Cheney and Air Force Generals Implicated in Nuke Theft

Excerpt of Part II of story at waynemadsenreport.com

Part II of a two-part series

Between August 24 and September 6, 2007, the U.S. Air Force's nuclear chain-of-command was severely compromised by a rival chain established out of Vice President Dick Cheney's office and extending through the offices of the Air Force Secretary and Chief of Staff, the Air Force's Cyber-Warfare element, and into the strategic bombing commands located at Minot and Barksdale Air Force Bases. In the weeks before and after this time period, there is ample evidence to suggest that the security of nuclear weapons, particularly at Minot, was placed in severe jeopardy by the rival chain-of-command.

On August 24, 2007, three B-52s operating from Barksdale flew a training exercise called REX REDUX, officially billed as a commemoration of a 1938 B-17 flight directed at the Italian luxury liner SS Rex. The exercise, personally ordered by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Moseley, was actually testing an Israeli-developed imaging and targeting pod called LITENING II on a U.S. Navy contracted merchant vessel, the USNS Bobo, in the Atlantic east of Bermuda and several targets of opportunity along the planes' flight paths through the southern United States.

REX REDUX also involved assets of the Air Force's embryonic Cyber Command in Washington and Barksdale.

Four days later, on August 30, a Barksdale-based B-52 flew six nuclear warhead tipped AGM-129 advanced cruise missiles from Minot to Barksdale. The incident was later called a "mistake" by Air Force officials. However, three high-ranking Air Force officers leaked the incident to the Air Force Times.

Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne, a key member of the rival chain-of-command, rewarded his loyalists in Barksdale by announcing the base had been selected as the preliminary headquarters for the Air Force Cyber Command. Wynne made his announcement at a Shreveport gambling casino. Wynne, according to a CNN report, advocated the testing of nonlethal weapons, like high-power microwave weapons, against American citizens. Wynne said, "If we're not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation."

Minot Air Force Base may also get a piece of the cyber-warfare pie. Attempts by this editor to interest North Dakota Democratic Senator Byron Dorgan in the August 30 nuclear incident were unsuccessful. Dorgan is obviously angling, along with Democratic Senator Kent Conrad, to get a chunk of the cyber-war command pie for Minot.

Far from being a mistake, the procurement of the nuclear missiles from Minot was tied to a rival chain-of-command operation that would occur on September 6, when the Israeli Air Force struck a purported Syrian nuclear facility in eastern Syria, near the town of Dayr az Zawr.

On April 24, 2008, as news broke of an FBI investigation into a long-time Israeli intelligence ring that penetrated the U.S. military and intelligence communities, CIA director, Air Force General Michael Hayden, revealed further "intelligence" on the Syrian facility, said to be a joint North Korean-Syrian reactor modeled after the Yongbyon facility in North Korea. However, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and American weapons experts cast doubt on the veracity of the CIA's intelligence, including a dubious videotape said to have originated with Israeli intelligence sources. Hayden, it appears, is part of the rival Air Force chain-of-command, taking orders directly from Cheney, to prepare and incite a U.S. military conflict with Syria and Iran.

The FBI investigation of the Israeli spy ring, which included convicted US Navy spy Jonathan Pollard; accused Army spy Ben-Ami Kadish; and possibly others who served in high positions in the George W. Bush administration is also reportedly looking at key members of the rival Air Force chain-of-command.

It is noteworthy that Air Force Cyber-Warfare guru Dr. Lani Kass, who had recently been an Israeli Air Force Major, first came to the United States as a defense contractor in 1981, the halcyon period of the Israeli spy ring inside the Pentagon and Reagan administration. Reagan National Security Council Middle East expert Douglas Feith was fired from his job after he was suspected of passing classified information to an Israeli embassy contact. Feith was re-hired at the Pentagon by his old friend Richard Perle. Kass now serves as the Air Force's chief cyber-warfare guru and she also specializes in information operations deception. Along with Air Force General Lawrence Stuztriem, Kass is involved in Operation Checkmate, operational planning for a U.S. military attack on Iran.

Two days after the Israeli spy story involving Kadish broke, the Pentagon-chartered cargo ship, SS Westward Venture, fired machine guns at approaching Iranian patrol vessels.

After the Minot nuclear incident, the Air Force's Air Combat Command at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia ordered a stand down of all fighters and bombers in the Air Force. Although the order was issued on September 7, the day after the Israeli strike on the "Al Kibar" site in Syria, the stand down did not occur until September 14.

Gates ordered an outside review of the Minot incident conducted by retired former Air Force Chief of Staff General Larry Welch. Welch was hardly an impartial judge, having been part of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's favorite program, the Ballistic Missile Defense System or "Star Wars II." Welch led a Blue Ribbon panel that heaped praise on the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, then led by Air Force General Ronald Kadish.

The Welch Report failed to discover the breakdown in Air Force nuclear command-and-control and the existence of the rival chain. An indication of the worthlessness of the Welch Report was the discovery that in August 2006, four Minuteman nose cone nuclear fuse assemblies were "mistakenly" shipped from Hill Air Force Base in Utah to Taiwan. The fuses had originally been shipped to Hill from F. E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyoming in March 2005. Gates reacted to the incident by ordering an unprecedented inventory of all nuclear weapons and nuclear material in the U.S. arsenal.

On April 21, 2008, Gates, speaking to young Air Force officers at the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, criticized the Air Force for refusing his orders to get more involved in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Gates' criticisms stunned the audience and reverberated throughout the Air Force. Here was a Secretary of Defense indicating that a subordinate service was insubordinate. Gates was likely hinting at the existence of the rival nuclear chain-of-command directed from Cheney's office.

The rival nuclear chain-of-command that was responsible for the Minot nuclear incident, REX REDUX, and associated events is as follows:

Vice President Dick Cheney

-- Chief of Staff David Addington

Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Moseley

-- Gen. Lawrence Stuztriem, Chief of Staff of the Air Force Strategic Studies Group - CHECKMATE

-- Dr. Lani Kass, ex-Israeli Air Force, Cyber Warfare, US Air Force, CHECKMATE

Lt. Gen. Robert Elder, Commander 8th Air Force, Barksdale Air Force Base

Col. Bruce Emig, Commander 5th Bomb Wing, Minot Air Force Base (relieved of command after nuclear incident)

Maj. Gen. Stephen Goldfein, Commander Air Warfare Center, Nellis Air Force Base

Goldfein's role in the chain-of-command has been exposed as a result of a Department of Defense Inspector General audit that discovered that Goldfein and Moseley helped steer a $50 million public relations contract for the Air Force's elite Thunderbirds flying team to Strategic Message Solutions (SMS), a firm that had been established to bid on the Thunderbirds Air Show Production Services, or TAPS. On September 2, 2007, as the impact of the Minot nuclear incident was still being felt in Minot and around the Air Force, a scheduled Thunderbirds air show to help celebrate "Northern Neighbors Day" was proclaimed to be still on schedule for September 8. A week after the worst nuclear security command-and-control debacle in the nation's history, Minot Air Force Base opened its gates for the public to come on to the base and watch the Thunderbirds perform. There was even a traffic jam of civilian cars, including some from nearby Canada, waiting to drive on to the base.

Meanwhile, lower and mid- ranking Air Force nuclear security personnel were being stripped of their personnel reliability program clearances for access to nuclear weapons on the base. The contrast could not have been more stark. It was clear that carrying on with the scheduled Thunderbirds show at Minot was part of a public relations spin being directed from Moseley and his staff.

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