Nabucco or South Stream, or South Pars...?

Despite the efforts to save energy a strong scenario for near future is that the quantity of gas needed in EU region will remain same as today if not bigger.  sources of gas are widely known the essential question is how the gas is arriving to European markets.  Environmental and technical aspects can be handled as well economical ones; the real battlefield is (geo) political and it’s much more effective than energy issue itself.

In today’s Europe the core of energy war is the struggle between South Stream and Nabucco pipe lines, which also is one of the most divisive issue inside EU.  The Brussels bureaucracy favour the Nabucco project, a transit route bypassing both Russia and Ukraine, while a part of EU member states, EU energy giants and gas producers are favouring Russia’s South Stream.

Latest developments

EU, Russia as well companies interested about gas business have all activated when decisions are needed to define the final route of gas to European markets.

a) EU     

The common factor with both pipelines is that they are eliminating Ukraine’s transit monopoly.  Publicly EU has probably due political motives planned update Ukraine’s gas pipeline network like during The International Investment Conference on March 23rd 2009 in Brussels. Russia has not been invited to discuss the terms of gas supplies to Europe via Ukraine's gas pipeline network for three years but Ukraine is hoping part of requested $5.5 bn modernization costs from EU in name of EU energy security. Gas buyers and transit operators may have their views, but the question still remains what they can buy and on which terms.  EU bureaucrats are making a fatal miscalculation if they are building energy infrastructure without source of energy itself.

The EU Commission has included the Nabucco pipeline in its list of priority projects,  despite pressure from Germany and Italy. But the EU cut its budget funding of the project by 20% getting some 200 million euros for first stage of the project.Nabucco is likely to rely heavily on subsidies from the EU. Several member countries questioned the economics of the project. 

The European Union and Turkey gave fresh political impetus on 8thMay 2009 in Prague to the Nabucco pipeline project, although key Central Asian gas suppliers held off on pledging their support. But it also needs gas, which may be a problem as Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan refused to sign the final declaration in Prague, unlike two other suppliers -- Azerbaijan and Egypt -- and two key transit nations -- Turkey and Georgia. But Mr Gul also made clear he expected some progress on Turkey's stalled EU membership talks.  Earlier Turkey’s premier, in a rare visit to Brussels on January 19, tested Europe’s reaction, saying that he will review his support for Nabucco if the Energy Chapter of its EU accession talks is blocked. “If we are faced with a situation where the energy chapter is blocked, we would of course review our position,” he said. (Neweurope 26 January 2009)The Declaration of Southern Corridor Summit here .

b) Russia

Russia has floated plans for a new global treaty on trade in fossil and nuclear fuel in an attempt to consign to history an earlier pact, the 1991 Energy Charter Treaty. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev unveiled the project during his state visit in Finland on 20th April 209. "Our task today is to maintain, or rather ensure for the future, the balance of producers of energy resources, transit states and consumers of energy resources," he said. The new pact is to cover oil, gas, nuclear fuel, coal and electricity and to include the US, China and India as well as European countries.

On 15th May 2009 four agreements shall be signed in Sochi: the national companies of Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria and Italy shall sign agreement with the Russian ‘Gazprom.  One of them is agreement between Serbia’s Srbijagas and Russia’s Gazprom on route of Southern Stream pipeline through Serbia with length about 450 kilometers.  There shall be also a fifth agreement – bilateral agreement between Russia and Italy, which shall be signed by the Prime Ministers of the two countries, Vladimir Putin and Silvio Berlusconi.  (Blic 13.5.2009)

c) Companies

The consortium behind the Nabucco now comprises six national energy companies: Botas (Turkey), Bulgargaz (Bulgaria), Transgaz (Romania), MOL (Hungary), OMV (Austria), and RWE (Germany). However on Jan. 25, 2008 OMV sealed a deal for a joint venture with Gazprom for extending Baumgarten’s storage and distribution capacity. Accordingly, Gazprom holds a 50 percent stake there.  Moreover, OMV has been buying into Hungary’s MOL. Considering Russia’s significant share in OMV, any amount of OMV ownership of MOL again translates into stakes for Russia’s energy giant. Even further challenging the Nabucco project is the fact that OMV and MOL, together with yet a third consortium member, Bulgargaz, have already signed up to Gazprom’s South Stream project.

Nabucco

The pipeline that the EU hopes will bring gas from the Caspian Sea to Austria takes its name from Giuseppe Verdi's 1842 opera, Nabucco. The work tells the story of the oppression and exile of Hebrew slaves by Nabucco, a Babylonian king, better known to the English world as Nebuchadnezzar. The opera deals with the eternal quest for freedom, but the choice of name may yet prove fateful for a project that is facing so many obstacles to its completion.   

The pipeline is supposed to transport around 30 billion cubic meters of gas annually. In terms of gas suppliers the project's backers have named Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan.  

However Turkmenistan's gas output is contracted to Russia up until 2028. Azerbaitzan also does not have the amounts required so as for the project to be profitable in the long run. The possibility of Iranian gas is far from realistic due to its nuclear program and the adamant denial by Israel and the opponent Sunni Arab states.  Nabucco is still counting on gas supplies from Azerbaijan despite a memorandum of understanding signed between Russia’s Gazprom and the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan SOCAR signed on March 30th 2009 clearly shows the growing interest of Azerbaijan in cooperation with Russia.

32 European countries are clients of Russia’s Gazprom.  Despite EU declarations and investment plans the US-backed Nabucco natural gas pipeline is dying a slow death. Even its strongest supporters have a hard time demonstrating its commercial viability. The risk for Nabucco is that if the supply and funding issues are not sorted out, the EU's dream of energy freedom will remain an aspiration rather than a reality.

South Stream    

Its planned route would run from the Russian Black Sea coast across the seabed to Bulgaria, then bifurcate into a southern branch to Greece and southern Italy and a northern branch into Serbia, Hungary, and Austria, with a potential detour to Slovenia and northern Italy.

Bulgaria and Hungary have both signed government agreements on joining South Stream. Austria is also in talks and has already agreed to sell Gazprom 50 percent of the shares in Baumgarten, the gas hub where Nabucco is supposed to end, while Turkey already operates a direct sub-marine pipeline linking it to Russia - Blue Stream.  Also Romania is open to investing in the Gazprom pipeline South Stream, not just the EU Nabucco project.

On December 2008, Russia and Serbia signed an umbrella agreement providing political guarantees that Serbia will receive a stretch of the South Stream gas pipeline and that the underground gas storage facility in Banatski Dvor will be finalized.  At the same time a 51 % stake of Serbian Oil Industry (NIS) was sold to Gazprom.Slovenia backed South Stream gas pipeline in the midst of a European gas crisis Jan. 2009 while Gazprom tried to secure pledges on the South Stream gas pipeline to Italy.  The Slovenian delegation said during the meeting the implementation of the South Stream project would both diversify the European energy sector and allow Russia to transit its gas without obstacles.  A portion of the pipeline would travel through Serbia and Hungary with options to include a leg through Slovenia to northern Italy.

In September 2008, Uzbekistan and Russia agreed to build a new pipeline with a capacity of 26 to 30 billion cubic meters (bcm) annually to pump Uzbek and Turkmen gas to Europe. Such a pipeline will again undermine the US efforts to pump trans-Caspian energy routes bypassing Russia.

The technical and economic assessment of the land where the pipeline will lie is planned to be completed by the end of 2009, while the assessment of facility's underground stretches should be finished in early 2010.  Russia's Gazprom plans to start gas deliveries to Europe through the future South Stream pipeline no later than 2015.

Iran

However, the whole situation is good for Iran. Some experts believe that without Iran the “Nabucco” project will remain unimplemented, while its participation could give an impulse to the process.  Iran has the  largest gas reserves in the world after Russia  and Turkmenistan (27,5 trillion cubic meters, or 18% of the world's gas reserves and 33% of that of the OPEC).

But is there gas coming from Iran?  Iran uses the lion's share of produced gas (360 million cubic meters daily) for civil purposes. By the year 2014 Tehran plans to provide gas to 93% of the population of 630 cities and to 18% of the rural population in more than 4,000 villages. Iran's factories and electric power plants also need much gas. Another share of the produced gas Iran has to inject into its reserves to keep oil production at a high level (experts say this help Iran increase output by more than 30%). Iran has long been enjoying infrastructure for oil exports but yet has not such for exporting gas.

On February 21st 2009 the Iranian and Turkmeni governments signed an agreement that will give Iran the rights to develop the Yolotan gas field in Turkmenistan. The deal will help Iran resolve gas supply problems in its north-eastern provinces. Turkmenistan will sell Iran an additional 350 billion cubic feet of gas annually, more than doubling current supplies of almost 300 bcf a year, according to the agreement first disclosed by Iran’s official media and later confirmed by Turkmenistan.

 

Iran also recently offered to invest $1.7 billion for a 10 percent stake in the second phase of Azerbaijan’s huge Shah-Deniz gas field which will come on line by 2014. Iran already has a 10 percent share in the first phase and it wants to import large volumes of gas from the Azeri field. For Iran, the deals couldn’t be better suited to its objectives. It’s economically unviable currently to supply gas to its isolated, north-eastern third of the country. Getting gas from Turkmenistan would therefore make more Iranian gas available for export to Turkey. Also, connecting both Caspian countries to Iran via pipeline would allow Tehran to accomplish its long-held objective of transiting any gas production increases from its neighbours to customers in Europe, the Persian Gulf, or Asia.

Turkmenistan

Preliminary indications are the gas reserves in Turkmenistan is around 38.4 TCM – far more than Iran and just 20% lower than Russia. The biggest gas field discovery was in October 2008 – called the Yoloten Osman deposits. It is located near the Afghan – Turkmenistan border. Turkmenistan has contracts to supply Russia with 50 bcm annually, China with 40 bcm and Iran with 8 bcm annually. The Russian energy giant Gazprom requires this Turkmen gas to meet its export obligations in the European market, which accounts for 70% of the its total revenue. Gazprom sells 2/3 of Russia’s 550 bcm annual gas production in the rapidly growing domestic market. This compels it to secure Turkmen supplies to meet contracted European demands.

Nabucco vs. South Stream

Gazprom has received an invitation to join the Nabucco pipeline project to pump gas from Central Asia to Europe, but will not take up the offer, a deputy head of Russia’s energy giant said. In an interview with Vesti TV on Monday, Alexander Medvedev said Gazprom would stick with its South Stream project and stay out of Nabucco. “Unlike in the case of Nabucco, we have everything we need for this project [South Stream] to materialize,” he said. “We have gas, the market, experience in implementing complex projects, and corporate management.”

The Nabucco route does circumvent Ukraine, but it is from Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan, goes under Caspian Sea, passes across Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Georgia. So many countries in pipeline are creating multiple political risk compared to South Stream which goes from Russia under Black Sea directly to EU zone.  Besides, Nabucco is going to lack the resource base adequate to its transit capacities unless the project is joined, for example, by Iran, but this is politically problematic.

The shareholders of the Nabucco consortium are: Botas (Turkey), Bulgargaz (Bulgaria), MOL (Hungary), OMV(Austria), RWE(Germany) and Transgaz (Romania).  OMV, MOL and Bulgargaz have also signed up to South Stream pipeline, which bypasses Turkey. It is unrealistic to think that both South Stream and Nabucco will happen, but companies  want to make sure at least one of them happens and be part of that.

The current timeframe, assuming that the outstanding issues are resolved, is that Nabucco would come on-stream in 2013, two years after Nord Stream, the planned Baltic pipeline, which has already secured both supplies and finance for the construction work.

Some geopolitical aspects

The EU's new "southern corridor" has been dubbed a version of U.S. "Silk Road Strategy" aimed to block Russia from gas fields around Caspian Sea and its connection to Iran (More in my article "Is GUUAM dead?).   The South Pars natural gas field brings a new element to change original U.S. plan as it is a sign of a long-term energy alliance between Moscow and Tehran and with active participation of the EU. Turkey and Armenia may be join the project as transit countries. Naturally, this leaves Washington very few chances to lobby its energy projects in the region aimed at using Azerbaijan and Georgia as the so-called 'Caucasus communication corridor'.

In addition Russia, Iran and Qatar have taken the decision to form a "big gas troika".  The idea is that three countries - with 60 % of global gas reserves - will work on joint projects accross the entire gas chain from geological exploration and production to distributionand marketing gas. Alexey Miller – Head of Gazprom - stated at the end of the meeting that “we are united by the world’s largest gas reserves, common strategic interests and, which is very important, high potential for cooperation within tripartite projects.

There is also a question about Turkey.  The South Stream pipeline will run from Russia directly to Bulgaria across the Black Sea. Russia is diversifying its gas supply routes so as not to depend on one transport hub. It might perhaps be cheaper to build the new pipeline along existing route of the Blue Stream, which crosses the Black Sea from Russia to Turkey, than to lay a new route on the seabed. This, however, would increase the aggregate capacity of the two streams to about 48 billion cubic meters, giving the Turks a great deal of influence on Russian supplies.Russia and the EU countries do not want this to happen.  On the other side Greece, which is taking part in the construction of an oil pipeline from Burgas in Bulgaria to Alexandroupolis, has announced its readiness to join the South Stream project. This makes sense, as apart from bringing economic dividends it will make Greece an international energy hub on a par with Turkey.

Bottom line

In conclusion EC is pushing imaginary project of Nabucco pipes with support of drowning USA who’s last straw of Silk Road blocking strategy Nabucco is.  EU countries as well non-member states are pushing national interests;  Iran, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan are looking the best deal, Russia tries keep domination of gas markets and secure the resources, EU companies are playing with two cards to secure being with winners side and EP of course is bystander...

Oil optimism relying on fudged statistics...

Oil optimism relying on fudged statistics...By Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed

Headlines about 2012's World Energy Outlook (WEO) from the International Energy Agency (IEA), released mid-November, would lead you to think we are literally swimming in oil.

The report forecasts that the United States will outstrip Saudi Arabia as the world's largest oil producer by 2017, becoming "all but self-sufficient in net terms" in energy production - a notion reported almost verbatim by media agencies worldwide, from BBC News to Bloomberg. Going even further, Damien Carrington, Head of Environment at the Guardian, titled his blog: "IEA report reminds us peak oil idea has gone up in flames."

The IEA report's general conclusions have been echoed by several other reports this year. Exxon Mobil's 2013 Energy Outlook projects that demand for gas will grow by 65% through 2040, with 20% of worldwide production from North America, mostly from unconventional sources. The shale gas revolution will make the United States a net exporter by 2025, it concludes. The US National Intelligence Council also predicts US energy independence by 2030.

This past summer saw a similar chorus of headlines around the release of a Harvard University report by Leonardo Maugeri, a former executive with the Italian oil major Eni. "We were wrong on peak oil," read environmentalist George Monbiot's Guardian headline. "There's enough to fry us all."

Monbiot's piece echoed a spate of earlier stories. In the preceding month, the BBC had asked "Shortages: Is 'Peak Oil' Idea Dead?" The Wall Street Journal pondered, "Has Peak Oil Peaked?", while the New York Time's leading environmental columnist, Andrew Revkin, took "A Fresh Look At Oil's Long Goodbye".

The gist of all this is that "peak oil" is now nothing but an irrelevant meme, out of touch with the data, and soundly disproven by the now self-evident abundance of cheap unconventional oil and gas.

Burning our bridges
On the one hand, it's true: there are more than enough fossil fuels in the ground to drive an accelerated rush to the most extreme scenarios of climate catastrophe.

The increasing shift from conventional to unconventional forms of oil and gas - tar sands, oil shale, and especially shale gas - heralds an unnerving acceleration of carbon emissions, rather than the deceleration promised by those who advocate shale as a clean 'bridge fuel' to renewables. According to the CO2 Scorecard Group, contrary to industry claims, shale gas "cannot be credited" with US emissions reductions over the last half-decade. Nearly 90% of reductions, says the group, "were caused by decline in petroleum use" and the "displacement of coal" by "non-price factors" rather than shale, and coal's "replacement by wind, hydro, and other renewables."

To make matters worse, where natural gas saved 50 million tonnes of carbon by substituting coal generation due its lower price, it generated 66 million additional tonnes across the commercial, residential, and industrial sectors.

In fact, studies show that when methane leakages are incorporated into an assessment of shale gas' CO2 emissions, natural gas could even surpass coal in terms of overall climate impact. As for tar sands and oil shales, emissions are 1.2 to 1.75 times higher than for conventional oil. No wonder the IEA's chief economist, Fatih Birol, remarked pessimistically that "the world is going in the wrong direction in terms of climate change."

But while the new evidence roundly puts to rest the "doomer" scenarios advocated by staunch "peak oil" pessimists, the global energy predicament is far more complicated.

Scaling the peak
Delving deeper into the available data shows that we are already in the throes of a global energy transition in which the age of cheap oil is well and truly over. For most serious analysts, far from signifying a world running out of oil, "peak oil" refers simply to the point when, due to a combination of below-ground geological constraints and above-ground economic factors, oil becomes increasingly and irreversibly more difficult and expensive to produce.

That point is now. US Energy Information Administration (EIA) data confirms that despite the United States producing a "total oil supply" of 10 million barrels per day (up by 2.1 mbd since January 2005), world crude oil production remains on the largely flat, undulating plateau it has been on since it stopped rising that very year at around 74 million barrels per day (mbd).

According to John Hofmeister, former president of Shell Oil, "flat production for the most part" over the past decade has dovetailed with annual decline rates for existing fields of about "4 to 5 million bpd". Combined with "constant growing demand" from China and emerging markets, he argues, this will underpin higher oil prices for the foreseeable future.

The IEA's WEO actually corroborates this picture, but the devil is in the largely overlooked details. First, the main reason US oil production will overtake Saudi Arabia and Russia is because their output is projected to decline, not rise as previously assumed. So while US output creeps up from 10 to 11 mbd in 2025, post-peak Saudi output will fall to 10.6 mbd and Russia to 9.5 mbd.

Second, the report's projected increase in "oil production" from 84 mbd in 2011 to 97 mbd in 2035 comes not from conventional oil, but "entirely from natural gas liquids and unconventional sources" - with conventional crude oil output (excluding light tight oil) fluctuating between 65 mbd and 69 mbd, never quite reaching the historic peak of 70 mbd in 2008 and falling by 3 mbd sometime after 2012. The IEA also does not forecast a return to the cheap oil heyday of the pre-2000 era, but rather a long-term price rise to about $125 per barrel by 2035.

Finally, oil prices would be much higher if not for the fact that governments are heavily subsidizing fossil fuels. The WEO revealed that fossil fuel subsidies increased 30% to $523 billion in 2011, masking the threat of high prices.

Therefore, world conventional oil production is already on a fluctuating plateau and we are increasingly dependent on more expensive unconventional sources. The age of cheap oil abundance is over.

Fudging figures
But there are further reasons for concern. For how reliable is the IEA's data? In a series of investigations for the Guardian and Le Monde, Lionel Badal exposed in 2009 how key data was deliberately fudged at the IEA under US pressure to artificially inflate official reserve figures. Not only that, but Badal later discovered that as early as 1998, extensive IEA data exploding assumptions of "sustained economic growth and low unemployment" had been systematically suppressed for political reasons according to several whistleblowers.

With the IEA's research under such intense US political scrutiny and interference for 12 years, its findings should perhaps not always be taken at face value.

The same goes, even more so, for Maugeri's celebrated Harvard report. By any meaningful standard, this was hardly an independent analysis of oil industry data. Funded by two oil majors - Eni and British Petroleum (BP) - the report was not peer-reviewed, and contained a litany of elementary errors. So egregious are these errors that Dr. Roger Bentley, an expert at the UK Energy Research Centre, told ex-BBC financial journalist David Strahan that "Mr Maugeri's report misrepresents the decline rates established by major studies, [and] it contains glaring mathematical errors... I am astonished Harvard published it."

What the scientists say
In contrast to the blaring media attention generated by Maugeri's report, three peer-reviewed studies published in reputable science journals in the first half of 2012 offered a less than jubilant perspective.

A paper published in Nature by Sir David King, the UK's former chief government scientist, found that despite reported increases in oil reserves and tar sands, natural gas, and shale gas production, depletion of the world's existing fields is still running at 4.5% to 6.7% per year. They firmly dismissed notions that a shale gas boom would avert an energy crisis, noting that production at shale gas wells drops by as much as 60 to 90% in the first year of operation. The paper received little, if any, media fanfare.

In March, King's team at Oxford University's Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment published another peer-reviewed paper in Energy Policy, concluding that the industry had overstated world oil reserves by about a third. Estimates should be downgraded from 1,150-1,350 billion barrels to 850-900 billion barrels.

"While there is certainly vast amounts of fossil fuel resources left in the ground," the authors argued, "the volume of oil that can be commercially exploited at prices the global economy has become accustomed to is limited and will soon decline." The study was largely blacked out in the media (except for a solitary report in the Telegraph, to its credit).

In June - the same month as Maugeri's deeply flawed analysis - Energy published an extensive analysis of oil industry data by US financial risk analyst Gail Tverberg, who found that since 2005, "world [conventional] oil supply has not increased". He argued that this was "a primary cause of the 2008-2009 recession" and that the "expected impact of reduced oil supply" will mean the "financial crisis may eventually worsen."

But all the media attention was on the oil man's oil-funded report. Tverberg's peer-reviewed study in a reputable science journal, with its somewhat darker message, was ignored.

What happens when the shale boom goes boom?
These scientific studies are not the only indications that something is deeply wrong with the IEA's assessment of prospects for shale gas production and accompanying economic prosperity. Indeed, Business Insider reports that far from being profitable, the shale gas industry is facing huge financial hurdles.

"The economics of fracking are horrid," observes US financial journalist Wolf Richter. "Production falls off a cliff from day one and continues for a year or so until it levels out at about 10% of initial production."

The result is that "drilling is destroying capital at an astonishing rate, and drillers are left with a mountain of debt just when decline rates are starting to wreak their havoc. To keep the decline rates from mucking up income statements, companies had to drill more and more, with new wells making up for the declining production of old wells. Alas, the scheme hit a wall, namely reality."

Just a few months ago, Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson complained that the lower prices resulting from the US natural gas glut were dramatically decreasing profits. This problem is compounded by the swiftly plummeting production rates at shale wells, which start high but fall fast. Although Exxon had officially insisted in shareholder meetings that it was not losing money on gas, Tillerson candidly told a meeting at the Council on Foreign Relations: "We are all losing our shirts today. We're making no money. It's all in the red."

The oil industry has actively and deliberately attempted to obscure the challenges facing shale gas production. A seminal New York Times investigation in 2011 found that despite a public stance of extreme optimism, the US oil industry is "privately skeptical of shale gas". According to the Times, "the gas may not be as easy and cheap to extract from shale formations deep underground as the companies are saying, according to hundreds of industry e-mails and internal documents and an analysis of data from thousands of wells."

The emails revealed industry executives, lawyers, state geologists and market analysts voicing "skepticism about lofty forecasts" and questioning "whether companies are intentionally, and even illegally, overstating the productivity of their wells and the size of their reserves". Though corroborated by independent studies, such revelations have been largely ignored by journalists and policymakers.

But we ignore them at our peril. Arthur Berman, a 32-year veteran petroleum geologist who worked with Amoco (prior to its merger with BP), on the same day as the release of the IEA's 2012 annual report, told OilPrice that "the decline rates shale reservoirs experience... are incredibly high."

Citing the Eagleford shale - the "mother of all shale oil plays" - he pointed out that the "annual decline rate is higher than 42%". Just to keep production flat, oil companies will have to drill "almost 1000 wells in the Eagleford shale, every year... Just for one play, we're talking about $10 or $12 billion a year just to replace supply. I add all these things up and it starts to approach the amount of money needed to bail out the banking industry. Where is that money going to come from?"

Chesapeake Energy recently found itself in exactly this situation, forcing it to sell assets to meet its obligations. "Staggering under high debt," reported the Washington Post, Chesapeake said "it would sell $6.9 billion of gas fields and pipelines - another step in shrinking the company whose brash chief executive had made it a leader in the country's shale gas revolution." The sale was forced by a "combination of low natural gas prices and excessive borrowing".

The worst-case scenario is that several large oil companies find themselves facing financial distress simultaneously. If that happens, according to Berman, "you may have a couple of big bankruptcies or takeovers and everybody pulls back, all the money evaporates, all the capital goes away. That's the worst-case scenario."

To make matters worse, Berman has shown conclusively that the industry exaggerated the estimated ultimate recovery (EURs) of shale wells using flawed industry models that, in turn, have fed into the IEA's future projections. Berman is not alone. Writing in Petroleum Review, US energy consultants Ruud Weijermars and Crispian McCredie argued there remains strong "basis for reasonable doubts about the reliability and durability of US shale gas reserves", which have been "inflated" under new Security & Exchange Commission rules.

The eventual consequences of the current gas glut, in other words, are more than likely to be an unsustainable shale bubble that collapses under its own weight, precipitating a supply collapse and price spike. Rather than fuelling prosperity, the shale revolution will instead boost a temporary recovery masking deeper, structural instabilities. Inevitably, those instabilities will collide, leaving us with an even bigger financial mess, on a faster trajectory toward costly environmental destruction.

So when is crunch time? According to a recent report from the New Economics Foundation, the arrival of "economic peak oil" - when the cost of supply "exceeds the price economies can pay without significantly disrupting economic activity" - will be around 2014 or 2015.

Black gold, it would seem, is not the answer to our problems.

Dr Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development and chief research officer at Unitas Communications Ltd where he leads on geopolitical risk. His latest book is A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save It (2010), which inspired the award-winning documentary feature film, The Crisis of Civilization (2011). 

 

Le problème fondamental de la franc-maçonnerie en politique...

Le problème fondamental de la franc-maçonnerie en politique...

 

C'est qu'en définitive, elle ne saurait ni constituer par ce qu'elle représente le moindre apport authentique d'énergie spirituelle à une nation sous sa coupe, ni non plus tolérer qu'autrui le fasse.
Elle ne peut donc que poser une chappe de plomb sur toutes ses forces vives et l'accompagner dans un lent et inexorable déclin jusqu'à son extinction finale; du moins, si on lui en donne l'opportunité.

En ce sens, elle se comporte comme une de ces espèces parasites opportunistes qui en viennent à contrôler le système nerveux d'un hôte infesté.

En France, pays dont elle s'est emparée par l'usage arbitraire de la force (ce qu'elle reprochait à ses adversaires), à ce qui ressembla à s'y méprendre à un recours en masse aux sacrifices humains, la franc-maçonnerie aura accompagné un long déclin du rayonnement du pays, et sa politique de colonisation, toujours active aujourd'hui, visant à assurer le rayonnement de ses intérêts maffieux et de ses "valeurs" à l'étranger, triste
substitut au rabais de ses guerres de conquête révolutionnaires, ne saurait rien y changer.


Certaines raisons permettent d'expliquer cet état de fait. Serait-ce... la nature fondamentalement égoïste et égocentrique
de sa philosophie politique (le fameux "tout pour les "frères")? Son obsession pour la dissimulation de son importance véritable et de ses mécanismes d'action, phénomène qui, de par ses proportions, frise l'adoration de Satan, célèbre dieu du mensonge? Ou bien sa lutte sans merci (c'est-à-dire sans miséricorde - sans mesure ni compassion) contre toutes les
formes de spiritualité vivante, qu'elle tente de déguiser en laïcité? Son goût pour la pensée unique, si apparent dans
ces faux débats permanents occupant tout l'espace, organisés entre les tendances politiques qu'elle instrumentalise? Car
cette secte totalitaire n'aime point la concurrence.


Qui fut le dernier dirigeant non maçon de la France? Ce fut un certain Charles de Gaulle. Si l'on sourit aujourd'hui parce du fait que certaines formes de son expression ont pu parfois vieillir, il n'en reste pas moins que quand il en a eu l'occasion, il a su insuffler un sacré élan à un pays pourtant moribond...

Nicaragua to Build $30 Billion Waterway to Rival Panama Canal...

 

By James Burgess |

 

The 51 mile Panama Canal was built back in 1914 to offer ships a faster route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Five percent of the annual world trade passes through the canal, more than one million ships since 1914, which last year helped generate $1 billion for Panama in 2011.
Nicaragua was considering the construction of its own canal, until Panama beat them to it, however once again the rumours of a Nicaraguan Canal are surfacing, with countries such as China, Russia, Brazil, and Japan, willing to invest $30 billion in order to develop another route between the Atlantic and Pacific. The Nicaraguan government hopes that the waterway will promote foreign investment and development in the country, which is the second poorest in the Americas, after Haiti.
Eden Pastor, the leader of the project, has said that his team has “had talks with Japan, China, Russia, Venezuela, Brazil and South Korea and everyone is interested” in contributing to the $30 billion plan.
On Tuesday the Nicaraguan President, Daniel Ortega, submitted a draft bill for consideration which detailed six potential routes for the new canal, one of which would pass through the San Juan river on the border of Costa Rica.
At the moment the Panama Canal is in the middle of a $5.25 billion project designed to expand its size and allow for larger ships, but the Nicaraguan Canal will be built even wider and deeper in order to accommodate the largest ships that wish to pass through...

Rare earth metals are quickly becoming the next important strategic resource.

Rare earth metals are quickly becoming the next important strategic resource.

Rare earth metals (REM) are increasingly becoming a critical strategic resource. The 17 elements can be found in most high-tech gadgets, from advanced military technology to mobile phones. China currently holds claim to over 90 percent of the world’s production. As global demand increases, Beijing’s export reductions in recent years have forced high-tech firms to relocate to China and forced other governments to pour money into their exploration and production. An emergent India is among those concerned about China’s control of rare earths. In the past 12 months, the geopolitics of rare earths has become evident. REMs are becoming a strategic resource over which the two emerging giants are competing in Asia. Indeed, one might say rare earths are fast becoming “the next oil.”
The name, rare earth metal, is a misnomer. The metals are, in fact, far more abundant than many precious minerals. Yet their dispersion means they are rarely found in economically viable quantities. The similarity of chemical properties of the 17 REMs, demonstrated by their close proximity on the periodic table, makes them very difficult to separate. Their extraction is capital- and skill- intensive. End uses for REMs are varied but recent figures cited by the U.S. Geological Survey noted that in the U.S. the end use was predominantly for battery alloys, ceramics and magnets, sectors that are continuing to grow to cater for high-tech industry. The extent to which REM’s are used in defense technology is such that without their production modern warfare—fighter jets, drones, and most computer-controlled equipment—would have to undertake a lengthy process of redevelopment. A sovereign monopoly of such a resource is therefore a serious concern for any nation.
Two decades ago, Deng Xiaoping, the former leader of the Communist Party of China, noted the importance of REMs, “The Middle East has oil and China has rare earth,” he said in 1992. His foresight was impressive. China holds half of the world’s deposits of REMs, 55 megatons (Mt), according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Not counting countries comprising the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the U.S. holds the next largest national reserves with approximately 13Mt. India, on the other hand, has a mere 3.1Mt of estimated reserves. Continued cuts in China’s exports have led to a scramble for production, as other countries realize their reliance on China’s resources. Propelled by increasing demand and a need for self-sufficiency to provide for growing industry demands, India plans to triple its output by 2017.
In 2010, China halted shipments of REMs to Japan for two months following a diplomatic crisis, crippling high-tech manufacturing in the country. A trade official announced that Japan would try to reduce its dependency on Chinese REMs by cutting consumption by 10,000 tons annually over the coming years, noting that almost half a billion U.S. dollars would be paid in subsidies to support the initiative. Tokyo, the largest REM importer in the world, has also moved to diversify its REM suppliers, inking deals with Lynas Corp from Australia and Molycorp in the U.S, among others. Most recently, in November 2012, India and Japan signed a Memorandum of Understanding in which Japan, the world’s largest REMs importer, pledged to purchase as much as 20 percent of its REM imports from India.
Tensions between China and India are nothing new. The two BRICS countries remain deadlocked on issues such as the border dispute over Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin, Chinese naval activity in the Indian Ocean and Sino-Pakistani relations. Economically, the two emerging giants are also stamping their influence on Asia, often stepping on each other’s toes in a delicate half-wrestle, half-waltz—a race for influence in which China is often more proactive.
Asian countries, many of which are increasing military spending, have bound together in an effort to stave off dependence on China’s REMs.  The most unlikely of these alliances has been on the Korean Peninsula. North and South Korea met in November 2011 to discuss joint exploitation of Pyongyang’s rare earths, which some estimates put at six trillion dollars. Yet investment in heavy industry in North Korea has been less than attractive for even Pyongyang’s closest allies, as demonstrated by the failed venture of Chinese firm Haicheng Xiyang Group. Meanwhile, Japan has also engaged in talks to jointly develop Myanmar’s REM deposits.
In recent years, South Korea and Japan have collaborated to stockpile and share energy resources to ensure the security of energy imports. Such resource sharing agreements may very well be applied for rare earth minerals in the future. In 2011 Rep. Mike Coffman (R-CO) introduced the RESTART (Rare Earths Supply Chain Technology and Resources Transformation) Act into the U.S. House of Representations. The Act, which wasn’t passed during the just concluded session of Congress, included a provision that called for creating a national stockpile organized under the U.S. Department of Defense, a proposal which has been floated a number of times over the past few years. After years of foreign reports, in July 2012 the state-owned China Securities Journal said that China had begun stockpiling REMs, without specifying when the initiative began.
India, however, isn’t in a position to stockpile the resources. Instead it has begun to boost production and exploration to try and meet domestic demand. In Orissa, a new 10,000 ton REM processing plant is expected to be operational by early next year. The U.S. $25 million plant is expected to process 4 percent of global production of Monazite. Much of this will be used to meet domestic demand.
India and China have both begun offshore exploration for REMs. Production from deep-sea mining is still years away, some estimates say 2030-2040, if it is viable at all. Many experts liken the idea to trying to mine a moving asteroid. Despite the inherent and costly problems, China paved the way for such exploration and won exploration rights from the International Seabed Authority to a 10,000 sq kilometer block in the Southwest Indian Ocean. India followed suit. New Delhi is spending U.S. $135 million to buy a new exploration vessel, hoping to complement its small onshore resources with offshore mining. A cross-disciplinary team, including space and nuclear energy engineers, will develop India’s offshore mining capacity. According to India’s Minister for Earth Sciences, Ashwani Kumar, the program will address the country’s “critical and strategic needs.” Kumar was quoted by local media as saying that, "Countries like China have taken to deep-sea mining with a strategic purpose." India, for its own strategic purposes is forced to do the same.
While prices of REMs have dropped since their earlier peak, a bullish outlook remains. KPMG believes that 75 percent of companies will close in the next 24 months due to current low prices. If such a major collapse of the industry in fact occurs, the industry will consolidate into the hands of a few. Government-owned Indian Rare Earths Ltd will no doubt be propped up by New Delhi. Similarly, China’s new fund to “restructure” its rare earth industry, as announced in a November press release, will likely centralize and consolidate the industry making it smaller and more manageable for Beijing.
Despite countries such as the U.S. and Australia pushing investments forward in REM production, their viability as profit-making enterprises is dubious given the high costs of labor and the difficulties in meeting environmentally-friendly regulations. Jack Lifton, founder of Technology Metals Research, told Reuters in 2011 that he believes only 4 percent of ventures will prove profitable. With estimates like this, India’s expensive entry into production and exploration of REMs, when prices have bottomed out, demonstrates the strategic importance of the resource for New Delhi. Low labor cost countries with REMs, such as Myanmar, Mongolia and possibly North Korea, will be courted by developed countries, and, of course, India. Regardless of increased production from countries other than China, Beijing will remain the largest producer and likely the cheapest.
The fact remains that the commercial viability and spillover politico-environmental costs make production of REMs too expensive in developed countries. China has more leeway in such issues and the lion’s share of current production. Prices will remain largely controlled by Beijing’s propensity to export. India has similarly cheap labor costs and, while actual reserves are low, boosting production is more viable there than in the U.S. or Australia. New Delhi wants to balance China’s influence in the region in order to expand its own. Japan and South Korea are among the countries more than willing to begin importing Indian REMs, while India’s growing domestic demand leaves little choice but to secure more domestic reserves. The geopolitical battle for REMs is well underway between China and India, and across the world. Indeed, rare earths look likely to become the next crucial strategic resource, the next oil.
Elliot Brennan is editor and project coordinator of research in resource security at the Institute for Security and Development Policy, Stockholm, Sweden. 

Russia Depardieu and Bardot gave a direct slap in the collective face of the European elites...

 Russia Depardieu and Bardot gave a direct slap in the collective face of the European elites.


By now we probably have all seen the footage of French actor Gerard Depardieu proudly showing his Russian passport and most of us have also heard reports about French actress Birgitte Bardot declaring that she will leave France in disgust and also ask for Russian citizenship.  Does any of that matter?  Depardieu was angered by a comment made by a French minister who condemned his move to Belgium to avoid paying high taxes, as for Bardot, her wrath was triggered by the fact that French authorities have decided to put down two elephants in the Lyon zoo rather than treat them for tuberculosis.  Taxes, elephants and movie stars, hardly something worth spending much time on.

And yet.

There is much more to this than meets the eye.

First, all this is taking place while the European media is replete with general anti-Russian hysteria and especially vicious Putin-bashing articles.  Behind all this there is a powerful constellation of big money interests which include Boris Berezovsky, of course, but also the business partners of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, top officials of BP Oil and Gaz and MI6, Chechen and Israeli mobsters and key members of the Russian "non-systemic opposition" (i.e. those parties which could not even get a single representative elected to the Duma: folks like Boris Nemtsov, Valeria Novodvorskaya, Aleksei Navalnyi, Ksenia Sobchak, etc.) and Georgian intelligence agents.  To say that Depardieu and Bardot are swimming against the stream is an understatement.

The "new Russian" Depardieu

Second, both stars have added insult to injury by not only heaping praise both on Russia as a country and a real democracy, but especially praising Vladimir Putin himself.

Third, and this is extremely important and yet almost totally overlooked by most commentators, it would be difficult to find a bigger contrast then between Depardieu and Bardot.  No, I don't mean the looks, I am referring to the fact that Depardieu comes from a Communist family and still considers himself as a Communist whereas Brigitte Bardot has very strong connections to the French national right, the National Front, and Jean Marie Le Pen personally.  And yet, for all their differences, they both looked to Putin's Russia as a viable alternative to what is taking place in their native France.

Lastly, this is happening against the background of a huge, truly unprecedented economic, social and political crisis in Europe which will probably see the collapse of the Euro and possibly part of the EU.  In France specifically, a total loser was elected as President - Francois Hollande - whose nickname inside his own socialist party was, forgive the crude expression, "limp dick" (the French Socialists had planned for years to present Dominique Strauss-Khan as their candidate, an man of immense personal charisma and intelligence, but whose inability to control is sexual impulses made him a perfect target for a discreditation operation by agents of the US and British banking interests).

Bardot as Marianne

Why does all this matter?  Because Depardieu and Bardot are but the tip of an iceberg of Europeans totally disgusted with what is taking place in their country and who are looking towards Russia as much more than just a "somewhere else" - they could have easily picked far less controversial countries such as Switzerland, Iceland, Monaco or even Costa Rica or Thailand.  It is absolutely clear that both actors picked Russia because, unlike the other countries I mentioned, Russia is a *political alternative to the EU*, a country which dares to openly defy the European political elites. By their choice of Russia Depardieu and Bardot gave a direct slap in the collective face of the European elites.

It is important to realize the immense symbolical weight that the names Depardieu and Bardot have in France.  Both of these actors are in a very direct way national symbols.  Take Bardot, for example, not only was she considered for years as an international sex-symbol but she was actually used as a model for Marianne, the French symbol for Liberty.  As for Depardieu, not only is he universally considered as the most talented French actor alive, he is also a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur and a Chevalier of the Ordre national du Mérite.

General de Gaulle

As for Russia and France, these two countries always have had a very strong, if complex, relationship.  This relationship began in 11th century when the Russian Princess Anna of Kiev married the French King Henri i and eventually ruled France as the Regent and Queen for her son Phillip I.  Ever since the relationship between Russia and France has always been very strong, to the point that even Napoleonic wars paradoxically ended up strengthening them (both sides very much admired each other).  During World War II, I would argue that France was the only real ally of the Soviet Union (if only because both the British and the US were busy planning various types of military attacks on the USSR and even holding secret negotiations with the Nazis up to the very last days of the war).  Finally, General de Gaulle, arguably the most important French political figure of the 20th century, always tried hard to strengthen the alliance between the Soviet Union and France until he was overthrown by a revolution in May of 1968 organized by a cabal of Anglo-Jewish bankers who replaced the patriotic de Gaulle by George Pompidou, an ex-Director General of the Rothschild Bank, who proceeded to immediately subordinate France to Anglo-Jewish financial interests (see for example the infamous "Rothschild Law" - Google translated) and May 68 became the prototype for all the future Anglo "color-coded" revolutions.

De Gaulle was overthrown, but he left behind a powerful and uniquely French ideology called "Gaullisme" which is a mix of strong and independent patriotism in foreign affairs and social solidarity inside France.  While this ideology has been comprehensively betrayed by the officially 'Gaullist' parties, it is still very much alive in the French collective memory and, in particular, amongst the supporters of the influential French dissident Alain Soral.

The "defection" of personalities such as Depardieu or Bardot very much feed into what I would call an "underground Gaullism" which is seeing a strong rebirth in large segments of the French society.  At the core of it is a comprehensive rejection of the Anglosphere's attempt to rule the planet, a rejection of the current international financial system (WTO/WB/IMF/EU/NAFTA/etc.) imposed by international banking cartels and a fundamental rejection of both internationalism and capitalism, seen as two sides of the same coin.

This is, of course, very similar to what we could refer to as "Putinism" even though Putin himself still goes out of his way not to overly antagonize the Anglosphere (if only because Russia is not strong enough yet to do so).  This French attraction to Russia is thus very natural.

The rest of Europe is, however, unlikely to join into this phenomenon.  Northern Europe, from Germany to the Scandinavian peninsula, is firmly under the control of the Anglosphere.  Central Europe, being even more spineless and intellectually dull, has turned into a confederation of US banana republics, and only in southern Europe is there a strong sense that something has gone terribly wrong and that new ideas are needed (hence the economic warfare waged by the international banking system against countries such as Greece, Spain or Italy).

Still, France is the country of revolutions par excellence and arguably still the intellectual powerhouse of Europe.  France it has the potential to become a trend-setter if it decides to do so.  It therefore shall be very interesting to see if the Depardieu-Bardot phenomenon will remain a one-time-only event, or if other signs of a growing Franco-Russian bond will begin to emerge...

Russian ESPO Pipeline Threatens Europe Oil Supplies...

By Jen Alic;

 

Russia’s Transneft has opened its second and final branch of the $25 billion, 4,700km East Siberia-Pacific Ocean (ESPO) pipeline to double its capacity to 30 million tons for total exports of 36 million tons in 2013.
There are three things of significance here:
The capacity-doubling pipeline could render the ESPO blend crude an official new blend on the world market
It makes Russia’s Far East a major infrastructure player, posing it to become a strategic transit point for oil to Japan, China, the US, South Korea, the Philippines, Singapore and Taiwan
It gives Russia more leverage over Europe
Related Article: China to Dominate the 2013 Coal Market
The first phase of ESPO saw the completion in 2009 of a pipeline from Irkutsk to Skovorodino in Russia. However, the link from Skovorodino to Kozmino oil terminal on the Pacific Coast was by rail. The second phase included a pipeline section direct to the Pacific Coast.
It’s about access to Asia-Pacific markets, which the ESPO offers by linking Siberian oil fields to the port of Kozmino, in Nakhodka Bay. But it’s not only about access, it’s about product, and the ESPO stands to become a new competitive blend on the world market for the first time.
The ESPO blend (known as VSTO in Russian) was created specifically for the pipeline that bears its name. It is the top blend in Russia, favored for its lighter qualities and lower quantities of salt chloride. The pipeline opens up an avenue for the favored ESPO crude to get to market at a higher price and makes it more competitive than crude from the Urals, which for now serves as the main export blend for Russia. According to the Russians, the ESPO crude blend is even better than competing blends from Dubai—at least in terms of sulfur content. 
What is Russia hoping for in the end? It’s already assured of the Asia market with ESPO; but it is seeking to tap into the American market and compete with West Texas Intermediate (WTI).
Related Article: Iranian Gas and the Nabucco Pipeline Realities
Will it achieve this aim? So far so good, but there are some challenges. First, we’re not sure if Russia can keep the ESPO running at capacity. Its oil fields in East Siberia are not fully developed, and while there is enough oil pumping right now to keep the first phase of the pipeline fed, the extension might require a diversion of oil from fields in West Siberia.
Russia will certainly have to increase production if it wishes to meet its goal of exporting 36 million tons of ESPO to Asia this year. Transneft, the pipeline’s operator, predicts the pipeline’s capacity to increase to 80 million tons in the future. But it’s not capacity that’s worrying--it’s production. 
Regardless, Europe should be concerned. Right now, it receives much of Russia’s Urals crude, upon which it is heavily dependent. The completed ESPO provides Russia with more leverage by way of another key outlet for its oil to Asia-Pacific countries. If it is able to pump enough through the ESPO, it can threaten Europe by turning off the taps without too much damage to its own balance sheets...

By. Jen Alic of Oilprice.com

 http://www.yakutiatoday.com/news/business_espo.shtml

Nuclear bombshell...

 

 

Nuclear bombshell...
Israeli and American Jews often brush aside the damage that convicted Naval Intelligence spy Jonathan Pollard did to U.S. national security. However, the recent disclosure of formerly redacted pages in the Pollard Damage Assessment prepared by the Director of Central Intelligence's Foreign Denial and Deception Analysis Committee and issued on October 30, 1987 has revealed that Pollard began working as a U.S. naval intelligence watch officer the same month that Israel and South Africa, possibly with the financial support of Taiwan, detonated a nuclear device in the South Atlantic near Prince Edward Islands. The unredacted damage assessment report also provides details of Pollard's espionage work for South Africa before or at the same time he was spying for Israel.

Pollard's joint espionage for Israel and South Africa point to him likely playing a role on providing faulty intelligence to upper intelligence echelons concerning the nuclear test.

The report describes Pollard's work in September 1979 in the Navy Field Operational Intelligence Office (NFOIO). The report states: "He began work as an Intelligence Research Specialist assigned to the Naval Ocean Surveillance Information Center (NOSIC} of the Navy Field Operational Intelligence Office in September 1979." The report also states that during the same month of the South African-Israeli nuclear test Pollard "admitted that he
had attended a clandestine meeting with the South African Defense Attache."

The report's description of Pollard's early association with South Africa at the same time Israel and the apartheid regime were cooperating on nuclear weapons development is as follows:

"The following factors that have come to light about his employment with the Navy indicate that Pollard was unsuited for access to sensitive. national security information:

-- False claims concerning professional qualifications. Pollard falsely stated on his naval employment application that he had a 'provisional' M.A. degree from the Fletcher
School of Law and Diplomacy. Moreover, in February 1980 during an interview with Task Force 168, the intelligence element charged with HUMINT collection, Pollard falsely
claimed to have an M.A. degree, to be proficient in Afrikaans, and to have applied for a commission in the naval reserve. Pollard made another, more farfetched statement to
his immediate supervisor in NOSIC: he said he had key South African contacts who could provide him with valuable information, and that he had known South African citizens
for many years because his father bad been the CIA Station Chief in South Africa."

The report also states: "Pollard claimed in a post-arrest debriefing that he had come
very close to volunteering to commit espionage while holding a conversation in Hebrew with the Israeli Naval Attache during a U.S.-Israeli intelligence exchange in 1983. Although it is not clear exactly when Pollard first began to consider espionage, we believe it was at least as early as 1980-81."

In July 1980, after the successful nuclear test the previous year and after Pollard and, presumably other Israeli moles, tainted U.S. intelligence into believing that the "flash" spotted on September 22, 1979 by orbiting U.S. VELA satellites was nothing more than a meteor entering the atmosphere, Pollard admitted he lied earlier about his contacts in South African intelligence.

The damage report's Executive Summary is surprisingly soft on Israel's use of Pollard as a spy. The summary states that Pollard's "short but intensive espionage career on behalf of Israel lasted from June 1984 until his arrest on 21 November 1985."  However, other sections of the report state that Pollard considered spying for Israel at least as early as 1980-81. Other parts of the report indicate that Pollard's espionage for both Israel and South Africa began much earlier and that even as a teen Pollard was a committed Zionist who placed loyalty to Israel above the United States, a lesson learned that was later ignored when the U.S. government security apparatus appointed card-carrying Zionists to top jobs in the Defense Department, Justice Department, and CIA.

Since his sentencing to life imprisonment on March 4, 1987, Pollard has seen one after another Israeli leader -- Yitzhak Shamir, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Ariel Sharon, Ehud Barak, Ehud Olmert, and Binyamin Netanyahu -- pressure the White House for a pardon and safe passage for Pollard to Israel. Netanyahu has even visited Pollard in the Butner Federal Correctional Institution in North Carolina, nicknamed "B'nai Butner" because it has its own kosher kitchen. In fact, Pollard has become a folk hero to many Israelis, an action that shows the true nature of Israel and its people as documented enemies of the United States and the American people.

Pollard was viewed as a security risk early on in his career but his protectors in the Naval Intelligence chain-of-command laughed off Pollard's sure signs of betrayal as due to "eccentricity." In 1983 and 1984, this editor was assigned computer security responsibilities for the Naval Telecommunication Command and Pollard's Special Security Officer (SSO) at the Naval Intelligence and Security Command in Suitland, Maryland personally told me about the trouble he was having in trying to convince his superiors that Pollard was a bona fide security risk. When I asked the SSO about details, he claimed that Pollard was always crying discrimination because he was Jewish. In fact, the Damage Report refers to Pollard's use of the anti-Semite canard to remain in his position and with his access to Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) left intact. The report states; "[Pollard] claimed he
developed a strong perception of anti-Israeli attitudes among his colleagues and of inadequate US intelligence support for Israel." The report fails to mention what many in the CIA and U.S.  intelligence knew in the aftermath of the 1983 terrorist bombing of the U.S. Marine Barracks in Beirut, that  Israel knew about the attack in advance and failed to warn U.S. commanders beforehand. In retrospect, Pollard was merely using his Jewishness to cover for his espionage for Israel.

The report also states that Pollard argued with his superiors over priorities. As a Naval Intelligence analyst Pollard Pollard wanted to concentrate on research related to the Middle East to the exclusion of littoral Africa.

The damage report cites Pollard's personal and employment history as "replete with incidents of irresponsible behavior that point to significant emotional instability." Yet, he continued to have his security access reinstated after repeated suspensions. U.S. intelligence sources have told WMR that Pollard had a protector high up in the Reagan administration, someone the Mossad code-named "Mega." There has been an ongoing debate on the identity of Mega for the past thirty years.

But only a high-level sponsor in the administration would have enabled Pollard to continue to have access to the most sensitive U.S. intelligence information, especially when considering that the damage report later concluded: "Despite his emotional and behavioral difficulties, Pollard managed to gain the respect of most of his superiors, as evidenced by his achievement of promotions from GS-07 to GS-12 over a six-year period."

The report also states that while a student at Stanford University, Pollard bragged about being a Mossad agent: "former student acquaintances told investigators that he bragged about his role as a Mossad agent and, on one occasion, waved a pistol in the air and screamed that everyone was out to get him." Thus began Pollard's modus operandi: because he appeared crazy, there was no way Pollard could be a Mossad agent. Surely, the Mossad screened its agents and would drum out anyone with psychological problems. If anyone believed that, they fell right into the trap Mossad had cleverly laid.

Consider for a moment the following bizarre behavior exhibited by Pollard while he was with Navy intelligence: "After Pollard' a arrest, I [REDACTED] observed that Pollard's sometimes strange behavior -- including, inter alia, the telling of bizarre stories about his
adventures as a CIA agent in Syria and being captured and tortured by Syrian authorities -- had taken on new importance after his discovery and arrest, but noted further that the most important thing known about Pollard before his arrest was that he was an intelligent, energetic, and often productive analyst whose faults could be overlooked in light of his obvious value to the components to which he was assigned."

Pollard apparently did not fool the CIA. The report states: "Pollard in 1978 had been rejected for a CIA Graduate Fellowship." The reason given was Pollard's admission that he used marijuana, along with another reason that the report continues to withhold from disclosure.

The Damage Report states; "Pollard's success rested upon an academic background that included graduate study at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, upon his considerable skills as an analyst, and upon deficiencies in administrative procedures and record-keeping -- since rectified --that allowed Pollard to change jobs without adverse aspects of his past performance coming to the attention of his new supervisors."

The report points to factors that any legitimate background investigation would have discovered about Pollard and which should have resulted in a veto of his security clearance. The report states; "Pollard claimed that he had begun dreaming about
future emigration to Israel at age 12 when that country won a dramatic victory in the six-day war of June 1967." The report adds, "another influence was his attendance in the summer of 1971 at a three-month science camp in Israel, which featured strong
encouragement to emigrate."

The Damage Report appears to have had competing sets of authors -- one group trying to emphasize the aggressive nature of Israeli intelligence targeting of the United States and the other trying to slough off Pollard's treason as relatively insignificant. On one hand, the report claims that Pollard began spying for Israel in 1984 but on the other it states that one of the Pollard family's old friends and "pro-Israeli activist" was closely linked to a top Israeli intelligence operative: "He [Pollard] eagerly seized an opportunity to volunteer his services to Israeli intelligence in late June 1984. At that time, Pollard met his initial Israeli handler, Col. Aviem Sella -- a noted fighter pilot on study leave in the United States --through a pro-Israeli activist, who was an old friend of the Pollard family."
Sella became Pollard's principal point of contact: "Pollard passed classified material to Sella concerning military developments in several Arab countries during at least three meetings, June-August 1984 . . . Pollard received initial, formal instruction from the Israelis during three days of operational planning and tasking 1984 sessions in Paris in November 1984. Here, Pollard met Rafael Eitan, advisor on counterterrorism to Prime Minister Shamir and the
senior Israeli in charge of the case, as well as Joseph Yagur, Counselor for Scientific Affairs at the Israeli Consulate in New York, who immediately replaced Sella as Pollard's direct handler. Pollard's initial monthly salary of $1,500 was agreed upon in [REDACTED].

The Israelis were clearly concerned that Pollard would soon be tripped up on a polygraph and urged him to resign before one could be administered. The report states that Pollard's primary task was "to provide Israel with the best available U.S. intelligence on Israel's Arab adversaries and the military support they receive from the Soviet Union. Eitan emphasized that Pollard should resign from naval intelligence rather than undergo a polygraph examination; we assume that Pollard at some point told the Israelis that his application for a graduate fellowship had been rejected by CIA."

The report contains several lengthy and unredacted descriptions of Pollard's espionage for the Jewish state and the timing of the most recent CIA declassification and disclosure, December 16, 2012, may have been agreed upon to point out Israel's duplicity with regard to the United States a few weeks prior to the political firestorm from mainly Jewish neo-conservatives upset about the nomination of former Republican senator Chuck Hagel from Nebraska as the next Secretary of Defense. The neo-con meme is that Hagel is anti-Israel and anti-Semitic.

The report states: "After returning from Paris, Pollard shifted his espionage into high gear. Beginning in/late January 1995, he made large biweekly deliveries of classified material, on every other Friday, to the apartment of Irit Erb, a secretary at the Israeli Embassy in
Washington. Pollard recalled that his first and possibly largest delivery occurred on 23 January and consisted of five suitcases full of classified material, and that he maintained the biweekly schedule -- interrupted only by a second operational trip abroad -- until his arrest in November 1995. Pollard also met Yagur at Erb's apartment on the last Saturday of each month to discuss additional taskings and the value of the intelligence he delivered. Pollard recalled that Yagur on at least two occasions indicated that selected items of his intelligence were known and appreciated by 'the highest levels of the Israeli Government.' Pollard's monthly salary was raised to $2,500 in February 1995 in appreciation for his productivity; and he made a second operational trip to meet his Israeli handlers in Tel Aviv in July-August 1995.

By the fall of 1985, Pollard's Navy supervisor had become suspicious of his activities because Pollard seemed to be handling large amounts of classified material concerning the Middle East and unrelated to Pollard's legitimate duties, which concerned North America and the Eastern Caribbean. An investigation ensued that led to Pollard being questioned by FBI and NIS officials beginning on 18 November and arrested on 21 November after an unsuccessful effort to gain asylum at the Israeli Embassy.

During post-arrest debriefings, Pollard said that if his espionage had remained undetected, he would have been inclined to seek a job with the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research because he would not have been required to undergo a polygraph and major intelligence products were readily available there. He also indicated he could have assumed a less risky role as an agent of influence at State."

It was this information that led some law enforcement investigators to believe that "Mega" held a high-level post in the State Department.

According to Pollard, Israel's laundry list for intelligence was extensive:

"According to Pollard, the Israelis submitted the following collection requirements, in descending order of priority, to Pollard:

-- Arab (and Pakistani) nuclear intelligence;
-- Arab exotic weaponry, including chemical and
weapons;
-- Soviet aircraft;
-- Soviet air defenses;
-- Soviet air-to-air missiles and air-to-surface missiles;
and
-- Arab order-of-battle, deployments, readiness, [REDACTED}

Eitan provided additional tasking for [REDACTED] material reporting "dirt" on Israeli political figures, any information that would identify Israeli officials who were providing information to the United States [REDACTED]."

Eitan's request for "dirt" on Israeli officials was likely that collected by the CIA's agents in Israel, particularly inside the Israeli government. It was well-known by the CIA at the time that Netanyahu, as an example, was a fairly open homosexual from the time that he spent in Philadelphia, especially as a member of the Rittenhouse Square gay scene, to his start in Israeli politics. Later, U.S. government surveillance of Netanyahu placed him on numerous occasions at sado-masochistic gay theaters in Greenwich Village in New York.  In addition, the CIA amassed a great deal of "dirt" on the questionable financial activities of Sharon and his sons.

Continuing, the report states:

"We believe that Pollard responded effectively to the general Israeli taskings, but that he himself exerted the strongest influence on what was compromised by virtue of his own access, interests, and collection initiatives. U.S. investigators, with Pollard's assistance, identified the following categories and approximate numbers of compromised published documents, plus an estimated 1,500 current intelligence summary messages:

Special compartmented information (SCI)
Top Secret, non-codeword
Secret, non-codeword
Confidential
Unclassified and unknown classification

The Jewish media, upon the most recent disclosures in the Damage report, described Pollard as only providing information on the Soviet union and the Arab states, not on the United States. However, what the Jewish press conveniently ignores is that what Pollard provided to Israel was based on sensitive U.S. sources and methods, many inside Arab and eastern European governments. When the identities of these sources were determined by Pollard's disclosures, the Mossad approached them to accept one of two offers: either work for Mossad or their espionage for the United States would be conveyed to their own security services, with dire, if not fatal, consequences resulting. In any event, these U.S. intelligence sources were compromised and, therefore, "burned."

The paragraphs on Israel's intelligence gains from the Pollard disclosures are totally redacted but likely contain the aforementioned information gathered from U.S. intelligence sources at the time of Pollard's arrest.

The report does state: "The unauthorized disclosure to the Israelis of such a large and varied body of classified material poses risks of several kinds to US intelligence sources and methods, analytical capabilities and intelligence exchanges, and foreign-policy interests, including the possibility of extended compromise of some of Pollard's material to third countries."

The reference to "third countries" is particularly noteworthy. It is known that Israel traded some of the classified information provided to Pollard to the Soviet Union. In return, the Soviets agreed to increase the number of exit visas for Soviet Jews to emigrate to Israel. Some of these Jews only used Israel as a transit country because many eventually ended up in the United States.

Other excerpts of the report of interest include:

"Pollard's role in providing Israel with intelligence that assisted its planning for the 1985 raid on PLO headquarters near Tunis."

"Pollard's espionage has put at risk important U.S. intelligence and foreiqn-policy interests."

"Pollard granted a detailed, on-the-record interview to journalist Wolf Blitzer."

"Pollard showed additional evidence of emotional instability and ah obsession with helping Israel."

The following statement appears to have come right from the editorial offices of the Anti-Defamation League and bears no relation to other sections of the report about Pollard's failed loyalties to the United States:

"Jonathan Jay Pollard's childhood and adolescence were marked by material sufficiency, strong intellectual stimulation within a closely knit family, and some bruising experiences as a member of the Jewish-American minority growing up in Middle America. Born as the youngest of three children to Morris and Mildred Klein Pollard on 7 August 1954, Jonathan
Pollard spent his early childhood in Galveston, Texas, and his adolescence in South Bend, Indiana, where his father is a prominent virologist at the University of Notre Dame. The family has been strongly pro-American and also active in support of the State of Israel.  Jonathan Pollard indicated that he felt ethnically isolated in South Bend and was uncomfortable in an environment he perceived to be strongly anti-Semitic."

There are disturbing sections that call into question the loyalties of Pollard's family:

"In a Memorandum in Aid of Sentencing, Pollard wrote that 'the first flag I could recognize in my early youth was that of Israel and for years our family took quiet pride in my late uncle's decision to provide the fledgling Israeli Army in 1948 with military boots and medical supplies 'liberated' from the American Hospital in Paris, which he commanded at the time." Pollard also states in the memorandum, 'my parents never ceased in their
efforts to portray this land [USA] ... as a Godsend for Jews . . . '"

Pollard also related that "the first indication I had that life would be an agonizing struggle between competing values rather than one of coherent academic absolutes occurred when my family moved to Indiana, where I suddenly found myself confronting a community in which racism and bigotry were acceptable social practices. I was never able to establish friendships in my neighborhoods and was compelled to spend most of my time around the city's Hebrew Day School, where I felt at least physically safe and emotionally protected."

By Pollard's own admission, his dubious loyalties to the United States at an early stage should have barred his access to classified material:

"Pollard indicated that he already had begun fantasizing about future emigration to Israel when that state won a dramatic victory in the six-day war of June 1967. This event evidently made a lasting impression upon him; from then on he increasingly considered emigration to or other means to assist Israel. Another influence was Pollard's attendance in the summer of 1971 at a three-month science camp in Israel, sponsored by the Weizman Institute, which featured patriotic field trips and strong encouragement for young Jewish-Americans to emigrate to Israel."

Other red flags appeared in Pollard's background, any one of which was grounds to deny him a security clearance"

"Pollard's attendance at Stanford University from 1972-76 was marked both by significant academic achievement and signs of emotional instability. On the one hand, he graduated with a B.A. in political science, emphasizing national-security studies, with a grade point average of 3.5. On the other hand, after Pollard's arrest, former Stanford acquaintances alleged that he was involved in several bizarre incidents. They, for example, claim that he told them he worked for the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad, and was being groomed to work for it within the United States Government. On another occasion, Pollard waved a pistol in the air and screamed that everyone was out to get him."

Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu is among the many religious and political leaders of Israel who have called for Pollard's release. Eliyahu gave the eulogy at the funeral of Jewish Defense League terrorist group founder Meir Kahane. Eliyahu also called the 2005 Indian Ocean tsunami "God's punishment" for Asian nations like India, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia that refused to support Israel. He also said the life of one Israeli yeshiva student is worth more than the lives of 1,000 Arabs. U.S. political leaders refuse to condemn the vile hatred and racism that emanate from the mouths of Israel's top rabbis.

The report continues:

"Throughout his time at Stanford, Pollard apparently retained a fixation on emigrating to Israel or providing other direct assistance to Tel Aviv. He claims to have volunteered to work on a kibbutz during the Yom Kippur War in 1973 as part of a program to permit Israeli men to be transferred from the kibbutzim to the war fronts . . . his [Pollard's] volunteer group spent five frustrating days waiting for an El Al flight in Los Angeles before being told the need for had passed with Sharon's crossing of the Suez Canal."

Pollard's work history is provided in the report:

Pollard's Assignments and Security-Clearance Actions
With Naval Intelligence, 1979-85

September 1979             Research analyst, Naval Ocean Surveillance Information Center, Suitland, Maryland (merchant shipping analyst and watch
officer).
November 1979                                          Interim Top Secret clearance granted.
February 1980                                  Volunteer to Task Force 168 (TF-168), the
naval intelligence .element responsible for HUMINT collection; Pollard was assigned to
collect information from a South African defense attache.

April 1980                      Pollard temporarily reassigned to position in
Naval Intelligence Support Center (NISC)-34 that did not require access to SCI material, owing to reservations concerning his emotional stability.


May 1980                      Assigned as Middle Eastern warship analyst, Free World Branch, NISC-33; SCI access
reinstated.

August 1980                  Association with TF-168 terminated owing to evidence of gross unreliability and recommendation by clinical psychologist that Pollard be assigned to non-sensitive duties. Top Secret clearance and SCI access suspended; Pollard reassigned as research ship analyst, NISC-34, pending fitness for duty evaluation by one of four cleared psychiatrists identified to Pollard by Commanding Officer, NISC.

April 1981                    Psychiatrist diagnosed Pollard as having a [REDACTED] but also
deemed him "thoroughly capable of handling the duties of his job and not a security
risk." The psychiatrist recommended further treatment, but Pollard did not seek or
receive any.

January 1982               Reinstatement of Pollard's Top Secret clearance and SCI access ordered by Commander, Naval Intelligence Command (NIC).

February 1982.            Pollard returned from NISC-34 to assignment as Middle East warship analyst in NISC-33.

June 1984                  Began temporary duty with Anti-Terrorist
Alert Center (ATAC), Naval Investigative Service (NIS); worked rotating shift as
watchstander.

October 1984             Permanently assigned to ATAC, NIS, as analyst responsible for assessing terrorist activities, narcotics traffic, and instability in North America and Eastern
Caribbean. Remained in this assignment until arrest.

Task Force 168 worked closely with the Defense Intelligence Agency on overt human intelligence collection operations. It was closed down in October 1991. Before he was arrested, Pollard tried to reapply for a position with TF-168. The report states: "Pollard, surprisingly, once again sought to be assigned or detailed to TF-168 despite his
previous problems with that component. He arrived late and disheveled for an applicant interview and offered a preposterous explanation, to the effect that the Irish Republican Army had kidnapped his wife and he had spent the weekend getting her released."

Pollard's time with TF 168 was rife with signs that he was a hostile intelligence agent. The report states:

"-- Adverse record with Task Force-168. Pollard repeatedly violated his instructions -- for example, by attending meetings against orders and disclosing classified information without authorization -- during his assignment to collect intelligence on Soviet naval activities in the South Atlantic from a South African defense attache. Pollard's superiors quickly developed misgivings concerning his erratic behavior and then learned he had lied about his qualifications and disclosed classified information to the South African attache without authorization.* As a result of his unacceptable behavior, Pollard was examined by a clinical psychologist, who described Pollard as grandiose and manipulative. The psychologist felt that the risk of unintentional compromise of information, but not espionage, by Pollard was high. He recommended therapy and assignment to nonsensitive duties.

* The TF-168 collection operation was converted to counterintelligence case "Operation swan Song," under the auspices of NIS, in July 1980, for the purpose of clarifying Pollard's activities. Operation Swan Song was terminated in early August following Pollard's admissions, noted above, and a determination that further investigation would be unproductive.

-- Lifestyle Problems. Pollard experienced intermittent financial difficulties and behavioral problems, and the post-arrest investigation turned up allegations of drug abuse. Pollard's rent check was returned owing to insufficient funds in March 1983, and he was late paying
rent due in December 1993, and March and April 1984. In May 1984, he borrowed money from a co-worker and over the next few months bounced several checks attempting to repay it. In July 1984, a letter of indebtedness from the Navy Federal Credit Union reported that Pollard was delinquent in repaying a $4,175.00 loan. Meanwhile, Pollard and his fiancee Anne Henderson allegedly used marijuana and cocaine occasionally at parties in the Washington area from 1982-84. In late 1983, an anonymous telephone caller informed a NISC official that Pollard had been observed in an altercation in a bar in Georgetown and had identified himself as an intelligence analyst during the incident.

In post-arrest debriefings, Pollard claimed that what he perceived to be anti-Israeli attitudes among his colleagues in naval intelligence contributed to his decision to commit espionage for Israel. For example, Pollard claimed that the U.S. delegation to a US-Israeli scientific and technological intelligence-exchange conference, which he attended in 1982, failed to follow established disclosure guidance by withholding information releasable to Israel. Pollard also claimed he overheard comments from U.S delegates that he viewed as either anti-Israeli or anti-Semitic.

Pollard claimed that another key contributing factor was his concern and frustration over the inadequate U.S. reaction following the bombing of the U.S. Marine headquarters in Beirut in October 1983. Pollard rationalized that if the U.S. Government were unwilling to take effective countermeasures to protect its own interests in Lebanon, then it might be unwilling or unable to provide Israel with adequate assistance in the event of critical need. Pollard stated he 'walked out of the memorial service [for the Marines] committed to doing something that would guarantee Israel's security even though it might involve a degree
of potential risk and personal sacrifice.'

Pollard stated that in the fall of 1983 he made a final decision to assist Israel through espionage, and he soon sought means to initiate the activity. He thought initially that he would need an associate to act as an intermediary with the Israelis. Accordingly, Pollard -- accompanied by Anne Henderson -- in the spring of 1984 approached [REDACTED] a friend who worked [REDACTED] with a proposal for an ill-defined effort to aid Israel.

Pollard's access to classified information and, according to Pollard, would have known intuitively that Pollard would welcome an opportunity to provide classified material to the Israeli Government. In late June 19841 shortly after Pollard was detailed to the Naval Investigative Service's newly-created Anti-Terrorist Alert Center (ATAC), Pollard received a phone call from [REDACTED] who wanted Pollard to meet a high-ranking Israeli Air Force officer. [REDACTED] stated this officer had been involved in the 'raid on the reactor,' which Pollard understood to be the October 1981 Israeli air raid on the Osirak nuclear facility in Iraq. Pollard claims he immediately viewed this proposal as an opportunity for him to volunteer his services to Israel. A few days later, Pollard was telephoned at his residence by "Avi," who introduced himself as a friend of [REDACTED] and arranged to meet with Pollard in Washington.

Pollard said his initial meeting with Col. Aviem Sella* occurred a week to 10 days after Sella's initial phone call. They met at a bar in the Washington Hilton Hotel [REDACTED]
---
*Sella is not an intelligence careerist but a highly successful fighter pilot who was being groomed for senior rank with the expectation that he eventually might become Chief of staff of the Israeli Air Force. Sella's official reason for residency in the United States in 1984 was his pursuit of a doctorate in computer sciences at New York University while on study leave from the Israeli Air Force.

intelligence information to Israel. Speaking in Hebrew, Pollard described his job at the ATAC and his extensive access to classified material both in the center and elsewhere in the US
Intelligence Community. While Sella seemed skeptical that security could be as lax as Pollard described, he identified the general targets of his collection efforts -- the Soviet Union and Arab States. Sella emphasized that Israel would not request information on US military capabilities, then told Pollard that he wanted to see an example of the material he could provide. Sella suggested that Pollard obtain classified documents on Saudi Arabia and Soviet air-defense systems, as well as photographs of the bomb-damaged Iraqi nuclear facility.

Sella established a secure procedure for setting up future clandestine meetings. He directed that Pollard obtain a listing of several pay telephones within a few blocks of his
residence, also located near the Hilton Hotel. Once this was accomplished, Sella assigned a Hebrew letter to each number and explained that he would call Pollard at his residence, mention a Hebrew letter, and thereby direct Pollard to a particular pay telephone to await an operational telephone call.

Using this procedure, Sella contacted Pollard within a few days to arrange a second meeting for the purpose of viewing and evaluating the information requested at the first.
After again making contact at the Hilton, Sella drove Pollard to a secluded outdoor location near Dumbarton Oaks. Pollard had brought a briefcase full of classified documents for Sella's review, including a three-volume study of Saudi Arabian military forces, a [REDACTED] study of Saudi ground forces' logistics, and [REDACTED] satellite imagery of the bomb-damaged Iraqi nuclear facility. Sella commented that the material was much better than what was currently available in Israel and would be of great assistance to his country.

A third meeting with Sella was scheduled for the purpose of copying all material collected to date. In the week or so between the second and third meetings, Pollard assembled
information from the National Security Agency, including daily Middle East and North African Summaries and a study on Egyptian air defenses. He also screened and obtained numerous us·defense attache reports from embassies in various Arab countries.

The meeting began at a Holiday Inn in Bethesda, Maryland, and proceeded by car via a circuitous route to a residence on Deborah Street in Potomac, Maryland. Subsequent investigation identified the Deborah Street residence as the house of Ilan Ravid, Attache for Scientific Affairs of the Israeli Embassy in Washington. Pollard saw a man in the house whom he identified during subsequent investigation as similar in appearance to Ravid.

During the third meeting, Sella informed Pollard that he would have to travel to Europe -- Paris was agreed upon -- to meet the Israeli intelligence official in charge of the
operation. Pollard was told to make his own travel arrangements and charge the expense to a credit card, as he would be reimbursed after arriving in Paris. Anne Henderson, to whom Pollard had become engaged in July 1994, was to accompany Pollard, but the Israelis did not want her to know the true purpose of the trip. To assist Pollard in explaining how he could afford such a 'vacation,' Pollard and Sella created a fictitious 'Uncle Joe Fisher' who was paying for the trip as an engagement present. Sella also told Pollard to arrange for him to meet Henderson socially so that she could see a familiar face in Paris; Pollard, Henderson, Sella, and his wife met subsequently for dinner at the Four Ways Restaurant in
Washington, D.C. Finally, Sella told Pollard to bring his latest Navy leave-and-earnings statement to Paris for examination by Israeli Intelligence officers, so that they might use it as a basis for establishing payment for his espionage.

Meetings between Pollard and his Israeli handlers on 8, 9, and 10 November in Paris essentially completed Pollard's assessment and recruitment and prepared him to undertake the most productive period of his espionage career. Several important developments occurred during the meetings:

-- Pollard met Rafael (Rafi) Eitan, a senior career official in Israeli intelligence, former adviser on counterterrorism to the Israeli Prime Minister, and the person in charge of the operation.
-- Direct handling of Pollard in the United States was transferred from Sella to Joseph (Yossi) Yagur,  Counselor for Scientific Affairs, Israeli Consulate New York; Eitan and Yaqur warned Pollard against further operational contact with Sella.
-- Yaqur and Eitan provided initial, detailed taskings on the intelligence Pollard was to obtain. Yagur emphasized that Pollard should seek military and scientific intelligence on Arab States, Pakistan, and the Soviet Union in its role as military patron of the Arabs. Eitan requested the only specific document mentioned at the Paris meetings, the 'RASIN Manual,' which he could only describe as a document concerning signals intelligence. Eitan also requested information on PLO Force 17, material reporting 'dirt' on Israeli political figures, any information that would identify Israeli officials who were providing information to the United States, and any information on U.S. intelligence operations targeted against Israel.

In addition to conveying operational instructions and taskings, Eitan used the Paris meetings to test and strengthen Pollard's motivation. Eitan presented a formal, highly alarmist briefing to Pollard on the Middle East situation, which described how Israel could be quickly overrun by a Syrian attack. He emphasized that Israel faced a 'technological Pearl Harbor' [where did that phrase appear again? Of course, it was the 'electronic Pearl Harbor" used by the neo-cons to help set the stage for the 9/11 attacks] and badly needed access to the material Pollard could provide. In his debriefings, Pollard commented that the presentation was calculated to strengthen his commitment to the espionage operation, and it was accompanied by a 'ceremony' wherein he was 'sworn in' as an Israeli citizen.

During the post-arrest interviews, Pollard recalled an additional meeting at the Deborah Street residence in Potomac sometime between his return to the United States and the January 1985 meeting -- probably in December 1984. Pollard recalled that the purpose of that meeting was to pick up the ring for Henderson and the 'Uncle Joe Fisher' letter. Yagur also told Pollard that this meeting and all future meetings would be in an apartment on
Van Ness Street, N.W. in Washington, D. C. Pollard received a key to the apartment at that time.

The biweekly drop schedule and monthly face-to-face meetings with Yagur at Erb's apartment continued up to the time of Pollard's initial questioning by NIS and FBI personnel in November 1985. He made his last drop on Friday, 15 November. The only interruption in the routine occurred during Pollard's second and last operational trip overseas in July and August 1985. During this trip, Pollard met with Eitan and Yagur in Tel Aviv and married Anne Henderson in Venice, Italy.

The Israelis warmly praised Pollard's productivity during his first operational meeting in Tel Aviv. Pollard and Yagur met with Eitan in a secure area of the Beilinson Hospital in Tel Aviv, where Eitan was recuperating from eye surgery. Eitan reviewed a computerized listing that Pollard believed contained all the material provided to date. Eitan complimented him on the material, stating that it had been crucial to the security of Israel and had far exceeded
expectations.

Pollard claimed to investigators that he again expressed concern about what would happen to his wife and himself if his espionage was detected. Eitan again assured him that no
drastic action would be taken by the United States. He also repeated his pledge that Israel would take care of Pollard; and informed Pollard that in addition to his salary, Israel was
setting up a Swiss bank account for him, into which Israel would deposit $30,000 per year. Pollard was to continue his espionage for Israel for 10 years, after which Pollard and his
immediate family would emigrate to Israel. He could then use the projected $300,000 to establish himself in his new homeland. The Swiss account would be in the name of 'Danny Cohen,' which would be Pollard's Israeli identity. Eitan commented further that Israeli passports would be prepared for the Pollards.

By the fall of 1985, the ATAC officer-in-charge (OIC) had become auspicious of Pollard's activities because he seemed to be handling large amounts of classified material concerning the Middle East that was unrelated to his legitimate area of concern, North America and the Caribbean. The ore began to monitor more closely Pollard's activities. on 25 October 1985, one of Pollard's co-workers notified the ore that he had seen Pollard apparently removing classified material from the center without authorization. The ore verified that Pollard had removed the material and informed the Counterintelligence Directorate of the Naval Investigative Service. N!S opened an investigation of Pollard and notified the FBI. Pollard was observed removing additional classified material during the
NIS/FBI investigation.

On 18 November 1985, FBI and NIS agents confronted and questioned Pollard for the first time as he left the ATAC building in Suitland, Maryland. They found classified material in Pollard's possession for which he had no authorization to remove from the building. Pollard at first claimed to be delivering the material to another U.S. intelligence organization. Once this story broke down, he alleged that the information was destined for a journalist contact, Kurt Lohbeck, who was interested in helping the Afghan Mujahidin. ([Lohbeck died in 2010. His obituary in the Albuquerque Journal stated that Lohbeck was "a radio and television announcer and news director, a congressional consultant to the U.S. House Interior Committee, an aide for then New Mexico Congressman Manuel Lujan, a NM legislator, a CBS war correspondent covering Afghanistan for ten years during the Soviet invasion, an author (Holy War, Unholy Victory), an expert witness regarding Afghan refugees seeking political asylum, a founder and member of the board of a local bank, founder and president of the regional chapter of the Society of American Magicians (S.A.M.), and a member of LA's Magic Castle and London's Magic Circle.'] Lohbeck was also a cog in the support network for the Afghan mujaheddin that was featured in the book and movie "Charlie Wilson's War.")

The report provides additional information on Lohbeck and Pollard: "Pollard and Lohbeck had met on a number of occasions to discuss Middle Eastern, Soviet-Afghan, and arms-transfer issues. Lohbeck was a pro-Mujahidin lobbyist, who maintained contacts with Afghan guerrilla leaders as well as US and Pakistani government officials."

The Jewish media concluded Pollard did not jeopardize U.S. national security by spying for Israel. Tell that to crews who flew on the RC-135 (above), the Air Force planes that flew ferret SIGINT and ELINT missions along the Soviet and Chinese coasts. Pollard sold the Israelis the store on RC-135 operations and Israel passed some of the intelligence on to the Soviets in return for more Soviet Jews emigrating to Israel.

In what could be the most damning part of the report, the FBI gave Israel enough time to exfiltrate Pollard's handlers from the United States. The report states: "[During] the three-day period of questioning by NIS and FBI investigators, Pollard alerted Yagur by telephone and volunteered false information to investigators thereby giving Yagur, Erh,. and Sella time to flee the country. Pollard was placed under 24-hour FBI/NIS surveillance on 19 November with the two-fold objectives of identifying his real contacts and preventing his escape from the United States. Pollard and his wife were arrested by the FBI on the morning of 21 November after a security officer at the Israeli Embassy refused to allow them entry into the building. Probably, Yagur, Sella, and Erb already had left the United States."

Wolf Blitzer played an unusual role in the Pollard case. The report states: "While his cooperation in debriefings was most helpful to government investigators, Pollard's willingness to grant an interview to journalist Wolf Blitzer for The Jerusalem Post without obtaining advance approval of the resulting text from the Justice Department violated the terms of his plea bargain. In the Blitzer interview, which was held on 20 November 1986 at Petersburg Federal Penitentiary, Pollard provided extensive information on his motives and objectives in conducting espionage for Israel. He also provided Blitzer a general account, with some important examples,* of intelligence he passed to the Israelis and emphasized that the Israeli Government must have been aware of and have approved of his activities. The interview, first published in excerpted segments in The Jerusalem Post over several months, was replayed in The New York Times and The Washington Post. Anne Henderson-Pollard followed up with her own commentary on the case in an unauthorized interview on '60 Minutes' on 1 March 1987, just three days before the Pollards were sentenced.

* Pollard told Blitzer he gave the Israelis "intelligence on PLO headquarters in Tunis, Iraqi and Syrian chemical warfare production facilities, Soviet arms shipments to Syria and other Arab states, Pakistan's nuclear program, and the US Intelligence Community's assessment of a new Soviet fighter."

The U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv (above) bristles with intercept antennas on its roof. The Israelis wanted Pollard to pass on intelligence on what kind of "dirt" the U.S. had on Israeli political leaders and the identities of Israeli informants for U.S. intelligence, called "rats" by the Israelis.

This publicity, which the Pollards apparently hoped would mobilize sympathy and support from the Israeli Government as well as from within the American Jewish community, backfired on both them and on the Israelis.

Israeli discomfiture had been heightened by the U.S. indictment in February 1987 of Pollard-recruiter Col. Aviem Sella and then by the sharp US reaction to Sella's appointment as Commander of Israel's Tel Nof airbase. Although the official Israeli Government investigation announced on 11 March and completed in late May was legally toothless and did not yield findings of complicity on the part of Israeli cabinet officials in the affair, adverse publicity and political pressure forced Sella's resignation from the Tel No£ post.

Nonetheless, Israeli media commentaries and public opinion polls also suggest that many Israeli citizens regard Pollard as an Israeli patriot and believe that their government should have assisted him once he was caught. Moreover, Sella retains his status as an Israeli national hero and his colonelcy in the Israeli Air Force.

In addition to running operations against the Arabs, the Israeli services have high interest in collecting political, economic, and scientific intelligence about the Soviet bloc, the
United States, and the United Nations, whose policy decisions could have repercussions on Israel. Tel Aviv's program for accelerating its technological, scientific, and military development has included attempts to penetrate classified defense [REDACTED but likely refers to U.S. defense contractors. A number of NSA and National Reconnaissance Office programs were compromised in the 1980s by Israeli contractors who received classified information from Jewish American defense contractor engineers and scientists. A particularly damaging compromise occurred in RCA in New Jersey in 1985, the same year Pollard was arrested. Jewish RCA engineers turned over classified information to Israeli engineers working on a firewalled signals intelligence program code named DINDI. The entire program was shut down as a result of the compromise but FBI agents in New Jersey were instructed not to pursue criminal investigations of Jewish American engineers. Another sensitive NSA program, code-named PIEREX, was also compromised to Israeli engineer spies].

Two of Pollard's three handlers, Col. Aviem Sella and Joseph Yagur, emphasized that Pollard should obtain military and technical intelligence on the Soviet Union, Arab states, and Pakistan. The Israelis wanted to be informed of technological advances in Arab military inventories; for example, they wanted Pollard to provide them with information on Soviet reactive-armor technology and on advanced Soviet SAM systems so they could prepare for their appearance in Arab inventories.

Yagur. expressed .interest in intelligence regarding all Middle Eastern countries, which he defined as ranging from Morocco to Pakistan and from Lebanon to the Yemens [REDACTED and REDACTED], Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria, and Pakistan. Pollard also was to
provide indications-and-warning support for the Israelis by contacting them via an emergency telephone number and using a code word, later designated as '20 percent,' if he learned that war in the Middle East was imminent.

[Eitan] asked for information on the PLO's Force 17, CIA psychological studies or other
intelligence containing 'dirt' on senior Israeli officials; information identifying the 'rats' in Israel, by which Eitan apparently meant Israelis who provided information to the United
States.

As the espionage operation accelerated following the Paris meeting, Yaqur extended and refined the Israeli requirements at meetings held monthly with Pollard. During a discussion which accompanied Pollard's first large delivery of classified material on 23 January 1985, Yagur repeated a request that Eitan had made in Paris for the 'RASIN' (Radio Siqnal
Notation) manual. Yagur showed Pollard the first chapter of the manual, which identified it as an NSA document. Yagur told Pollard that Israel had gained access to the communications of the Soviet military assistance group in Damascus and needed the RASIN manual to determine if it were technically feasible to decrypt the signals.

Examples included requests for information on 'CERES,' which Yagur thought was a Syrian research and development facility; data on Syrian remotely piloted vehicles; information on the Ramona ELINT system in Syria, the numbers and locations of all Soviet advisors in Syria; information on the national-level command, control, and communications center in Damascus; the identities of Syrian units with attached Soviet advisors; and all training programs for Syrian personnel in the USSR. Yagur also requested medical intelligence on the health of Syrian President Hafiz al-Assad.

Pollard also received specific requests for intelligence on Egypt and on the Egyptian connection with an Argentinian missile program. Yagur asked for a specific, Egyptian study on the Israeli Air Force and a Westinghouse Corporation study on Egyptian air defenses, neither of which Pollard was able to obtain. Yagur also made a high-priority request for information on the Argentine-Egyptian Condor missile program. DIA documents on the Condor, which Pollard obtained and provided, filled an important gap in Israeli strategic intelligence, according to Yagur. Pollard claimed he later saw an Israeli intelligence report based on his information.

In June or July 1995; Yaqur asked Pollard for all available information on PLO headquarters outside Tunis and on Libyan and Tunisian air defenses. Following the Israeli air attack on the headquarters on 1 October 1985 -- according to Pollard--Yaqur said a contingency plan had been developed and executed based upon Pollard's information. Pollard claimed that Yaqur passed thanks from 'the highest levels of the Israeli Government' for his intelligence support for the raid.

In the absence of an Israeli request, Pollard initiated the delivery of three daily intelligence summaries, prepared by the National Security Agency and by Naval Intelligence and issued by the originators in message format, which the Israelis found useful and asked to receive routinely. These were the Middle East and North Africa Summary (MENAS), the Mediterranean Littoral Intelligence Summary (MELOS); and the Indian Ocean Littoral Intelligence Summary (I.O. Littoral Intsum.) Pollard claims to have provided copies of each
summary from mid-July 1994 until a few days before his arrest on 21 November 1985, which would yield a total of roughly 1,500 messages. As an example of their importance to the Israelis, Pollard recalled that Yagur once chided him for missing one day out of a month's collection of MELOS messages. Pollard claims the Israelis used the MENAS to identify new units in Arab orders-of-battle.

Pollard recalled that on two occasions--dates not remembered -- he delivered information on an emergency basis, for warning purposes. In one instance he alerted Yagur that the Soviet T-72M main battle tank had entered the Syrian inventory. On the other occasion he provided information on an impending terrorist truck bombing attack. According to Pollard, the CIA had warned Israel of an impending attack that would occur during the coming week, but had offered no supporting details. Pollard said he found information explaining that the terrorists had planned to use a truck with stolen French diplomatic plates. As a result of his information, Pollard said, the Israelis were able to foil the attack."

Pollard also gave Israel intelligence on:

"-- The State Department's position on Taba, a small disputed area on the Egyptian-Israeli border
-- 'Granite' and 'Have' programs, which involve U.S. exploitation of foreign materiel."

[Note: Granite was a U.S. Army Foreign Science and Technology Center foreign material exploitation program. It ended in 1992. Have was a series of Air Force compartmented intelligence programs that extended beyond exploitation of foreign material to SIGINT and other areas (Have Union RC-135 SIGINT missions, Have Void bunker buster project, Have Glib exploitation of foreign ordnance, Have Crow tactical electronics warfare system, Have Cook Air Force HUMINT collection on C3 systems, Have Flex airborne lasers, Have Quick frequency hopping and anti-jamming communications, and Have Blue stealth fighter development]. The Jewish media reports that Pollard did not provide intelligence on U.S. weapons systems is patently false. Stealth technology and bunker busters were highly-classified programs at the time of Pollard's espionage.]

"Pollard said he provided at his own initiative a DIA study that concluded Syria had a less-than-even chance of retakinq the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights in a surprise attack.

Yagur questioned Pollard about the Middle East Arms Transfer (MEAT) Working Group, a State Department-chaired interagency committee that coordinates military-hardware sales to that region, and asked if Pollard could join it.

Pollard's deliveries concerning PLO headquarters near Tunis, Tunisian and Libyan air defenses, and Pakistan's plutonium reprocessing facility near Islamabad.

Pollard told investigators that Joseph Yagur informed him that the RASIN manual permitted Israel to begin the process of attempting to monitor a communications link between the Soviet General Staff in Moscow and the Soviet military assistance group in Damascus, Syria.

Apart from supporting Israeli actions or positions that could harm US relations with friendly Arab states, Pollard's activities have caused some Arab countries to raise unwelcome questions or make critical observations about U.S. evenhandedness
in its Mideast policies.

The Damage report provides a chronology of Pollard's life:

Jonathan Jay Pollard: A Chronology o£ Events

7 August 1954   Born in Galveston, Texas.
1961                Family moved to South Bend, Indiana; father employed as virologist at Notre Dame University. Pollard complained in pre-sentencing affidavit that the community generally was unfriendly to Jews.June 1967         Pollard indicated in pre-sentencing affidavit that Israel's dramatic victory in the six-day war made a profound and lasting impression upon him.
Summer 1971    Pollard attended Weizman Institute Science Camp in Israel, which extolled Zionism and encouraged emigration to Israel.1972-1976       Attended Stanford University; graduated with BA in Political Science. GPA 3.5. Displayed first known signs of emotional instability.

The report states that Pollard should have been identified as a security risk at a very early stage: "Pollard's adverse performance record with TF-168 and other manifestations of irresponsibility during his employment with naval intelligence should have been highlighted in his personnel file and been readily available to naval intelligence components (as well as any other intelligence agencies) considering him for reassignment or interagency transfer. Pollard's frequent removal of large numbers of documents from his workspace should have aroused the suspicion of his supervisor and colleagues much sooner despite complicating factors such as flextime (permission for employees to work odd hours) and Pollard's possession of a 'courier card' that afforded him unrestricted permission to transport classified material among DoD facilities. A related factor was that most of the documents Pollard stole were unrelated to his job as a terrorism analyst for North America and the Caribbean. Pollard's acquisition of such documents therefore, constituted a gross violation of the need-to-know principle."

The report's most important recommendation was for the Attorney General to stop treating Israel as a non-hostile ally. The report states: "Israel's absence from the Attorney General's list of 'criteria countries' -- meaning that the U.S. Counterintelligence posture against Israel is not especially high -- points to a need for remedial action. Israel's special relationship with the United States appears to preclude that coutnry's placement on the 'criteria country' list."

The Jewish media called the release of the Pollard Damage Report a vindication for Israel because Pollard didn't hand over classified information on U.S. military or intelligence capabilities. The Jewish media's contention is a not-too-clever lie. By exposing America's sensitive intelligence sources and methods, such as the ability of an NSA outstation on Masirah island off of Oman (above), to gather electronic intelligence from surrounding nations, Pollard placed it and countless other intelligence-gathering operations in extreme jeopardy.

Had the United States adopted a strong counterintelligence stance against Israel in 1987, it is doubtful that Israel would have been able to carry out its various terrorist missions in the United States -- from the Oklahoma City federal building bombing to the 9/11 attacks. Thousands of American would be alive today if the FBI and Justice Department had decided to declare persona non grata a few Israeli spies and deny a few card-carrying Zionists security clearances and sensitive positions in the U.S. government.

There is an interesting side story to the pollard treason and it is germane as the Senate argues over Hagel's nomination to be Defense Secretary. In 1975, a Republican conservative congressman from Virginia, Robert Daniel, Jr., a former CIA employee, asked the CIA to provide him with information on Mossad, as well as three other intelligence services, those of France, West Germany, and China -- seen as threats to U.S. national security.

After Daniel's request, his political career began to sink like the Titanic. Ironically, Daniel's banker father, Robert Daniel, Sr., was returning from a trip to Europe in 1912. The elder Daniel survived his voyage on the ill-fated RMS Titanic and went on to be elected to the Virginia Senate. As far as Daniel, Jr., the whispering campaign began that he was asking too many questions about Mossad's activities in the United States. Daniel was actually trying to defend the policy of keeping the U.S. intelligence budget classified in an era when the intelligence community had come under incessant attack for its abuses of power at home and abroad. A Confidential CIA Office of Legislative Counsel memo dated October 1, 1975, states that Daniel wanted the information on Mossad to argue against an amendment by Rep. Robert Giaimo (D-CT) to make the intelligence budget public. Daniel believed that such information in the hands of Mossad, the West German BND, the Chinese Kung An Po, and the French SDECE would pose a national security threat to the United States.

But for the Jewish Lobby, and we will call it that because its interests extend far beyond the borders of Israel, Daniel had to go. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) began grooming a Jewish Democratic member of the Virginia House of Delegates, Norm Sisisky, to challenge Daniel, a member of an old Virginia plantation family. In 1982, Sisisky defeated Daniel 54 to 46 percent and, as a freshman, was appointed to serve on four major Armed Services Committee subcommittees, including Military Nuclear Systems and Strategic and Critical Materials. Sisisky also was named to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. An ardent Zionist who represented a 40 percent African American district, Sisisky once missed an important civil rights bill vote because it thought it more important to attend his grandson's bar mitzvah at Jerusalem's Western Wall. Sisisky was the president of his Petersburg conservative synagogue and the Virginia United Jewish Appeal, which provided financial aid to Israel. Sisisky, a leader of the Blue Dog Democrats, was one of Israel's strongest supporters in Congress.

In 1993, Defense Secretary Les Aspin informed President Bill Clinton that Pollard attempted to pass classified information to Israel in 14 letters he wrote from prison. Aspin strongly argued against presidential clemency. Aspin lasted only eleven months as Defense Secretary and he died from a sudden stroke in 1995 at the age of 56. Later, in 1998, CIA director George Tenet threatened to resign if Clinton decided to include Pollard's release as part of a peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians.

If it is "anti-Semitic" to place the interests of the United States ahead of those of Israel, so be it. Those who are challenging Defense Secretary-designate Chuck Hagel because he values America's interests over those of Israel should have their own loyalty to America questioned. And if that includes opening up criminal investigations of a few sitting senators and representatives, along with a few Israeli-owned journalists and lobbyists, so be it also...

Card carrying Zionists are U.S. security risks and should be denied sensitive jobs and security clearances...