-Caveat Lector-
http://www.markdankof.com/seeds_of_fire.htm
Book Review
"Seeds of Fire: China and the Story Behind the Attack on America" by Gordon
Thomas (2001)
Published by Dandelion Books (www.dandelionbooks.com) with Anvil Studios:
Tempe, AZ
ISBN: 1-893302-54-7 (Paperback-$25.95-523 pages)
Reviewed by Mark Dankof for Christian News and Freedom Writer at
www.freedomwriter.com
In recording King Nebuchadnezzar's dream and Daniel's subsequent
interpretation of it (Daniel, chapter 2), the Old Testament prophet
underscores the constantly repristinated theme of the rise and fall of
empires through successive ages and the mysterious role of God in this
process in the unfolding of a linear, redemptive view of history. Central
to the implementation of this sovereignly ordained plan are the selected
eras, places, figures, and events which provide a mosaic-like configuration
for the actors' stage upon which the key turning points in the relations
between nation-states occur. In the identification and interpretation of
these turning points in the birth and death of empires, the passage of time
and the employment of retrospective analysis are often followed by a greater
appreciation of the event's significance within the larger framework of
historical progression.
That September 11, 2001 marks a key turning point in history is
indisputable. In seeking a deeper understanding and perception of the
players, events, and mysteries comprising its mosaic, discerning readers
will be well served to make more than a passive acquaintance with Gordon
Thomas' new work, Seeds of Fire: China and the Story Behind the Attack on
America (Dandelion Books). Employing the use of official documents along
with a myriad number of personal interviews with relevant figures and his
proven gift for analysis and writing, the renowned author of Gideon's Spies,
Pontiff, and Journey into Madness takes the reader through the hideous
introductory case study of Kathleen Ann Sullivan's victimization at the
hands of the CIA sponsored MK-ULTRA mind alteration program. He follows
this sordid account with a detailed narrative describing the cooperative
role of the Reagan/Edwin Meese Justice Department and Israeli intelligence
in illegally purloining the PROMIS computer software from the Inslaw, Inc.
computer company in the 1980s. This software, as explained in the
narrative, operated on a 32 bit architecture and ran on a DEC VAX
microcomputer, possessing a
. . . staggering 570,000 lines of computer code, allowing it to integrate
with innumerable databases without a need to reprogram. . . . it also had
the potential to be the most effective espionage tool modern intelligence
had ever used. It did not depend on some satellite in outer space to do so,
or by obtaining court orders to implement wiretaps. The appeal of Enhanced
Promis was its essential simplicity. It tracked data held confidentially in
other databases (pp. 35-36-Reviewer's Emphasis).
In the latter instance, Israel's subsequent role in modifying the
software with a secret "trap door" computer microchip; its conduct of
illegal sales to various world intelligence agencies; its role in
facilitating the Communist Chinese use of PROMIS to steal American nuclear
secrets from the Los Alamos nuclear facility in New Mexico; and the
Mossad's physical elimination of British media mogul Robert Maxwell, its own
asset in the world-wide distribution of PROMIS, are examined in meticulous
detail. A sketch of these details will leave the reader pondering the
unfathomable paradoxes of the American-Israeli relationship, both in the
conduct of espionage operations by the junior partner in the political
marriage against the senior partner, as well as in the deafening silence of
a series of White Houses, Congresses, and mainstream media outlets when the
cracks in the canvas of these operations are subsequently demonstrated. In
the Enhanced PROMIS episode, Thomas demonstrates a series of facts which
taken in the aggregate will cause the American reader to ponder the nature
of his/her own government, and who is being adequately protected and served
by that government and its darkest, veiled processes. The picture painted
and the story unveiled are as compelling as they are tormenting, prompting
former U. S. Attorney General Elliot Richardson to remark that the
implications of what happened in the Enhanced PROMIS affair are "even more
damaging to what government should represent in the United States and indeed
any democracy, than Watergate or Irangate-or all the other 'gates' in recent
memory (p. 476)."
A synopsis of the facts presented by the author in the PROMIS software
theft should also inspire specific consternation on the part of political
conservatives in the United States in pondering the bitter irony of the
Reagan Administration's collusion with foreign interests in the blatant
violation of U. S. copyright law and its acquiescence in predatory espionage
operations against American national security interests and assets. Of
particular interest in this regard is the information presented by the
author about the dubious business and personal relationship of Edwin and
Ursula Meese to Earl Brian of Hadron, Inc. Brian, a Farsi speaking American
citizen with long term links to Ronald Reagan and Rafi Eitan, the deputy
director of covert action for the Israeli Mossad, would play an interesting
role for the latter in the dissemination of the Israeli doctored version of
Enhanced PROMIS to Jordanian intelligence. The "trap door copy," spiked
with an Israeli installed microchip for monitoring all users of the altered
version of PROMIS, would enable Israeli intelligence to copy and download
Jordan's intelligence information on Palestinian terrorists. Subsequently,
Rafi Eitan would turn to British media mogul and Mossad asset, Robert
Maxwell, in the further distribution of the PROMIS derivative software to a
diverse coalition of intelligence agencies worldwide, including over $500
million in covert sales to Canada, Great Britain, Australia, South Korea,
the Soviet KGB, a Polish intelligence agency, and Communist China. The
latter's purchase of six sets of software at 9 million dollars would be the
key to obtaining American nuclear secrets at Los Alamos-which would purchase
its own PROMIS software from Robert Maxwell acting at the secret behest of
Rafi Eitan, whose dream, in Thomas' words, of "becoming the hard-currency
millionaire of the computer surveillance world was coming true. (p. 57)"
But who served as the liaison between Eitan/Maxwell and the apparently
unsuspecting software purchasers of Los Alamos National Laboratory, whose
procurement of the Israeli doctored Enhanced PROMIS would facilitate the
Communist Chinese CSIS theft of American nuclear secrets in New Mexico,
including the particulars of the W-88 Trident nuclear submarine warhead?
Thomas provides a disturbing answer:
Rafi Eitan was about to begin on what he hoped would be his greatest
triumph yet. He planned to penetrate deep into the very heart of America's
nuclear arsenal using his doctored version of Enhanced Promis to do so. He
devised a plan for Robert Maxwell to sell the software to Los Alamos. The
device would contain the trap door which was so brilliantly designed it
could not be detected; if deconstructed, the trap door would simply
disappear.
It was Maxwell's close connection to the late Senator John Tower-who
would eventually be rewarded with a seat on Maxwell's Macmillan publishing
company in New York-which opened the door to Los Alamos (p. 57-Reviewer's
Emphasis). . . . In April 2001, the author was provided by Inslaw with a
document that goes a long way to confirm the extent of Maxwell's role. The
document was prepared by the company's attorneys and submitted to the U. S.
Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Headed: "Role of the late Robert Maxwell
in the dissemination of Promis on behalf of Israeli Intelligence," the
document stated: "Maxwell had been a long-time intelligence operative for
Israel. According to Ari Ben-Menashe, a former Israeli intelligence
officer, Maxwell also assisted Israeli intelligence and Rafi Eitan in the
dissemination of the proprietary Promis software to the intelligence and law
enforcement agencies of other governments, particularly in Eastern Europe,
the former Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and certain countries in Latin
America, and to international commercial banks. In August 1985, Maxwell
incorporated in the Commonwealth of Virginia a tiny national defense
publishing house, Pergamon-Brassey's International Defense Publishers of
McLean, Virginia (Reviewer's Emphasis). In 1987, Pergamon Brassey's hired
two senior computer systems executives who resigned at the same time from
the Meese Justice Department's Justice Data Center. The proprietary IBM
mainframe version of Promis had been operating at the Justice Data Center
since the early 1980s. Maxwell's six-employee Pergamon-Brassey's was
chaired by former U. S. Senator John Tower (Reviewer's Emphasis) . . .
Finally, in providing further discussion of the death of Maxwell beyond
that originally presented in Gideon's Spies, along with redacted FBI
documents from the 1980s which reveal the extent of that agency's concern
about Maxwell, his connections to Israel, and his myriad number of front
organizations worldwide, Thomas leaves the reader dumbfounded in the
latter's search for any compelling rationale for the extent of the
effectiveness of Maxwell, the Israeli Mossad and LAKAM, and the Chinese CSIS
in penetrating Los Alamos and other additional American agencies and assets.
Equally disturbing for the reader who weighs and considers, is the official
silence of the American government regarding the real or perceived
compromise of significant players in its Executive, Legislative, and
Judicial branches during and after the PROMIS catastrophe. And why the
continuation of the "engagement" policy with China and the "special"
relationship with Israel without pause or careful reexamination, given the
victimization of the United States in an espionage operation which produced
what may fairly be understood by the reader as the most serious breach of
American military security and secrets since the Rosenberg affair? Was
there more to the jettisoning of the nomination of John Tower as George
Herbert Walker Bush's Defense Secretary than the merely advertised
allegations surrounding the personal life of the Texas Senator? Was the
tragic demise of John Tower in April of 1991 in an air crash, six months
before the mysterious death of Robert Maxwell off the Canary Islands, a mere
accident? And why was there no investigation of the cooperation of the
Reagan/Meese Justice Department with Rafi Eitan, not only in the wake of the
latter's role in both the PROMIS and Pollard spy capers, but in the Mossad
operative's subsequent role as an advisor to Fidel Castro (p. 88)? Why
would Rafi Eitan refuse to reveal his own source for PROMIS to Gordon Thomas
in December of 1999, adding that "it is best to leave such matters unsaid
until certain people are out of prison (p. 46)?" Was Jonathan Pollard one
of those "certain people?" And in the report of Special Counsel Nicholas J.
Bua to the Attorney General of the United States in March of 1993 on the
Inslaw/PROMIS affair (Thomas reproduces an edited/redacted copy of the
report beginning on page 133), what actions were subsequently taken by the
Reno Justice Department in regard to credible evidence that pirated copies
of PROMIS were obtained from unknown sources by the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund, along with a string of international banks?
And finally, why did Vince Foster request files on PROMIS only a handful of
days before the strange discovery of his own corpse at Fort Marcy Park on
July 20, 1993?
While the answers to these disturbing questions remain elusive, Thomas
provides several on-the-record commentaries which only underscore the
aforementioned conclusion reached by Elliot Richardson:
He [John Cohen, the former lead investigator of the House Judiciary
Committee-Reviewer's Emphasis] had not minced his words. "There is a putrid
stench that reaches across party lines in Washington and involves cover-ups
by various administrations and foreign governments, specifically Israel's.
Though tens of millions of dollars have been spent investigating the 'Inslaw
affair,' they have all failed for one reason only. Very powerful people do
not wish the truth to get out. (p. 88)" . . .
Typical had been the verdict by the United States Congress Judiciary
Committee [Reviewer's Emphasis]: "The theft of Enhanced Promis is surrounded
by conspiracy, fraud, witness tampering, retaliation against witnesses,
interference with commerce by threats of violence. Violations of the
Racketeer and Corrupt Organizations Act. Transportation of stolen goods,
securities, monies. Receiving stolen goods." But most serious of all had
been the accusation that "a foreign power-the state of Israel-had been
engaged in active espionage against the United States by the illegal use of
the Enhanced Promis software. (p. 89)". . .
It was in Mc Dade's [Sean Mc Dade, senior investigator for the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Security Investigations Unit-Reviewer's Emphasis]
written memo to his superiors: "If made public, it conceivably will cause a
major scandal in both Canada and the United States. More than one U. S.
Presidential Administration will be exposed because of their knowledge and
complicity in what did happen. There is no doubt that high-ranking Canadian
government officials were also involved. These persons had used the
Enhanced Promis software to launder the money they received from helping to
arrange the sale of Enhanced Promis to CSIS [Chinese Secret Intelligence
Service]. The Israeli Mossad may have modified the original stolen software
by Rafi Eitan ('Dr. Orr') which was the 'first back door.' Later it became
a 'two-way back door,' allowing the Israelis access to top U. S. weapons
secrets at Los Alamos and other classified installations in the United
States. The Israelis now possess all the nuclear secrets of the United
States. Compared to this espionage coup, it can be categorically stated
that the Jonathan Pollard case is insignificant [Reviewer's Emphasis-pp.
89-90]."
Any subsequent explanation of the gravity of the Communist Chinese
acquisition of Enhanced PROMIS and American nuclear secrets at Los Alamos is
perhaps best achieved by reminding the reader of the nature of the Chinese
regime itself, both in the latter's pursuit of the development of a domestic
police state and in its increasingly bellicose foreign and defense policies
vis a vis the United States and the West. Thomas does so skillfully by
guiding the reader through 306 pages of compelling narrative examining the
role of the Communist Chinese leadership in the events of June 1989
culminating in the Tiananmen Square massacre, and subsequently examining the
disturbing links between China, the Taliban, and Osama bin Laden. The
massive data contained in Seeds of Fire on the events of June 1989 involves
reference to scores of eyewitness accounts of mass murder, political
repression, incarceration, and torture, along with unedited posts from the
period by on-site foreign correspondents. This is augmented by the author's
references to the moral and political quandaries posed by the conflict
between the economic and political interests of the American corporate
structure and its accompanying Bush-Rockefeller-Kissinger-Scowcroft-Haig
foreign policy nexus on the one hand, and the interests of the average
Chinese or American citizen on the other, which often juxtapose with the
globalized elite which governs them.
The narrative is replete with examples of the potentially dangerous
longer term implications of the continuance of the dichotomy between the
interests of the rulers and the ruled over the policies of trade, human
rights, and national security issues. Specific examples cited by Thomas
include the American silence over the Chinese sale to Iraq of large
quantities of lithium 6 hydride, a key component in the manufacture of a
hydrogen bomb (p. 145); the Chinese brokerage of military hardware in the
Middle East to American adversaries Iraq, Iran, and Syria ($300 million in
1990-p. 147); the role of Chase Manhattan Bank in the investiture of $250
million dollars in the Daya Bay Nuclear Power Plant, which had an integral
role in producing China's nuclear weapons; the involvement of American
defense contractors like Grumman and Garret Aerospace in advancing Chinese
military aviation (p. 187); the development of a satellite-linked computer
database network based in Beijing, courtesy of Asset Management,
International Financing and Settlement, Ltd, which employed as a consultant
one Prescott Bush, the brother of President George Herbert Walker Bush (p.
289); the utilization by the Israeli Shin Bet intelligence service of
Chinese-devised radioactive aerosol sprays containing genetically damaging
Scandium-64 in the suppression of the Palestinian intifada, along with a
full array of other nerve agents, choking agents, blood and blister agents
(p. 481); the cooperative effort between Chinese and Israeli intelligence
and military technicians in jointly searching the American EP-3 spy plane
forced by China to land on Hainan Island in the 2001 incident (p. 487-88);
and finally, the information provided by Colonel Xu Junping, a January 2001
People's Liberation Army (PLA) defector to the United States, that the Bill
Clinton sanctioned assassination attempt on Osama bin Laden after the U. S.
embassy destruction in Nairobi had failed due to the specific tip-off
provided to bin Laden by the Chinese CSIS which facilitated bin Laden's
escape into the mountains of Afghanistan (p. 492). It would be Colonel Xu
who would also inform George Tenet and Condolezza Rice on September 11, 2001
that Osama bin Laden had made several trips to China in the preceding two
years. Thomas also adds that on that same fateful Tuesday, Lieutenant
General Mahood Ahmed, head of the Pakistani PIS intelligence service, met in
Washington with George Tenet to provide briefing material on the
relationship of China to both bin Laden and the Taliban, material which
dovetailed with the information communicated by Xu Junping in his
debriefing.
Thomas then proceeds to relate the most ominous information of all,
subsequently corroborated by the Washington Times, that on September 11th, a
delegation from China comprised of senior officers of the PLA and the
Chinese Bureau of State Security, along with representatives of Chinese
military defense contractors Huswei Technologies and ZTE, arrived in Kabul,
Afghanistan to conclude a political and military provision pact with the
Taliban (p. 492), which in turn promised to employ its influence to defuse
Islamic militants operating in the northwestern provinces of mainland China.
What is the significance of the bin Laden visits to China in the last two
years, quite subsequent to the Khobar Towers bombing in Riyadh in 1996 and
the American Embassy bombings in Africa in 1998? Does the Chinese arrival
in Kabul on September 11th to consummate a deal with the Taliban suggest a
wider and more newly aggressive PLA and CSIS collaboration with al-Qaeda,
the PFLP, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Saddam Hussein, and the Iranian Ministry
of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) and Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)?
If so, what are the implications for the continuation of a developing
relationship between the CSIS and the Israeli Mossad? And is it possible
that the current American embarrassment and consternation over the
whereabouts of Osama bin Laden may have resulted in the failure to consider
the possibility of the latter's concealment with an Islamic cell group in
northwestern China, with the full shield, knowledge, and concealed consent
of Beijing? The reader may indeed hope that the speed and comprehensive
review of such questions by American intelligence and policy makers exceeds
the performance of these agencies prior to September 11, 2001.
Upon completion of Seeds of Fire, the deliberative, reflective reader
may well conclude that the New American's December 17, 2001 article
entitled, "Communist China Joins WTO," dovetails with the concerns and
analysis of Gordon Thomas on Chinese behavior, the acquiescence of the
American corporate and foreign policy establishment in it, and the darker
consequences yet to follow the Enhanced PROMIS and Tiananmen Square
tragedies for freedom loving peoples:
The recently concluded WTO meeting in Doha, Qatar, produced a plum for
the internationalist Establishment. Both the People's Republic of China and
Taiwan became members of the World Trade Organization. President Bush,
repeating the tired mantra of the free-trade idolaters, expressed the hope
that this latest act of appeasement of the Butchers of Beijing will somehow
produce reforms in the Communist Chinese government. "Taking these steps
will introduce greater competition into [the economies of China and Taiwan],
and mean that both follow the same trade rules as the United States and
other trading partners," Bush effused. "This, in turn, will generate
greater trade and investment that will bring benefits to businesses,
consumers, and workers in all our economies. . . . In the long run, an
open, rules-based Chinese economy will be an important underpinning for
Chinese democratic reforms."
Bush seems to have forgotten that starry-eyed prognosticators have been
saying the same thing for more than 20 years, ever since Deng Xiao Ping
instituted the first "democratic" reforms in Communist China in the late
70s. In the ensuing decades, China developed its program of forced
abortions, maintained its system of gulags for political prisoners,
massacred pro-freedom demonstrators at Tiananmen Square, stole U. S.
military technology and used it to build ICBMs targeted at the U. S., and
suborned and corrupted a U. S. President. And we shouldn't forget that the
Chinese military continues its brutal occupation of Tibet and systematic
destruction of Tibetan culture. Moreover, the Beijing government has
threatened both to invade Taiwan and to attack the United States with
nuclear weapons if we intervene to defend Free China. As for those
long-awaited "democratic reforms," Communist China is still a one-party
state, has never held free elections, and continues to persecute religious
believers at least as severely as the former Soviet Union.
Two decades of trade with the Chinese Communists have only given them
the ability to line their own pockets and modernize their military and
domestic police-state capabilities. Further economic and political
entanglement, via the WTO, will only perpetuate the tragedy of Chinese
Communism.
The disturbing implications of the data revealed and analyzed in Seeds
of Fire are augmented by the author's copious use of original documents
which underscore the credibility of the claims and analysis of his
narrative. These sections include 1) the affidavit of MK-ULTRA survivor
Kathleen Ann Sullivan (pp. 21-22), a litany of the manifestations of a
demonic program evidencing its origins in the minds of those in the service
of an omnipotent, deified State; 2) redacted FBI classified documents on
British media magnate and Mossad agent, Robert Maxwell (pp. 67-86); 3) a
collation of documents which provide a summary of the major players and the
chronology of events surrounding the alliance between the Reagan Justice
Department and Israeli intelligence in the theft and unauthorized
distribution of the Enhanced PROMIS computer software worldwide (pp.
95-141); 4) copies of unedited coverage of foreign correspondents in China
covering the events in Tiananmen Square in June 1989 (pp. 431-439); and 5)
excerpts from a CIA briefing paper entitled, "Global Trends, 2015," employed
by George Tenet to brief the incoming George W. Bush administration after
November, 2000 (pp. 495-504).
The reader who tackles Seeds of Fire will be rewarded with a fusillade
of disconcerting facts and angles pertaining to the American relationships
with Israel and China, the lack of accountability of the American government
and its elected representatives to its people, and the pathetic performance
of the mainstream American press as a vehicle for responsible investigative
reporting and analysis of critical public policy issues. In reporting the
known facts of the Enhanced PROMIS scandal, the compromise of American
interests by Israeli and Chinese intelligence, and the problematic character
of the relationship of the Chinese regime to the corporate and governmental
elite of the United States, Gordon Thomas successfully attempts a deeper
exploration and articulation of the larger historical context and causality
of the conditions and forces which facilitated the tragedy of September 11,
2001. It may well be concluded that in the absence of a painstaking
American self-examination and systematic political reform rooted in
spiritual re-awakening, the World Trade Center holocaust may be a predictive
microcosm of modern history's potentially greatest turning point--the final
eclipse of the fortunes of the 20th century's premier power at the hands of
Chinese Communism, Islamic fundamentalism, and internal malignancy. And
like its predecessor work, Gideon's Spies, Seeds of Fire again reiterates
legitimate and substantive concerns over the influence of the Israeli lobby
in the United States, as the latter attempts to perpetuate the failures of
British policies in Palestine rooted in the contradictions of 1917 and 1939.
Mark Dankof
(Mark Dankof is an ordained Lutheran pastor engaged in post-graduate work at
Westminster Theological Seminary in systematic theology and theological
German. An occasional correspondent and book reviewer for the Lutheran
conservative weekly, Christian News, and the Internet web site Freedom
Writer, he was the Constitution Party's candidate for the U. S. Senate in
the State of Delaware in 2000. His book reviews and short stories can also
be found on his own web site at www.MarkDankof.com)
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