Jack Idema, SF pariah, captured in Afghanistan

[ScopeScene]

IRREGULARS

Afghans Seize 4 Men Claiming to Be With U.S. Special Forces


By CARLOTTA GALL

Published: July 8, 2004



ABUL, Afghanistan, July 7 - Four men claiming to be Americans and posing as Special Forces commandos were arrested Monday by Afghan security agents in a raid on a house here, NATO and Afghan officials said Wednesday. At least eight men being held prisoner in the house and four Afghan interpreters were also detained, the officials said.

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The four foreign men had sometimes posed as American soldiers and sometimes as peacekeepers for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Kabul, an Afghan police officer said.

A spokesman for the NATO force, Cmdr. Chris Henderson, said that he was aware of the case, and that at least one American was among four foreigners arrested. He said that the men were not connected to United States forces and that he had "no idea" who they were.

The United States Embassy said it was investigating the matter. "We have reports that there are three Americans but we don't have confirmation," an embassy official said. The men did not have documents to prove their identity, he added.

One of the men detained, identified as Jonathan K. Idema, was known to the military and had apparently been under surveillance. He was the subject of a media advisory by the United States military press center several days ago, which warned that he was an imposter pretending to be a member of the American military.

"U.S. citizen Jonathan K. Idema has allegedly represented himself as an American government and/or military official,'' the e-mail notice said. "The public should be aware that Idema does not represent the American government and we do not employ him." A military spokesman, Maj. Jon Siepmann, denied all knowledge of the arrests, but another American official said Mr. Idema was among those arrested.

One foreign military official said the men had tried to pass themselves off as Special Forces troops, or "other agencies," who wear plain clothes and often wear beards and sunglasses. Kabul is brimming with plainclothes agents and former military types working for private security firms. Many drive around in unmarked cars, often armed, and Afghan law enforcement officials usually allow them free passage. United States Special Forces troops also move around unhindered in unmarked cars, sometimes looking like Afghans in Afghan clothes and beards, and sometimes more recognizable as Americans, in uniforms, baseball caps and sunglasses.

But the men detained were being investigated by both the Afghan security forces and the foreign military. Afghan police officers and intelligence agents mounted the raid on Monday, but a foreign military unit had played a part in surveillance, Afghan police officials said. The men lived in a house in central Kabul.

"At least two are saying they are Americans and they give different names each time,'' Commander Henderson said. "There are two other foreigners but it is not clear if they are Americans." he said. The police also found four Kalashnikov rifles and some clothes with blood on them, he said.

All the men are being held by the Afghan intelligence service, the National Security Directorate.

This is the same Jack(John) Idema featured in Robin Moore's "The Hunt For Bin Laden"? My guess is yes - and in it he was put in a positive light. He does have SF experience, right? Any thoughts? Some old entries might give some background for those unaware.

[shrek]

My two cents and no more!


Sometimes men that work for the US do not actually work for the US, at least not as far as you and I are concerned. See if this goes away quickly, fading into the shadows. If it does, they didn't "officially" work for the US. If it does not, they were probably rogues dudes trying to make a pile of cash somehow!

[Red]

My two cents and no more!


Sometimes men that work for the US do not actually work for the US, at least not as far as you and I are concerned. See if this goes away quickly, fading into the shadows. If it does, they didn't "officially" work for the US. If it does not, they were probably rogues dudes trying to make a pile of cash somehow!
Would this be a case of deniable agents?

[szr]

Airsofters taking it to the next level? :P

[duck]

Amazing. Have Afghanistan and Iraq replaced the Central African diamond mines as the mercenary mecca?

[ScopeScene]

Possibly true. But from what I've seen on Socnet and other places this guy is real poser - certainly not deserving glorification in a best seller. A google search yields some interesting stuff on him. Turns out he is involved in a legal battle with FoxNews, who previously employed him as an analyst.

[moughoun]

So was he in SF?, because Robin Moore almost pushes him in to myth the way he writes about him

[shrek]

Ok, I've got a hlaf cent left.

Deniable? If the big bad wolf makes it all go away quickly!

Wannabes using their fame to pose and gain some monies? Watch for deportation and or imprisonment!


Don't know if this guy was ever real SF!

[moughoun]

Searched around, he's not, he was a pararigger with a sfga, but that is not a sf mos, just a support guy and a bull****ter :roll:

[DPGLAW]

So far everything I have read in searching for him does state that he was a retired Green Beret and went into Afghanistan to fight with the NA after not being able to re-enlist due to his age (45).....Although none of the sites I found in my searches were US Gov't or military, they all say the same thing and none say he was not a Green Beret....If he was a poser as the US says now, then why not say anything the other 500 times he was in the news...I have a feeling that this was a case of plausable deniability,....the following are the links so that you can all make your own judgements....

http://tv.zap2it.com/tveditorial/tve_main/1%2C1002%C271|81698|1|10%2C00.html

[url]http://tv.yahoo.com/news/va/20030527/105408279100p.html

[url]http://www.phxnews.com/fullstory.php?article=3842

[url]http://raznor.blogspot.com/2003_05_25_raznor_archive.html [url]

those were some of the sites I came across in my search

[usa320]

My guess is he is either one hell of a poser.

Or he was a bounty hunter/merc of some sort, working for money.

I mean seeing as alot of these guys have at least 5 Million bucks on their head, its a nice prize for a bounty hunter.

And theres also the possibility he is working for any number of US agencies- DOD, DIA, CIA... as a splinter operative, basically doing things on his own to benefit US national security and still allowing for a degree of deniability.

[moughoun]

He got into a **** load of leagal trouble when he set up a company selling SF kit,he went bankrupt then set himself up as a "retired Greenie", go to Socnet, you'll find the whole story about him,

[Jester23]

Guys - Idema is a no talent ass bag.....

read what some formers have had to say about him:

http://www.socnetcentral.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=39424

[OB Kenobi]

Guys - Idema is a no talent ass bag.....

read what some formers have had to say about him:

http://www.socnetcentral.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=39424

I wouldn't believe everything you read on a public forum. None of them have any idea of what he was really doing over there, seems like a bunch of speculation. I don't know of any "posers" who hang out in Afghanistan, and who were there immediately after 9/11.

[Gordon]

The chances are, if he was working as a deniable agent for the US Government he wouldn't tell people and his captors that he worked for the US Government / Army.

Just a thought.

[Chuckie]

The chances are, if he was working as a deniable agent for the US Government he wouldn't tell people and his captors that he worked for the US Government / Army.

Just a thought.

What else is he going to say, he's there on holiday?

[Gordon]

The chances are, if he was working as a deniable agent for the US Government he wouldn't tell people and his captors that he worked for the US Government / Army.

Just a thought.

What else is he going to say, he's there on holiday?

Oh right, so supposing the guy's working there, on the sly for the US gov., but he goes around saying he's a member of the US SF working for the gov. .... well, that's real sly.

Kind of like spying in a country and walking around with a big banner saying "I'm a spy".

[mocking_loudly_died]

How can any one with a media persona ever act deniable?
The law of logic rules out that assertion.

“Hey I’ve seen you on tv!” – average joe

“No you haven’t, I’m on a deniable operation, like the ones in those Andy McNab books” – Idema

Christ.

[Gordon]

hehe ... that too ... ;)

Maybe the guy was out there in connection with the drug trade ... i'm sure there's a whole of cash to made moving junk from there to pretty much anywhere else in the world.

I'm not meaning to degrade the guy in anyway, just a thought.

[2RHPZ]

US mercenary 'dangled Afghans upside down in private Kabul jail'
By Nick Meo in Kabul

09 July 2004

A freelance American bounty hunter who claimed to have been on the trail of Osama bin Laden has been arrested in Afghanistan for allegedly torturing prisoners after they were found dangling upside down in a private cell.

The men were found by Afghan security services after they seized Jonathan K Idema, one of Kabul's best-known characters. Mr Idema, referred to as Jack around the city, two other Americans and four Afghans were held following a brief shoot-out at a house in the capital on Monday.

The Interior Minister, Ali Ahmad Jalali, said the men had "formed a group and pretended they were fighting terrorism. They arrested eight people from across Kabul and put them in their jail". The prisoners had been released, Mr Jalali said.

Mr Idema is an American soldier of fortune who helped the Northern Alliance overthrow the Taliban in 2001. He claims to have trained with the SAS in Britain.

According to his account, he arrived in the country in the winter of 2001 to play a major part alongside Afghan guerrillas fighting the Taliban and al-Qa'ida. His exploits were written about in a blood-curdling paperback, Taskforce Dagger; Hunt for Bin Laden, which details the campaign by American special forces inside Afghanistan in the months after 11 September.

The book says that Mr Idema, originally from North Carolina, joined the Green Berets at the age of 18 in 1975, just missing service in the Vietnam War, then later trained with British SAS forces at the regiment's base in Hereford.

His links to the US military and exact role in the campaign are a murky area. The book quotes the veteran US television journalist Dan Rather, who met Mr Idema in Afghanistan, describing him as "politically incorrect, abrasive, unconventional, and unquestionably heroic". Mr Idema says he almost captured Bin Laden during the siege at al-Qa'ida's Tora Bora cave hideout in December 2001.

But yesterday his buccaneering career appeared to have juddered to a halt and he was thought to be under interrogation by Afghan police, possibly in the city's notorious Waliat Jail. Hours before his arrest, the American military portrayed Mr Idema as a loose cannon. A spokeswoman said: "The public should be aware that Idema does not represent the American government and we do not employ him."

An unnamed Afghan official said that after the shootout with Idema and his men, the prisoners were found in a house that had been turned into a makeshift jail. They were hanging upside down and had been beaten. The men reportedly sported the bushy beards favoured by Islamic radicals, but it appeared they had no links to terrorism.

The other foreigners arrested said they were Edward Caraballo and Brent Bennett, but it was not clear whether these were their real names. Afghan officials said the men had been tailed by security forces before being seized in a house behind a wall topped with barbed wire in a run-down Kabul suburb.

The foreigners had claimed to be working for an export company, but were arrested wearing military uniforms and armed with automatic weapons. It was not clear whether they had been charged last night.

Mr Idema was said to have spent much of his time in recent weeks at a Kabul hotel, The Mustapha. It is popular with aid workers, UN staff, journalists and the trickle of tourists beginning to arrive in the city. One Afghan shopkeeper said: "He [Mr Idema] was always friendly and used to chat. He was interested in the culture and history of Afghanistan."

The US military in Afghanistan has itself been dogged by a prison abuse scandal mirroring the one in Iraq, with claims that prisoners died under interrogation.

[shrek]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/07/09/afghan.prison/index.html

Latest story on CNN

[Jester23]

Kenobi - SOCNET contains a helluva lot more BTDTs than this site could ever get (no offense, Hood).

Those guys know what they're talking about, on top of the fact that Idema has been slammed thousands of times since Moore's book has been released.

I would take the posts (opinions, what-not) on SOCNET a little more seriously that the gaggle-f*cks that tend to post over here.

[ibstolidude]

Kenobi - SOCNET contains a helluva lot more BTDTs than this site could ever get (no offense, Hood).

Those guys know what they're talking about, on top of the fact that Idema has been slammed thousands of times since Moore's book has been released.

I would take the posts (opinions, what-not) on SOCNET a little more seriously that the gaggle-f*cks that tend to post over here.
Jester- you waste words on Kenobi; despite their truth.

[Red]

Kenobi - SOCNET contains a helluva lot more BTDTs than this site could ever get (no offense, Hood).

Those guys know what they're talking about, on top of the fact that Idema has been slammed thousands of times since Moore's book has been released.

I would take the posts (opinions, what-not) on SOCNET a little more seriously that the gaggle-f*cks that tend to post over here.

lol, but not all of us are gaggle f*cks.

[OB Kenobi]

Kenobi - SOCNET contains a helluva lot more BTDTs than this site could ever get (no offense, Hood).

Those guys know what they're talking about, on top of the fact that Idema has been slammed thousands of times since Moore's book has been released.

I would take the posts (opinions, what-not) on SOCNET a little more seriously that the gaggle-f*cks that tend to post over here.
Jester- you waste words on Kenobi; despite their truth.

I wasn't basing my opinion on what members of this site have said, I would never do that, maybe you've noticed that I usually disagree with them. I am wondering how a "poser" manages to survive in Afghanistan, and conduct some sort of business there or whatever he is doing. I want to know more about what this guy supposedly did and what he was doing in Afghanistan. Hearing "Idema is a ****************, Idema is a poser" doesn't tell me anything and doesn't prove anything.

[moughoun]

Kenobi - SOCNET contains a helluva lot more BTDTs than this site could ever get (no offense, Hood).

Those guys know what they're talking about, on top of the fact that Idema has been slammed thousands of times since Moore's book has been released.

I would take the posts (opinions, what-not) on SOCNET a little more seriously that the gaggle-f*cks that tend to post over here.
Jester- you waste words on Kenobi; despite their truth.

I wasn't basing my opinion on what members of this site have said, I would never do that, maybe you've noticed that I usually disagree with them. I am wondering how a "poser" manages to survive in Afghanistan, and conduct some sort of business there or whatever he is doing. I want to know more about what this guy supposedly did and what he was doing in Afghanistan. Hearing "Idema is a ****************, Idema is a poser" doesn't tell me anything and doesn't prove anything.-

Ok, he claim's he was a Green beret, he was not, for a man supposedly working undercover in Afganistan he had a surprisingly big mouth, for some one who claim's to have been in sf,he should know that torturing people get's you nothing, they will tell you what you want to hear not what you need to hear, he claim's he came close to capturing OBL in Tora Bora during the fighting but it was proved that he wasn't with in 250 km of the place that and load of other stuff just mark's him out,


PS,it's not unusual for poser's orwhat ever to get to place's like that, a month after the US invaded a group of 8 men were arrested, they claimed they were US SF, it turned out they were a bunch of wannabe bounty hunter's trying to get the 25 million, none ofthem had even been in the military, talk about clueless p-)

[OB Kenobi]

Ok, he claim's he was a Green beret, he was not, for a man supposedly working undercover in Afganistan he had a surprisingly big mouth, for some one who claim's to have been in sf,he should know that torturing people get's you nothing, they will tell you what you want to hear not what you need to hear, he claim's he came close to capturing OBL in Tora Bora during the fighting but it was proved that he wasn't with in 250 km of the place that and load of other stuff just mark's him out,


PS,it's not unusual for poser's orwhat ever to get to place's like that, a month after the US invaded a group of 8 men were arrested, they claimed they were US SF, it turned out they were a bunch of wannabe bounty hunter's trying to get the 25 million, none ofthem had even been in the military, talk about clueless p-)

It sounds like he's not a poser, but a pretty ruthless individual you wouldn't want to mess with. I mean, there's a difference between a poser who goes to Afghanistan and gets his throat cut after a week, but this guy was holding his own, and apparently terrorizing people there.

So supposedly he was after that $25m I guess.

[PvtPyle]

He is a poser, and a criminal. I served with his former Company CO in Afghanistan, and his is a world class ****bag. He was not retired, he was thrown out. And did 4 yrs in jail for wire fraud and a slew of other charges.

If he was working for an OGA in Afghanistan it would not make any sense to post wanted posters all over the bases looking for him. He was claiming to be several things, and Army Major amongst them. Every SF guy in country was looking for him to shut him down and roll him up once and for all because of all the bad press (and press in general) he gave SF as a whole, and for being a poser claiming to have BTDT when he had not. When our replacements came in (a unit from his old stomping grounds) they made it a point to sit everyone down and give them a brief on this assclown and why he was wanted.

It is a shame that Robin Moore had the wool pulled over his eyes so badly when it came to Jack(off). It runied what could have been an otherwise credible book. Anything involving Jack and his exploits is considered suspect.

[moughoun]

Ok, he claim's he was a Green beret, he was not, for a man supposedly working undercover in Afganistan he had a surprisingly big mouth, for some one who claim's to have been in sf,he should know that torturing people get's you nothing, they will tell you what you want to hear not what you need to hear, he claim's he came close to capturing OBL in Tora Bora during the fighting but it was proved that he wasn't with in 250 km of the place that and load of other stuff just mark's him out,


PS,it's not unusual for poser's orwhat ever to get to place's like that, a month after the US invaded a group of 8 men were arrested, they claimed they were US SF, it turned out they were a bunch of wannabe bounty hunter's trying to get the 25 million, none ofthem had even been in the military, talk about clueless p-)

It sounds like he's not a poser, but a pretty ruthless individual you wouldn't want to mess with. I mean, there's a difference between a poser who goes to Afghanistan and gets his throat cut after a week, but this guy was holding his own, and apparently terrorizing people there.

So supposedly he was after that $25m I guess.

No the reason he got away with it so long is, he'd arrive at a town claiming to be from the US gov here to help, you know, rebuilding eg, then he would get the info on the Taliban/Al`qaida and then leave, the people would then wait around for the promised help whichdidn'tarrive for age's the people got angey because they thought they were forgotten, and that contributed to the declining situation, and granted he may be ruthless, but where did it get him

[Glass1]

edit

[ogukuo72]

My $0.02 contribution:

First, he's probably not on a deniable op. Afghanistan is the last place the American government need to conduct a "deniable" operation in!

Second, I don't think that real Special Forces personnel would go around terrorising the civilian population. These are the chaps who wrote the second chapter in the book on winning hearts and minds.

Third, no matter what the media has tried to portray, the Special Forces way of getting info is exchanging services (like medical services) and essential goods with the civilian population for info, not kidnapping them and beating the info out of them.

So, I think this chap is a not only a poser, but actually harming the war effort by putting the real soldiers in a bad light.

[aartamen]

Afghanistan is the last place the American government need to conduct a "deniable" operation in!

Exactly, it's not Cambodia.

[Jester23]

lol, but not all of us are gaggle f*cks.[/quote]\

LOL! Sorry - I apologize for it seeming that I called everyone on here (incl. myself) gagglef*cks - I was more-so referrring to those who cause problems b/c they feel the need to, the 12 year old poser, etc.

[He219]

http://a1112.g.akamai.net/7/1112/492/03312000/news.lycos.com/news/ot_getImage.asp?op=img&id=644732
The house in which three Americans used to stay is seen in Kabul, Afghanistan, Thursday, July 8, 2004. Three Americans were arrested on Monday, during a raid in Kabul. The three tricked NATO peacekeepers into helping them on illegal raids in the capital, getting the international force to send explosives experts and bomb-sniffing dogs to check buildings where they had arrested suspects. A spokesman says the men seemed authentic, decked out in faux U.S. Army uniforms. Afghan officials say the three could spend 20 years in jail on charges of hostage-taking and assault of Afghans allegedly found beaten and hanging upside down in their private jail.


Portrait of a U.S. Vigilante in Afghanistan (http://www.paktribune.com/news/index.php?id=70556)
KABUL, July 13 (Online): Journalists remember him as Jack, an eccentric, heavily armed and at times, it seemed, dangerously unbalanced, middle-aged former American Special Forces soldier, who appeared in Afghanistan in the fall of 2001.
Surrounded by armed Afghan guards and rumors that he worked for the Central Intelligence Agency, he quickly rose to prominence.

In the next two years, he was interviewed by Fox and CBS News, helped write a book called "The Hunt for bin Laden" and said he had discovered evidence in Afghanistan that linked Iraq to Al Qaeda.

This week, Jack, a convicted felon whose real name is Jonathan Keith Idema, was arrested with two other Americans and accused of running his own vigilante antiterrorism campaign in Kabul. Afghan and American officials said that Mr. Idema, 48, and the two other Americans posed as government officials and illegally imprisoned at least eight innocent Afghan men for 10 days or more, The New York Times reports.

A senior Western diplomat said Saturday that Mr. Idema's campaign appeared to have been an attempt to get American intelligence agencies to take him seriously. American officials have said that Mr. Idema had no ties to the American government. "Perhaps if he did something successful," the diplomat said, "the government would pay attention to him."

In an article about the exploits of Mr. Idema's group sent by e-mail to news organizations in Kabul just before his arrest, a journalist identified as Mohammed Ashimey wrote that a "supersecret group" of "renegade Green Berets" had decided to break up a major terrorist plot in Kabul "without United States support and without government funds."

But local Afghan journalists said they had never heard of Mr. Ashimey, and there was no response to a message sent to the e-mail account from which the article originated.

In breathless prose, the article said the former commandos, frustrated by American government inaction, had dubbed themselves Task Force Saber and had arrested 13 people suspected of terrorism since arriving in Afghanistan three months ago. The article, which sounded like it could have been written by an American, included an accurate description of the illegal arrests that led to Mr. Idema's detention and a fawning description of his work.

"Driving beat up old S.U.V.'s, wearing low-slung holsters like Clint Eastwood, long hair, beards and Afghan scarfs, the Green Berets operated they way they did during the 2001-2002 war, with no rules, no oversight and no plan," the article said. "Changing cities, houses and bases every few days, they seem to appear and disappear at will."

American and Afghan officials are still investigating how many Afghans Mr. Idema detained during his spree, how long it lasted and whether he harmed anyone.

The Western diplomat said bloody clothes had been found at a house in Kabul where the Afghan authorities freed five of the Afghans whom Mr. Idema had been holding prisoner.

Black curtains still hang over two back rooms where prisoners were held in his house in Kabul. Prisoners also appeared to have been tied to chairs in the kitchen and bathroom, Afghan officials said. In an office, there were two clocks on the wall, one showing the time in Kabul and one showing the time at Fort Bragg, the military base used by Special Operations forces in North Carolina. A piece of paper on the wall was titled "Missions to Complete" and listed various tasks. Item No. 2 was "Karzai." Item No. 4 was "pick up laundry."

One of the prisoners, Muhammad Hanif, a 19-year-old mechanic, said in an interview on Saturday that when Mr. Idema's group arrested him, they burst into the house where he was working and fired shots into the ceiling. Local police who arrived at the scene said the armed Americans said they were with the United States military.

When he and seven other prisoners were taken to Mr. Idema's house, they found an Afghan named Sher Ali, who said he had been imprisoned there for six days. The next day, Mr. Ali was gone.

Mr. Hanif said he had been denied food and water for the first three days of his imprisonment and at one point had become so weak that he had lost consciousness. Through 10 days of imprisonment, he said, his hands were tied and a bag was placed over his head. He said that when the prisoners had asked their captors if they could pray, one American had answered: "You are terrorists. Why do you pray and what do you pray for?"

Afghan officials said all the men Mr. Idema arrested appeared to be innocent.

Mr. Idema grew up in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., joined the Army in 1975, and was on active duty for three years before joining a Reserve Special Forces unit in New York, according to The Fayetteville Observer.

In December 2000, he was featured in an article in The New York Times about pet owners who believed animal cloning may eventually be possible.

Mr. Idema, who lived in Fayetteville, N.C., at the time, said he had saved some genetic material from Sarge, a dog he had used while serving as a soldier. Mr. Idema said the dog had parachuted out of planes with him and sniffed bombs.

In 1994, a federal jury in Fayetteville found Mr. Idema guilty of wire fraud, according to court documents. Prosecutors said he faked credit reports and established a false company to obtain roughly $270,000 in merchandise for his troubled military equipment business, Idema Combat Systems. He was sentenced to four years in prison.

Ali Ahmed Jalali, the Afghan interior minister, questioned how Mr. Idema was able to operate without being noticed by foreign intelligence agencies. He said that in the wake of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, Mr. Idema's spree would fuel Afghan suspicions of American forces.

"There are people who are trying to find excuses to blame everything on the Americans," he said. "He was running a prison in Kabul."

End.

[MEGR]

Yea, this Idema guy is out of his freaking mind. Now he's gonna do jail time in an Afghan jail, which is really gonna suck.

[duck]

The Michigan Militia meets Kabul.

[Tributal]

It is a shame that Robin Moore had the wool pulled over his eyes so badly when it came to Jack(off). It runied what could have been an otherwise credible book. Anything involving Jack and his exploits is considered suspect.Who's Robin Moore? If you mean Michael Moore he strikes me as someone who's more than willing to pull the wool over his own eyes if it will get him the kind of (mis-)information he is looking for.

[moughoun]

It is a shame that Robin Moore had the wool pulled over his eyes so badly when it came to Jack(off). It runied what could have been an otherwise credible book. Anything involving Jack and his exploits is considered suspect.Who's Robin Moore? If you mean Michael Moore he strikes me as someone who's more than willing to pull the wool over his own eyes if it will get him the kind of (mis-)information he is looking for.

Robin Moore the auther :roll:

[ArmedPacifist]

It is a shame that Robin Moore had the wool pulled over his eyes so badly when it came to Jack(off). It runied what could have been an otherwise credible book. Anything involving Jack and his exploits is considered suspect.Who's Robin Moore? If you mean Michael Moore he strikes me as someone who's more than willing to pull the wool over his own eyes if it will get him the kind of (mis-)information he is looking for.

authour of a book, I think it was the hunt for bin laden.