C.I.A. Arms for Syrian Rebels Supplied Black Market, Officials Say
AMMAN, Jordan — Weapons shipped into Jordan by the Central Intelligence Agency and Saudi Arabia
intended for Syrian rebels have been systematically stolen by Jordanian
intelligence operatives and sold to arms merchants on the black market,
according to American and Jordanian officials.
Some of the stolen weapons were used in a shooting in November that killed two Americans and three others at a police training facility in Amman, F.B.I. officials believe after months of investigating the attack, according to people familiar with the investigation.
The
existence of the weapons theft, which ended only months ago after
complaints by the American and Saudi governments, is being reported for
the first time after a joint investigation by The New York Times and Al
Jazeera. The theft, involving millions of dollars of weapons, highlights
the messy, unplanned consequences of programs to arm and train rebels —
the kind of program the C.I.A. and Pentagon have conducted for decades —
even after the Obama administration had hoped to keep the training
program in Jordan under tight control.
The
Jordanian officers who were part of the scheme reaped a windfall from
the weapons sales, using the money to buy expensive SUVs, iPhones and
other luxury items, Jordanian officials said.
The
theft and resale of the arms — including Kalashnikov assault rifles,
mortars and rocket-propelled grenades — have led to a flood of new
weapons available on the black arms market. Investigators do not know
what became of most of them, but a disparate collection of groups,
including criminal networks and rural Jordanian tribes, use the arms
bazaars to build their arsenals. Weapons smugglers also buy weapons in
the arms bazaars to ship outside the country.
The
F.B.I. investigation into the Amman shooting, run by the bureau’s
Washington field office, is continuing. But American and Jordanian
officials said the investigators believed that the weapons a Jordanian
police captain, Anwar Abu Zaid, used to gun down two American
contractors, two Jordanians and one South African had originally arrived
in Jordan intended for the Syrian rebel-training program.
The officials said this finding had come from tracing the serial numbers of the weapons.
Mohammad
H. al-Momani, Jordan’s minister of state for media affairs, said
allegations that Jordanian intelligence officers had been involved in
any weapons thefts were “absolutely incorrect.”
“Weapons
of our security institutions are concretely tracked, with the highest
discipline,” he said. He called the powerful Jordanian intelligence
service, known as the General Intelligence Directorate, or G.I.D., “a
world-class, reputable institution known for its professional conduct
and high degree of cooperation among security agencies.” In Jordan, the
head of the G.I.D. is considered the second most important man after the
king.
Representatives of the C.I.A. and F.B.I. declined to comment.
The
State Department did not address the allegations directly, but a
spokesman said America’s relationship with Jordan remained solid.
“The
United States deeply values the long history of cooperation and
friendship with Jordan,” said John Kirby, the spokesman. “We are
committed to the security of Jordan and to partnering closely with
Jordan to meet common security challenges.”
The
training program, which in 2013 began directly arming the rebels under
the code name Timber Sycamore, is run by the C.I.A. and several Arab
intelligence services and aimed at building up forces opposing President
Bashar al-Assad of Syria. The United States and Saudi Arabia are the biggest contributors, with the Saudis contributing both weapons and large sums of money,
and with C.I.A. paramilitary operatives taking the lead in training the
rebels to use Kalashnikovs, mortars, antitank guided missiles and other
weapons.
The
existence of the program is classified, as are all details about its
budget. American officials say that the C.I.A. has trained thousands of
rebels in the past three years, and that the fighters made substantial
advances on the battlefield against Syrian government forces until
Russian military forces — launched last year in support of Mr. Assad —
compelled them to retreat.
The
training program is based in Jordan because of the country’s proximity
to the Syrian battlefields. From the beginning, the C.I.A. and the Arab
intelligence agencies relied on Jordanian security services to transport
the weapons, many bought in bulk in the Balkans and elsewhere around
Eastern Europe.
The
program is separate from one that the Pentagon set up to train rebels
to combat Islamic State fighters, rather than the Syrian military. That program was shut down after it managed to train only a handful of Syrian rebels.
Jordanian
and American officials described the weapons theft and subsequent
investigation on the condition of anonymity because the Syrian rebel
training is classified in the United States and is a government secret
in Jordan.
News
of the weapons theft and eventual crackdown has been circulating inside
Jordan’s government for several months. Husam Abdallat, a senior aide
to several past Jordanian prime ministers, said he had heard about the
scheme from current Jordanian officials. The G.I.D. has some corrupt
officers in its ranks, Mr. Abdallat said, but added that the institution
as a whole is not corrupt. “The majority of its officers are patriotic
and proud Jordanians who are the country’s first line of defense,” he
said.
Jordanian
officials who described the operation said it had been run by a group
of G.I.D. logistics officers with direct access to the weapons once they
reached Jordan. The officers regularly siphoned truckloads of the
weapons from the stocks, before delivering the rest of the weapons to
designated drop-off points.
Then
the officers sold the weapons at several large arms markets in Jordan.
The main arms bazaars in Jordan are in Ma’an, in the southern part of
the country; in Sahab, outside Amman; and in the Jordan Valley.
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It
is unclear whether the current head of the G.I.D., Gen. Faisal
al-Shoubaki, had knowledge of the theft of the C.I.A. and Saudi weapons.
But several Jordanian intelligence officials said senior officers
inside the service had knowledge of the weapons scheme and provided
cover for the lower-ranking officers.
Word
that the weapons intended for the rebels were being bought and sold on
the black market leaked into Jordan government circles last year, when
arms dealers began bragging to their customers that they had large
stocks of American- and Saudi-provided weapons.
Jordanian
intelligence operatives monitoring the arms market — operatives not
involved in the weapons-diversion scheme — began sending reports to
headquarters about a proliferation of weapons in the market and of the
boasts of the arms dealers.
After
the Americans and Saudis complained about the theft, investigators at
the G.I.D. arrested several dozen officers involved in the scheme, among
them a lieutenant colonel running the operation. They were ultimately
released from detention and fired from the service, but were allowed to
keep their pensions and money they gained from the scheme, according to
Jordanian officials.
Jordan’s decision to host the C.I.A.-led training program is the latest episode in a long partnership.
Beginning
in the Eisenhower administration, the C.I.A. made large payments to
King Hussein, who ruled Jordan from 1952 until his death in 1999, in
exchange for permission to run numerous intelligence operations on
Jordanian soil.
C.I.A.
money and expertise also helped the king establish the G.I.D. and put
down internal and external threats to his government. Since the Sept.
11, 2001, attacks, the United States has flooded Jordan with money for
various counterterrorism programs. American and Jordanian spies have run
a joint counterterrorism center outside Amman, and a secret prison in
Jordan housed prisoners the C.I.A. captured in the region.
In
his 2006 book, “State of Denial,” the journalist Bob Woodward recounted
a 2003 conversation in which George J. Tenet, then the director of
central intelligence, told Condoleezza Rice, then the national security
adviser, “We created the Jordanian intelligence service, and now we own
it.”
It
is a relationship of mutual dependence, but Jordan has particular
leverage because of its location in the heart of the Middle East and its
general tolerance to be used as a base of American military and
intelligence operations. Jordan’s security services also have a long
history of trying to infiltrate Islamic militant groups, efforts that
have yielded both success and failure.
In
2009, a Jordanian doctor — brought to the C.I.A. by a G.I.D. officer
after the doctor said he had penetrated Al Qaeda’s leadership — turned out to be a double agent
and blew himself up at a remote base in Afghanistan. Seven C.I.A.
employees, as well as the G.I.D. officer, were killed in the attack.
Two
recent heads of the service, also known as the Mukhabarat, have been
sent to prison on charges including embezzlement, money laundering and
bank fraud. One of them, Gen. Samih Battikhi, ran the G.I.D. from 1995
to 2000 and was convicted of being part of a scheme to obtain bank loans
of around $600 million for fake government contracts and pocketing
about $25 million. He was sentenced to eight years in prison, but the
sentence was eventually reduced to four years that were served in his
villa in the seaside town of Aqaba.
Gen.
Mohammad al-Dahabi, who ran the service from 2005 to 2008, was later
convicted of stealing millions of dollars that G.I.D. officers had
seized from Iraqi citizens crossing into Jordan in the years after the
American invasion of Iraq in 2003. His trial showed that he had also
arranged for money to be smuggled in private cars from Iraq into Jordan
and had been involved in sellingJordanian citizenship to Iraqi
businessmen. He was sentenced to 13 years in prison and fined tens of
millions of dollars.
President
Obama authorized the covert arming program in April 2013, after more
than a year of debate inside the administration about the wisdom of
using the C.I.A. to train rebels trying to oust Mr. Assad.
The
decision was made in part to try to gain control of a chaotic situation
in which Arab countries were funneling arms into Syria for various
rebel groups with little coordination. The Qataris had paid to smuggle
shipments of Chinese-made FN-6 shoulder-fired weapons over the border
from Turkey, and Saudi Arabia sent thousands of Kalashnikovs and
millions of rounds of ammunition it had bought, sometimes with the
C.I.A.’s help.
By
late 2013, the C.I.A. was working directly with Saudi Arabia, the
United Arab Emirates and other nations to arm and train small groups of
rebels and send them across the border into Syria.
The
specific motives behind the November shooting at the Amman police
training facility remain uncertain, and it is unclear when the F.B.I.
will officially conclude its investigation.
This
year, the widows of the Americans killed in the attack sued Twitter,
alleging that it knowingly permitted the Islamic State to use its social
media platform to spread the militant group’s violent message,
recruiting and raising funds.
Captain
Abu Zaid, the gunman, was killed almost immediately. His brother, Fadi
Abu Zaid, said in an interview that he still believed his brother was
innocent and that he had given no indications he was planning to carry
out the shooting.
The
Jordanian government, he said, has denied him any answers about the
shooting, and has refused to release his brother’s autopsy report.
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