is compacted, the bottle will break and the acid will cause the gasoline to explode. Also, this bottle can be dropped off a bridge into a passing freight train or off a highway bridge onto passing open trucks.

 

• A soldier can take a small heat-seeking rocket and wait outside a major airport and when a large passenger plane is taking off, fire upwards at the engine. There will be an explosion and the plane will crash, killing everyone on board. With the confusion, the soldier has an excellent chance of escaping. If this were done at major airports such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago, Boston and New York all at the same time, there will be a great wave of fear and air travel will certainly stop for some time.

 

• Small explosive charges can be placed against one leg of a large transmission tower and when exploded, the tower will fall, bringing down the wires and causing blackouts. This could best be done during a heat period when many use air conditioners. Also, traffic control lights will go out, causing problems in big cities.

 

• A diver can place explosive charges underwater on the bottom of a ferryboat in a large harbour such as New York, so that the boat sinks in deep water with passengers on board.

 

• Removal of those personalities that block the call’s path. All types of military and civilian intellectuals and thinkers for the enemy state.

 

• Kidnaping enemy personnel, and taking important documents, secrets, and arms.

 

• Assassinating enemy personnel as well as foreign tourists. Excellent targets whose deaths would cause the most publicity would be senior government officials, religious leaders, popular sports figures, well-known actors, the very wealthy.

 

• Spreading rumors and writing statements that instigate people against the enemy. Desecrating a Christian or Jewish religious building and leaving evidence behind indicating religious fanatics of the other group was responsible or start rumors that some disease has broken out somewhere.

 

• Blasting and destroying the places of amusement, immorality, and sin; not a vital target

 

• Blasting and destroying the embassies of target countries in Washington. Killing a foreign ambassador either in Washington or at the UN office in New York would be significant.

 

• Blasting and destroying bridges leading into and out of the larger cities.

 

• Attacking vital economic centers such as Wall Street in New York or the port facilities at San Diego.

 

• Blasting schools with young pupils attending.

 

• Contaminating pubic water supplies with chemicals or dead animals.

 

• Starting fires in woods and dry country during a drought and when the winds are sufficiently strong to spread the fires widely.

 

• Deface Christian churches with Jewish slogans and then, when this is known to the public, deface a synagogue with Christian slogans. Follow this by killing a Christian religious person and, again, follow this by killing a rabbi. In this way, our enemies will fight each other to our success.

 

• Since Arabic physical types, that is dark hair, beards and so on attract attention, it should be possible to dye the hair from dark to blonde and to use contact lenses to make eyes blue.

 

• An excellent method of leaving personnel bombs in crowded public places would be to have a soldier dress as a woman, with fair hair, and put a baby carriage with a false baby and a personnel bomb into a crowded area like a major sports event, a large railroad station at a commuter time, a church or synagogue or even inside the American Capitol building. The false woman would then leave and the bomb would explode. But this should only be used once because after that, the very bad American security people would search all baby carriages in the future.

 

• Dressing a soldier as an American policeman and having him shoot a Moslim woman in public. And then escaping and there would be outrage against the police and in the Moslim community where we could then find more recruits.

 

• Leasing a room in a big hotel or casino hotel but on a lower floor and then setting a big fire in that room. At night would be better and the flames and smoke would go up and kill many people above the room. The soldier should use a Christian name or a Jewish one to distract the police afterwards.

 

 

Currency and Documents

 

            Financial Security Precautions:

 

Dividing operational funds into two parts: One part is to be invested in projects that offer financial return, and the other is to be saved and not spent except during operations.

 

• Not placing operational funds all in one place.

 

• Not telling the Organization members about the location of the funds.

 

• Having proper protection while carrying large amounts of money.

 

• Leaving the money with non-members and spending it as needed.

 

Forged Documents (Identity Cards, Records Books, Passports)

 

The following security precautions should be taken:

 

• Keeping the passport in a safe place so it would not be seized by the security apparatus, and the brother it belongs to would have to negotiate its return (I’ll give you your passport if you give me information)

 

• All documents of the undercover brother, such as identity cards and passport, should be falsified.

 

• When the undercover brother is traveling with a certain identity card or passport, he should know all pertinent information such as the name, profession, and place of residence.

 

• The brother who has special work status (commander,communication link,…) should have more than one identitycard and passport. He should learn the contents of each, the nature of the indicated profession, and the dialect of the residence area listed in thedocument.

 

• The photograph of the brother in these documents should be without a beard. It is preferable that the brother’s public photograph on these documents be also without a beard. If he already has one document showing a photograph with a beard, he should replace it.

 

• When using an identity document in different names, no more than one such document should be carried at one time.

 

• The validity of the falsified travel documents should always be confirmed.

 

• All falsification matters should be carried out through the command and not haphazardly (procedure control)

 

• Married brothers should not add their wives to their passports.

 

• When a brother is carrying the forged passport of a certain country, he should not travel to that country. It is easy to detect forgery at the airport, and the dialect of the brother is different from that of the people from that country.

 

Security Precautions Related to the Organizations’ Given Names:

 

• The name given by the Organization to the brother should not be odd in comparison with other names used around him.

 

• A brother should not have more than one name in the area where he lives the undercover work place.

 

Organization MILITARY BASES IN ENEMY LANDS

”

Definition of Bases:

 

• These are apartments, hiding places, command centers, etc. in which secret operations are executed against the enemy.

 

• These bases may be in cities, and are then called homes or apartments. They may be in mountainous, harsh terrain far from the enemy, and are then called hiding places or bases.

 

• During the initial stages, the Military Organization usually uses apartments in cities as places for launching assigned missions, such as collecting information, observing members of the ruling regime, etc.

 

• Hiding places and bases in mountains and harsh terrain are used at later stages,from which Jihad groups are dispatched to execute assassination operations of enemy individuals, bomb their centers, and capture their weapons. In some Arab countries such as Egypt, where there are no mountains or harsh terrain, all stages of Jihad work would take place in cities. The opposite was true in Afghanistan, where initiallyJihad work was in the cities, then the warriors shifted to mountains and harsh terrain. There, they started battling the Communists.

 

Security Precautions Related to Apartments:

 

• Choosing the apartment carefully as far as the location, the size for the work necessary (meetings,storage, arms, fugitives, work preparation).

 

• It is preferable to rent apartments on the ground floor to facilitate escape and digging of trenches.

 

• Preparing secret locations in the apartment for securingdocuments, records, arms, and other important items.

 

• Preparing ways of vacating the apartment in case of a surprise attack (stands,wooden ladders).

 

• Under no circumstances should any one know about the apartment except those who use it.

 

• Providing the necessary cover for the people who frequent the apartment (students,workers, employees, etc.)

 

• Avoiding seclusion and isolation from the population and refraining from going to the apartment at suspicious times.

 

• It is preferable to rent these apartments using false names, appropriate cover, and non-Moslem appearance.

 

• A single brother should not rent more than one apartment in the same area, from the same agent, or using the same rental office.

 

• Care should be exercised not to rent apartments that are known to the security apparatus such as those used for immoral or prior Jihad activities.

 

• Avoiding police stations and government buildings.Apartments should not be rented near those places.

 

• When renting these apartments, one should avoid isolated or deserted locations so the enemy would not be able to catch those living there easily.

 

• It is preferable to rent apartments in newly developed areas where people do not know one another. Usually, in older quarters people know one another and strangers are easily identified, especially since these quarters have many informers.

 

• Ensuring that there is has been no surveillance prior to the members entering the apartment.

 

• Agreement among those living in the apartment on special ways of knocking on the door and special signs prior to entry into the building’s main gate to indicate to those who wish to enter that the place is safe and not being monitored. Such signs include hanging out a towel, opening a curtain, placing a cushion in a special way, etc.

 

• If there is a telephone in the apartment, calls should be answered in an agreed-upon manner among those who use the apartment. That would prevent mistakes that would, otherwise, lead to revealing the names and nature of the occupants.

 

• For apartments, replacing the locks and keys with new ones.As for the other entities (camps,shops, mosques), appropriate security precautions should be taken depending on the entity’s importance and role in the work.

 

• Apartments used for undercover work should not be visible from higher apartments in order not to expose the nature of the work.

 

• In a newer apartment, avoid talking loud because prefabricated ceilings and walls [used in the apartments] do not have the same thickness as those in old ones.

 

• It is necessary to have at hand documents supporting the undercover member. In the case of a physician, there should be an actual medical diploma, membership in the medical union, the government permit, and the rest of the routine procedures known in that country.

 

• The cover should blend well with the environment. For example, selecting a doctor’s clinic in an area where there are clinics, or in a location suitable for it.

 

• The cover of those who frequent the location should match the cover of that location. For example, a common laborer should not enter a fancy hotel because that would be suspicious and draw attention.

 

 

 

Chris Mason  Крис Мазон

chris. mason@ c4ads.org

Mason, Christopher , P.O. Box 25765, Arlington, VA 22313

 

 

 The Turkish media are rife with speculation that a former U.S. Navy and State Department officer who is married to Yasemin Çongar, once the Washington bureau chief of the Turkish newspaper Milliyet and now affiliated with Taraf, is a C.I.A. agent. The main evidence linking the two has been provided by an April 2002 article that Çonger published in the Foreign Service Journal, in which she identified herself as being “married to FSO Chris Mason”.

 

Mr. Mason has written to the Evening Gazette, categorically denying the allegations made in the original 2 Feb 2010 article about him by Oray Egin. In particular, Mr. Mason reportedly has denied ever being associated with, or having received compensation from, the C.I.A. or the RAND Corporation, as alleged in the article. He states that he is a retired diplomat with an academic interest in Afghanistan, and has demanded that the Evening Gazette retract their false and unfounded allegations, while reserving the right to further legal actions against the paper.

 

This may well be true but as his public curriculum vitae shows, he seems to have had and continues to have close working relationships with the U.S. intelligence community. He claims to lecture regularly at the Joint Special Operations University, the Naval Postgraduate School, the National Defense University, and to teach at the Fort Bragg Special Operations Center, Fort Carson, Fort Drum, and other military posts.

 

Although his curriculum vitae no longer appears on the Naval Graduate School website, Chris Mason’s research, publication, and advisory work is still amply documented on it. For example, “NPS Senior Research Fellow and retired Foreign Service Officer Chris Mason” addressed the Conference on Culture and Counterinsurgency in Southern Afghanistan, Aug. 25-27, 2009, which was attended by U.S. Lt. Gen. McChrystal and Canadian Brig. Gen. Daniel Menard and a dozen top officers of his Joint Task Force-Afghanistan; Mason reportedly made a presentation on “using Pashtun culture for strategic advantage”.

M. Chris Mason is a Senior Research Fellow with the Program for Culture & Conflict Studies, focusing on the history and ethnography of Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.   Mr. Mason is a retired Foreign Service Officer who served as the Afghanistan Policy Officer for the Bureau of Political Military Affairs at the State Department for four years beginning in June 2001, developing U.S. security policy on Afghanistan, ranging from the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), to the Disarmament Program (DDR) and the Afghan National Army (ANA).

Mr. Mason also served at the U.S. Embassy in Harare  as the USIA officer, a post always occupied in foreign embassies by CIA personnel.

Following this, Mr. Mason was transferred to Berlin but was almost immediately requested to leave by the German government and declared persona non gratia, possibly because he is and has been, active with American neo-Nazi groups and is known to traffic in Nazi relics.

 

While at the State Department, he worked closely with the intelligence community on a number of classified projects involving tribal mapping and the tribes of Afghanistan.  He was considered the State Department’s expert on the history, culture and ethnography of the country and served on the CIA’s Pashtun Red Cell.

 

In 2005, he served as the Political Officer on the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Paktika Province on the Pakistan border.  As the senior US government civilian in the province, he traveled widely with the provincial governor and U.S. Army maneuver elements, engaging thousands of Afghans at speeches and Shura (elders) meetings across the province.  Prior to that tour, Mr. Mason had previously traveled frequently to Afghanistan, beginning in January, 2002 on a variety of security-related projects.

 

He is currently also a Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies in Washington, DC, and serves as the South Asia Desk Officer for the Marine Corps Center for Advanced Culture Learning (CAOCL) in Quantico, Virginia, where he developed the Marine Corps’ classroom program and distance-learning training programs for Afghanistan, wrote the Afghanistan Deployer’s Cultural Guide, and trains Marines deploying to Afghanistan.

 

Mr. Mason served 23 years in the U.S. government as a Naval Officer and Foreign Service Officer. From 2001 to 2005, he was a policy officer on the Afghanistan Interagency Operations Group at the State Department and most recently served as the political officer on the Provincial Reconstruction Team in Paktika Province. He lectures regularly on Afghanistan and Counterinsurgency at Joint Special Operations University, the Naval Postgraduate School and the National Defense University, and teaches Afghan history, culture, and ethnography to military personnel deploying to Afghanistan at the Fort Bragg Special Operations Center, Fort Carson, Fort Drum, and other military posts. He holds a Master’s Degree in Military Studies, and is a PhD candidate in History at The George Washington University

 

Earlier Mr. Mason had been a Senior Research Fellow with the Program for Culture & Conflict Studies, at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.

 

 Mr. Mason currently lectures on ethnography and counterinsurgency in Afghanistan at the National Defense University, the Joint Special Operations University, Fort Bragg, RAND, DynCorps, and the Naval Postgraduate School.

 

In addition, he teaches a course on Counterinsurgency for the Master of Security Studies (MSS) program at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), and lectures on Afghanistan history, culture and the Taliban for the U.S. Army’s traveling Leadership Development and Education for Sustained Peacekeeping (LDESP) program which trains military personnel deploying to Afghanistan.

 

Prior to joining the Foreign Service in 1990, Mr. Mason served as a Peace Corps volunteer in South America from 1977-1979 and naval officer on active duty from 1981-1986, with tours as a gunnery officer (USS John Young, DD973), a forward observer (2d Battalion 12th Marines) and a naval gunfire officer (2d ANGLICO Airborne).  He earned Navy Master Parachutist wings, the Navy Achievement Medal, the Korea Defense Medal, the Humanitarian Service Medal, Zimbabwean Army parachute wings, the State Department Superior Honor Medal, and other awards.  He holds a Bachelor’s Degree from Carnegie Mellon University, a Master’s Degree in Military Studies from Marine Corps University, and is currently a PhD candidate in South Asian History at the George Washington University in Washington, DC.

 

The fact that Mr. Mason “served on the CIA’s Pashtun Red Cell” is of interest. In a long (11-page) article in the U.S. News and World Report, David Kaplan had reported on the “Red Cell” as follows:

 

 Twice each week, a top-secret report with distinctive red stripes lands on the desks of select policymakers in Washington. Called the “Red Cell,” it is the work of a CIA unit by the same name, set up after the 9/11 attacks to think “outside the box.” “Some of it is really wacky, even scary,” says an insider. “Like bombing Iran.” The “Red Cell,” in a very real sense, is emblematic of the trouble the U.S. intelligence community finds itself in today. Its reports, in-house critics say, are getting stale. “There’s not a lot of young blood,” an analyst says, “and there’s not enough turnover.”

 

In the light of this background the fact that Mr. Mason admits to having “served on” the C.I.A. Red Cell is not without significance. Further, the revelation that there was a “Pashtun Red Cell” raises questions about what kind of “outside the box” thinking Mr. Mason and his friends have been engaged in on the Pashtuns? If bombing Iran was not off the table for Red Cell thinkers, then certainly creating Pashtunistan (or balkanising Pakistan) would not be off the agenda either.

 

Mr. Mason’s close links to the intelligence community are plainly spelt out in his speaker’s introduction at a Jamestown Foundation event (on “Waziristan and the Uzbeks”) held on 6 June 2007:

 

While at the State Department, he worked closely with the intelligence community on a number of classified projects involving tribal mapping and the tribes of Afghanistan and the FATA, and served on the CIA’s Pashtun Red Cell.

 

The introduction also states that in March 2007 Mr. Mason had visited Quetta, Peshawar and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in Pakistan.

 

Finally, there seems to be more to the Turkish press coverage—especially in scandalising Çonger’s marriage to an American, with alleged C.I.A. links, on the one hand, and her position at the controversial Taraf newspaper, on the other; Taraf is (1) suspected of being funded by Fethullah Gülen (a moderate observant Muslim living in self-exile in the United States), and (2) accused of being staunchly pro-AKP (Adalet ve Kalk?nma Partisi, or Justice and Development Party, of the President  and the Prime Minister), and (3) of being anti-military.

 

 

 

The FBI’s Fishy Story on Killing Tsarnaev’s Friend

 

May 31, 2013

by Matthew Rothschild

The Progressive

 

This story always smelled a little fishy to me

 

I’m talking about the FBI’s killing of Ibragim Todashev, the Chechen down in Florida who was a friend of Tamerlan Tsarnaev. When he was fatally shot by an FBI agent on May 22 while being questioned by several law enforcement officers, we were told that he had lunged at an agent with a knife or tried to grab the agent’s weapon.

 

Well, now it turns out he didn’t have a knife, according to the Washington Post. (And the excuse “he lunged for my weapon” is one of the most common police lies in the book.)

 

Now I’m prepared to believe that Todashev was no angel. The FBI said he confessed to involvement with Tamerlan Tsarnaev in a triple murder in Waltham, Massachussets, on September 11, 2011.

 

But Todashev, like everyone here in the United States, was supposed to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. Yet he was never charged and never faced trial. Instead, he was fatally shot seven times while unarmed.

 

And now we’ll never know for sure what involvement he had, or Tsarnaev had, in that triple murder or whether he, too, was involved somehow in the Boston marathon bombings.

 

But the larger point is simply this: Too many people in our country die at the hands of law enforcement every year.

 

And the excuses are often lame, as they appear to be in this case.

Point-Blank Shot Killed Friend of Alleged Boston Bomber – Father

May 30, 2013

by Alexey Eremenko

RIA Novosti

 

          MOSCOW, The father of Ibragim Todashev, who was shot to death last week by US authorities while being questioned about the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, said Thursday that his son was killed with a point-blank shot to the head, raising even more questions about an already murky case.

 

“He was questioned for eight hours,” Abdulbaki Todashev told reporters in Moscow. “Then they shot him, six times in the body and once in the head.”

 

The May 22 shooting death has been cloaked in mystery, with US media raising questions early on about officials’ use of lethal force – a concern echoed by the dead man’s father.

 

“They could have wounded him, in the leg or the shoulder. But this is a killing with a ‘control shot,’” Todashev said, using the Russian phrase for a point-blank shot used by hit men to ensure their victim is dead. He also showed reporters photographs of what looked like his son’s bullet-riddled body, including one of a bullet wound to the head.

 

“I’ve only seen things like that in movies,” he said in an even, almost detached tone.

 

 The FBI has said it is conducting an investigation into the incident. In emailed comments, Dave Couvetier, a spokesman for the FBI in the Orlando area, where the internal investigation is being handled, directed RIA Novosti to a Thursday statement on the FBI’s website saying the bureau would not comment on details of the case until the ongoing internal review is wrapped up. It gave no time frame. On the day of the shooting, law enforcement officials had been questioning the younger Todashev at his home in Orlando, Florida, both about his relationship with Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the older of the suspected marathon bombers, and an unsolved 2011 triple murder in a Boston suburb. One of the victims had reportedly been a close friend of Tsarnaev’s and investigators were trying to piece together whether Tsarnaev and Todashev had been involved in the killing.

 

According to early media reports, including one in the New York Times, unnamed law enforcement officials said Ibragim Todashev had admitted to carrying out the murder with Tsarnaev, but then went “off the deep end” and attacked the investigators with an unidentified object – “a knife or a pipe or something” – and was killed before writing a confession.

 

The Washington Post, also citing unnamed law enforcement sources, reported Wednesday that Todashev had been unarmed.

 

The elder Todashev said Ibragim had never mentioned the murder case to him.

 

Ibragim, a 27-year-old native of Russia’s Chechnya region who had lived in America since 2008, met the bombing suspects, fellow ethnic Chechens Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, in Boston, where he used to live, the father told reporters. (Earlier media reports had only linked Ibragim to Tamerlan.)

 

The three were mixed martial arts enthusiasts and used the same gym, but they were never close friends, the father said, adding that his son was a devout Muslim but not a fundamentalist.

 

Ibragim had never believed that the Tsarnaevs were behind the Boston bombings, which killed three and injured over 200 in April, his father said.

 

Abdulbaki Todashev also complained that the FBI had not provided his family with any information about Ibragim’s death. The photos he showed at the press conference, which seem to have been taken in a morgue or funeral home, had been obtained through contacts in United States, Todashev said.

 

He offered conflicting explanations for the shooting, first saying the law enforcement agents may have wanted to rob Ibragim and then speculating that they may have wanted to silence him for an unspecified reason.

 

“They are bandits, not FBI agents,” he said. He questioned the reasons for shooting his son in the back of the head, though stopped short of explicitly saying the agents deliberately killed him.

 

A US Islamic group called Thursday for an official investigation into the killing, saying it planned to file a formal complaint with the US Department of Justice.

 

The Todashevs fled war-torn Chechnya in the 1990s, settling in Russia’s Saratov region, a thousand kilometers to the north. They moved back to the Chechen capital Grozny in 2008, said the father, who now works in the city administration.

 

Ibragim Todashev, the eldest of 12 siblings, obtained permanent residency in the United States last March, his father said, adding that Ibragim was due to fly back to Russia for his first visit since 2008 on May 24.

 

The Army’s multibillion dollar ‘money pit’

May 29, 2013

by Austin Wright 

Politico

 

 The Army calls its battlefield intelligence network a major high-tech breakthrough.

 

Three soldiers, who have used it routinely in Afghanistan, say it’s a dud — a multibillion-dollar dud.

 

“It is a huge, bloated, excessively expensive money pit,” said an Army reservist recently back from the war zone.

 

In the ongoing, high-stakes battle over the intelligence software, the three soldiers, who have been making the rounds in Washington to air their grievances, shared their experiences using the intelligence network with POLITICO on the condition they not be identified, saying they were risking their careers by meeting with a reporter.

 

“There’s a lot I could lose if someone were to find out,” said an Army intelligence analyst. “I’m still junior in my career.”

 

Their testimonials are the latest wrinkle in a long-simmering dispute over the intelligence network, which is designed to process and analyze intelligence collected anywhere from the battlefield on up to unmanned surveillance drones and weather satellites.

 

The dispute involves four key players:

 

Top Army commanders, who are determined to develop an in-house intelligence network, the Distributed Common Ground System. The system, they say, incorporates lessons learned in the wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, about the need to share information across the military services and government agencies.

 

Junior-level soldiers who have reached out to members of Congress and journalists to blow the whistle on what they consider a massive blunder: an intelligence network in DCGS-A that’s favored by Army brass but too complicated and unreliable to be actually useful in remote locations in Afghanistan.

 

Palantir Technologies, the California-based maker of a competing intelligence system that has received rave reviews from soldiers in the field for its ease of use. The company has enlisted top lobbyists in its effort to equip units in Afghanistan with its software, despite concerns about the product’s ability to conform to the Army’s standards for interoperability.

 

And Rep. Duncan Hunter, the former Marine turned Republican congressman from California who’s waging war against an Army bureaucracy he says is blind to realities on the ground in Afghanistan. Hunter has accused the service of making it difficult for soldiers to get their hands on Palantir’s software and of altering an internal report that initially recommended expanded use of the commercial product, as POLITICO has previously reported.

 

In particular, the dispute offers a case study in an age-old military phenomenon: Top commanders and grunts downrange experience war differently — and sometimes have differing views on which technologies work best in battle.

 

Commanders, often far removed from the action on the ground, have a number of competing interests — in this case, the need to build an interoperable intelligence network to serve the Army for decades to come versus the need to analyze intelligence gleaned from the battlefield here and now.

 

The grunts are mainly concerned about the here and now.

 

“It’s unconscionable for an officer to force-feed you something that doesn’t work,” the junior intelligence analyst told POLITICO.

 

On Capitol Hill, Hunter has been pressing the same argument, saying the Army has prioritized an intelligence system that won’t be fully operational for several years over one that works well now.

 

The congressman is laying the groundwork for a legislative push that represents a major threat to the sprawling DCGS-A network, which pulls intelligence from more than 600 sources — maps and weather reports, plus intelligence assessments and the locations of past explosions of improved explosive devices, among other data points.

 

A member of the House Armed Services Committee, Hunter is crafting a bill that would require an independent review of DCGS-A — and could lead to cuts in funding for elements of the system deemed inadequate. He plans to introduce it as an amendment during the upcoming debate over the annual National Defense Authorization Act, according to his spokesman, Joe Kasper.

 

Other lawmakers are taking note.

 

Last year’s National Defense Authorization Act, for instance, ordered a review of DCGS-A.

 

And Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) brought up the system’s deficiencies during a Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee hearing last week. “It is my understanding that due to the large bandwidth requirements of DCGS-A that soldiers deployed in forward operating bases in Afghanistan are having difficulty using the system,” he said.

 

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno, who was testifying, responded that the service is moving to a “cloud” model, which he said would “really tackle the bandwidth problem.” The timeline? It’ll be up and running “in the next year and a half or so,” Odierno said.

 

“DCGS-A has fundamentally changed how we do intelligence,” the general added. “When I was a division commander in 2003 in Iraq, I had less intelligence than we now get down to company commanders in Afghanistan.”

 

At the Pentagon, officials have been stepping up their efforts to garner support for DCGS-A, waging a charm offensive ahead of Hunter’s legislative push. Earlier this month, the service held a media event, which POLITICO did not attend, at Fort Belvoir, Va., where soldiers demonstrated how the system works and answered questions about it.

 

“For every soldier you say has a complaint, I can probably show you 100 soldiers who have just used it and don’t have any complaints about it,” said Army spokesman Lt. Col. Jerome Pionk, who responded point-by-point to complaints made by the three soldiers who have used DCGS-A in the field.

 

“DCGS-A enables decision-makers to save lives, right now, every day,” Pionk told POLITICO. “There’s no way in hell we’re going to be able to please everybody all the time.”

 

But the three soldiers who discussed their experiences using DCGS-A with POLITICO described the system as unwieldy and unreliable, hard to learn and difficult to use.

 

All three had used Palantir’s software, which can be made available to Army units when specifically requested by commanders in the field, and said it’s an intuitive system that allows soldiers to quickly find real-world uses for battlefield intelligence.

 

“We had successes where intelligence that we developed [using Palantir] led to the interdiction of these guys carrying out IED attacks,” said an Army intelligence officer with more than two decades of experience.

 

The soldiers laid out a number of DCGS-A complaints:

 

The DCGS-A network crashes several times per shift, the soldiers charged. The system requires an 80-hour training course, they added, saying it only took them several hours to learn how to use Palantir. But, Pionk said, “The greatest computers in the world will crash from time to time in an environment like Afghanistan. Even Palantir crashes — I’ve seen that.”

 

Loading maps using DCGS-A requires a 15-to-20-step process, the soldiers said. In remote locations in Afghanistan, they explained, the instruction manuals available to intelligence analysts are often out of date — and require soldiers to push buttons that no longer exist in the most recent versions of the software. In response, Pionk said, “I know where to find any up-to-date instruction manual on any Army system almost instantaneously in Afghanistan.”

 

Often, the soldiers say, intelligence analysts in Afghanistan are asked to provide their commanders with maps of specific locations, along with information on the local populations and the locations of past IED attacks. “Using DCGS, it’s going to take a huge amount of time,” the Army reservist said.

 

The soldiers said Palantir’s software is much faster and provides more detailed analyses about the locations of past IED explosions — along with predictions of where future attacks might take place.

 

The soldiers also said officers in Afghanistan are “terrified” to provide honest feedback about DCGS-A to senior leaders. It’s clear, they said, top commanders are determined to move forward with DCGS-A despite its problems. “You have a whole bunch of senior leaders that have tied their careers to DCGS,” said the Army reservist. “It is a career-killer if you are caught talking about Palantir and how it’s the best thing,” added the junior intelligence analyst.

 

Pionk denied these claims, saying, “Other soldiers have gone through the proper channels to address their concerns.”

 

 Moreover, the Army’s top acquisitions chief, Heidi Shyu, has said she welcomes candid feedback regarding DCGS-A. In an interview in her Pentagon office last month, Shyu told POLITICO she went to Afghanistan in January to hear directly from soldiers in theater about their experiences using the system, among other technologies.

 

Shyu, the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, acknowledged the weaknesses of DCGS-A, including its cumbersome user interface, but said the Army is working to improve the system. She also said the Army is primarily interested in “open architecture” products in which the underlying software is accessible to the service and can be integrated into other systems in the network.

 

 “If you get rid of DCGS-A, you now have a very narrow stovepipe,” Shyu said, comparing the system to an iPhone and Palantir’s software to an iPhone application.

 

“We’re not fighting Palantir — in fact, quite the opposite,” she added, explaining that the Army entered into a cooperative research agreement with the company in May 2012 in an effort to explore options for incorporating Palantir into DCGS-A.

 

Regardless, she said, the Army has allowed units requesting Palantir to have it — to use in conjunction with DCGS-A.

 

But there have been four cases in which Army officials declined requests from commanders for the software, the service has said. In two cases, Army units were given additional training on DCGS-A and an upgrade to the system instead of software made by Palantir.

 

For its part, the California company has been pushing behind-the-scenes to get its product into the hands of service members, despite the Army’s concerns. The company has ramped up its Washington presence over the past year, having spent $270,000 on lobbying during the first three months of the year, according to records filed with the Senate, up from $200,000 during the last three months of 2012.

 

Palantir, which did not respond to repeated requests for comment, has retained several big-name lobby shops, including the law firm Patton Boggs.

 

Other contractors also have skin in the game.

 

A number of the world’s largest defense firms — including Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics — have a stake in DCGS-A, which the Army has spent billions of dollars developing, including its latest request for $267 million to support the system during the next fiscal year.

 

Another major player on the edge of the defense industry, IBM, makes a product called i2 Analyst’s Notebook that has been incorporated into DCGS-A to help intelligence analysts make sense of the system’s more than 600 sources of data.

 

“The Army, after a very close examination, chose this system for its capabilities,” said Christopher Padilla, IBM’s vice president for governmental programs. “Palantir lost that competition, and now what they’re trying to do is overturn an acquisition decision using anecdotal information.”

 

“The DCGS system, based on Analyst’s Notebook, is far more capable than the Palantir system,” Padilla added.

 

He described his competitor’s software as a “proprietary system” that “can’t easily communicate with other elements” of DCGS-A.

 

“Analyst’s Notebook,” he explained, “is deliberately built on an open architecture.”

 

Pionk, the Army spokesman, echoed that view. “We have no choice in using the open architecture standard,” he said.

 

But for soldiers in theater, the biggest concern is which system is better able to translate intelligence into immediate successes on the battlefield.

 

“We are constantly told what DCGS will be able to do,” said the experienced Army intelligence officer, “but not the here and now.”