Steinberg spends a lot of time documenting the occult and paranormal activities of Pentagon researchers (and also “weapons that directly attack the targetted population’s central nervous system and brain functioning,” including “such phenomena as atmospheric electromagnetic activity, air ionization, and extremely low frequency waves), but for my dime the interesting part of Steinberg’s analysis concerns the use of fake terrorism, or “pseudo gang” terrorism and “psychological operations” of the sort used against the “targetted population” here in the United States since nine eleven and, more recently, in Britain. For instance, Steinberg references Seymour Hersh, who quoted Naval Postgraduate School defense analyst and Pentagon counterinsurgency advisor John Arquilla (see my January blog entry on Hersh and Arquilla in regard to pseudo terrorism and the kidnapping and apparent murder of Margaret Hassan). “Hersh hinted [in his New Yorker article, The Coming Wars] that U.S. Special Forces units were being unleashed to create their own terrorist ‘pseudo gangs’ to more easily infiltrate terrorist groups like al-Qaeda,” as Steinberg summarizes. “When conventional military operations and bombing failed to defeat the Mau Mau insurgency in Kenya in the 1950s, the British formed teams of friendly Kikuyu tribesmen who went about pretending to be terrorists,” writes Arquilla. “These ‘pseudo gangs,’ as they were called, swiftly threw the Mau Mau on the defensive, either by befriending and then ambushing bands of fighters or by guiding bombers to the terrorists’ camps. What worked in Kenya a half-century ago has a wonderful chance of undermining trust and recruitment among today’s terror networks. Forming new pseudo gangs should not be difficult.”

It is my contention al-Qaeda (or more precisely, al-CIA-duh) is just such a “pseudo gang,” initially created in Afghanistan in the 1980s to fight the Soviets but held over—as are all successful intelligence operations (and the CIA admits the creation of the Islamic Terror Network is its largest and most successful operation to date; see Chalmers Johnson). As the corporate media (as a willing participant in psychological warfare against the American people) would have it, al-CIA-duh reformulated itself without intelligence assistance after the United States abandoned Afghanistan in the wake of the Soviet defeat in that backwater and more or less strategically meaningless country (that is until a consortium of oil and natural gas corporations decided they wanted to build a pipeline there in the 1990s). There is ample evidence that al-CIA-duh remained a valued intelligence “asset” (and covert warfare workhorse) after Afghanistan, the primary example being its activities in the Balkans (see my From Afghanistan to Iraq: Transplanting CIA Engineered Terrorism) and elsewhere.

As Steinberg notes, once again referencing the detective work of Hersh, “[Evangelical Christian Lieutenant-General William “Jerry” Boykin] and his immediate boss, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone, are directly in charge of the Special Operations search-and-kill squads touted by John Arquilla in his pseudo-gang promo.” Joe E. Kilgore, writing for Special Warfare in the Winter of 2002, declares that the “future holds great promise for the Center and School and for the students it trains. The commanding general of SWCS [John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School], Major General William G. Boykin, is developing the ARSOF School of the Future, an innovative concept designed to ensure that SWCS instructional facilities and techniques will meet the challenges of the 21st century. The SWCS Special Forces Evolution Steering Committee is developing a road map to facilitate the transformation of the Special Forces Branch. Improvement plans for both CA and PSYOP have been approved, and those plans are scheduled to be implemented beginning in FY 2002.” An integral component of the Pentagon’s ambitious psyop program is Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG). “P2OG would launch secret operations aimed at ’stimulating reactions’ among terrorists and states possessing weapons of mass destruction, meaning it would prod terrorist cells into action, thus exposing them to ‘quick-response’ attacks by US forces. The means by which it would do this is the far greater use of special operations forces,” David Isenberg wrote for the Asia Times in November, 2002. P2OG, however, is only the public relations face of a much larger and sinister plan that stretches back at least to 1980 and Col. Paul E. Vallely’s seminal MindWar document and the idea of psychological warfare waged against the American people.

Vallely, of course, does not mention “pseudo-gang” warfare explicitly and instead puts forward the idea of “full spectrum” warfare in all fronts, including disinformation or propaganda warfare waged against the American people. Indeed, the idea of fake or deceptive terrorism is much older and originated in its modern form and was field tested by General Frank Kitson, a British officer “who first thought up the concept that was later used in the formation of Al Qaeda. He called it the ‘pseudo gang’—a state sponsored group used to advance an agenda, while discrediting the real opposition. The strategy was used in both Kenya and Northern Ireland. In the case of Northern Ireland, most of the violence that was attributed to ‘Loyalists’ was in actuality not their handiwork, but the result of the activities of the death squads affiliated to the British secret state,” writes Ian Buckley (see my General Frank Kitson: Trail Blazing Fake Terrorism).