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The Emperors Clothes/Humanitarian Spies

Posted By: RMNEWS AGENT 009
Date: Wednesday, 16-Feb-2000 14:39:03
www.rumormill.news/1619

The following is an excellent article we received that we thought you might enjoy. It's lenghty, but well worth your time. ~RMNewsAgent009

The Emperors Clothes http://emperors-clothes.com/indexe.htm

Humanitarian Spies by Jared Israel (revised 2/9/00)

www.emperors-clothes.com

It appears there are two types of Humanitarian Aid organizations in the New World Order: Them That Steals and Them That Spies. For the thieves, see Soiled Rainbow. If you are interested in spies and the liars who cover up their work, stay here.

I have been doing research on the CARE spy scandal for several days. It is a Labor of Sisyphus. No sooner does one think one has dug up all there is to dig then one encounters (if you will pardon the mixed metaphor) more dirt rolling down the hill. CARE has been compromised by this mess, but not only CARE. Also the Australian government, the US government, the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) and the Western mass media. Perhaps the Western mass media worst of all.

On Nov 2, SBS TV in Australia revealed that CARE Canada had been recruiting what amounted to spies for NATO in Yugoslavia.

I've posted the hyperlink to the SBS CARE story below. It's worth reading. But before you look at the transcript, I suggest you read the background material because in some ways it's more revealing than the TV show, more damning. As happens often, when Western journalists uncovered this cover-up, they didn't uncover it all.

Spies or Victimized Aid Workers?

On March 31, 1999, three employees of CARE Australia, Steve Pratt, an Australian who headed the Yugoslav operation, Peter Wallace, another Australian, and Branko Jelen, a Yugoslav, were arrested at the Serbian-Croatian border. Yugoslavia charged them with using CARE as a cover to spy for NATO.

CARE Australia officials ridiculed the charges, claiming CARE was completely neutral and that the confession of Steve Pratt, aired on Serbian TV, could only have resulted from coercion. Western mass media supported CARE, presenting the men as Good Samaritans whose only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time and falling victim to Serbian paranoia and war propaganda. CARE had clean hands...

Or did it?

Now comes a TV show, broadcast Nov. 2 by SBS in Australia. It reveals that CARE recruited and paid OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) Verifiers in Kosovo from Oct. 1998 to March 1999. That much is uncontested.

As you will see when you read the transcript, some CARE people justify the OSCE recruiting program on the grounds that the Verifiers were legitimate peacemakers. Alas, this simply does not wash.

Goals of the Kosovo Verification Mission

'Negotiated' (that is, 'coerced') under threat of NATO bombing last October, the Verification agreement let the OSCE send unarmed mediators into Kosovo, supposedly to help defuse tensions. However everything about the Verification mission suggests military intelligence, not mediation.

It was run by William Walker. Walker had no background as a mediator. He wasn't even an expert in Balkans history or current politics. What he did know about was counter-insurgency and black ops. His role in Iran-Contra and his achievements in apologizing for the murderous El Salvador death squads all but prove he is a high-placed intelligence operative. (A factual account of Mr. Walker's work in Central America will be posted on Emperors-Clothes as soon as possible. In the absence of that account, which we have not had time yet to lay out, let me say these facts are uncontested. Period.) The U.S. verification team was composed of employees of Dyncorp, a Virginia company that has grown rich off Government work. At the 1992 Senate hearings on R. James Woolsey's appointment as head of the CIA, Woolsey commented: "I own less than one-quarter of one percent of the -- diluted shares of a company named Dyncorp here in the Washington, D.C. area. And the corporation has, from time to time, had a handful of very small contracts with the Central Intelligence Agency." Ahh, sweet understatement. Dyncorp's "very small contracts" have included covert work in Columbia and Peru. (Facts on this will be posted shortly on Emperors-clothes. Again, it is all documented). In the case of Dyncorp's work in Columbia, the Clinton administration was accused of using Dyncorp to circumvent human rights restrictions on US aid to the death-squad-ridden Colombian military. So what do we have? We have the head of the Verification mission and his American team linked to covert operations and death squad activities in Latin America. Other than that, they have no qualifications for their work in Kosovo.

Given this command structure, doesn't it stand to reason that the Western (i.e., U.S.) goal was a) to gather military intelligence and b) to establish command-relations with the Kosovo Liberation Army, an outfit whose activities - killing ethnic Serbian civilians and ethnic Albanian "collaborators" as well as employees of the Serbian state such as policemen, power line repairmen, school officials, Yugoslav troops and even state-employed wood gatherers - whose activities are very much like those of Latin American death squads?

Indeed, isn't it reasonable to guess that the tactical similarity between the KLA and the Latin American death squads may result from their having had the same (US) advisors?

In any case this was the Verification Mission for which CARE Canada was recruiting. Not only recruiting, but also apparently paying the recruits' salaries.

Even the Western press has virtually admitted that Walker & Co. were spies. Consider the following from the LA Times:

His [i.e., William Walker's] postings include a stint in Honduras from 1980 to 1982, when the Central American country was Washington's secret conduit for weapons and other support to right-wing Contras fighting to overthrow the Sandinistas in neighboring Nicaragua.

He also served as chief of the U.S. Embassy's political section in El Salvador, another Central American hot spot, from 1974 to 1977, and later as the country's U.S. ambassador from 1988 to 1992. As a diplomat in countries so high on Washington's national security agenda, Walker couldn't help knowing something about spying, said John Pike, a defense analyst at Washington's Federation of American Scientists. "Those are front-line postings where he would have unavoidably developed an acquaintance with the capabilities and limitations of intelligence sources and methods," Pike said from Washington. And it would be surprising if Walker's team of ex-military and other experts came to verify Kosovo's cease-fire without equipment to listen in on radio communications, Pike said. "Put it this way: They would be idiots if they weren't doing that," he added. "What are they going to do, read about it in the paper the next day?"( LA Times, Jan. 20, 1999, our emphasis) The Amazing Story of Mr. Pratt, Mr. Wallace and Mr. Jelen

So we had a neutral, Humanitarian Aid organization (CARE) recruiting Verifiers, that is spies, for a Kosovo Mission run by CIA types. Shortly after the Mission ended and NATO began bombing Yugoslavia, three of the Humanitarian CARE employees were arrested for spying.

That was on March 31. At first CARE officials claimed they were not sure of the three men's whereabouts. Then, on April 11, Steve Pratt appeared on Serbian Television, RTS. Here's the actual text of the RTS broadcast, as transcribed by the BBC:

[Announcer] Through coordinated action, the security bodies of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia have smashed a network of agents headed by Major Steve Pratt. The named person had been gathering intelligence on the movement of our military and police forces under the cover of the Care International humanitarian organization before the aggression on our country, and, during the aggression, on the effects of the bombing.

[Pratt, recording in English with passage by passage Serbo-Croatian translation] My name is Steve Pratt. I was born in 1949. I was born in Australia and I am the citizen of Australia. Before I came to Yugoslavia, I worked in northern Iraq, Yemen, Zaire, Rwanda, and Kenya for the humanitarian organization Care of Australia.

When I came to Yugoslavia, I performed some intelligence tasks in this country by using the cover of Care Australia. My concentration was on Kosovo and some effects of the bombing. I misused my Yugoslavian citizen staff for the acquisition of information. I realize that damage was done this country by these actions, for which I am greatly sorry. I always did and still do condemn the bombing of this country.

[Television footage shows Pratt sitting in a chair and making the statement; TV also shows Pratt's passport; there are no visible signs of physical mistreatment of Pratt] (BBC, April 13, 1999) The Western media presented a negative view of the RTS broadcast. One AP report April 12th was headlined, "TV pictures of aid worker's spy confession fuzzy: Tapp". In the story Australian CARE chief Charles Tapp dismissed the RTS broadcast because Pratt was shown in profile, because it was impossible to see his eyes and because his confession was not very specific. (He said "confession" should be put in "immense inverted commas".) An Agence France Presse story on the 12th was headlined "Yugoslavs forced our man to confess to spying."

Amidst this reporting, which amounted to anti-Yugoslav propaganda, the real story was simply ignored by most of the media; where it was covered it was scornfully dismissed.

That story, which broke April 11th in the Australian Sunday Telegraph, quoted Steve Pratt's mother, Mrs. Mavis Pratt, concerning Pratt's past activities. I have not been able to see a copy of the Sunday Telegraph story. Fortunately a few sentences are quoted in a few places. One is an AP dispatch issued hours after the Sunday Telegraph report. According to the AP, Mrs. Pratt told the Telegraph that her son had worked for CARE in Iraq:

''He was letting the U.N. know what Iraq was doing, he was observing, so Iraq put a price on his head and they had to get him out of there quickly.'' In other words, he had been a spy.

Dishonor Thy Mother

How might one expect CARE executives to have responded to Pratt's confession and Mrs. Pratt's statement?

CARE presents itself as a politically neutral, humanitarian organization. Doesn't that suggest CARE leaders should have adopted a cautious, neutral approach? Perhaps said they have nothing but respect for the arrested men and established a fund legal expenses? Wouldn't any other approach compromise their neutrality and raise questions about their motives?

And what about the mass media? Since governments do employ spies, since to be effective, spies have to have some kind of cover, wouldn't it make sense to present the story in a factual manner and not use journalistic techniques to sway public opinion?

CARE and the media lash out at Yugoslavia

Let's look at the April 11 AP story, starting with the headline. The headline may be the only thing one reads and even if one reads further, the headline colors one's view of the rest.

What sort of headline would logically go with this story? Maybe something like:

Mom Says Arrested CARE worker Spied Before

Instead, AP chose:

CARE says Serbian spying 'confession' obtained under duress

This is a very strong statement. By making it the headline, AP lent it credibility. Did it deserve such credibility?

The RTS broadcast with Pratt's confession had just been aired. What could Charles Tapp or anyone else at CARE actually have known about this case?

If Pratt had told them he was a spy, they would know. But if Pratt was a spy and told nobody, how could they have known?

Therefore Tapp's denial is either a) a lie (because he knew Pratt was a spy and therefore denied it) or b) pure speculation (because he had no way of knowing whether Pratt was innocent or guilty.)

So what's the point of the headline? By using the phrase "obtained under duress" the headline creates a picture in the reader's mind - of threats and torture. Though the body of the article offers no factual basis for this charge, the headline has a powerful impact.

Note that 'CARE' is not a person but an organization; how can CARE 'say' anything? By quoting 'CARE' instead of a CARE executive, the AP story capitalizes on Westerners' impression of CARE, the organization: neutral, selfless, honorable. A CARE spokesman might lie - but 'CARE' itself? Never.

Compounding the Question

Note that by jumping to the question of how the confession was obtained (supposedly 'under duress') the AP story gives the (false) impression that Pratt's innocence is an established fact.

The sleight of hand technique used here is similar to the compound question. A familiar example: "Do you still beat your wife?" The use of the very aggressive "do you still" obscures the fact that the main charge is unproven: we have not been shown that you ever beat your wife. Similarly here, by stressing the manner in which the (allegedly) false confession was obtained (that is, "under duress") the headline obscures the fact that we have been shown no evidence the confession was false.

Let's move onto the first paragraph in the article:

The aid agency CARE Australia on Monday said its field worker Steve Pratt's alleged spying confession broadcast by Serbian television was made under duress. This is just a repeat of the headline. Bad journalism, unless they want us to learn this statement by rote. Will there be a quiz?

Here's paragraph two:

CARE and the Australian government demanded immediate access to Pratt and his colleague, Peter Wallace, who were detained by Yugoslav authorities March 31 after they left Belgrade for Montenegro to help refugees. Still not quoting actual people, the AP adds a second institution, the Australian government, by way of additional confirmation. The Yugoslav offense is so great, all institutions are speaking out.

Moreover, by telling us these institutions have "demanded immediate access to Pratt" and Wallace, the article suggests Yugoslavia is denying such access. This in turn suggests the Yugoslavs must have something to hide - such as evidence that Pratt has been beaten. Note that there is no effort, here or elsewhere in the article, to discuss the normal procedure for allowing access to men accused of spying for a group of nations who are, in grave violation of international law, bombing your country.

The paragraph also includes the statement that the arrested man had been arrested after they:

left Belgrade for Montenegro to help refugees. (My emphasis) How could the AP possibly know why Pratt, Wallace and Jelen had left Belgrade? Couldn't they have left to spy elsewhere? Or to escape detection? By asserting their humanitarian motives without evidence, the article strengthens the reader's impression that the men are innocent.

A little further down, a CARE official is cited by name for the first time:

CARE Australia's emergency coordinator, Brian Doolan, said threats may have been made against local staff or against Wallace to extract the confession. (My emphasis) 'May have been made.' Two thoughts on this: a) Doesn't the use of 'may' completely contradict the headline and first paragraph, which have 'CARE' (speaking as if it were a person) saying the confession WAS obtained under duress and b) isn't it true that it is always possible that a confession 'may' have been extracted based on threats?

Since by this point we've been told several times that Pratt was forced to confess, I would bet many readers wouldn't notice the use of "may".

The article continues as follows:

Doolan said the claims made against Pratt were ''absolute lunacy.'' If Pratt "may" (which suggests 'may not') have confessed under duress, why is Doolan sure the charges are lunacy? The AP ignores this obvious contradiction. Nor does it try to bring some balance to the story by talking to someone from the Yugoslav side, for example a Yugoslav security official. Such a person might ask: "Since it's obvious that Mr. Pratt could be a spy without Mr. Doolan knowing, how can Mr. Doolan be so sure the charges are lunacy?"

And so the article continues for eight (8) more paragraphs, strengthening the impression that Pratt must be innocent until we get to the end, where Mrs. Pratt is quoted. But readers are not permitted to judge Mrs. Pratt's words for themselves; they are given a good deal of help by CARE Australia chief executive Charles Tapp who is quoted before and after Mrs. Pratt who attacks the charge that Pratt had previously spied against Iraq, attacks the newspaper that covered it, and even tries to discredit Mrs. Pratt (her sin is being old). Here's how it reads:

...[CARE chief executive Tapp] rejected the suggestion that they [i.e. the arrested CARE workers] were acting for any other organization in any capacity.

Speaking from the Yugoslavia-Croatia border, Tapp also slammed a newspaper report in which Pratt's mother, Mavis Pratt, was quoted as saying her son had supplied information about Iraqi forces to the United Nations during the Gulf War.

''He was letting the U.N. know what Iraq was doing, he was observing, so Iraq put a price on his head and they had to get him out of there quickly,'' she [Mrs. Pratt] was quoted as saying.

Tapp said Mrs. Pratt was elderly and added, ''Frankly, I consider this to be extremely poor journalism.'' (AP Worldstream April 11, 1999; Sunday 22:06 Eastern Time ) When you think of it, the quote from Mrs. Pratt is the only news in this entire news story. The rest is intended to give us a proper news orientation. The AP is evidently anxious to guarantee that readers approach the arrests with the preconception that Pratt and the others are innocent. Why?

As for CARE officials - their statements are suggestive. Consider: Pratt confessed on April 11th. The Sunday Telegraph printed Mrs. Pratt's statement the next day and within hours AP broadcast furious denials from CARE officials. How could these officials be so sure so fast? Why would they react without taking time to investigate and discuss the matter, including privately with Yugoslav officials? Doesn't such a hasty and violent response suggest that:

Pratt et al were indeed spies; Tapp and Doolan were fully aware that Pratt, Wallace and Jelen were spies because they were themselves involved in organizing such spying; CARE officials were therefore worried that Yugoslav officials or, worse yet, Pratt or Wallace, might go public with more revelations, might expose high-level CARE (and Australian government?) involvement, might talk about CARE spying in other countries, and so on. Thus it was crucial immediately (on Sunday!) to discredit the arrests and especially the public confession. By planting the thought that the confession was made 'under duress' and 'was lunacy' and that Mrs. Pratt's own statement was unbelievable - the hope was to prejudice Western readers against any further revelations from Belgrade or Steve and Mavis Pratt. Honor thy Satellite Phone

Four months later, Yugoslavia released Pratt and Wallace. In a dispatch at the time, the Australian news agency, AAP, explained that Yugoslav border guards had found:

...detailed maps, a satellite telephone and a laptop computer in their car when Pratt and Wallace tried to cross into Croatia. Shouldn't this information have been presented as top news in April? It was not. Instead the media engaged in more preventive damage control. Consider this from the AAP on April 15th:

CARE Australia worker Steve Pratt, who is being held as a spy in Yugoslavia, would have collected some military information, his former boss said today.

But it would only have been to help CARE's planning and would not have been given to any outside body, Tony McGee said... Mind boggling, isn't this? Why on earth would CARE routinely gather military information? The article goes on:

Mr. McGee, like Mr. Pratt a former Australian army officer, said he never took any interest in military installations or troop movements except to the extent that they might affect CARE's safety and operations. Are all these guys ex-Army officers? Doesn't CARE recruit any regular folks? And what about McGee's suggestion that by recruiting (supposedly) former Army officers CARE insures its employees will take no "interest in military installations or troop movements except to the extent that they might affect CARE's safety and operations."

In case people are not convinced that military men would never take an interest in military matters, Mr. McGee adds:

In any event, satellites could provide much better information than anything aid workers on the ground could gather. So Pratt was certainly no spy because former military officers just don't have the military curiosity needed for spying and even if he was a spy the information he would gather would be of minor use. Doesn't this sound more and more like a) Pratt was a spy and b) all these guys knew it?

What is the point of McGee's statement? The only explanation I can suggest is: CARE officials knew Pratt was carrying incriminating equipment and descriptions of troop movements when he was arrested; there was a danger the Yugoslavs would make this incriminating evidence public; McGee was trying to immunize the public beforehand. And once again, the media provided a willing PR forum.

Pratt, Critic of NATO (?)

Here's an AAP headline from April 12th:

Ex Army Major no spy say CARE colleagues

This article tells Pratt's life story, official version. We are told he spent years in the army where he worked in supply until at the request of former Australian Prime Minister and CARE Chairman Malcolm Fraser, he joined CARE.

He what?

How comes an ordinary Army major to be recruited by a Prime Minister? Isn't this in itself a bit suspicious?

The AAP asks no embarrassing questions.

The article goes on to claim that Pratt:

also criticized the NATO bombing, and publicly attacked the destruction of a CARE-run refugee camp which killed nine people. This is intended to prove Pratt's even-handedness. See? He criticizes NATO. (More evidence of his innocence.)

But consider Pratt's actual comments, recorded on March 29 in an AAP Internet Bulletin. He's talking about the NATO bombing of refugees who were living in abandoned Army barracks:

"I suspect the centers had been located very close to military targets. The report that I am getting that they have probably been caught up in some sort of collateral thing," Mr. Pratt said. The refugees killed were believed to include women and children who were ethnic Serb refugees who fled Bosnia during the 1995 conflict.

"They were not directly hit, they don't seem to have been deliberately targeted."...He said the center where eight refugees were confirmed killed had been located 60km southwest of the city of Nis in an old army barracks consisting of barracks of wooden huts. But two of the nine buildings had been damaged, including one which was burned down, when NATO hit a warehouse about 100 meters away. "I believe (the damage) was accidental..."

Another refugee had been confirmed killed in Kosovo's capital of Pristina in a refugee center close to police headquarters. "Again this was a refugee center too close to a NATO target. I suppose this is the way things are in war but it is extremely sad," he said. Is Pratt "publicly attacking" NATO for the "destruction of a CARE-run refugee camp?" Or is he in fact excusing NATO of any criminal responsibility?

Why do you say 'Preposterous' Mr. Downer?

Two days after Pratt confessed on Yugoslav TV, The Guardian (London) reported that:

The Serbian government's claim that two Australian aid workers missing for 14 days were gathering intelligence has been dismissed as 'preposterous' by the Australian foreign minister, Alexander Downer. (The Guardian(London) April 13, 1999) Imagine you told your neighbor your wooden house was on fire and he replied: "Preposterous!"

Of course, you could be wrong - but preposterous?

How could Downer possibly be sure?

Australian Foreign Minister Downer's statement demonstrates his desire, in the absence of supporting evidence, to prove Pratt was innocent. This puts Downer in good company: Tapp, McGee, Doolan the AP, the AAP and the mass media in general were all trying to convince the public that Pratt was innocent. The Guardian could have contributed to news gathering by questioning Downer: "How can you be sure? Why is everyone so anxious to prove the Yugoslavs are lying? Could this be a pre-emptive strike aimed at preventing people from believing future Yugoslav revelations about CARE's involvement in spying?"

But the Guardian asked no such questions. Apparently they wanted to prove Pratt was innocent too.

Dishonor Thy Mother Some More

While most of the world had no idea Major Pratt's mother had nailed him in the Sunday Telegraph, the word got around in Australia. Hence the following bit of damage control published by the AAP on April 12th:

CARE Australia emergency coordinator Brian Doolan personally guaranteed Mr. Pratt was not spying when they worked together in Iraq from 1993 to 1995. Mr. Doolan criticized Sydney's Sunday Telegraph reporters for speaking to Mr. Pratt's mother, Mavis Pratt, who told the newspaper: "He was letting the UN know what Iraq was doing, he was observing, so Iraq put a price on his head and they had to get him out of there quickly."

The newspaper's story was groundless, Mr. Doolan said. The elderly Mrs. Pratt was confronted through the fly-screen door by two young women saying they wanted to help her son, he said.

"They (the reporters) seemed to have spun a bit of line and she's given them bits of information, potted information, that she knows about Steve's experience overseas," he said. Huh? Has Downer actually proven anything here?

Forget Thy Mother and Ditto Thy Satellite Phone!

Apparently this was sufficient to eliminate mom because by April 26, in a story on the Pratt/Wallace affair (the news stories generally left out Mr. Jelen since he was only a Yugoslav) Time actually printed the following sentence:

How the two aid workers came to be accused of spying has mystified their families and friends. Isn't this amazing?

Yes, one might argue, but perhaps 'Time' didn't know about the Mrs. Pratt's statement...

I find that hard to believe. Since they were writing a story about Australians accused of spying, wouldn't the 'Time" reporters read what the Australian press (not the mention the AP) had published concerning the arrests? How could they not know about Mavis Pratt's statement?

But let us concede, for the sake of argument, that Time didn't know.

The AAP certainly did know. After Pratt and Wallace were released in September, the AAP published a story that tried to explain the supposedly irrational Yugoslav conviction that the men were spies. In it, the AAP admitted that:

Serb authorities had intercepted Pratt's reports on troop movements, but added that these reports:

were designed to help Aid agencies, not NATO's air strikes. How could anyone think otherwise? the Yugoslav authorities must be paranoid.

AAP adds:

There were other allegations that Pratt spied on Iraq for the United Nations while he was working there for CARE Australia. These "other allegations" were the ones raised by Mrs. Pratt. Does the AAP see fit to mention her name? It does not. Instead it goes on to answer the anonymous allegations:

...the Army said Pratt had never undertaken intelligence work during his military career... Do you find this convincing? If Pratt was a spy would you expect the Australian Army to admit it?

Arguments like this have no merit as arguments. If you isolate them from the larger text, they look ridiculous. But within the context of a barrage of propaganda, they do have an effect. Here's how it works:

The AAP and other Western media take meaningless statements that sound like arguments. They put this empty babble in the appropriate place for real arguments. They string several such arguments together and they do this over and over again and in this way, by heaping one pro-establishment pseudo-argument on top of another (though never offering real evidence) the reader is trained into a sort of glaze, thought dissipates, the proper impression is planted and lingers.

Filing for ethical bankruptcy

The AAP story closes with an amazing statement. Referring to Peter Wallace, who had just been released along with Steve Pratt, the article states that:

His family, like Pratt's, were shocked when he was accused of being a spy. (Our emphasis. AAP General News, Sept. 2, 1999) Is it unreasonable to suggest that CARE, the mass media and the Australian government had fashioned a convenient cover story and Mrs. Pratt statement did not fit, so it was edited out?

Here is the hyperlink to the SBS TV show: http://www.sbs.com.au/dateline/transcript.html

* To browse articles at Emperors-clothes please click here or go to http://www.emperors-clothes.com If you would like to help Emperors-Clothes... please click here or go to http://www.emperors-clothes.com/howyour.htm to use our secure server. The Internet search tools we use for research are paid for by donations. If you would like to send a check, please mail it to Emperor's Clothes, P.O. Box 610-321, Newton, MA 02461-0321. Thanks.

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