Peter Dale Scott hits paydirt, again

by **robertdreed** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 9:49 pm

I usually refrain from posting entire articles, but this one deserves a full copy. Most likely, this is the wider context for what Sibel Edmonds has been saying. Most likely. Peter Dale Scott July 22, 2005 9/11 in Historical Perspective: Flawed Assumptions Deep Politics: Drugs, Oil, Covert Operations and Terrorism: A briefing for Congressional staff, July 22, 2005 Peter Dale Scott, author of Drugs, Oil, and War The American people have been seriously misled about the origins of the al Qaeda movement blamed for the 9/11 attacks, just as they have been seriously misled about the reasons for America’s invasion of Iraq. The truth is that for at least two decades the United States has engaged in energetic covert programs to secure U.S. control over the Persian Gulf, and also to open up Central Asia for development by U.S. oil companies. Americans were eager to gain access to the petroleum reserves of the Caspian Basin, which at that time were still estimated to be “the largest known reserves of unexploited fuel in the planet.”[1] To this end, time after time, U.S. covert operations in the region have used so-called “Arab Afghan” warriors as assets, the jihadis whom we loosely link with the name and leadership of al Qaeda.[2] In country after country these “Arab Afghans” have been involved in trafficking Afghan heroin. America’s sponsorship of drug-trafficking Muslim warriors, including those now in Al Qaeda, dates back to the Afghan War of 1979-89, sponsored in part by the CIA’s links to the drug-laundering Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).[3] It was part of CIA Director Casey’s strategy for launching covert operations over and above those approved and financed by a Democratic-controlled Congress. The most conspicuous example of this alliance with drug-traffickers in the 1980s was the Contra support operation. Here again foreign money and drug profits filled the gap after Congress denied funds through the so-called Boland amendments; in this case government funds were used to lie about the Contras to the American people.[4] This was followed by a massive cover-up, in which a dubious role was played by then-Congressman Lee Hamilton, later of the 9/11 Commission.[5] The lying continues. The 9/11 Commission Report assures Americans that “Bin Ladin and his comrades had their own sources of support and training, and they received little or no assistance from the United States.”[6] This misleading statement fails to consider that: 1) Al Qaeda elements received considerable indirect U.S. Government assistance, first in Afghanistan until 1992, and thereafter in other countries such as Azerbaijan (1992-95). Before 1992, for example, the Afghan leader Jallaladin Haqqani organized and hosted the Arab Afghan volunteers known later as al Qaeda; and Haqqani “received bags of money each month from the [CIA] station in Islamabad.”[7] The Arab Afghans were also trained in urban terrorism, including car bombings, by Pakistani ISI operatives who were in turn trained by the CIA.[8] 2) Key members of the network which became al Qaeda, such as Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, Ali Mohamed, Mohamed Jamal Khalifa, and lead hijacker Mohammed Atta, were granted visas to enter the United States, despite being suspected of terrorism.[9] Al Qaeda foot soldiers were also admitted to the United States for training under a special visa program.[1<img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/alien.gif ALT="0]"> 3) At Fort Belvoir, Virginia, an al Qaeda operative was given a list of Muslim candidates for al Qaeda’s jihad.[11] 4) When al Qaeda personnel were trained in the United States by a key al Qaeda operative, Sergeant Ali Mohamed of the U.S. Army Special Forces, Mohamed was still on the U.S. Army payroll.[12] 5) Repeatedly al Qaeda terrorists were protected by FBI officials from investigation and prosecution.[13] In part America’s limited covert assistance to al Qaeda after 1989 was in order not to offend al Qaeda’s two primary supporters which America needed as allies: the intelligence networks of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. But unquestionably the entry of United States oil companies into oil-rich Azerbaijan was achieved with the assistance of a U.S.-organized covert program using “Arab Afghan” operatives associated with bin Laden. Oil was the driving force of U.S. involvement in Central and South Asia, and oil led to U.S. coexistence with both al Qaeda and the world-dominating Afghan heroin trade. This brings us to another extraordinary distortion in the 9/11 Report: While the drug trade was a source of income for the Taliban, it did not serve the same purpose for al Qaeda, and there is no reliable evidence that Bin Ladin was involved in or made his money through drug trafficking.[14] That drug-trafficking does support al Qaeda-connected operations has been energetically asserted by the governments of Great Britain and many other European countries, as well as the head of the U.S. Congressional Task Force on Terrorism. Heroin-trafficking has been a source of income in particular for al Qaeda-related warriors in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Chechnya, and Kosovo. Most recently it has supported terrorist attacks in the Netherlands and Spain. U.S. support for al Qaeda elements, particularly in Azerbaijan and Kosovo, has increased dramatically the flow of heroin to Western Europe and the United States. The Example of Azerbaijan In the former Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan, Arab Afghans clearly assisted this effort of U.S. oil companies to penetrate the region. In 1991-92, Richard Secord, Heinie Aderholt, and Ed Dearborn, three veterans of U.S. operations in Laos and Iran-Contra, turned up in Baku under the cover of an oil company, MEGA Oil.[15] MEGA never did find oil, but did contribute materially to the removal of Azerbaijan from the sphere of post-Soviet Russian influence. As MEGA operatives in Azerbaijan, Secord, Aderholt, Dearborn, and their men engaged in military training, passed “brown bags filled with cash” to members of the government, and above all set up an airline on the model of Air America which soon was picking up hundreds of Mujahideen mercenaries in Afghanistan.[16] (Secord and Aderholt claim to have left Baku before the Mujahideen arrived.) Meanwhile, Mujahideen leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in Afghanistan, who at the time was still allied with bin Laden, was “observed recruiting Afghan mercenaries [i.e. Arab Afghans] to fight in Azerbaijan against Armenia and its Russian allies.”[17] At this time, heroin flooded from Afghanistan through Baku into Chechnya, Russia, and even North America.[18] It is difficult to believe that MEGA’s airline (so much like Air America) did not become involved.[19] The triple pattern of drugs, oil, and al Qaeda was seen again in Kosovo in 1998, where the Al-Qaeda-backed Islamist jihadis of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) received overt American assistance from the U.S. Government.[2<img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/alien.gif ALT="0]"> Though unmentioned in mainstream books on the war, both the al Qaeda and drug backgrounds of the KLA are recognized by experts and to my knowledge never contested by them.[21] Though the origins of the Kosovo tragedy were rooted in local enmities, oil and drugs were prominent in the outcome. At the time critics charged that US oil interests were interested in building a trans-Balkan pipeline with US Army protection; although initially ridiculed, these critics were eventually proven correct.[22] BBC News announced in December 2004 that a $1.2 billion pipeline, south of a huge new U.S. Army base in Kosovo, has been given a go-ahead by the governments of Albania, Bulgaria, and Macedonia.[23] Meanwhile by 2000, according to DEA statistics, Afghan heroin accounted for almost 20 percent of the heroin seized in the United States -- nearly double the percentage taken four years earlier. Much of it is now distributed by Kosovar Albanians.[24] Sergeant Ali Mohamed and U.S. Intelligence Links to the Al Qaeda Leadership The Report describes Ali Mohamed as “a former Egyptian army officer who had moved to the United States in the mid-1980s, enlisted in the U.S. Army, and become an instructor at Fort Bragg,” as well as helping to plan the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya (6<img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/glasses.gif ALT="8)"> . In fact Ali Mohamed was an important al Qaeda agent who, as the 9/11 Commission was told, "trained most of al Qaeda's top leadership," including "persons who would later carry out the 1993 World Trade Center bombing."[25] But the person telling the 9/11 Commission this, U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald, misrepresented Ali Mohamed’s FBI relationship. He told the Commission that, "From 1994 until his arrest in 1998, [Mohamed] lived as an American citizen in California, applying for jobs as an FBI translator and working as a security guard for a defense contractor."[26] Ali Mohamed was not just an FBI job applicant. Unquestionably he was an FBI informant, from at least 1993 and maybe 1989.[27] And almost certainly he was something more. A veteran of the CIA-trained bodyguards of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, he was able, despite being on a State Department Watch List, to come to America around 1984, on what an FBI consultant has called “a visa program controlled by the CIA”, and obtain a job, first as a security officer, then with U.S. Special Forces.[28] In 1988 he took a lengthy leave of absence from the U.S. Army and went to fight in Afghanistan, where he met with Ayman al-Zawahiri (later bin Laden’s chief deputy in al Qaeda) and the “Arab Afghan” leadership.[29] Despite this, he was able to receive an Honorable Discharge one year later, at which point he established close contact with bin Laden in Afghanistan. Ali Mohamed clearly enjoyed U.S. protection: in 1993, when detained by the RCMP in Canada, a single phone call to the U.S. secured his release. This enabled him to play a role, in the same year, in planning the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya in 1998.[3<img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/alien.gif ALT="0]"> Congress should determine the true relationship of the U.S. Government to Ali Mohamed, who was close to bin Laden and above all Zawahiri, who has been called the “main player” in 9/11.[31] (Al-Zawahiri is often described as the more sophisticated mentor of the younger bin Laden.)[32] In particular Congress should determine why Patrick Fitzgerald chose to mislead the American people about Mohamed’s FBI status. In short, the al Qaeda terror network accused of the 9/11 attacks was supported and expanded by U.S. intelligence programs and covert operations, both during and after the Soviet Afghan War. Congress should rethink their decision to grant still greater powers and budget to the agencies responsible for fostering this enemy in the first place. Sane voices clamor from the Muslim world that the best answer to terrorism is not war but justice. We should listen to them. By using its energies to reduce the injustices tormenting Islam, the United States will do more to diminish terrorism than by creating any number of new directorates in Washington. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Michael Griffin, Reaping the Whirlwind: The Taliban Movement in Afghanistan (London: Pluto Press, 2001), 115. Exploration in the 1990s has considerably downgraded these estimates. [2] Western governments and media apply the term “al Qaeda” to the whole “network of co-opted groups” who have at some point accepted leadership, training and financing from bin Laden (Jason Burke, Al-Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam [London: I.B. Tauris, 2004], 7-<img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/glasses.gif ALT="8)"> . From a Muslim perceptive, the term “Al Qaeda” is clumsy, and has led to the targeting of a number of Islamist groups opposed to bin Laden’s tactics. See Montasser al-Zayyat, The Road to Al-Qaeda: The Story of Bin Lâden’s Right-Hand Man [London: Pluto Press, 2004], 100, etc.). [3] Peter Truell and Larry Gurwin, False Profits: The Inside Story of BCCI, the World’s Most Corrupt Financial Empire (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992), 132; Peter Dale Scott, Drugs, Oil, and War (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), 42. [4] Robert Parry, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq (Arlington, VA: Media Consortium, 2004), 213-28, 235-39, 245-47. [5] For Hamilton’s role on the conspiratorial whitewashing of contra drug activities, see Jonathan Marshall, Peter Dale Scott, and Jane Hunter, The Iran-Contra Connection: Secret Teams and Covert Operations in the Reagan Era (Boston: South End Press, 1987), 179-81. At least eight men in the current Bush Administration were criticized for their roles in Iran-Contra, including two (Poindexter and Abrams)who were convicted. [6] 9/11 Commission Report, 56. [7] Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (New York: Penguin Press, 2004), 157 (hosted); George Crile, Charlie Wilson’s War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2003), 521 (bags). [8] George Crile, Charlie Wilson’s War (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2003), 335 (car bombings); Steve Coll, Washington Post, 7/19/92 (ISI/CIA). [9] Rahman was issued two visas, one of them “by a CIA officer working undercover in the consular section of the American embassy in Sudan” (Peter L. Bergen, Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden [New York: Free Press, 2001], 67; cf. 218 (Khalifa). FBI consultant Paul Williams writes that Mohamed “settled in America on a visa program controlled by the CIA” ((Paul L. Williams, Al Qaeda: Brotherhood of Terror [[Upper Saddle River, NJ]: Alpha/ Pearson Education, 2002], 117). Others allegedly admitted despite being on the State Department watch list include Mohammed Atta and possibly Ayman al-Zawahiri (Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation, and the Anatomy of Terrorism [Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 2005], 205, 46). [1<img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/alien.gif ALT="0]"> Former State Department officer Michael Springmann, BBC 2, 11/6/01; Ahmed, War on Truth, 10. [11] US v.. Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman et al, Federal Court, SDNY, Testimony of Rodney Hampton-El, 8/3/95. [12] Peter Lance, Cover Up: What the Government Is Still Hiding about the War on Terror [New York: Regan Books/ HarperCollins, 2004], 25); Andrew Marshall, Independent, 11/1/98, <a href="http://billstclair.com/911timeline/1990s/independent110198.html:">billstclair.com/911timeli...0198.html:</a> "Mr. Mohamed, it is clear from his record, was working for the U.S. government at the time he provided the training: he was a Green Beret, part of America's Special Forces…. A confidential CIA internal survey concluded that it was 'partly culpable' for the World Trade Centre bomb, according to reports at the time." Williams writes that Mohamed’s “primary task as a U.S. soldier was to train Muslims to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan” (Williams, Al Qaeda: Brotherhood of Terror. 117). Cf. 9/11 Commission Report, 68. [13] The most prominent example was the blocking by David Frasca at FBI HQ of the investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Frasca also failed to act on the July 2001 request from the Phoenix FBI office urging a systematic review of Muslim students at U.S. flight schools (Ahmed, War on Truth, 251-57). [14] 9/11 Commission Report, 171. This statement is one-sided and misleading. But so is the opposite claim of Yossef Bodansky: “The annual income of the Taliban from the drug trade is estimated at $8 billion. Bin Laden administers and manages these funds – laundering them through the Russian mafia…” (Bodansky, Bin Laden, 315). [15] Thomas Goltz, Azerbaijan Diary: A Rogue Reporter’s Adventures in an Oil-Rich, War-Torn, Post-Soviet Republic (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1999), 272-75. A fourth operative in MEGA Oil, Gary Best, was also a veteran of North’s Contra support effort. For more on General Secord’s and Major Aderholt’s role as part of Ted Shackley’s team of off-loaded CIA assets and capabilities, see Marshall, Scott, and Hunter, The Iran-Contra Connection, 26-30, 36-42, 197-98. [16] Goltz, Azerbaijan Diary, 272-75; Peter Dale Scott, Drugs, Oil, and War (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), 7. As part of the airline operation, Azeri pilots were trained in Texas. Dearborn had previously helped Secord advise and train the fledgling Contra air force (Marshall, Scott, and Hunter, The Iran-Contra Connection, 197). Richard Secord was allegedly attempting also to sell Israeli arms, with the assistance of Israeli agent David Kimche, another associate of Oliver North. See Scott, Drugs, Oil, and War, 7, 8, 20. Whether the Americans were aware of it or not, the al Qaeda presence in Baku soon expanded to include assistance for moving jihadis onwards into Dagestan and Chechnya. [17] Cooley, Unholy Wars, 180; Scott, Drugs, Oil, and War, 7. These important developments were barely noticed in the U.S. press, but a Washington Post article did belatedly note that a group of American men who wore "big cowboy hats and big cowboy boots" had arrived in Azerbaijan as military trainers for its army, followed in 1993 by “more than 1,000 guerrilla fighters from Afghanistan's radical prime minister, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.” (Washington Post, 4/21/94). The Azeri “Afghan Brigade” was formally dissolved in 1994, after which it focused more on sabotage and terrorism (Cooley, Unholy Wars, 181). [18] Cooley, Unholy Wars, 176. [19] As the 9/11Commission Report notes (5<img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/glasses.gif ALT="8)"> , the bin Laden organization established an NGO in Baku, which became a base for terrorism elsewhere. It also became a transshipment point for Afghan heroin to the Chechen mafia, whose branches “extended not only to the London arms market, but also throughout continental Europe and North America (Cooley, Unholy Wars, 176). [2<img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/alien.gif ALT="0]"> See Lewis Mackenzie (former UN commander in Bosnia), “We Bombed the Wrong Side?” National Post, 4/6/04: “Those of us who warned that the West was being sucked in on the side of an extremist, militant, Kosovo-Albanian independence movement were dismissed as appeasers. The fact that the lead organization spearheading the fight for independence, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), was universally designated a terrorist organization and known to be receiving support from Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda was conveniently ignored….The Kosovar Albanians played us like a Stradivarius violin. We have subsidized and indirectly supported their violent campaign for an ethnically pure Kosovo. We have never blamed them for being the perpetrators of the violence in the early 1990s, and we continue to portray them as the designated victim today, in spite of evidence to the contrary. When they achieve independence with the help of our tax dollars combined with those of bin Laden and al-Qaeda, just consider the message of encouragement this sends to other terrorist-supported independence movements around the world." Cf. John Pilger, New Statesman, 12/13/04. [21] “`Many members of the Kosovo Liberation Army were sent for training in terrorist camps in Afghanistan,’ said James Bissett, former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia and an expert on the Balkans. `Milosevic is right. There is no question of their participation in conflicts in the Balkans. It is very well documented” (National Post, 3/15/02, <a href="http://www.nationalpost.com/news/world/story.html?f=/stories/20020315/344843.html).">www.nationalpost.com/news...843.html).</a> Cf. Frank Ciluffo of the Globalized Organized Crime Program, in testimony presented to the House of Representatives Judicial Committee (12/13/00): "What was largely hidden from public view was the fact that the KLA raise part of their funds from the sale of narcotics.” Contrast e.g. Michael Ignatieff, Virtual War : Kosovo and Beyond (New York: Metropolitan/ Henry Holt, 2000), 13: “the KLA, at first a small band of poorly trained and amateurish gunmen.” For the al Qaeda background to the UCK and its involvement in heroin-trafficking, see also Marcia Christoff Kurop, “Al Qaeda´s Balkan Links,” Wall Street Journal Europe, 11/1/01. “According to Michel Koutouzis, the DEA's website once contained a section detailing Kosovar trafficking, but a week before the U.S.-led bombings began, the section disappeared” (Peter Klebnikov, “Heroin Heroes,” Mother Jones, January/February 2000, <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2000/01/heroin.html).">www.motherjones.com/news/...oin.html).</a> [22] George Monbiot, Guardian, 2/15/01. [23] BBC News, 12/28/04. Those who charged that such a pipeline was projected were initially mocked but gradually vindicated (Guardian, 2/15/01; Scott, Drugs, Oil, and War, 34). See also Marjorie Cohn, “Nato Bombing of Kosovo: Humanitarian Intervention or Crime against Humanity?” International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, March 2002, 79-106. [24] Klebnikov, “Heroin Heroes,” Mother Jones, January/February 2000. [25] Cf. 9/11 Commission Report, 68. [26] Patrick Fitzgerald, Testimony before 9/11 Commission, June 16, 2004, <a href="http://www.9-11commission.gov/hearings/hearing12.htm,">www.9-11commission.gov/he...ing12.htm,</a> emphasis added. [27] Fitzgerald must have known he was dissembling. Even the mainstream account by Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon (The Age of Sacred Terror [New York: Random House, 2002], 236) records that “When Mohamed was summoned back from Africa in 1993 [sic, Mohamed in his confession says 1994] to be interviewed by the FBI in connection with the case against Sheikh Rahman and his coconspirators, he convinced the agents that he could be useful to them as an informant.” Cf. Lawrence Wright, New Yorker, 9/16/02: “In 1989…Mohamed talked to an F.B.I. agent in California and provided American intelligence with its first inside look at Al Qaeda.” Larry C. Johnson, a former State Department and CIA official, faulted the FBI publicly for using Mohamed as an informant, when it should have recognized that the man was a high-ranking terrorist plotting against the United States. In Johnson's words, "It's possible that the FBI thought they had control of him and were trying to use him, but what's clear is that they did not have control” (San Francisco Chronicle, 11/04/01). [28] Lance, 1000 Years, 30 (Watch List); Williams, Al Qaeda: Brotherhood of Terror, 117 (visa program); Bergen, Holy War, Inc., 128 (security officer). [29] Yossef Bodansky, Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America (New York: Random House/Prima, 2001), 106; cf. Richard H. Shultz, Jr. and Ruth Margolies Beitler, Middle East Review of International Affairs, June 2004, <a href="http://meria.idc.ac.il/journal/2004/issue2/jv8n2a6.html.">meria.idc.ac.il/journal/2...n2a6.html.</a> In 1995 Mohamed accompanied Ayman al-Zawahiri of Islamic Jihad, already effectively merged with al-Qaeda, on a secret fund-raising trip through America (Bodansky, Bin Laden, 105; Peter L. Bergen, Holy War, Inc. [New York: Free Press, 2001], 201). [3<img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/alien.gif ALT="0]"> Cf. 9/11 Commission Report, 68. The Globe and Mail later concluded that Mohamed "was working with U.S. counter-terrorist agents, playing a double or triple game, when he was questioned in 1993” (Globe and Mail, 11/22/01, <a href="http://www.mail-archive.com/hydro@topica.com/msg00224.html).">www.mail-archive.com/hydr...224.html).</a> [31] al-Zayyat, The Road to Al-Qaeda, 98: “I am convinced that [Zawahiri] and not bin Laden is the main player in these events.” In contrast the 9/11 Commission Report (151) assigns no role to Zawahiri in the 9/11 plot. Was Mohamed in touch with Zawahiri at this time? The San Francisco Chronicle has written that “until his arrest in 1998 [by which time the 9/11 plot was already under way], Mohamed shuttled between California, Afghanistan, Kenya, Somalia and at least a dozen other countries” (San Francisco Chronicle, 10/21/01). [32] Burke, Al-Qaeda, 150. <a href="http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~pdscott/911Background.htm">socrates.berkeley.edu/~pd...ground.htm</a> A slightly updated and expanded version- <a href="http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~pdscott/AAAChap9aAzerb.htm">socrates.berkeley.edu/~pd...aAzerb.htm</a> Edited by: <A HREF=http://p097.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=robertdreed>robertdreed</A> at: 8/15/05 7:52 pm

by **starroute** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 2:50 am

You and I should get together and compare notes -- I think we've been investigating a lot of the same stuff. (Like Viktor Bout.) There is a direct line of covert operations and personal connections that starts with the OSS in China during World War II, dealing in guns and heroin; goes through Helliwell, Castle Bank, and the French Connection in the early 60's; gets tangled up with the CIA and anti-Castro Cubans in southern Florida; moves over to Vietnam (which as I recall is where Secord became part of it, as did Ollie North); works its way through both the Contra-cocaine connection and the Afghan heroin connection in the 80's; then winds up (with all the participants getting older and a little worse for wear) with Secord in Azerbaijan in the early 90's, ineptly trying to recruit Afghan terrorists. This same line has tendrils that wind through almost every dubious enterprise of the last 50 years: from the Kennedy assassination, to Watergate, to Reverend Moon and the World Anti-Communist League, to the Bush family shenanigans of the 80's. Not to mention long-time CIA cover-up artists like Porter Goss. And of course BCCI. It's a pretty amazing saga, and almost no one seems to be aware of it.

by **Starman** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 4:52 am

More pieces to the intricately-extended web of covert ops, powerful players, parapolitics, wars, and corruption with links to oil, guns and drugs; Esp. good links and details about Armitage as a key asset to the criminal networks operating around the world, in which the Bush Dynasty has been deeply involved even before Germany's rise to Power. Armitage is a clear case of the worst of the very very very bad. Great Peter Dale Scott article BTW. Starman <a href="http://www.williambowles.info/ini/ini-0136.html">www.williambowles.info/ini/ini-0136.html</a> Investigating the 'New' Imperialism: Oil, Guns and Drugs: The money Triangle --excerpt-- From Adolf Hitler to George Bush Jnr, US capitalism's unbroken link Pre-amble: When I started putting this essay together, it started out as investigation of Richard Armitage as a typical example of the kind of people employed to run the United States on behalf of their imperialist masters. Then I came across a piece written in 2000 by Michael Ruppert of Beyond the Wilderness, that broadened my inquiries as the article links Kellog Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton to the worldwide distribution of drugs via the global network that Halliburton owns or operates on behalf of the US government and various corporations including major oil companies. A network that evolved over time initially through the CIA's connection to the drug trade in the Golden Triangle but which has its roots in Nazi Germany over thirty years earlier and its connection to US big business. And in the post-war period, Brown Brothers Harriman were also involved in laundering Nazi money through a Dutch-based bank. And then synchronicity kicked in, as in the middle of writing this piece, I get emailed an article in the New Hampshire Gazette that expands on the piece I included in the ‘Bush Family Saga’ on Prescott Bush, Avril Harriman and Brown Brothers Harriman Bank and its connections to the Nazi Party that it now emerges continued until 1951. What the new information reveals is that the financial connections between US and German capitalism extended even further than had been known until the new documents were released. A central player in the US/Nazi big business connection was Standard Oil of New Jersey, the Rockefellar-owned corporation that during the 1930s merged with IG. Farben, one of the major backers of Hitler's National Socialist Party and supplier of the infamous gas Cyklon B used in the extermination camps. Standard Oil (now Exxon) also owned the oil concessions in Saudi Arabia (later to be renamed Aramco). Other major players involved in the Nazi business connection include General Motors, Ford and ITT. The Bush regime is part of an unbroken link that extends back to the founding of Hitler’s National Socialist Party through the funding it received from Brown Brothers Harriman Banking, Prescott Bush's bank and the subsequent link between this bank and Kellog Brown and Root, now a subsidiary of Halliburton and its connections to Bush through the Rumsfeld/Cheney connection and their connection to Halliburton. Brown Brothers Harriman Bank owned Dresser Industries, one of the world’s largest oil drilling companies that in 1998, under urging from Dick Cheney was purchased by Halliburton in an $8.1 billion dollar deal. The link is complete. And yes, it is the same Brown in Brown and Root as the Brown Brothers Harriman Bank. The point is, a clique of key big business interests extending back over several generations runs the US. And that if anyone doubted that, putting it down to wild ideas of a conspiracy, you have to be blind not see it now. That Bush’s wealth descends directly from backing the Nazi Party is incontrovertible and that the Bush family’s involvement in the trade in drugs and weapons as an intrinsic part of the 'war on communism', later to become the 'war on terror' that extends back thirty years is also incontrovertible. But why has the current Bush administration hired so many key individuals from the Reagan/Bush years including Richard Armitage, Colonel ‘Ollie’ North, Michael Ledeen, Otto Reich and others? What was so special about a bunch of guys at the centre of the Iran-contra scandal, money laundering operations, drug smuggling and other dirty dealings going back forty years? Enter Ruppert’s article. Ruppert’s piece illustrates the central role that Brown and Root/Halliburton have played as a global conduit for drugs and the central role that Halliburton/Brown and Root play in Bush’s imperial grab for power. In this context, Armitage suddenly looks like small fry, but consider this; the people who have carried out the imperial policies of subsequent US administrations that extend back to Roosevelt in the 1930s, are people like Armitage, without whom, executing the imperium’s plans could well be severely compromised. Why? A close-knit group of people, all with intimate ties to US intelligence services including the DEA, the CIA and the DIA as well as connections to the banking, oil and defense industries, are also people who are intimately connected to the global trade in drugs, weapons and laundered money. Links that extended to the Vatican Bank, (Banco Lavorno Nationale), BCCI and Nugan Hand. Key players in Iran-contra were also officers or had connections to these banks. Some were involved in laundering money for the CIA. The notorious S&L banking crashes of the 1980s also involved Bush family members. . . . Strictly speaking, when dealing with politics, the personalities of the people involved are supposedly less important than the context, the power relations, money, class and so forth. But when it comes to the cabal of individuals grouped around the Bush presidency, many of whom have a history of involvement with assassinations, terrorism, drugs, money laundering and other illegal activities, the motivations, the psychology of the individuals involved has a direct bearing on the nature of the activities. Such is the case with people like Richard Armitage although there are others such as Otto Reich, Michael Ledeen and Colonel ‘Ollie’ North. In fact, the list is so big, and stretches back through the administrations of several successive US presidents, that the relationship between the policies and the individuals has to be viewed as inseparable. One could justifiably argue that breaking the law in order to further US policies is now inseparable part of ‘doing business’. South East Asia, oil, guns and drugs; Nicaragua guns and drugs; Iran, oil and guns; Israel, guns and oil; Iraq, guns and oil; Saudi Arabia, guns and oil; Albania, drugs and oil; Russia oil and drugs, Central and South America, guns, drugs and oil. In all of these situations the name Richard Armitage crops up time and again over more than thirty years of loyal service to US capitalism. Outrageous? The global trade in cocaine and heroin is estimated at around $500 BILLION and no doubt this is an under-estimate. The US is the major market for drugs just as it is for oil and in turn it is the world’s number one seller of weapons. Is it any wonder that the three commodities go hand in hand and that the US should be at centre of the global trade in these three valuable commodities. "Noting the indiscreet arrogance of Wall Street in engaging in criminal behavior, I wrote in May's issue, after Citigroup's brazen acquisition of Mexico's drug money-laundering bank, Banamex, "It doesn't matter anymore whether the American public chooses to notice. The fait accompli is that drug money and criminal money are now out of the closet as the most important determinants of economic success for the US financial system. The careless arrogance of these moves only reveals the utter confidence in Washington, on Wall Street and in the banking system that no voices from the wilderness can stop it." Michael Ruppert <a href="http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/oct152001.html">www.fromthewilderness.com...52001.html</a> What started out as an intrinsic component of the ‘war on Communism’ has its logical conclusion in the ‘war on terror' and oil, guns and drugs are the threads that tie the current Bush administration to over three decades of international piracy and terrorism that forms the backdrop for the current policies of the Bush regime. That the US uses the tactics that it accuses its enemies of using should come as no surprise, especially when we consider that the supposed enemies of the US are more often than not its creatures, some of whom have returned to haunt it and especially the cocaine barons. It should also come as no surprise that the corporate media in both the US and the UK have a vested interest in covering up this shameful past, for to do otherwise would expose the cosy relationship that exists between the media and corporate capitalism. Exposing it now would also expose the hypocrisy of the 4th estate and its complicity in deceiving us all. And even as I write, the BBC quotes Armitage as he calls for intensifying the ‘war on terrorism’ as though he were ‘just a diplomat’, completely ignoring the man’s past record and the total airbrushing of history in the classic Stalin mode that goes completely unchallenged. The same names crop up with tedious regularity and raise the issue that far from being the odd ‘bad apple’ or lose cannon, the individuals who now constitute the core of the Bush cabal, have been breaking the law, both domestic and international, in order to further the interests of US capitalism. But what we see now, is way beyond the ‘normal’ practices of furthering US foreign policy. What it formerly chose to hide, it is now brazenly advocates, indeed it forms the core of its policy as outlined in the PNAC and other strategic documents. But it’s the corporations that these individuals have or had an interest in such as Halliburton, Unocal, Boeing, Chevron, Enron before its demise, and a host of other defence, electronics and pharmaceuticals corporations, that have been the principal beneficiaries of the policies of the Bush regime and of previous US administrations, especially Halliburton and the subsidiary, Brown and Root, have both been connected to the drug trade: "A closer look at available research, including an August 2, 2000 report by the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) at www.public-i.org, suggests that drug money has played a role in the successes achieved by Halliburton under Cheney's tenure as CEO from 1995 to 2000. This is especially true for Halliburton's most famous subsidiary, heavy construction and oil giant, Brown and Root. A deeper look into history reveals that Brown and Root's past as well as the past of Dick Cheney himself, connect to the international drug trade on more than one occasion and in more than one way. This June the lead Washington, D.C. attorney for a major Russian oil company connected in law enforcement reports to heroin smuggling and also a beneficiary of US backed loans to pay for Brown and Root contracts in Russia, held a $2.2 million fund raiser to fill the already bulging coffers of presidential candidate George W. Bush. This is not the first time that Brown and Root has been connected to drugs and the fact is that this "poster child" of American industry may also be a key player in Wall Street's efforts to maintain domination of the half trillion dollar a year global drug trade and its profits. And Dick Cheney, who has also come closer to drugs than most suspect, and who is also Halliburton's largest individual shareholder ($45.5 million), has a vested interest in seeing to it that Brown and Root's successes continue." Moreover, it’s the connection between war, oil, drugs and US corporations that is the key to the Bush imperium, for without war, or preparing for one where would corporations like Halliburton be? Ever since 9/11 the profits of Halliburton have literally shot through the roof. Indeed, ever since 1990, with no country or entity to curb the ambitions of US imperialism, profits from wars of one kind or another have seen the rise of the warfare state that makes the profits made out of the Vietnam War pale into insignificance. And without the 'war on drugs', the US would not be in the position to use its economic and military clout to subvert the governments and economies of so many countries around the world. The line between the 'war on drugs' and the 'war on terror' has effectively dissolved. Linking the two wars is oil, the 'drug of choice' for US capitalism. "[E]verywhere there is oil there is Brown and Root. But increasingly, everywhere there is war or insurrection there is Brown and Root also. From Bosnia and Kosovo, to Chechnya, to Rwanda, to Burma, to Pakistan, to Laos, to Vietnam, to Indonesia, to Iran to Libya to Mexico to Colombia, Brown and Root's traditional operations have expanded from heavy construction to include the provision of logistical support for the U.S. military. Now, instead of U.S. Army quartermasters, the world is likely to see Brown and Root warehouses storing and managing everything from uniforms to rations to vehicles. "As described by the Associated Press, during "Iran-Contra" Congressman Dick Cheney of the House Intelligence Committee was a rabid supporter of Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North. This was in spite of the fact that North had lied to Cheney in a private 1986 White House briefing. Oliver North's own diaries and subsequent investigations by the CIA Inspector General have irrevocably tied him directly to cocaine smuggling during the 1980s and the opening of bank accounts for one firm moving four tons of cocaine a month. This, however, did not stop Cheney from actively supporting North's 1994 unsuccessful run for the U.S. Senate from Virginia just a year before he took over the reins at Brown and Root's parent company, Dallas based Halliburton Inc. in 1995. … "As the Bush Secretary of Defense during Desert Shield/Desert Storm (1990-91), Cheney also directed special operations involving Kurdish rebels in northern Iran. The Kurds' primary source of income for more than fifty years has been heroin smuggling from Afghanistan and Pakistan through Iran, Iraq and Turkey. Having had some personal experience with Brown and Root I noted carefully when the Los Angeles Times observed that on March 22, 1991 that a group of gunmen burst into the Ankara, Turkey offices of the joint venture, Vinnell, Brown and Root and assassinated retired Air Force Chief Master Sergeant John Gandy. "In March of 1991, tens of thousands of Kurdish refugees, long-time assets of the CIA, were being massacred by Saddam Hussein in the wake of the Gulf War. Saddam, seeking to destroy any hopes of a successful Kurdish revolt, found it easy to kill thousands of the unwanted Kurds who had fled to the Turkish border seeking sanctuary. There, Turkish security forces, trained in part by the Vinnell, Brown and Root partnership, turned thousands of Kurds back into certain death. Today, the Vinnell Corporation (a TRW Company) is, along with the firms MPRI and DynCorp (FTW June, 00) one of the three pre-eminent private mercenary corporations in the world. It is also the dominant entity for the training of security forces throughout the Middle East. Not surprisingly the Turkish border regions in question were the primary transhipment points for heroin, grown in Afghanistan and Pakistan and destined for the markets of Europe." <a href="http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ciadrugs/bush-cheney-drugs.html">www.fromthewilderness.com...drugs.html</a> These extracts are from an article written in 2000, three years before the US invaded Iraq and before Bush the smaller stole the election. It’s clear from the connections between all the players including Colin Powell, whose links to Iran-Contra and who is a close pal of Armitage, and the guns for drugs scandal, Halliburton, Brown and Root, Dyncorp, Vinnell Corporation go all the way back to old man Prescott Bush and his links to financing the German Nazi Party via Brown Brothers Harriman Bank that owned Dresser Industries that is now owned by Halliburton. Dresser built oil platforms in key drug routes around the world including the Gulf of Mexico. What better offloading location could one have than an oil platform. And clearly, the illegal nature of the activities of the Armitages of this world, mixing with drug smugglers, assassins, money launderers, covert arms dealers and the like, means that their actions are already thoroughly compromised. And this is critically important to my analysis because it exposes the so-called morality that the imperialists like to espouse as fundamental to their policies of supposedly supporting human rights, democracy and the like as a complete fraud. So who is Richard Armitage and why is Armitage and his peers — with involvements stretching back to the Vietnam War era and even before — suddenly back in ‘favour’? What is it that they bring to the Bush administration that makes them so important to have onboard? Power, drugs, guns, money and the connections that come with it are at the top of the list and as I hope to show, they go to the very heart of the totally corrupt regime that now runs America. Most important of all, it exposes the ruthless nature of the capitalist system, a system that takes ends justifying the means to the ultimate conclusion, that in order to preserve the system anything goes including the use of drugs as an integral part of projecting US economic and political power. Armitage is, I suppose, typical of the kind of person who does the dirty work of imperialism, whether it’s for money, prestige or personal satisfaction. (For a complete listing of Armitage’s financial investments see <a href="http://www.public-i.org/cgi-bin/WhosWhoSearch.asp?Display=Details&Person_ID=1007)">www.public-i.org/cgi-bin/...n_ID=1007)</a> The CIA’s involvement in drug running that started during the Vietnam War with Project Phoenix is perhaps the key to the current situation as the connections made during that period set the scene for later US involvement with the sale of drugs as means to further US foreign policy, whether as a source of finance for the illegal purchase and sale of weapons or as a means of destabilising countries and communities, or winning friends and influencing people. Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Afghanistan, Albania, Russia are just some of the countries whose economies and cultures have been taken over through the US policy of the ‘war on drugs’. "Project Phoenix…was financed in part with opium money. It has been alleged that the close relationship with SE Asian drug dealers continued after the US withdrawal from Vietnam, with Iran used as a conduit for drugs and money. It has also been reported that, as a sequel to Project Phoenix, an off-the-books assassination program was established in Iran. "The Phoenix or Phuong Hoang Operation was originally designed to "neutralize," that is assassinate or imprison, members of the civilian infrastructure of the [Vietnamese] National Liberation Front. Phoenix offices were set up from Saigon down to the district level. Their functions were to: (1) collate intelligence about the "Vietcong Infrastructure"; (2) interrogate civilians picked up at random by military units carrying out sweeps through villages; (3) "neutralize" targeted members of the NLF . . . The original Phoenix concept was quickly diluted, for two main reasons: (1) pressure from the top to fill numerical quotas of person to be neutralized; (2) difficulties at the bottom of identifying NLF civilian infrastructure, who were often indistinguishable from the general population, and the near impossibility of proving anyone membership in the NLF. The result was vastly to increase the numbers of innocent persons rounded up and imprisoned, indiscriminately murdered, and brutally tortured in an effort to show results . . . Between 1968 and 1972 hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese civilians were rounded up and turned over to the Vietnamese police for questioning. Such interrogation has usually been marked by brutal torture. <a href="http://www.vicpeace.org/stories/03/1070.html">www.vicpeace.org/stories/03/1070.html</a> "After four tours with the U.S. Navy in Vietnam, Armitage joined the U.S. Defense Attaché's Office in Saigon in 1973, just in time to play a key role in "preparing" the botched evacuation of friendly South Vietnamese. Tens of thousands of loyal partners who had worked with the Americans were abandoned to advancing North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong forces. Never one to admit failure or duplicity, Armitage covered his own posterior by accusing the Central Intelligence Agency of wrongly predicting that a deal for an orderly pullout could be arrived at with the advancing communists and then failing to provide enough notice that Saigon was about to fall. Fresh from the debacle in Southeast Asia, Armitage went to work as a consultant for the Defense Intelligence Agency, where the quality of his work, to say the least, did not improve." <a href="http://www.yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=673">www.yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=673</a> Following the US withdrawal from Vietnam in 1975, Armitage joined the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and was posted to Tehran where he excelled at not predicting the overthrow of the Shah (the man he had been assigned to keep on the throne) and even went as far as accusing the Ayotollah Khomeini of being a friend of the Soviets. "Armitage became…a special consultant to the Department of Defense, working out of Bangkok and dealing with unrepatriated prisoners and the missing in action. Armitage also started a mysterious business called the Far East Trading Company. Meanwhile, from 1976 to 1979 in Iran, Richard Secord was supervising the sale of US military aircraft and weapons to Middle Eastern nations. During this same period, there are reports that Shackley, Clines, Secord, and Armitage set up several curious corporations and subsidiaries around the world including Lake Resources, Stanford Technology Trading Group, Compa[g]nie de Services Fiduciaria, CSF Investments and Udall Research Corporation." <a href="http://www.vicpeace.org/stories/03/1070.html">www.vicpeace.org/stories/03/1070.html</a> In fact all the companies referred to above, were and those that still exist, are so-called proprietaries of the CIA, a fact that further reinforces the belief that during this period Armitage was in the employ of the CIA, and although we can only speculate as to his role during this period, it is generally believed that the front companies were used for CIA covert actions in Southeast Asia and later in Afghanistan and it's been suggested that the idea of using heroin as a weapon in the 'war against communism' in both Indo-China and Afghanistan was Armitage's idea. "His critics had alleged in the past that he was the author of the idea of using heroin to weaken the fighting capability of the communists in Indo-China and then in Afghanistan though the late Le Comte de Marenches, the head of the French External Intelligence Agency under Presidents George Pompidou and Giscard d'Estaing, had claimed that it was he who had given this idea to the Americans with specific reference to Afghanistan." <a href="http://www.saag.org/papers5/paper473.html">www.saag.org/papers5/paper473.html</a> 1978 saw him (officially) rejoining government when he joined the staff of Senator Robert Dole and then as an advisor to Reagan election campaign who rewarded his services in 1981 by appointing him Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia and Pacific Affairs and then in 1983 he became Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs until 1989. His speciality was special forces operations and 'counter-terrorism'. Under George Bush Snr he was made 'Special Emissary' to King Hussein of Jordan during the 1991 Gulf War. But it's Armitage's role in the 'Secret Team' that was at the heart of the Iran-contra scandal during this period that kept him out of government until Bush the smaller grabbed the throne of state when Armitage was rewarded for his loyalty by being appointed as deputy secretary of state under his old friend Colin Powell. "Armitage…under investigation for his role in the Reagan administration's Iran-Contra scandal. Though he testified that he didn't know about the administration's secret sale of arms to Iran until November 1986, when they became public knowledge, independent counsel Lawrence Walsh's report laid out extensive evidence that he knew about them a year earlier. In fact, Armitage apparently opposed the arms sales as early as December 1985, on the grounds that Iranians were "sleazebags." Secord later testified that he met with Armitage then in an effort to change his mind. Armitage claimed not to remember meeting with Secord, though Armitage's own meeting logs show that he did. Armitage kept a December 6, 1985 document describing the legal ramifications of the Iran arms sales, entitled "Possibility for Leaks," locked in his Pentagon safe until June 1987, when it was belatedly turned over to Walsh and the congressional Iran-Contra committee. Armitage also attended a Pentagon meeting in August 1986 in which Oliver North outlined the covert activities in support of the Contras that he had been supervising through the National Security Council. Armitage denied remembering anything about this meeting as well. In his final report, Walsh said he declined to prosecute Armitage for his numerous dubious statements on these issues because he could not prove they were knowingly false." <a href="http://www.inthesetimes.com/issue/25/07/naureckas2507.html">www.inthesetimes.com/issu...s2507.html</a> "The Bush cabinet is a virtual who's who of oil, defense and pharmaceutical bigwigs.1 The Bush family is itself closely tied financially to the bin Ladens.2 , 3 Both families are involved in the Carlyle Group.4 Bush Sr. sits on the board of Carlyle, a 12 billion Equity company with oil holdings and defense contracts.5 Dick Cheney was the former CEO of Halliburton Oil. Colin Powell is a major stockholder in several defense contractors. National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice sat on the board of Chevron. Andrew Card, the Chief of Staff is from General Motors. Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, was CEO of Searle Pharmaceuticals. Dick Armitage, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, has ties to the Russian mafia and is a board member of Carlyle. Robert Jordan, the Saudi ambassador, was a member of Baker Botts, a legal firm specializing in oil and defense (the Baker in Baker Botts is James Baker). Tony Principi, Secretary of Foreign Affairs, comes from Lockheed Martin. Gordan England, Secretary of the Navy, is tied to General Dynamics. James Roche, Secretary of the Air Force, is from Northrop Grumman. Gen. Thomas White, retired, Secretary of the Army, is from Enron Energy. Donald Evans, the Commerce Secretary, owns Colorado Oil Company. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice sat on the board of Exxon. And Mr. Carlucci, the Chief of Carlyle, sits on the Middle East Policy Council. 6 ""Several western oil companies [some represented by Richard Armitage] including Occidental, Shell and British Petroleum had their eyes riveted on Albania's abundant and unexplored oil deposits. Western investors were also gawking [at] Albania's extensive reserves of chrome, copper, gold, nickel and platinum"" <a href="http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/regional/KLA1.html">www.fromthewilderness.com.../KLA1.html</a> So we've come full circle, from the earliest days of the Bush family's involvement with Nazi Germany via Brown Brothers Harriman Bank and Standard Oil/IG Farben and later, Saudi Arabia (Aramco), through to the Vietnam War and the Golden Triangle where the trade in drugs started, and then to Iran and Iran-contra and the South American drug connection, and then onto Afghanistan and finally Iraq where Dresser Industries (Brown Brothers), Brown & Root, all come together under the aegis of the Bush emperium with Halliburton as the final link. Throughout it all, key individuals have played important roles in linking together oil, guns and drugs as part of a web of business and political connections designed to further the interests of big capital. The question is, how much longer can this web of deceit be kept hidden from the public? How much longer can the mass media ignore the crimes of a dynasty that extends back through three-quarters of a century? Notes: --unquote--

by **chiggerbit** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 10:38 am

What???? The Report describes Ali Mohamed as “a former Egyptian army officer who had moved to the United States in the mid-1980s, enlisted in the U.S. Army, and become an instructor at Fort Bragg,” as well as helping to plan the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya (6 . In fact Ali Mohamed was an important al Qaeda agent who, as the 9/11 Commission was told, "trained most of al Qaeda's top leadership," including "persons who would later carry out the 1993 World Trade Center bombing."[25] But the person telling the 9/11 Commission this, U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald, misrepresented Ali Mohamed’s FBI relationship. He told the Commission that, "From 1994 until his arrest in 1998, [Mohamed] lived as an American citizen in California, applying for jobs as an FBI translator and working as a security guard for a defense contractor

by **proldic** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 11:43 am

Same guy? Related? If so, what does that mean? Does it mean that PDS is trying to attack Fitzgerald? What does that mean? Certainly he's not the greatest of the western intel analysts. More limited hangout than anything else. I've had my doubts about him for years.

by **jpastoor** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 3:27 pm

Fitzgerald describing al Qaeda's training and use of Mohamed as an example: <blockquote>Quote:<hr>The first point is that I think we sometimes fail to appreciate how well trained the al Qaeda network is and how they go about their intelligence gathering. And I think a couple of examples illustrate the point.<hr></blockquote> al Qaeda is well trained by the universities? Russians?!! I don't know if Fitzgerald is trying to be misleading, but the rest of his testimony about al Qaeda describes the CIA to a tee. I'll wait and see if he makes a career move or is hung out to dry. <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46525-2004Jun16.html">www.washingtonpost.com/wp...Jun16.html</a>

by **ewastud** » Wed Aug 17, 2005 5:01 am

Would it not be great if the conspiracy which you sketch out, or something much like it, gets exposed and shown to be fact? It would "conspiracy theorist" a whole "respect" that it has never enjoyed.

by **nomo** » Wed Aug 17, 2005 2:37 pm

Guns, Oil, and Drugs: G.O.D., in America.

by **Al Gomas** » Fri Aug 19, 2005 2:11 am

Thanks for posting this info. Where does Elliot Abrams fit into the puzzle?

by **robertdreed** » Fri Aug 19, 2005 3:01 am

well, what do you WANT me to say? I don't know of the extent of Elliot Abrams' role- if any- in the affairs alluded to in the Scott document. I assume that you have a seach engine available, that may or may not prove of worth in answering your question. Any info I could get about it at the moment would be from doing an Internet search myself, and I simply don't have the time to do that. <a href="http://dogpile.com/">dogpile.com/</a> <a href="http://google.com/">google.com/</a>

by **AnnaLivia** » Fri Aug 19, 2005 4:30 am

this thread REALLY deserves to be stickied. big thanx to robertdreed, star route, and starman!!

Peter Dale Scott hits paydirt, again

Peter Dale Scott hits paydirt, again

Re: Guns, drugs, and money-laundering

re: More Oil, Guns and Drugs

Re: re: More Oil, Guns and Drugs

I noticed that too

Re: Fitzgerald's testimony

Re: Guns, drugs, and money-laundering

Guns, Oil, and Drugs

Re: Peter Dale Scott hits paydirt, again

Al Gomas...

can we take this one forward with us to next forum?

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