Our “great besider” only has to freewheel his deceitful spin these days. 

The little fella is not only made safe by his many loyal but mindless followers, always primed & ready to do his dirty work for him, but by a sycophantic, incompetent or dishonest media.

Among his gentler media handlers is Ray Hadley, from 2GB.

Take the latest on air free kick on “radical Islam” awarded yesterday.

HADLEY:

They're also talking about Imams being required to be certified under a new national board for this radical preaching, brings me to the next point, Ronan Gunaratna, and I note on Sky News they're now saying two terrorism experts, I think the other one maybe Clive Williams, believe that at this time clerics in both Sydney and Melbourne are preaching martyrdom and jihad to young followers, do you think that is most likely right, do you have information that it maybe right?

PRIME MINISTER:

Well I never talk about any information I have but suffice it to say that we continue to worry that there is a section of the Islamic community, a very small section, that is not serving the interests of anybody with some of things that they've had to say and I don't think I'll say anymore than that.

The rodent often makes the claim that he “never talks about” intelligence information that he might have. Of course, this caveat also conveniently extends to any misinformation that might be being spun at the time.

Now if Ray was on the ball, he would have realised that the allegations on “martyrdom & jihad” he was bandying-about were not new. In fact, their chief proponent, Ronan Gunaratna, had made similar unfounded allegations in the past, very conveniently playing to the government’s fear agenda.

Even some of our more reputable current affairs journalists & programs have been taken-in by the self-proclaimed “expert” on terrorism, Mr Gunaratna.

On November 21 last year, Lateline’s Tony Jones aired a report by Tom Iggulden - Homegrown Terror Attack Likely: Expert - containing the same alarming allegations by the same illustrious expert, Mr Gunaratna.

Billed as “the star” of the conference where the interview was conducted, Mr Gunaratna proceeded to talk-up the inevitability of a terrorist attack in Australia in the next 3 years.

“What we have seen is that there is support base of about 200 to 300 Muslims in this country that support violent extremism and violence” he said.

He went on to say: “You must make sure that there is no place for extremist preachers, or preachers of hate, in Australia. It is those people that plant the ideas of violence and terrorism in the minds of the young Muslims.”

How convenient were these wise protestations, coming on top of the orchestrated AFP & ASIO raids & just as the federal government was pushing the passage of its harsh new anti-terror legislation?

The problem is that many would suggest that Mr Gunaratna is not the “terrorism expert” that he & others hold him out to be.

In fact, many would assert that Mr Gunaratna’s real & only expertise is in self-promotion & that his primary objective is to personally benefit by promoting fear of terrorism.

Back on July 20, 2003, Gary Hughes wrote an expose of Mr Gunaratna in the Melbourne Age, detailing his “shadowy” ways. To quote from the lengthy article –

“Whenever a comment has been needed about al-Qaeda or terrorism, Rohan Gunaratna has been there to supply it. Who is he? Rohan Gunaratna describes as a spiritually defining moment the day in March 2001 when he learned that the Taliban regime in Kabul had ordered the demolition of the ancient, giant statues of Buddha at Bamiyan in Afghanistan.

But it was the destruction six months later of an icon of the modern world – New York’s World Trade Towers - that changed his life in a more practical way, launching a stellar new career as a global authority on international terrorism. Gunaratna was the right person in the right place at the right time. The world’s media outlets were looking for experts to interpret how and why the world had changed and the Sri Lanka-born academic was great "talent", providing dire warnings about the threat of Osama bin Laden’s shadowy al-Qaeda network. No one seemed to worry that, until the September 11 attacks, Gunaratna’s acknowledged expertise had been largely confined to the activities of Sri Lanka’s Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or the Tamil Tigers.

In May 2002, as Australian SAS troops were hunting bin Laden’s followers south-east of Kabul, Gunaratna’s book Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror became an instant bestseller and his reputation grew accordingly, being described as one of the world’s foremost experts on Islamic terrorism.

Gunaratna, 42, had ridden a wave of success driven by the basic laws of supply and demand - there were not enough experts to meet the demand from the media and publishers for intelligence analysts able to provide a catchy quote or headline. And Gunaratna appeared happy to break the mould of the public’s traditional idea of an academic analyst, making at times startling claims based on what he said were his own intelligence "sources" and criticising governments - including Canberra - for not doing enough and being too concerned about civil liberties.

Gunaratna was also seized upon by the Australian media, including newspapers published by Fairfax, and promoted virtually unquestioningly as the leading authority on Islamic terrorism, particularly after the Bali bombing in October last year. But Gunaratna and others who belong to this new breed of media-friendly commentators, who blur the distinction between academic analysis and politics and base research on information from anonymous intelligence sources, are causing concern in some circles.

Members of Australia’s intelligence community, and in particular ASIO, are known to be dismissive of many of Gunaratna’s more sensational statements, such as claims that alleged military chief of the Jemaah Islamiyah network and senior al-Qaeda member Hambali had regularly visited Australia. In Britain, The Observer newspaper’s home affairs editor and long-time writer on Islamic terrorist groups, Martin Bright, describes Gunaratna as "the least reliable of the experts on bin Laden". He says Gunaratna is often used by the British authorities as an expert witness in the prosecution of Islamist terror suspects because they can rely on him to be apocalyptic.

Also under scrutiny are the financial links between analysts who highlight the dangers posed by terrorists and private corporations that stand to make money from an increased atmosphere of fear.

In Australia, journalist and commentator on intelligence issues Brian Toohey is one of the few to have openly questioned Gunaratna’s credentials, describing him as a "self proclaimed expert" and dismissing some of his claims as "plain silly". He uses as an example a warning by Gunaratna published in November 2001 in the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council Review that terrorist groups might try to influence Australian politicians by rallying "10,000 or 20,000 votes" in their electorates.

David Wright-Neville is senior research fellow at the Centre for Global Terrorism at Monash University and until 2002 was a senior terrorism analyst in the Office of National Assessment. Although he won’t comment directly on Gunaratna, or any other individual analyst, he says that, like in any other profession, the abilities of so-called terrorism experts ranges from the very good down to questionable.

The lack of scrutiny of their abilities, says to Wright-Neville, is partly due to the shortage of analysts and experts available to meet the massive demand for public knowledge. He says problems arise when analysts don’t make it clear when they leave the secure ground of known facts and enter into their own extrapolation when commenting to the media. The results can be headlines based on conjecture rather than reality.

Another factor, says Wright-Neville, is the use of unidentified intelligence or security sources by some analysts. Not all intelligence organisations are equally reliable and, particularly in some south-east Asian countries, can be highly politicised and running agendas for their governments. Individuals in intelligence agencies can selectively leak information to analysts - or to the media - to influence public debate. "The context in which information is obtained is vital," he says. It is also important not to put too much weight on intelligence sources. "Intelligence is an imprecise science," says Wright-Neville.

Gunaratna’s credentials in biographical information published in books, magazines, newspapers and on the internet, are at first glance impressive. His book Inside Al Qaeda states: "Rohan Gunaratna, the author of six books on armed conflict, was called to address the United Nations, the US Congress and the Australian Parliament in the wake of September 11, 2001. He is a research fellow at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, St Andrews University, Scotland. Previously, Gunaratna was principal investigator of the United Nations’ Terrorism Prevention Branch and he has served as a consultant on terrorism to several governments and corporations."

After The Sunday Age made detailed checks on Gunaratna’s biographical details, he confirmed last week that there was no such position as principal investigator at the UN’s Terrorism Prevention Branch and he worked there in 2001-02 as a research consultant. He also confirmed that, rather than directly addressing the UN, Congress and the Australian Parliament, he had actually spoken at a seminar organised by the parliamentary library, given evidence to a congressional hearing on terrorism and delivered a research paper to a conference on terrorism organised by the UN’s Department for Disarmament Affairs.

Gunaratna’s first six books on armed conflict were all relatively obscure works on the Tamil Tigers. One of the books, South Asia at Gunpoint, brought him to notice in Australia in October 2000 with claims that a Tamil Tiger support network had shipped a small helicopter and micro-light aircraft to Sri Lanka and that a Tamil Tiger arms smuggling ship had visited Australia in 1993. Although the local Tamil community was outraged, at least one of the allegations was shown to have a basis in fact. An SBS Dateline report telecast that same month tracked down the Newcastle shop owner who had been questioned by ASIO after being approached by an alleged Tamil Tiger sympathiser in 1994 wanting to buy hang gliders and have them shipped to Malaysia. The information appears to have come through Gunaratna’s very close links with Sri Lanka’s intelligence service. Gunaratna worked for the Sri Lanka Government between 1984 and 1994.

The trail of financial support and weapons supplies to the Tamil Tigers took Gunaratna into the wider world of international terrorism, including Afghanistan, where the Tamil Tigers obtained small arms. His research into the Tamil Tigers and their methods also made him an authority on suicide bombers - knowledge that would stand him in good stead following the September 11 suicide attacks in New York and Washington.

In July 2001, he co-authored (with three others) an article called Blowback in Jane’s Intelligence Review, which looked at Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda in light of evidence from the then recently completed trials of those behind the US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. The article was one of the first detailed examinations of bin Laden and the origins of al-Qaeda. It quickly became a point of reference after September 11.

One former Australian intelligence officer says a problem with Gunaratna’s approach is that he tends to look at international terrorism from the perspective of how it relates to the Tamil Tigers, who declared a truce in December 2001 and opened peace negotiations. Gunaratna did much of his work on the Tamil Tigers’ international links while studying in the United States in 1995-96. It was then that he began establishing important friends in the small world of intelligence analysis.

He did a master of arts at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at Notre Dame University in 1996 and research at the University of Illinois and University of Maryland. While at Maryland, he worked with Admiral Stansfield Turner, one-time head of US intelligence. While at Notre Dame, he linked up with the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at Scotland’s St Andrews University and its massive database on terrorist incidents going back to 1968. He also got to know the centre’s then head, Dr Bruce Hoffman, with whom he has co-authored a yet to be published book on terrorism.

Gunaratna moved to Scotland to complete his doctorate at St Andrews and work as a research fellow at the terrorism and political violence centre. He also got open access to the centre’s large terrorism database, one of just a small handful of such databases scattered around the world. The database is a combination of material gathered by St Andrews and the Rand Corporation, the non-profit US thinktank established by the US Air Force. Now known as the RAND-St Andrews database on Terrorism and Low Intensity Conflict, it is largely maintained and updated by more than 30 students who comb the internet and newspapers and magazines from around the world for information on terrorist operations.

The database is not the only link between Rand and St Andrews and Rand and Gunaratna. Bruce Hoffman, the founder of the St Andrews centre for terrorism study, is now a vice-president of Rand and chief of its Washington office. And Rand, St Andrews, Gunaratna and Jane’s worked together last year as private advisers to Risk Management Solutions, helping the private American corporation develop a "US terrorism risk model" to sell to insurance companies worried about terrorist strikes. Rand, in turn, is linked to the $US3.5 billion Carlyle Group, which holds stakes in some of the world’s biggest arms and defence corporations, through the former US defence secretary and deputy CIA director Frank Carlucci, who is chairman of the group and a Rand board member.

The Carlyle Group employs former President George Bush as a senior adviser, uses former US Secretary of State James Baker as its senior counsellor and has former British Prime Minister John Major as chairman of its European arm. Earlier this year, it bought a third of QinetiQ, the company floated by Britain’s Ministry of Defence to commercially exploit non-secret security and defence technology. QinteQ has been negotiating with the British Government to buy the soon-to-be-privatised Security, Languages, Intelligence and Photography College, where British spies are trained.

In his biographical details on the site of the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies in Singapore, where he is an assistant professor, Gunaratna states one of his past positions was "principal investigator, QinetiQ Project on Terrorist Information Operations". Gunaratna moved to Singapore this year to help establish a regional centre for terrorism research at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies at Nanyang Technological University, where he is titled assistant professor. Not surprisingly, the centrepiece of the new research centre is a database on terrorist activities in the Asia-Pacific region.

Gunaratna says his expertise on al-Qaeda comes from interviews with the group’s "penultimate leadership" and rank and file members, hundreds of documents seized after the invasion of Afghanistan and the debriefings of al-Qaeda suspects in more than a dozen countries. It was that kind of information that led him in March to state definitively that Australian David Hicks, who has been detained at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba after his capture in Afghanistan, was "not a member of al-Qaeda", "did not plan to attack civilian targets", "never intended to attack a civilian target" and was a "romantic" not taken seriously by other Taliban fighters.

Eyebrows were raised among fellow intelligence analysts when Gunaratna reversed his position on Hicks two weeks ago, after the US announced the Australian was one of six detainees it had enough evidence against to put before a military tribunal. This time Gunaratna, said Hicks had undergone "more advance and more specialised training" with al-Qaeda, which "had some special plans for him". Gunaratna attributed his change of heart to information gained from "more recent investigations" and given to him by sources he refused to identify. Another person with raised eyebrows was Hicks’ Adelaide lawyer, Frank Camatta, who maintains that Gunaratna could not possibly have had access to transcripts of his client’s interrogations in Guantanamo ay. "We’d sure like to know who his sources are," says Camatta.”

How convenient for the rodent & his fear campaign against Australia’s Muslim community to have someone like Gunaratna available to spruik for him.

Just as it was convenient to have the same “expert” conveniently talking-up the likelihood of a terrorist attack being mounted in Australia, by 200-300 members of local Muslim “terror cells”, when the government & its intelligence agencies were busy pursuing their odious “anti-terrorism” legislation.

Even Pauline Hanson would blanche at the dreadful libel being perpetrated against Australia’s Muslim community by the rodent & his disgusting accomplices.

The media says nothing & - to our shame - we say even less.