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The Case of Keith Idema
Barry Farber
Thursday, July 22, 2004
There are two kinds of journalists writing about Jonathon (Jack) Keith Idema - those who praise him, and those who portray him as an insane, sadistic, renegade ex-Green Beret who led his own private army inside Afghanistan rounding up innocent Afghans and beating them and hanging them upside down in his own private jail in Kabul.

And what's the difference between those two kinds of journalists? The ones who praise him have been on the Keith Idema story for 10 years. The others have been on the Keith Idema story for about ten minutes! I belong to the first group.

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In 1991 when the Soviet Union fell apart there was no happier fall-away piece than Lithuania, which was swallowed whole by the Soviet Union in 1940 and remained anti-Soviet until the Soviets collapsed in 1991. Somebody in Washington did some good thinking. Send some of our people over, make contact with the Lithuanian KGB - who really hated Russia and communism the whole time - and see what we could learn. And they couldn’t have sent a better man than Special Forces Sergeant J. Keith Idema who quickly bonded with the Lithuanians and brought back information that may either save us all or serve us with fair warning of our impending physical obliteration!

(Idema's admirers claim Keith wowed the Lithuanian KGB guys by out-shooting them at the firing range and out-drinking them in the officers' club afterwards. I won t let that thought breathe outside of parentheses because the saga of Keith Idema is going to get plenty wild enough without it!)

The next year, 1992, Keith became the star at a Pentagon briefing by delivering the startling news that since the Soviet breakup, weapons-grade nuclear material had been, not leaking, but pouring into the hands of the international terrorist underworld. When a system like communism collapses, whatever you're sitting on top of becomes your currency. If you're supervisor of a shoe factory, you trade shoes for food, clothing, whatever. If you re in charge of a potato warehouse, potatoes are your new rubles. And those who were in charge of weapons-grade nuclear material found themselves in an enviable trading position.

Keith described to those at that Pentagon briefing the nuclear backpack or suitcase nuclear bomb, a tactical atomic device that could lay waste to 40 city blocks when detonated, Keith warned that the number of missing units from the former Soviet arsenal was unknowable. The traffic was lucrative to those who controlled that material and their tight Soviet-era control was now out of control.

After the Pentagon briefing two men approached Keith and said, "Great work, Sergeant. We're FBI and CIA. Give us your sources over there and we'll continue your great work."

Nothing doing, Keith told them. He explained that in order to get his information he had to vow he would never share it with either the FBI or the CIA. Don t forget, he told them. The Lithuanians who gave me all this were plugged into the communist intelligence brain. And they know that the CIA and the FBI are riddled with their OWN spies!

The men warned Keith of dire consequences if he did not divulge his sources. Keith did not deliver. They did! Keith was indicted for wire fraud and thrown into federal prison. Keith denies he was guilty. He also recalls being promised leniency and early release if he gave them what they wanted.

That's where I came in. Ted Kavanau, a celebrity TV news producer who was credited with putting CNN on the air for Ted Turner at the beginning, called me, told me about Keith, and suggested I interview him from prison on my radio show by phone. I got a lot of fascinating hours of talk radio out of the deal. Keith got a lot of solitary confinement. Warden after warden at federal prison after federal prison punished Keith for talking to media. Once the warden was driving home from the prison and heard Keith on my show on his car radio and did a U-turn and jerked Keith off the phone and threw him into solitary again.

Keith celebrated one pleasure in prison denied to other inmates. He knew that the 11:00 p.m. news would bring coverage of the FBI agent who arranged for Keith to be locked up himself led away in handcuffs after being convicted as a Soviet spy. That was Earl Pitts. One little problem. The TV room closes down at 11:00 p.m. and the inmates all have to return to lockup. Keith remained by the TV.

Four prison guards told Keith to return to lockup. He replied, "I'm going to watch this particular newscast. You're only four. If you're going to force me, I suggest you first call for backup." They, indeed, called for backup but, somehow, a higher-up who understood Keith's desire to watch the 11:00 p.m. news that night got involved. The word came down. Let him watch. Then let him return to lockup!

Remember Robert Hansson, the FBI agent turned Soviet spy? Remember Aldridge Aimes, the CIA man serving a life term as a Soviet spy? Let's hear it for the Lithuanian KGB! They hand out good advice!

After 9/11 Keith, now a free man, went on his own to Afghanistan and - I know this sounds absurd - JOINED the Northern Alliance! He bonded with their fighters and marched with them following the American invasion from their once-beleaguered base in the north down though the capital Kabul and clear on down to Kandahar. Keith kept my audience up to date on the fighting at all points along the way. Stories about Keith flashed around the world. His first-aid training with Special Forces made him the closest thing to a medical doctor thousands of people in the Afghan villages had ever known. Legends grew up around all the Afghan lives the nice American named Jack saved with little medicines or medical equipment.

Keith came home to Fayetteville, North Carolina, and we who admired him hoped he'd start a family and a business and maybe write a book.

References to women's sex appeal have been outlawed by the PC for almost a decade now, but I'm old enough to be grandfathered out of that strait-jacket; so I can tell you that if you ever got a look at Keith's wife, Victoria, you'd marvel that Keith ever left home even for a quick visit to a nearby convenience store, much less for a return to Afghanistan, which is exactly what Keith did.

And then things deteriorated. One Sunday recently Keith was on my radio show detailing his successes in rounding up terrorists. The next Sunday the FBI had plastered "Wanted" posters with Keith's picture all over Kabul warning "Armed and Dangerous!" By the following Sunday Keith was in Afghan custody, threatened with 20 years or more for running a private army and a private jail and torture chamber!

Those in the media who were brand new to the Keith story got sucked up the government exhaust pipe and believed all the horrible things the feds put out. Ted Kavanau and I and a few others aren’t buying. We smell FBI vengeance, payback fueled by Keith's volunteer success in rounding up the bad guys. We're open to being proven wrong. The other side doesn’t seem to be open to anything.

I'll make you a side-bet right here. I'll bet you those reporters presently painting Keith as a one-man Abu Ghraib would find their nostrils flooded with rat fragrance instantly if their hometown police first reported raiding a torture house and finding prisoners hanging by their feet, and then later dropped that from their story completely and instead claimed they'd found a bloody towel in a back room and strongly suspected some of the prisoners had been beaten.

There is zero evidence to suggest even one single reporter has yet asked the Afghan authorities, "Wait a minute! What ever happened to the bit about the prisoners hanging upside down?" Police around the world make up stuff like that when they seek to demonize not ordinary wrong-doers, but political prisoners - prisoners who are pawns in some dark forbidding power struggle or who the regime wants put away for a long time. And American reporters being fed raw demonization are supposed to raise hell and put a chunk under it, not just take notes and refeed it all to America and the world!

Keith's American attorney John Tiffany says he has evidence bull-proof and pig-tight that will put the lie to every important point the anti-Keith forces - two governments and a world press corps strong - are making. Stay tuned.

I want to invite Ted Kavanau to finish this column with a release he wrote in a valiant attempt to give the Keith-haters in the American media the reasons why we're on the opposite side. Here's Ted.

The soldier, who more than a decade ago first warned the Pentagon about the Russian Mafia selling suitcase nuclear bombs to terrorist supporting nations now languishes in an Afghan prison along with other members of his independent antiterrorist team.

Former Green Beret Sgt. Jonathan Keith Idema, who was known only as "Jack" in Afghanistan, awaits formal charges while Afghan officials claim he captured innocent Iraqis and illegally jailed and tortured them. In contrast to these official torture allegations, a NATO spokesman, who claimed his troops were deceived into going on three raids with Idema's group, spoke of, "...their apparently professional approach - also in handling prisoners".

Idema claimed to have broken up a major al-Qaeda planned bomb plot, one he said the FBI knew about for six months but on which had taken no action. The NATO spokesman did report that the peacekeeping troops found traces of explosives and suspicious electronic components in the raided buildings.

Suitcase nuke proliferation is reportedly much worse since Idema first told the Pentagon what he learned from the Lithuanian KGB about the illicit traffic. (That story by the way, won major awards when reported by CBS "60 Minutes", though CBS chose not to credit their major source - Jonathan K. Idema.)

According to a just published book, "Osama's Revenge - The Next 9/11," by former FBI consultant Paul L. Williams, al-Qaeda has been, " ... planning a spectacular nuclear attack using six or seven suitcase nuclear bombs already smuggled into this country that would be detonated simultaneously in U.S. cities."

And in a case of leftovers from Soviet activities during the Cold War, "Quoting Russian military officials, Williams also says Moscow secretly slipped into the continental U.S. several suitcase nukes to be activated in case of the breakout of hostilities with Washington." Williams says the nukes are still in this country ready to go if needed. (*source NewsMax).

As for Idema, he awaits his fate in Kabul, from a people whose liberty he fought for beginning in the early post 9/11 days, his exploits chronicled in the best-selling, "The Hunt For Bin Laden." Meanwhile, there are those, like the NATO spokesman in Afghanistan, who say they have no idea who he really is. - Ted Kavanau

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