The re-occurrence of grisly, videotaped beheadings of two American hostages in Iraq, in a manner very similar to the execution of Nick Berg, provides an opportunity to test the hypothesis that these executions were not quite what they appeared to be. Like the execution of Nick Berg, there is reason to believe the executions of Americans Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley were not terrorist attacks on innocent victims, but were in fact, executions administered by the Israeli secret service on individuals who had willingly cast their fortunes and lives on the sea of international espionage. These individuals (and their families) were probably being punished - not to influence US policy, but because they jeopardized the very existence or authority of the Mossad in Iraq.
In Section 2, (written prior to the murders of Armstrong and Hensley) it was argued that the execution of Nick Berg was actually a cover-up of the Mossad’s involvement in the United States and the attack of 9/11, and at the same time, a message to their own organization that ‘loose lips’ are dealt with severely.
When these two Americans were executed three and a half months later - purportedly by the same individual, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - it seemed appropriate to test the basic premise of the prior interpretation of events. The initial hypothesis going into the research was that if these latter public executions did not withstand scrutiny similar to that imposed on the Nick Berg affair, it may be possible that the interpretation of events was ‘unreliable.’ The question was: were Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley spies killed by the Mossad? Unfortunately, that appears to be the case.
The known facts surrounding this affair are scarcer than those around l’ affaire de Berg but they point to one conclusion: both Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley most likely worked in or for the American intelligence world, and were not innocent victims.
Let the analysis start with the observation that these gentlemen were not average Americans. They were not – as the news would suggest - a couple of normal, civil engineers who were trying to help in the reconstruction of Iraq. They were not normal guys who might have worked at one or two local construction or engineering companies, got laid off, and applied for an overseas job. Like Berg, these gentlemen:
• Traveled internationally, and extensively so;
• Demonstrated exceptional risk-taking behaviors in terms of going places they should not be;
• Worked for companies with significant contracts to the US intelligence world;
• Consorted with known spies or terrorists;
• Had the FBI investigating their lives; and
• Left puzzling questions and contradictions behind them in their life stories.
This is not normal.
At first, one needs to notice that both gentlemen worked for a major US defense contractor that won the largest of four contracts to build ‘bases’ in Iraq. They were not there to build schools, repair utilities, or rebuild Iraq, as they had informed their friends and family. In fact, their work and the contract won by their employer are ‘classified.’ All we know is what they told their friends and family, and that appears to be contradictory with the official documentation. Why the lies?
Second, they were not living on a secure construction site as foreigners usually do under such contracts, but rather “lived in a wealthy Baghdad neighborhood of villas surrounded by walls and protected by metal gates and armed guards outside the high-security area known as the Green Zone.” As one security guard in Iraq noted regarding a contractor that would live under such conditions: “It is unbelievably naïve.” Interviewing a fellow employee, an African newspaper quoted the fellow contractor: “Those who have no military experience almost never travel outside the camps of the military zone designated Multi-National Division (South East) without an escort. The majority are accompanied by soldiers in "snatch wagons" - armoured Land Rovers - providing cover with heavy machine guns and SA80 rifles. Ex-military types, armed to the teeth, also provide escorts. He took an unnecessary risk. We live on camp and travel with green fleet [the British army]. There are no ifs, buts and ands about it. It's company policy, we don't travel without the army. If the army say you don't move, you don't move.”
In fairness, it must be noted that the three kidnapped gentlemen had private security guards. They were not totally reckless. However, in the week prior to their kidnapping, they were notified by their guards that the lives of their guards had been threatened, and that the guards then actually abandoned them. This situation raises significant questions:
1. Why would either government or private guards not be replaced or reinforced by their employing agency? The scenario suggests the guards were ‘private’ in nature, and not provided by an agency, but rather by the three hostages themselves.
2. Why would three gentlemen – working hard to send money home (“to make ends meet”) be taking risks and unnecessarily be spending their own cash on ‘guards’?
3. Why would these gentlemen remain at this home, in a war zone, in an unsecured region of the city, after being advised of death threats specifically targeted at them?
These are conditions which suggest that the three kidnapped men were involved in activities above and beyond ‘helping the people of Iraq, and taking care of their families.”
The company that employed them is Gulf Supplies and Commercial Services. The contract was for $46 million, and was largest of four similar contracts in Iraq, larger than the other three combined. One would think a major defense contractor is subject to public scrutiny – but not so Gulf Commercial Services. They have no website that distributes information, nor is there another single reference to them on the Internet search engines, other than their linkage to this atrocity. When approached by the media, the normal media report is that “GSCS has not replied to requests for further information.”
One reporter was able to gain some insight into Gulf Supplies, but this information is not verified by another source. Gulf Supplies is a 13-year-old firm that provides “technical, logistical and operational support to local and international clients doing business in the Middle East, Arabian Gulf and Central Asia regions.” Its customers include Bechtel, CH2M Hill Cos. Ltd., Fluor Corp., Kellogg Brown and Root, and Parsons Infrastructure and Technology. GSCS has no recorded history of international construction – unlike a company such as Flour City International, which recorded one Eugene Armstrong as a Board Director. Gulf Services maintains itself as a ghost company from the United Arab Emirate.
When people and organizations go out of their way to prevent disclosure, it begs the question – what is there to hide?
Unlike Hensley, Armstrong has not had published the traditional funeral and obituary announcements. His life is fairly well hidden from the news and Internet references.
The little information available about Mr. Eugene Armstrong is very telling. His cousin, who managed to avoid the ‘family spokesperson’ control clamped on the families of these two victims, described Armstrong as a traveling worker, who lived as a youngster in Germany, and had major work engagements in Bosnia, Angola, and Thailand. (Is it possible he first crossed paths with Kenneth Bigley in Thailand?) If he was a normal contractor in these areas, his behavior did not demonstrate it. As an acquaintance of Armstong’s reported, "He talked about how in Bosnia no one would ride in a pickup truck with him toward the end because he had so many bullet holes in his truck and he'd had so many windshields blown out that he was considered to be bad luck." This is highly reminiscent of Nick Berg’s behavior – being in places he shouldn’t be, often enough to get caught at it. Evidently, his life-style in Baghdad demonstrated the same tendency towards risk taking.
Interestingly, November 1995 finds one Eugene Armstrong testifying in Washington as the spokesperson for the CIA representing of the “Ames Damage Assessment team.” Ames was the Russian mole in the CIA who leaked the names of hundreds of agents, causing the death of more than a few. Armstrong was the CIA agent that summarized the impact of that leak on the CIA field organization.
The opening lines of the Jack Hensley story usually read like this: “The past couple of years were hard on Jack Hensley: part-time jobs at a convenience store, a post office and as a substitute teacher were not quite enough to support his wife and 13-year-old daughter, and new opportunities seemed scarce.” This generally strikes us as a story of a normal guy who fell on hard times, and went to Iraq to make ends meet. For a man who left a lucrative, professional position – to spend time with his family – ‘going back’ was probably not what he wanted. However, he did choose to “go back”- to life a travel and risk-taking.
Jack liked to travel. Jack his met wife in Colombia, South America. It has also been noted that he worked for a year and a half in Saudi Arabia. It is also known that Hensley worked for at least 17 years at Getronics, managing large-scale telecommunications projects. Getronics is a global firm with locations in 44 countries. Because nothing is known of these seventeen years, it is speculated that Jack did a number of international projects, and then left the company to spend time his daughter, after having been absent as a father. It is of pertinent interest that in reviewing the 150 pages of messages on the Jack Hensley memorial website that there are numerous people who wrote saying ‘I worked with Jack…’ at Wang, at his bar etc. – but not a single person, in over 1500 messages said, I worked with Jack at Getronics. It suggests a 17 year black hole.
Getronics holds a number of contracts with the US Defense Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency, and is described as “one of the leading suppliers of innovative seat management and secure computing to the DoD (Department of Defense)…and the intelligence community.” Then, in the space of about three years, there were a series of acquisitions of the Getronics assets. It was purchased by DigitalNet, which was purchased by the British firm BAE Systems (formerly British Aerospace)– the fourth largest arms manufacturer in the world. BAE North America was then purchased by IDT, (Integrated Defense Technologies), which was then purchased by DRS Technologies. BAE North America is a leading manufacturer of ‘high performance radio frequency surveillance equipment used in signals intelligence operations.” [Aerospace & Defense Market Update, October 2002]. According to DRS’s annual report, DRS is working heavily with Lockheed-Martin on the “Navy’s network centric tactical warfare environment.”
Interestingly, Mr. Hensley took interest in conspiracy theorists. In June of 2000, he traveled to North Carolina to join a radio audience at WTZY, to listen to the conservative conspiracy advocate Craig Roberts. Jack Hensley was quoted by the local news after the show: "I like what he's doing, in general – digging and bringing things out that people need to know." Sounds like a tendency towards ‘loose lips’ – which got Berg killed.
The second miscellaneous bit of information was shared by his brother, Ty Hensley. Ty “said he felt that despite their demands, the hostage takers always intended to kill the hostages. They never called an embassy to communicate their demands, he said. ‘The terrorists wanted to kill my brother and hurt my family,’ Ty Hensley said.”
The third bit of information comes from Jack’s wife. When asked if she could comment on what she new about her husband’s kidnapping, “She said she did not know if there had been any communication between her husband's captors and the Iraqi or American governments. ‘Nothing that I am privy to. I know there is far more superior intelligence behind this, both here in the states and in Baghdad, that they know things that I don't know and, to be honest, I don't need to know them,’ Pati Hensley said. ‘I just need them to follow through and do what they can to save these two gentlemen’."
The oddities in the Hensley family messages are this: 1) Ty seems fairly convinced that the attack on Jack is an attack on his family (Was he told this, and if so, why?), and 2) Pati’s use of the words ‘superior intelligence’ and her desire to not know the truth, suggests a familiarity with intelligence operations beyond that of a innocent bystander.
These small bits of information beg a number of questions:
• How does a ‘technology expert’ and a ‘professional managing large scale telecomm projects’ for a Defense company end up being hired to supposedly repair barracks in Iraq? One must assume he was doing something else.
• Is there a connection with the type of telecommunications work done by Nick Berg?
• Why is there an inconsistent message from the public about why he was in Iraq? His acquaintances and family are telling the press he was there to build schools and rebuild Iraq. Why would he tell them that? One must assume it was a cover.
• Why does his wife need to spend time with FBI investigators, reported by the press to be at her house? Usually, this type of activity is covered by a representative from the State Department.
All the evidence suggests Jack was a great guy – someone you’d want as a friend. At the same time, he was a guy who took risks he did not have to - in terms of where he lived, who he lived with and what he did. There was part of his world his wife didn’t want to know about.
Finally, there should be a discussion of the group taking the blame for this outrage. Looking at a picture of the executioners, the outfits are the same as those from the Nick Berg execution, the physical size is the same, and the orange jumpsuits are back in the picture. The video and pictures suggest are these are the same guys that executed Nick Berg. The US Embassy issued a statement that it’s probably the same group. But… does the world really know who they are, and is it really Abu Musab al-Zarqawi?
“Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of the organisation responsible for the beheadings in Iraq, is regularly portrayed by the US government as a terrorist mastermind, responsible for activity in places as widespread as Hamburg, Chechnya, Madrid (train bombing) and Mombassa (hotel bombing). But while there is no doubt that Zarqawi has committed awful crimes, experts say that accusing him has become an easy fall-back for the authorities as they struggle to contain the insurgency. There is no unanimity on whether Zarqawi is a henchman of Osama bin Laden or a rival.”[“A Thug who will stop at nothing to create pure Islamic Zone in Middle East,” Ewen MacAskill and Rory McCarthy, Guardian Unlimited, 11/23/2004]
First, the profile presented by the Guardian Unlimited is not the picture of an Islamic fundamentalist terrorist. It is the profile an international hit-man, not unlike Carlos the “Jackal” Ramirez – who, once captured, was buried by the authorities so deep in prison no one could ever hear his story. (Who is hiding what dark secrets in that case?)
Second, these Iraqi executions do not follow the modus operandi of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. His infamous reputation is built on use of weapons of mass murder: bombings and chemicals, used against those whose religions he disagrees with: Shia Muslims and Jews. These executions meet none of the three characteristics of his group’s modus operandi: 1) mass murder, 2) religious affiliation or 3) use of bombs and chemicals. Nor do the other incidents attributed to his group have attributes of the executions: videotape, political extortion and kidnapping. There are two totally different modus operandi here, inexplicable unless there is a totally different agenda or person committing the crimes. More importantly, however, it should be noted that possibly the only other group that would have the same enemies as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and have the organization and skill to execute globally – would be the Mossad.
A geopolitical explanation is required at this point. Ninety percent of the world Muslim population is Sunni, and ten per cent is Shi’a, also known as Shi’ite. (This schism between the Muslims dates back 1400 years.) Although a global minority, the conservative Shia currently controls Iran, and represents 60% of the population of Iraq. Saddam Hussein was secular, favored the Sunni’s and kept the Shia under control. The threat to Israel of “real democracy” in Iraq is that it would allow the Shia clerics to re-gain the control of Iraq that was taken from them by the Sunni’s 500 years ago, and then by the British in 1920. Shia control of both Iraq and Iran, thus creating a Shia ‘power bloc’ would be an unacceptable threat to Israel, because of the Shiite cleric’s religious preoccupation with the holy cities of Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem. However, with Shiites focused on their grievances with Sunnis, and both groups attacking each other, Israel remains safe. With Shiites unable to merge and unify the wealth of Iran and Iraq, Israel remains safe. Hence, it is ‘fortuitous’ for Israel that there are such a groups as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Al Qaeda that can fragment Muslim unity and polarize the religious sectors. If these two organizations didn’t exist, Israel might have to invent them. Once again – as in the Nick Berg story – there arises the specter of the Mossad masquerading as Muslim terrorists, dealing out death and horror and fanning the flames of American outrage, and Muslim disunity. (It is also fortuitous that current efforts in January 2005 at implementing “partial voting” – using Bush’s argument that “some democracy is better than none” – happens to disenfranchise a good portion of the Shia population.)
Heidner Report Table of Contents >2 I 3 I 4 I 5 I 6 I 7
See also: Clues to the Murderers of 9-11
No Need for Hijackers
Rumsfeld a Co-Conspirator of 9-11 Stand Down
