LAS VEGAS – The contractors who run the Nevada National Security Site, formerly the Nevada Test Site, have been scrambling to find new missions to keep the facility alive. And with its wide open spaces and secure borders, it’s the perfect place for covert training.
But how would taxpayers feel about using public dollars to train foreign insurgents, including some who are officially considered to be terrorists?
It’s never really clear how these things can turn out, and sometimes such operations can backfire. For example, in the mid-80s, America trained and armed Afghan rebels to fight against the Russian army. Those same Afghans later joined the Taliban and have used the training we gave them to kill American soldiers.
Nationally known journalist Seymour Hersh reported this month that the U.S. government paid to train Iranian provocateurs, presumably to cause trouble for the current government of Iran. But it turns out the government considers these guys to be terrorists.
The test site has emerged in recent years as a top training facility for all sorts of classified programs, including special ops teams and anti-terror units, and it appears foreign operatives are part of the mix.
“The first units of the MEK to show up in Nevada in late 04, early 05, and it was months and months of training,” investigative reporter Seymour Hersh said.
The Pulitzer Prize winning reporter broke the story in early April, alleging that a rabidly anti-Iranian faction known as the Mujahedeen e-Khalq, or MEK, was at Area 12 on the test site for months of special forces training. Area 12 has been used many times as a base for sensitive operations, including training for the agents who guard American nuclear bombs. It has barracks and facilities to house scores of troops, or in this case, insurgents.
According to Hersh, the training focused on high-tech communications tactics, the kind that involves spy drones, as well as explosives training and enhanced interrogation techniques, which might explain why Nevada saw so many flights of so-called rendition planes during the same period.
Read the rest from the I-Team at KLAS-TV.
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