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I hate television \u201cexperts\u201d, the infamous \u201canalysts\u201d who know all \u2013 and support all \u2013 about the military, the televisual ex-generals with vain presidential ambitions and the infamous American \u201cthink tank\u201d personnel whose right-wing, pro-Israeli beliefs are carefully shielded from viewers by the US networks who employ them. I always characterise the antiseptic and pseudo-academic institutions to which they belong as the \u201cInstitute for Preposterous Affairs\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\nThe Fisk \u201cIPA\u201d contains hundreds of robotic folk who will churn out claptrap about \u201ckey players\u201d, \u201cstakeholders\u201d and \u201cmoderate allies\u201d and, of course, \u201cworld terror\u201d. They turn up on CNN, Fox and Russia Today.<\/em> And, of course, the BBC.<\/span><\/p>\n But William Arkin<\/a> <\/strong><\/span>was always a bit different. This ex-US marine intelligence author of ground-breaking work on secret CIA \u201cblack sites\u201d and equally secret US weapons dumps (nuclear and non-nuclear) has a respectful audience at both Harvard and Maxwell US Air Force Base. And when he quits, I take notice.<\/span><\/p>\n Here\u2019s a guy the Reagan administration wanted to send to prison for revealing the location of US and Soviet nuclear weapons, and who \u2013 in his own words \u2013 \u201chad to fight editors who couldn\u2019t believe that there would be a war<\/a> <\/strong><\/span>in Iraq\u201d. He\u2019s just resigned his job<\/a><\/strong><\/span> as a talking head. Goodbye NBC News. That\u2019s what I call a real story.<\/span><\/p>\n And here\u2019s what Arkin told his colleagues about the American military<\/a> <\/strong><\/span>when he left NBC last week. \u201cThere is not a soul in Washington,\u201d he wrote to them, \u201cwho can say that they have won or stopped any conflict. And though there might be the beloved perfumed princes in the form of the [David] Petraeuses and Wes Clarks, or the so-called warrior monks like James\u00a0Mattis and HR\u00a0McMaster, we\u2019ve had more than a generation of national security leaders who have sadly and fraudulently done little of consequence.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAnd yet we embrace them\u2026 We do so ignoring the empirical truth of what they<\/em> have wrought: there is not one country in the Middle East that is safer today than it was 18 years ago.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Arkin\u2019s draw \u2013 for me, at least \u2013 is that he doesn\u2019t suck on the rubber tube of Wikileaks or social media whistle-blowers. He prefers to dig down through the pages of dull, boring real military information available in serious army and air force journals and official government documents. I came across his work when a reader in Japan sent me pages from Arkin\u2019s book Code Names: Deciphering US Military Plans, Programs, and Operations in the 9\/11 World.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n I was investigating just how Israel<\/a><\/strong><\/span> was able to maintain its massive aerial bombardments of Lebanon and Gaza without running out of \u201csmart\u201d bombs, cluster munitions and air-to-ground missiles. Even Nato\u00a0ran low on ammunition in the 1999 Serbian War. But not Israel when it was blasting its enemies \u2013 including lots and lots of civilians \u2013 in the Middle East.<\/span><\/p>\n So here is what I found in Arkin\u2019s work as long ago as 2005. \u201cQuietly,\u201d he wrote, \u201cthe US maintains pre-positioned equipment and munitions on Israeli soil for use by US and Israeli forces. The War Reserve Stocks for Allies-Israel (WRS-I) programme includes ammunition owned by the US but intended for Israeli use, overseen by the army and Marine Corps.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Locations, according to Arkin, include Ben Gurion IAP (International Airport), Herzliya-Pituach, Nevatim airfield\u00a0and Ovda AB (air base).<\/span><\/p>\n So there you have it. The Arkin system of picking up rock-hard intelligence is not impossible, providing you have the patience to sit down and read. I wrote a story for The Independent<\/em> out of Israel when Israeli lobbyists were fearful the US might be restricting arms supplies to Ariel Sharon \u2013 as a means of forcing him to sign up to a new Israeli-Palestinian \u201cpeace\u201d agreement. They had nothing to worry about, I reported.<\/span><\/p>\n Only a month earlier, the Americans had rolled out their first S-70A-55 troop-carrying Black Hawk helicopter to be sold to the Israelis. Israel had purchased 24 of the new machines, costing $211m\u00a0(\u00a3166m) (most of which would be paid for by the US) even though it had 24 earlier model Black Hawks. The logbook of the first of the new helicopters was ceremonially handed over to the then director general of the Israeli defence ministry, Amos Yaron.<\/span><\/p>\n I was immediately abused. I had revealed Israel\u2019s military secrets, a telephone call from an Israeli supporter in London told me. I had leaked military secrets for Israel\u2019s enemies to read, an anonymous reader informed me. It was balderdash. I had merely done what I always do in Israel: scrupulously read the local papers and studied economic and military magazines \u2013 because the Israelis were always boasting of their home-made weaponry and military relationship with the US. The story cost only a few shekels at a newsagents in Tel Aviv.<\/span><\/p>\n But Arkin goes for facts in a much bigger way. He hoovers them up off every page. And NBC have just lost him. His expertise, he says, seems to be of less value right now. He was \u201cout of synch with the network\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n