Who leaked hostage rescue mission to ISIL?

(WMR)—During the night of July 3, U.S. Special Forces landed at the formerly Syrian government-held Akershi military base at Raqqa in eastern Syria to rescue American journalists James Foley, Steven Sotloff, and other U.S., as well as foreign, hostages reportedly held by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) jihadist fighters. ISIL renamed the base the “Martyr Osama bin Laden Camp” and used the base prison to hold its foreign hostages.

The Financial Times reported that after landing at the base in two helicopters during the early morning hours of July 3, the 10-man Special Forces team secured the base after killing a few of the guards but discovered that the hostage holding cells were empty. Someone had tipped off ISIL about the planned rescue attempt and the hostages were moved from Akershi only a few hours prior to the landing of the commando team.

Foley and his fellow hostages had been moved into Iraq. After U.S. forces began attacking ISIL forces in northern Iraq, Foley was executed by his captors in a purported beheading However, British media reported the execution by beheading, carried out by a British national called “John,” was likely staged. Many British officials believe that Foley had already been killed when “John” beheaded him with a knife.

Pentagon sources believe that the highly-classified operation was circuitously leaked to ISIL in order to present President Obama with a “Jimmy Carter-type” hostage rescue disaster. On April 24, 1980, U.S. Special Forces secretly landed in Iran at a remote spot dubbed DESERT ONE in an attempt to rescue 52 Americans being held at the U.S. embassy in Tehran. During the Iran operation, code named EAGLE CLAW, U.S. helicopters developed engine problems as the result of a sudden sand storm. After Carter ordered the mission aborted, a departing helicopter crashed into a transport plane causing a huge explosion in which eight U.S. servicemen were killed. The failed rescue mission dogged Carter for the rest of his re-election campaign, which he ultimately lost.

It was later believed that Carter had secured the covert help of two officials of Ayatollah Khomeini’s government in the hostage rescue attempt, Iranian President Abol-Hassan Bani Sadr and Foreign Minister Sadegh Ghotbzadeh. Bani-Sadr fled into exile in 1981 and Ghotbzadeh was arrested in November 1980 and executed as a CIA spy in 1982. There were credible reports that Iran was tipped off in advance by those who wanted EAGLE CLAW to fail, namely Israeli sympathizers in the Carter administration, to embarrass the president and cause him to lose the November election to Ronald Reagan, seen as more on Israel’s side than Carter, who had pressured Israel to give the Sinai back to Egypt as part of the Camp David agreement of 1978. Fortunately, the leak of secret plans to Iran about EAGLE CLAW were intercepted by Ghotbzadeh and Bani Sadr and their loyal aides and never passed to Iran’s radical leadership, thus, preventing a compromise. However, the sudden sandstorm accomplished what Israel’s spies in Washington failed to do. Carter was blamed for a failed rescue attempt.

Similarly, it is now believed that plans for the hostage rescue mission in Syria were leaked in order to embarrass Obama. There are a number of individuals and groups suspected of leaking the ultra-classified operational plans. Among the chief suspects is CIA director John Brennan, who may have tipped off Saudi national security adviser Prince Bandar bin Sultan. Brennan had worked closely with Bandar to train Syrian rebels, including many members of ISIL and its allied al-Nusra Front, at training camps in Jordan.

Bandar has been a chief financier and arms supplier to ISIL and his Saudi agents reportedly maintain close contact with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of ISIL and self-proclaimed “caliph” of the Islamic State. The “state” controls large swaths of territory in eastern and northeastern Syria and northern and western Iraq and it has managed to erase the Iraqi-Syrian border in the territory it controls.

Another source of the leak may have been someone inside the Jordanian government who was close to the Saudis and Bandar. There are reports that the U.S. hostage rescue team, which took off from a Jordanian base, included a Jordanian commando, who was killed in the failed rescue operation. ISIL reputedly has gained a number of adherents to its cause in Jordan. In 2009, a member of the Jordanian General Intelligence Directorate (GID), Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, carried out a suicide attack on the CIA’s Camp Chapman Forward Operating Base in Afghanistan. Seven CIA agents, including the station chief, were killed, along with one GID agent and the Afghan external security chief. It turned out that Al-Balawi was a double agent for the GID and Al Qaeda/Taliban.

Other sources of the leak may have been agents-of-influence for Israel in the Department of Defense, State Department, CIA, and National Security Council who were ensuring that Binyamin Netanyahu’s vow to “punish” Obama for his harder line against Israeli policy goals were realized. The wide fracture between the White House and an Israeli Prime Minister’s office has not been seen since the Carter administration.

There are a number of Israeli government facilitators peppered throughout the Obama administration, from Victoria Nuland at the State Department and deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes to Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Elissa Slotkin and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Combating Terrorism William F. Wechsler.

Last week, Obama interrupted his vacation in Martha’s Vineyard to make a hasty trip back to the White House without either the First Lady or his youngest daughter. The White House press pool in Martha’s Vineyard and the White House were kept in the dark about the reasons for Obama’s trip back to Washington. Obama’s older daughter did travel back to Washington with the president. Some media outlets reported that Obama called an emergency National Security Council meeting, which was attended by Vice President Joseph Biden, Brennan, and other officials to discuss pressing issues. We learned that the matter of the leak about the hostage rescue mission was high on the agenda for the NSC meeting. The word from our sources is that Obama was highly “pissed off” about the leak and wanted the leaker or leakers identified and held accountable.

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.

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Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).