Deconstructing & Construing/Rambling -- Inside the Works

Dog and pony show time.

Also, this.  Nice.  Castro knew of JFK assassination plan, book says

Since Oswald was known to the Cuban exile community as a pro-Castro agitator (a suspected anti-Castro plant at that), he was already on Cuban intel scope by Summer '63.  I doubt Castro would have wanted to get blamed for the assassination.

O's Mexico City visits to Cuban and Sov embassies can be nicely explained away by Latell's version.

One problem. Kennedy was starting to thaw the US/Cuban and US/USSR relationships at the time of his murder.

Best theory identifies extremist right-wing US elements.  Would have required participation of some USG assets to have orchestrated the cover-up (Warren Commission irregularities, autopsy skullduggery, media campaign, etc.)


De-construction: Rumblings from Meatball Works

-"Perhaps I shouldn't have dismissed the kinetic IO angle.
That would mean not "retaliation", but a loud and clear warning to villagers over there against cooperating with enemy in the future

Maybe not."

-"Col. Kurtz. XXXXXXXXX who discussed the kinetic IO/PSYOP angle mentioned the little arms in a pile incident from Apocalypse Now when making his case to me.
No kidding.

COIN maybe, PSYOP definitely. (If indeed that's what happened.)"

Clarity At Last - Mil Option On Iran a Bluff

Peres Says U.S. Must Put All Iran Options on Table

Ask and ye shall receive

Obama Says Military Option on Iran Not a ‘Bluff’


(Means that it is definitely a bluff. Had been unsure until now.)  

Where's the River of Snot?

A senior US law enforcement official asked me if I noticed anything strange about the video footage of the UC Davis incident.

I told him that I had only seen the famous still photo in the press.  I hadn't seen any video.

"You've been exposed to pepper spray before haven't you?", he asked.  I recounted for him the time that I was responsible for a minimal AD from a large canister of the stuff inside a moving vehicle. 

He reached for his IPad and clicked on the first YouTube video he could find.  "What isn't right about this scene?", he asked.  I answered, "the protesters aren't hauling ass out of there. They aren't acting like they have been pepper sprayed."

"Where is the River of Snot?" He continued, "Before riot cops use pepper spray they mask-up.  Do you see any of the cops standing there wearing gas masks?  The stuff that they are spraying is marker.  They are identifying the protesters that they are intending to arrest.  Look right there, that other cop is standing in the mist with no effect."

He got no argument from me there.  That wasn't pepper spray.

"Then why aren't the cops coming to their own defense?," I asked.

Timing is everything.

Adm. Mullen’s Words On PAK Under Scrutiny -- SMC Avenged

After the UBL raid, we've been almost alone re the US-PAK cooperation angle. For SMC, the UBL raid itself was the big tell (amongst several others).

Just recently Dexter Filkins (he of the flawed piece from two weeks ago) checked in aping the narrative we've been hearing so much of lately. (ref SMC tweet)

Then the dying Christopher Hitchens hopped aboard for a ride on the shall we attack PAK? bandwagon.(ref SMC tweet)

PAK ain't a "loyal ally" - given, but are more helpful than dudes know. (ref SMC tweet) The usual tards have morphed the necessary operational obfuscation into passionate political run-amokism that hasn't been helping matters

Happy me waking up to this piece in today's Post  SMC, thou art avenged!

(High-levels falling all over themselves trying to deal with the "chatter" bullshittery, too.)

Adultz realized that the tards were digging a big hOle for USA if their BS narrative was gonna be carried to its logical conclusion.

It don't get much better than this. (Though they are only walking back the story as much as they can without losing much of what remains of their dwindling credibility)

"U.S. officials said Mullen was unaware of the cellphones until after he testified."

Ho ho ho.  He would have been briefed if it was true.  More accurate would be to say "Mullen was unaware that amateur hour was gonna involve 'chatter' bullshittery."

Its not like we haven't tried to educate them about this sort of thing.

Mullen's key involvement in amateur hour frolics here cannot be good sign.  The level of deception may have gotten out of control.  Subterfuge in furthering an op like we discussed elsewhere a few days ago is one thing, but feeding into the media circus/political spectatorism to the degree that they did is quite another.

CATCH-ALL Revisited

From an important new Jane Mayer piece:

When Binney heard the rumors, he was convinced that the new domestic-surveillance program employed components of ThinThread: a bastardized version, stripped of privacy controls. “It was my brainchild,” he said. “But they removed the protections, the anonymization process. When you remove that, you can target anyone.” He said that although he was not “read in” to the new secret surveillance program, “my people were brought in, and they told me, ‘Can you believe they’re doing this? They’re getting billing records on U.S. citizens! They’re putting pen registers’ ”—logs of dialled phone numbers—“ ‘on everyone in the country!’ ”

(Our insights went even further - scarfing everything - is still too hot for anyone else but SMC to have discussed.)

Aid, the author of the N.S.A. history, suggests that ThinThread’s privacy protections interfered with top officials’ secret objective—to pick American targets by name. “They wanted selection, not just collection,” he says.

...

Binney, for his part, believes that the agency now stores copies of all e-mails transmitted in America, in case the government wants to retrieve the details later. In the past few years, the N.S.A. has built enormous electronic-storage facilities in Texas and Utah. Binney says that an N.S.A. e-mail database can be searched with “dictionary selection,” in the manner of Google. After 9/11, he says, “General Hayden reassured everyone that the N.S.A. didn’t put out dragnets, and that was true. It had no need—it was getting every fish in the sea.”

Uncropped (You Might Have Noticed)

We could/should have released it way ahead of WaPo. Instead, we wasted head starts on celebratory stiff drinks.We should be excused. (Don't neglect to click-the-pic)

In The Wake Of Davis -- Horseshit (Non-Starter) ROE

ROE like this would clearly be a non-starter. Probably just horseshit to advance Davis' release

An important aspect of the settlement, for the U.S., was that the principal of diplomatic immunity was never formally challenged in Pakistani courts. The Pakistani High Court refused to rule on the question and the trial court didn’t make a finding, either. That was crucial for the U.S., which feared that a legal challenge to its claim of immunity for Davis would expose hundreds of other undercover agents around the world who rely on the legal protection of their formal status as “diplomats.”

The final piece of the settlement may be the most complicated. Pakistani officials say discussions will begin soon with the CIA about the “rules of engagement” in Pakistan. “If it’s a CIA operation, the ISI needs to know,” explained one Pakistani official. The CIA has a roughly similar policy of “declaring” its personnel and operations with some other countries with which it has close intelligence ties, such as Britain, France, Israel and Jordan..

It's down to the ding-a-lings (Beck's show over in a year)

This article is the prod; BECK VS. GOOGLE

"Its down to the ding-a-lings (plus/minus 2.3 percent) for Beck audience. Those types all have their own theories.  They no longer need a Beck."--SMC source 

LMAO





Also,

that his show will be over in a year.

Also,

that we saved the gov some money by our generic reminder to look before you turn in your ID for private sector.  

Still modeling number of saves - gonna probably be good.

The operative Communications Theory idea is likely being nibbled at.  After all, parts were funded by the Ford Foundation. Too bad gov lost the thread - holding up good here.


Jerkoffs might suspect that we are touting the Assange line. Hardly


(Feel free to feel amply dumb -- it's the true feeling that builds a resilient community)

Gaddafi, Scanlan, & Julian (And Those Pesky SIPDIS-tagless cables)

Picking up on the conspiracy theory put forward by Iran’s leadership, which holds that the leaked U.S. diplomatic cables were released by the C.I.A. to undermine anti-colonialist governments, Colonel Qaddafi warned his listeners about the dark designs of “WikiLeaks which publishes information written by lying ambassadors in order to create chaos.”

And from the Grauniad:

5.03pm: Cables published by the Swedish press have disclosed that the US made efforts to get two Swedish companies - Colenco and Mahacos - from working with Iran on civilian nuclear reactors.

2.45pm: Gregg Mitchell at the Nation reports that Norway's Aftenposten, which was leaked a set of the cables, has shared its cache with more media organisations. Die Welt, the German paper, has been named and there are three more to come, a contact at the paper tells him.

The Aftenposten set has also been shared with Politilken in Denmark, Svenska Dagbladet in Sweden and the Dutch broadcaster RTL and newspaper NRC Handelsblad, as mentioned below.

Keen readers may note that Assange has also said he gave the cables to the Dutch pair referenced to above..

Question: what links Muammar Gaddafi and Teresa Scanlan, winner of Miss America 2011? The answer is they both made strong statements over the weekend against WikiLeaks.

Gaddafi blamed the Tunisia uprising on cables written by "ambassadors in order to create chaos". In answer to a question on WikiLeaks at the pageant, Scanlan, who (more conventionally) also played the piano and wore a bikini, said the release of the cables "was actually based on espionage, and when it comes to the security of our nation, we have to focus on security first and then people's right to know."

Nice.  No frickin rocket scientist her

PS

Must leave 'em all scratching their heads.

While they must be able to sense that something funny is happening, their luck runs out there.

This is because logic is not necessarily in play.

It may be part of the battle for the unconscious mind.

Or it may be shimmer.

Speaking of shimmer, French intel indicates that Mrs. Ben Ali decamped from Tunisia with 1.5 tons of gold - probably in late 2010 as they were getting their ducks in a row.

Out InThe Cold: Just For Laughs

 
Both of these gems are from Al Kamen's Post column.

Frosty exit for Wolfowitz
On Saturday, counterinsurgency guru and Center for a New American Security President John Nagl held his annual post-Christmas party at his home in Alexandria, attended by dozens of Iraq war veterans, Obama administration officials and journalists.

Also in attendance was Iraq war architect and former deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, whose jacket somehow vanished from the coat room.

In all likelihood, it was a simple case of mistaken identity.

But as Wolfowitz, now at the American Enterprise Institute, headed home without his coat on a frigid Washington night - temps around 26 degrees with gusting winds up to nearly 30 mph - conspiracy theorists couldn't help but wonder whether foul play was involved. The big question as the party was winding down: Did a disgruntled Iraq veteran walk off with the jacket as a last measure of revenge, or was it the work of a left-leaning Obama-ite?

For once, no one seemed to blame the journalists.


That's why it's a secret 

One of the favorite ploys used by government bureaucrats to thwart freedom-of-information requests (aside from just stalling) is the old B5 dodge. That refers to a section of the Freedom of Information Act that exempts from disclosure any information that the agency deems might be a sensitive part of the internal "deliberative processes" of government, such as inter- or intra-agency communications and such.

The National Security Archive recently won an appeal from the State Department over a B5 classification of something written by a department official on a proposed House resolution. The January 2000 resolution, sponsored by Reps. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and Bill McCollum (R-Fla.), expressed "the sense of the House of Representatives that Pakistan should be designated a state sponsor of terrorism."

A State Department official had written something on the proposed resolution that the department decided was exempt from disclosure. The Archive went through the department's appeals process and two years later won the right to see the hidden writing on the resolution.

It said: "What a bunch of crap!!"

Ah, the old deliberative process ain't what it used to be.

Anti-Iran IO Loses a Paramount Theme

Some readers may have raised their eyebrows at our assertion on Monday that the "new" NIE on Iran's nuclear weapons program -- ... has been [minor tweaks aside] in the can for nearly a year now.

This statement is significantly at variance with the administration's narrative that the NIE was only completed last week, and moreover, that the paradigm-shifting information about the state of Iran's nuclear weapons program was acquired in late Summer via "intercepts."

Never forget one of the key teachings from The Book of Meatballs, "Any time you hear of a U.S. official speaking publicly about 'intercepts' -- even on background -- some sort of bullshittery is afoot."

One reason we were able to make our claim about the well-seasoned NIE is that we had pointed readers in November 2006 to the important part of a typically logorrheic piece by Seymour Hersh in our post titled: CIA Finds No Evidence Of Iranian Nuclear Weapons Program.

Corroboration was furnished in the February 12, 2007 edition of The American Conservative magazine. Ex-CIA officer Philip Giraldi wrote:

An as yet unreleased U.S. National Intelligence Estimate on Iran concludes that the evidence for a weapons program is largely circumstantial and inconclusive, while the Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte reported that Iran is five to ten years away from having a weapon even if it accelerates the process and no one interferes with its development. Negroponte was predictably fired for his unwillingness to alter the intelligence, and the NIE is unlikely to see the light of day unless it is rewritten to conclude that Iran is an immediate threat.

[To make matters worse, at the time that Negroponte was told to hit the bricks, administration officials were telling anyone who would listen that the ex-DNI was bored with his job, only went into the office for a few hours a day, and spent the rest of the work week beside the pool at a health club.]

Unless Giraldi and Seymour Hersh are both blessed with uncanny powers of precognition (in which case they would be well advised to become professional lottery players), the White House put its credibility (don't laugh) on the line in the furtherance of the anti-Iran Info Op.

At some point they decided that the pressure op against Iran was more important than devising a policy around the facts as they knew them to be.

Don't believe them when they say that the president was not kept fully briefed about critical developments regarding Iran's nuclear weapons program.

As most of you folks here know, it doesn't work that way.

And now, some characters -- the most capable of whom whose training, experience and temperament qualify them to be "War on Christmas" theorists -- are calling for a review of the intelligence behind the NIE's key judgments about Iran's nuclear program.

LMAO.

PS Though somewhat distant from being in perfect interpretive congruence with our NIE pontifications, ZenPundit's Mark Zafranski has generously put together a thoughtful NIE roundup while Haft of the Spear's and Threat Watch's hyper-sage Michael Tanji has written a nigh poetic and not-to-be-missed reflection on the NIE circus.

Old Baltic News: Early SMC Statement on Estonian Cyber-Hype

From a previous SMC comment at Government Executive, May 23, 2007. Since then, wiser minds have caught up with our gin-pickled collective wisdom

It is an act of war from scratch - that at least is how the national security wonks specializing in cyberwar/IOs have been pitching similar, albeit projected, scenarios to policy makers for the past 10 years.

How and when to respond offensively to such attacks is another matter, primarily a political matter unless the situation degrades to a point where lives and limbs are actually being lost - but Estonia is far from such a state.

At the moment, the attacks on Estonia correlate well to standard war game scenario parameters/inputs, minus the scripted degradation of actual life-supporting infrastructure - a common resultant/assumption in most war game scenarios played by various national security entities.

The extent to which such a massive and widely distributed attack against Estonia actually wreaks havoc on life, and life supporting facilities - that is what I find interesting about the Estonian episode. How well do the inputs and assumptions of standard cyberwar scenarios compare to this in vivo run?

Are babies dying in their incubators? Are local bourses crashing and investors fleeing Estonia? Is there still water to drink?

-Replicated Comment from Government Executive Posted Anew @ Danger Room

US/EU Passenger Name Recognition Data Deal

EU and US negotiators have struck a deal on sharing information about transatlantic flight passengers.

No details are officially available*, but EU sources say data will be kept by US security agencies for 15 years.

Under agreements reached after the 9/11 attacks, European airlines must provide 34 pieces of information about passengers flying into the US.

The latest deal expires at the end of July. A replacement agreement must be approved by the EU's 27 member states.

Wednesday's deal was reached in talks between European Union Justice and Security Commissioner Franco Frattini, German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble and US Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

SOME THINGS US CUSTOMS KNOWS

• Your history of missing flights
• Your frequent flyer miles
• Your seat location aboard
• Your e-mail address
• The US and the EU have differed on ways to balance security needs with concern for passengers' privacy.

A previous deal lapsed last October. The two sides failed to agree on terms for a full renewal and only reached an interim agreement.

Earlier, EU officials approved a separate agreement giving US counter-terrorist investigators access to details of international money transfers processed by the Brussels-based Swift network.

Washington says it needs the information to track and block terrorist funding, but EU regulators ruled that the original arrangement broke the union's privacy laws.

*"No details are officially available", but loyal SMC readers get the real scoop. According to the summary record of the relevent EU committee (pdf), these are the negotiated details:

Ministers Schauble and Secretary Chertoff have agreed on the following, which according to the Commission is fully consistent with the negotiating mandate adopted by the Council :

- Structure of the deal : an Article 24/38 TEU agreement would be concluded between the EU and the US, supplemented by an exchange of letters acknowledging the unilateral undertakings that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is ready to adopt to protect the PNR data through a Statement of Record Notice (SORN). The precise nexus between the two is not agreed yet (the US side wants to avoid that the exchange of letters amounts to an agreement).

- PNR data would be kept for 7 years as "active" data and 8 years as "dormant" data.

- DHS would get access to PNR data and not only the Customs and Border Protection Department (CBP).

- The number of accessible data is reduced from 34 to 19.

- There would be a clear commitment to a PUSH system.

Many elements remain open though :

- Where to install the filters to delete the sensitive data (in the EU or in the US) ?

- The oversight mechanism : the Commission suggests to use the figure of the "eminent person" as in the SWIFT file.

- Reciprocity : the US wants to redefine the safeguards if a Member State or the EU were setting up a PNR system with more lenient safeguards.

Beaten To The Punch: SMC Outflanks The Pack On Breaking CIA Study "The Perfect Storm"

Two days ago this story at Washington Post broke the news about about a 2002 CIA study titled "The Perfect Storm: Planning for Negative Consequences of Invading Iraq".

Sound familiar? Yep, that was one of the studies Swedish Meatball Confidential's own Effwit excavated from the Senate Intelligence Report and broke here May 26, a solid week ahead of the regular (and irregular) hounds. (Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence on Prewar Assessments About Postwar Iraq).

Nobody else anywhere had found it. We confirmed this through following back Google searches from the many visitors we received looking for info after reading the Washington Post article.

It's posts like this we obnoxiously label as Trophies. We don't have many but what we have ain't half bad for this numerically (and otherwise) challenged clan of meatballs.

P.S. If anyone discovers that we in fact weren't first out of the blocks with the story then we'd appreciate if you let us know. We'll send you a signed official SMC meatball for your troubles - they are hardcore collectibles.

Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence on Prewar Assessments About Postwar Iraq

The Senate Intelligence Committee late yesterday afternoon released their review of the intelligence community's performance before the Iraq invasion in predicting the post-war ramifications of deposing Saddam Hussein.

The same studies were recently discussed here (see They Can't Say They Weren't Warned). Basically, the White House was told beforehand that we could expect all the bad things that have since happened in occupied Iraq.

Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence on Prewar Assessments About Postwar Iraq (229 page pdf).

The report declassifies and publishes in full two January 2003 National Intelligence Council (NIC) Intelligence Community Assessments (ICA): "Regional Consequences of Regime Change in Iraq" and "Principal Challenges in Post-Saddam Iraq."

There are a sizable number of excised passages in the original papers dealing with other countries in the region, the deletions being most noticeable when the subject turns to Iran's reaction to events in Iraq.

Much information is presented about the political environment in Iraq during Saddam's reign, with the conclusion that the political culture there is far from fertile ground in which to transplant democracy.

Other analysis wasn't always real accurate. Oil going up to $40 a barrel is a negative possibility foreseen in case of a cutoff of Iraqi supplies, especially -- according to the paper -- in combination with instability in Venezuela. But we are told that $15 barrels would be back as soon as the respective situations returned to normal. However, maybe the analysts were right about the basic economics, which would naturally lead to the suspicion that oil company skullduggery may be responsible for the dissonance.

In July 2002, the intelligence community held a simulation of how the post-Saddam political reconstruction might look. A long-term requirement for large numbers of U.S. forces to remain in country was envisioned. The Iraqis were seen to be focused on short-term political advantage over their rivals rather than focusing on the big picture. And the U.N. was seen as not acquiescing to U.S. plans for Iraqi political development.

After the two big ICAs (which are NIE caliber papers), there is also an Overview of Other Intelligence Assessments on Postwar Iraq, listing and summarizing various products of individual intelligence community agencies.

A CIA assessment from August 2002 entitled The Perfect Storm: Planning For Negative Consequences of Invading Iraq summed up in one handy package what could still be in store for Iraq. Intended as a worst case scenario, here are some highlights: "anarchy and territorial breakup in Iraq; instability in key Arab states; a surge of global terrorism and deepening Islamic antipathy towards the United States; major oil supply disruptions; and severe strains in the Atlantic alliance." Also, "Al Qaeda operatives take advantage of a destabilized Iraq to establish secure safe havens from which they can continue their operations", and "Iran works to install a regime friendly to ... Iranian policies." The Perfect Storm also warns of "Afghanistan tipping into civil strife as U.N. and other coalition forces are unable or unwilling to replace American military resources."

The distribution list of the two primary studies is included, attesting to the fact that this material was sent all over town.

This lengthy report tells us that a lot of effort was expended examining the likelihood that a U.S. invasion of Iraq would turn out to be detrimental to U.S. interests. The issue of whether Iraq was actually a threat was not the subject matter of these Phase II (Senate Intelligence Committee investigative terminology, as opposed to the DOD usage of Phase IV to refer to the postwar scenario) studies.

The Kerr Study Group's second report (a 2004 CIA evaluation) noted vis-a-vis these earlier studies, "Intelligence projections in this area [analysis of post-Saddam Iraq], however, although largely accurate, had little or no impact on policy deliberation."

A more damning indictment of how we got to this national nightmare would be hard to conceive.

DOJ Determined NSA CATCH-ALL Program Was Illegal

The blogosphere is reacting to the story of Alberto Gonzales' and Andrew Card's visit to pressure then-Attorney General John Ashcroft on his sick bed as if it is "news."

Hardly.

On New Year's Day 2006, the story was featured on EFFWIT, with the added revelation that the episode was behind Ashcroft's resignation as AG.

-Excerpt From EFFWIT

Merely An Inadvertent Omission

'Significant', eh?

I'm guessing that it involves Lebanon.

The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence said yesterday that the CIA violated the law last year when it failed to inform the panel of "a significant covert action activity."

"Despite agency explanations that the failure was inadvertent, the committee is deeply troubled over the fact that such an oversight could occur, whether intentionally or inadvertent," the panel said in its report on the fiscal 2008 intelligence authorization bill released late yesterday.

An intelligence official said yesterday that he could not discuss the covert action. He said that after CIA Director Michael V. Hayden took his post in May 2006 and learned about the program and that Congress had not been fully briefed, "the agency itself took the issue to the Hill [and] corrected what was an inadvertent oversight."

The committee gave no hint of what the covert activity involved. It disclosed the issue in support of provisions it placed in the bill that would require the CIA inspector general to conduct audits of each covert action program at least once every three years and to submit a report on the findings to both the House and Senate intelligence panels. ...

Under the National Security Act, the president can limit "under exceptional circumstances" congressional access to approval of covert actions, but disclosure is expected to be made to the "Gang of Eight" -- the House speaker and minority leader, the Senate majority and minority leaders, and the chairmen and ranking minority members of the two intelligence panels. The president must later inform the committees in "a timely manner."

Covert activities, which are intended to influence political or military actions abroad without any acknowledgment of U.S. involvement, are treated differently from intelligence-gathering activities, about which the law requires Congress to be kept "fully and currently informed."

SMC Delivers The Goods Again

Sometimes, if something quacks like a duck, it actually turns out to be a duck.

Our speculation a few days ago that a missing former Iranian official was actually a defector looks to have been spot on. (See Sounds Like A Defection).

A report in today's Washington Post says as much:

A former Iranian deputy defense minister who once commanded the Revolutionary Guard has left his country and is cooperating with Western intelligence agencies, providing information on Hezbollah and Iran's ties to the organization, according to a senior U.S. official. ...

Iran's official news agency, IRNA, quoted the country's top police chief, Brig. Gen. Esmaeil Ahmadi-Moqaddam, as saying that Asgari was probably kidnapped by agents working for Western intelligence agencies. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Asgari was in the United States. Another U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, denied that report and suggested that Asgari's disappearance was voluntary and orchestrated by the Israelis. A spokesman for President Bush's National Security Council did not return a call for comment. ...

Former Mossad director Danny Yatom, who is now a member of Israel's parliament, said he believes Asgari defected to the West. "He is very high-caliber," Yatom said. "He held a very, very senior position for many long years in Lebanon. He was in effect commander of the Revolutionary Guards" there.

Sounds Like a Defection

Iran said Tuesday its former deputy defense minister was missing while on a private trip to neighboring Turkey, and its top police chief accused Western intelligence services of possibly kidnapping the official.


Ali Reza Asghari, a retired general in the elite Revolutionary Guards and a former deputy defense minister, had arrived in Turkey on a private visit from Damascus, Syria, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported Tuesday.

Iran's top police chief, Gen. Esmaeil Ahmadi Moghaddam, said Iran was investigating the fate of Asghari through the Turkish police.

"It is likely that Asghari has been abducted by the Western intelligence services," IRNA quoted the Iranian police general as saying. The general did not elaborate.

In Turkey, the Interior Ministry said Tuesday it was investigating the matter, but would not confirm or deny that Asghari had disappeared or been kidnapped.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry had asked the Interior Ministry to investigate following a report from the Iranian Embassy in Ankara.

In Israel, security officials said the country's embassies and consulates had been alerted to possible attacks or kidnappings following media speculation that Israel was behind the Iranian general's disappearance. The security officials spoke on condition of anonymity because such security measures are classified.

The Shin Bet, Israel's security service, would not confirm that embassy security had been ratcheted up, saying only that such decisions were made "in keeping with the developments in intelligence and on the ground."