Reply #23: This story really STINKS - Stephen Bryen, President of FinMeccanica

[phoebe]

looks to be such a great guy..but according to this article he was spying for Israel.

http://www.counterpunch.org/green09032004.html

Dr. Stephen Bryen and Colleagues

In April of 1979, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Robert Keuch recommended in writing that Bryen, then a staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, undergo a grand jury hearing to establish the basis for a prosecution for espionage. John Davitt, then Chief of the Justice Department's Internal Security Division, concurred.

The evidence was strong. Bryen had been overheard in the Madison Hotel Coffee Shop, offering classified documents to an official of the Israeli Embassy in the presence of the director of AIPAC, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee. It was later determined that the Embassy official was Zvi Rafiah, the Mossad station chief in Washington. Bryen refused to be poly-graphed by the FBI on the purpose and details of the meeting; whereas the person who'd witnessed it agreed to be poly-graphed and passed the test.

The Bureau also had testimony from a second person, a staff member of the Foreign Relations Committee, that she had witnessed Bryen in his Senate office with Rafiah, discussing classified documents that were spread out on a table in front of an open safe in which the documents were supposed to be secured. Not long after this second witness came forward, Bryen's fingerprints were found on classified documents he'd stated in writing to the FBI he'd never had in his possession....the ones he'd allegedly offered to Rafiah.

and here's the clincher..

snip

In April, 1981, the FBI received an application by the Defense Department for a Top Secret security clearance for Dr. Bryen . Richard Perle, who had just been nominated as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy, was proposing Bryen as his Deputy Assistant Secretary! Within six months, with Perle pushing hard, Bryen received both Top Secret-SCI (sensitive compartmented information) and Top Secret-"NATO/COSMIC" clearances.


Read the ENTIRE article - it's a mind blower..

Here's another link to similar information

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?id=1521846767-3720

snip

March 1978: Congressional Staffer Offers Israeli Classified Material

During breakfast at Washington’s Madison Hotel, Stephen Bryen, a Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer and a close associate of Richard Perle, is overheard offering to pass classified material to Zvi Rafiah, the congressional liaison officer for the Israeli embassy and a suspected senior Mossad officer (see October 1973). “I have the Pentagon document on the bases, which you are welcome to see,” he reportedly says. The eavesdropper is Michael Saba, a businessman and former executive director of the National Association of Arab Americans. Saba, who recognizes Bryen as a staff member of the Senate Committee, promptly reports the incident to the Justice Department, which quickly launches an FBI investigation. The investigation will find that Bryen has illegally obtained classified documents of military and scientific importance and that he has been seeking material that “could prove to be a major embarrassment to the US government.” The investigation also learns that he has been meeting with Zvi Rafiah “two or three times a week.” The FBI ultimately assembles “a good circumstantial case” that Rafiah “routinely issued orders to Bryen” and will recommend that the case be brought before an investigative grand jury for espionage. But the case is quietly closed after Bryen resigns at the insistence of Philip Heymann, the assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, and under strong pressure from senators Clifford Case (Bryen’s boss) and Henry Jackson (Richard Perle’s). Heymann happens to be a close personal friend and associate of Dr. Bryen’s attorney.

People and organizations involved: Richard Perle, Stephen Bryen, Michael Saba, Henry Jackson, Philip Heymann, Zvi Rafiah, Clifford Case

April 1981: Richard Perle Wants Stephen Bryen to be his Assistant Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle indicates that he would like Stephen Bryen to be the deputy assistant. This becomes an issue during Perle’s confirmation hearings because Bryen was previously investigated by the FBI for passing classified documents to Zvi Rafiah, an Israeli embassy official in 1978 (see March 1978). Perle and Bryen are described in 1985 as “perhaps the most effective proponents of neoconservative positions on such matters as arms control, technology transfer, and the Middle East.”


and then there's this..

Dr. Bryen gets to write a story for the National Review praising Colin Powell's "compelling" speech re: Saddam having weapons of mass destruction

February 5, 2003, 12:55 p.m.
The Detailed Threat
U.S. takes a chance.

By Stephen Bryen

snip

he long-awaited United Nations Security Council speech was delivered today by General Colin Powell. He spelled out in considerable detail a compelling case about Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction programs, their delivery systems, and the links between Saddam's regime and terrorism, particularly al Qaeda. He provided extensive evidence on how Saddam has been deceiving the U.N.'s inspectors and the world community. The use of communications intercepts, photo intelligence, and human sources provided compelling proof to the world community. Most dramatically, Powell was able to illustrate that the U.N. inspectors themselves had been penetrated by Iraqi intelligence agents and that Iraqi scientists and their families had been systematically threatened and forced to sign their own death warrants ("agreeing" that if they talk, they die).


Some dramatic new details about Iraq's mobile germ-warfare laboratories were provided to the world, both revealing how they are internally configured (based on defector reports) and how they can produce biological agents in "dusty" form. A "dusty" agent (Powell referred to the agents as in a "dry" form) is much more dangerous than a liquid agent, as we discovered here in the U.S. with the anthrax attacks. The technology for decontaminating dusty agents is still quite primitive. Gas masks and protective coverings do not work very well against dusty agents because the finely milled toxic materials can penetrate fabrics and get past seals. General Powell correctly talked about the extreme difficulty tracking a dozen or so mobile labs down, since some of them are on truck beds and others on rail cars.

General Powell challenged the U.N. Security Council, pointing out that if the Council did not act it was in "danger or irrelevance." There is no doubt the U.S. took a considerable risk in revealing much sensitive intelligence, and making it easier for Saddam to better hide his communications and the "profiles" of his WMD weapons sites in the future. For this reason alone it is urgent to make sure that he is not given any time to do so. The time to act and smash Saddam is now.


He describes himself as..

— Stephen Bryen served as a deputy undersecretary of defense in the Reagan administration and as a staff director of Near East Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He is currently a managing director at Aurora Defense.