US airstrikes target French turncoat
Paul sends us a link to McClatchy which reports that one of the main targets of US airstrikes last month was a French intelligence officer who defected to ISIS/ISIL/Islamic State.
Two European intelligence officials described the former French officer as the highest ranking defector ever to go over to the terrorist group and called his defection one of the most dangerous developments in the West’s long confrontation with al Qaida.
The identity of the officer is a closely guarded secret. Two people, independently of one another, provided the same name, which McClatchy is withholding pending further confirmation. All of the sources agreed that a former French officer was one of the people targeted when the United States struck eight locations occupied by the Nusra Front, al Qaida’s Syrian affiliate. The former officer apparently survived the assault, which included strikes by 47 cruise missiles.
Nimble little shit, ain’t he? TAH has been able to acquire an artist’s rendering of how the defector looks based on exclusive interviews with his former workmates;
Category: Terror War
French Officer Defector eh? Hum…must be too many of those rich white, heavy sauces in France for his taste I guess.
Because Algeria was at one time a department of France (roughly equivalent to a US state), there is a relatively large population of Algerian descent in France. Sounds to me like one of them was working for DGSE or French MI for a number of years, was pretty good at what he did, and then became an Islamic radical.
Bad news if true. DGSE is reputedly quite competent, as is today’s French military. A defector from either could do much damage.
French defector to ISIL/IS? This is not good news.
Someone was busted by the FBI today at the airport, on his way to Turkey via Switzerland to join ISIL/IS>
Oh. But there’s no insider threat from ISIS/ISIL or whatever the fuck they’re called.
There is something fishy about this story. Why would his identity Top secret? I would think it should be common knowledge. Out him and pressure his family for him to return. The only reason I could see for withholding his ID is if he were a double agent. That sounds rather far fetched, but weirder things have happened.
Not necessarily. The identity of Intel community personnel are often protected long after their death. For example, Barbara Robbins, CIA employee (she was working under cover at the US Embassy in Saigon) who was killed in 1965, was not publicly acknowledged by the CIA and added to their Book of Honor until 2011 – roughly 46 years after her death. Until that point, her passing was acknowledged only by an anonymous star on their Wall of Honor.
Indeed, the identity of one of the individuals the CIA lost in Vietnam the year after Ms. Robbins was KIA has to date not yet been made public. As was the case with Robbins for years, the individual is memorialized with an anonymous star on the Agency’s Wall of Honor, but they are not identified by-name in the agency’s Book of Honor.
The same principle could be at work here. Nations are often loath to publicly acknowledge their former intelligence operatives.
Or it could be that no one noticed that the pond is short a frog.
I don’t know Roger, right off the top of my head I can see where the ‘powers that be’ could be concerned about compromising unrelated operations or other human intel resources by revealing this oxygen thief’s identity too quickly.
Ah Pepe Le Pew. Fav was when the female cat got some white paint on her back. Talk about a horn dog. That Pepe was a smoothie.
Interesting that *we* took the shot- not the French.
How long until some bright lawyer figures out that one way of avoiding the political fallout of the US targeting its own citizens overseas is to simply have an allied nation do the shooting?
International “Throw Mama From the Train”
In Asia they say. “throw Mama-San from the jeepney”.
He might be the first French intel dood to officially join a terror org but he aint the first such to officially support same.
It was French national policy through a big chunk of the ’70s and ’80s to provide any and all generally anti-west and specifically anti-US terror and/or military orgs (Red Faction/Brigade, IRA, PLO, USSR, PDRC, etc) with whatever intel they might receive from US or NATO sources.
This was done for the same reasons that the French forces paid the Talib not to attack the French positions during their “helping” in Afghanistan.
Like it has already been pointed out above the Shit-stain above was a Muslim of North African ancestory that was raised in France.
Fanatical Muslims have no allegiance to the countries that nurture them, only Islam.