The Case of Keith Idema

[seemslikeadream]

In 1991 when the Soviet Union fell apart there was no happier fall-away piece than Lithuania, which was swallowed whole by the Soviet Union in 1940 and remained anti-Soviet until the Soviets collapsed in 1991. Somebody in Washington did some good thinking. Send some of our people over, make contact with the Lithuanian KGB - who really hated Russia and communism the whole time - and see what we could learn. And they couldn’t have sent a better man than Special Forces Sergeant J. Keith Idema who quickly bonded with the Lithuanians and brought back information that may either save us all or serve us with fair warning of our impending physical obliteration!

(Idema's admirers claim Keith wowed the Lithuanian KGB guys by out-shooting them at the firing range and out-drinking them in the officers' club afterwards. I won t let that thought breathe outside of parentheses because the saga of Keith Idema is going to get plenty wild enough without it!)

The next year, 1992, Keith became the star at a Pentagon briefing by delivering the startling news that since the Soviet breakup, weapons-grade nuclear material had been, not leaking, but pouring into the hands of the international terrorist underworld. When a system like communism collapses, whatever you're sitting on top of becomes your currency. If you're supervisor of a shoe factory, you trade shoes for food, clothing, whatever. If you re in charge of a potato warehouse, potatoes are your new rubles. And those who were in charge of weapons-grade nuclear material found themselves in an enviable trading position.

Keith described to those at that Pentagon briefing the nuclear backpack or suitcase nuclear bomb, a tactical atomic device that could lay waste to 40 city blocks when detonated, Keith warned that the number of missing units from the former Soviet arsenal was unknowable. The traffic was lucrative to those who controlled that material and their tight Soviet-era control was now out of control.

more
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/7/22/105010.shtml


check the source it's a bush love fest

[KoKo]

1. AYYYYYYYY! Idema! spill the good FGS.. and go against your operatives!

OTOH...You are SCUM...Keith Idema...you are a "gun for hire" and should be considered as what you are...

You will only be redeemed if you fight for your lousy "turncoat" life and go against Rummy and the rest of your "handlers."

Maybe then, Keith, you will be redeemed in the eyes of folks who believe "Honor" is more important than $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$'s.

:puke: for these "mercenary "foot soldiers of fortune."

[bahrbearian]

3. Ollie North turned into a Hero without turning on his handlers.

[DrBB]

2. Um, Newsmax--overlap between Idema's rich fantasy life

...and that of the ReichPublicans more generally is all too likely here. Is this the genuine article or a guy who has read too many Tom Clancy novels? Or is it the reporters who have read too many of same?

Funny thing is, this seems the exact perfect mixture to suck in a credulous neocon, as for instance someone like Doug Feith, known for his own embarassingly amateurish self-directed "intelligence gathering" missions. What with the neocons' suspicion of official, "bureaucratic" (read, "professional," "competent") intelligence gathering apparati, I could easily see them eagerly buying up this mercenary Mitty's bill of goods and asking for more. And following up by sending him off to Afghanistan to torture terra-ists fer fun 'n' profit.

edit: slight clarifying addition.

[seemslikeadream]

4. did you get to see post #2

here?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=701568&mesg_id=703878&page=

[emad]

5. Afghanistan vigilante intrigue widens: Financial Times July 23

http://search.ft.com/search/article.html?id=040723000775&query=afghanistan+jonathan+idema&vsc_appId=totalSearch&state=Form

[seemslikeadream]

6. New info?

Mr Idema claims to be a former Special Forces operative and presented himself to officials in Kabul as working for a group named Task Force Saber 7.

[eridani]

7. Outsourcing War Crimes

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0722-11.htm

It was late fall 2001, and the U.S. conquest of Afghanistan was nearly complete. A passel of foreign war correspondents milled about the lobby of the Hotel Tajikistan, waiting for the Tajik foreign ministry to issue permission papers we needed to pass the checkpoints between Dushanbe and the Afghan border, so we could go on to cover the siege of Kunduz. I popped into the Soviet-vintage hotel's business center to check my email. That's when I met Jonathan Keith "Jack" Idema, the former Special Forces soldier charged on July 5 along with two other Americans for kidnapping and torturing Afghans as part of an unauthorized, vigilante anti-Taliban operation run out of a private home in Kabul.

"U.S. citizen Jonathan K. Idema has allegedly represented himself as an American government and/or military official," the U.S. military said in a statement. "The public should be aware that Idema does not represent the American government and we do not employ him."

That's their current story, anyway.

Agents of the National Security Directorate, Afghanistan's new intelligence agency, say they found eight starved Afghan detainees--three of them hanging by their feet--in Idema's rented house in central Kabul, along with a few AK-47 rifles and blood-soaked clothes. None of Idema's prisoners were working against the Karzai regime, so the NSD plans to release them. Idema, say officials, was probably hoping to torture his victims into telling him the location of Osama bin Laden so he could collect a $25 million bounty.

Idema was nice at first, chatting me up with jittery intensity as he alternately identified himself as belonging to--or, more accurately, implying identification with--the CIA and U.S. Special Forces. Griping about a Pentagon ban against supplying Northern Alliance forces with medical supplies, Idema slipped me a computer disc containing photos of gruesome wounds that had gone untreated because of the inhumane policy. He asked me to pitch a piece on the subject to my editors at The Village Voice, but with a caveat: "Don't publish those photos before talking to me first." I promised that I wouldn't. "If you do," he added, "you will die in great pain." He went on at length about the special shadowy brotherhood of Green Berets past and present, and described how anyone who crossed them would be marked for death. I would never have broken my pledge, but I didn't need a story that badly. I soon left for Afghanistan; so, eventually, did Idema.