“In 2014, the public learned that a former spy who had infiltrated the Jewish community in Buenos Aires on behalf of Argentina’s Federal Police had revealed to two investigative journalists that he had been ordered to turn over blueprints of the AMIA building to his Federal Police case officer. The spy was convinced the building plans were used by the real culprits behind the bombing. His stunning revelation prompted a series of articles in the Argentine press.”
How a police spy’s stunning testimony threatens the official US -Israeli AMIA bombing narrative — Gareth Porter (July 26 2020)
March 17 2021 — After years of research, independent investigative journalist Gareth Porter has concluded that revelations by a former police spy upend the official story blaming Iran for the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. The evidence suggests a cover-up by dirty war elements may have let the real culprits off the hook. Follow us on Twitter: @Intel_Today
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“The former infiltrator’s account provided the first clear indication that anti-Semitic veterans of Argentina’s “Dirty War” and their allies in the Argentine police and intelligence service orchestrated the explosion. But Argentina’s legal system — still heavily influenced by the intelligence agency that influenced the official investigation to blame Iran and a prosecutor whose career had been based on that premise — stubbornly refused to investigate the former police spy’s account.”
Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specializing on the U.S. national security state.
He has covered dozens of exclusive investigative stories about U.S. policy in U.S. wars and military operations in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Syria and U.S policies toward Iran.
He is author of five books, including Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam (University of California Press, 2005) and Manufactured Crisis: the Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare (Just World Books, 2014).
In his last book written with former CIA Officer John C. Kiriakou — The CIA Insider’s Guide to Iran: from CIA Coup to the Brink of War — Gareth Porter explains how and why the United States and Iran have been either at war or threatening such a war for most of the forty years since Islamic Republic of Iran was established.
The authors delve below the surface explanations for the forty-year history of extreme U.S. hostility toward Iran to blow up one official U.S. narrative after another about Iran and U.S. policy.
Gareth Porter believes that the main witness — Iranian defector Abolghasem Mesbahi — has fabricated false information incriminating Iran for the bombing.
Mesbahi is the same person who blamed Tehran for the tragedy of Pan Am Flight 103.
As the readers of this blog know, I have come to the conclusion that Iran has no responsibility whatsoever in the Lockerbie Affair.
In both cases, impunity for the real culprits continues, but the truth is slowing emerging.
The 1992 AMIA Bombing in Buenos Aires
On March 17, 1992, at 2:42 pm (UTC−3), a pick-up truck driven by a suicide bomber and loaded with explosives smashed into the front of the Israeli Embassy located on the corner of Arroyo and Suipacha, and detonated.
The embassy, a Catholic church, and a nearby school building were destroyed. The blast killed 29 and wounded 242.
Four Israelis died, but most of the victims were Argentine civilians, many of them children.
It was Argentina’s deadliest terror attack until the 1994 AMIA bombing and it remains the deadliest attack on an Israeli diplomatic mission.
A group called Islamic Jihad Organization, which has been linked to Iran and possibly Hezbollah, claimed responsibility. [The same group claimed responsibility for Lockerbie.]
Their stated motive for the attack was Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah Secretary General Sayed Abbas al-Musawi in February 1992.
Islamic Jihad also released surveillance footage they took of the embassy before the blast.
In 1999, the Argentine government issued an arrest warrant for Imad Mughniyah in connection with this attack and the 1994 AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires, which killed 85.
“Over the next few weeks, every Argentine seemed to have an opinion about how Nisman had died; the case became the Latin-American equivalent of the J.F.K. assassination, grist for conspiracy theories involving spies and foreign governments and conniving politicians. Posters across Buenos Aires asked: Who killed Nisman?”
The New Yorker
Argentinian federal prosecutor, Alberto Nisman, was assigned to investigate the bombing.
On January 18 2015, one day before he was scheduled to report on his findings, Nisman was found dead in his home.
Iranian defector Abolghasem Mesbahi was Nisman’s star witness…
“I am not going to speculate because I do not know who killed him but, yes, there are possibly ‘dark forces’ at work in this country.”
Horacio Verbitzky — Argentina journalist and human rights campaigner
Gareth Porter’s Investigation into the AMIA Bombing in Buenos Aires
REFERENCES
How a police spy’s stunning testimony threatens the official US-Israeli AMIA bombing narrative — Gareth Porter (July 26 2020)
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Buenos Aires AMIA Bombing — New Revelations Exonerate Tehran
On This Day — The Bombing of the Israel Embassy in Buenos Aires (March 17 1992) [New Revelations Exonerate Tehran]
Intel Today 