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"God Save the Shah: American
Guns,
Oil and Spies in Azerbaijan" by Mark Irkali, Tengiz Kodrarian and
Cali Ruchala
GARY BEST HAS made it his business not to be
found.
A self-described electronics importer,' he has left a long trail of
anecdote and innuendo of past misdeeds but few testifying
witnesses.
He was a marginal figure in one of the many subplots of the
Iran-Contra Scandal, though how exactly he was related to the
activities of Oliver North and his co-conspirators is unclear.
His importing business was concentrated primarily in Southeast
Asia, but somehow brought him into contact with the Afghan
Mujahedin, Iran-Contra conspirator Richard Secord and legendary Air
Force special operations commander Brigadier General Harry Heinie'
Aderholt. His current mailing address, and his current profession,
are unknown.
"In 1985, Gary's business was headquartered in Marietta,
Georgia. What exactly his company did, and how he spent his days,
is a mystery. Bob Fletcher, another figure on the periphery of
Iran-Contra, claims that in 1985, Gary Best became a partner in his
toy company, which he and other Iran-Contra figures planned to use
as a cover for illicit weapons transfers of the sort that made
Ollie (and Secord) famous....
He allegedly made several visits to the USSR as well as to
Mujahedin headquarters in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and former
associates say that Best bragged about his friendship with
sometime-Afghan Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar who, like many
former Mujahedin, is now a sworn enemy of the United States.
At the time of writing, Hekmatyar had just been placed on a
terrorist list by the State Department, and a staffer contacted at
his movement's headquarters in Pakistan was understandably
reluctant to discuss too many things with outsiders that spoke
English. A week later, the staffer, who claimed to be Hekmatyar's
son-in-law, told us that no one in the organization had ever heard
of Gary Best....
"According to Andrew, Best has a warrant out for his arrest in the United States and is probably traveling under a false passport.... The "crowd" expanded in 1991 to include another ghost from America's past: prominent Iran-Contra co-conspirator Richard Secord. Whereas the partnership of Best and Aderholt could be written off as a curious pairing, the presence of Secord in Best's Azerbaijani oil venture ought to have raised blood red flags around the world.
"Secord is a man that many people believe should have been in
jail in 1991 - just two years after copping a plea to a count of
lying to Congress (he was facing trial on eleven other felony
charges).
Instead, we are to believe that this former mastermind of
arms shipments and shady deals with guerrillas and Ayatollahs was
taken by the possibilities of dead oil wells in Azerbaijan.
"Best, Aderholt and Secord, with their lack of background in public
relations, might be forgiven for picking such an Orwellian name for
their venture as "MEGA Oil."
Assuming that Aderholt and Secord were, as they say they are,
accidental patsies in Best's devious schemes, it's still difficult
to believe the atrocious due diligence that two men with extensive
backgrounds in intelligence executed.
Conducting a post-mortem on MEGA Oil - noting its birthdate
and vital statistics - is almost as difficult as tracking down
Gary
Best.
"MEGA Oil's American partners wrote in press releases that the
company was based in either Marietta or Atlanta, Georgia.
A search of public records finds not one but two companies known as
"MEGA Oil
USA."
One is called "MEGA Oil USA/Vista Joint Ventures," and was
incorporated in 1985. "MEGA Oil USA" on the other hand wasn't
incorporated until 1993.
There is, moreover, a third MEGA Oil involved in the food
processing business. None of these Georgia companies could be
definitively traced to Best.
"To make up for MEGA Oil's lack of experience in the industry, Best
contracted a company which specialized in rehabilitating and
servicing existing oil wells.
Ponder Industries, registered in Delaware but conducting business
in Alice, Texas, entered into partnership with MEGA Oil in
Azerbaijan feeling like they had trumped an entire industry.
Later, an Securities and Exchange Commission panel expressed
astonishment that Ponder had done even less due diligence on MEGA
than they would have with any Texas partner - almost as little as
Aderholt and Secord.
Gary Best, insiders say, led Ponder to believe that his connections
with the Azeri government would take care of any problems.
As a result, Ponder agreed to fund and staff the oil wells in
Azerbaijan by themselves, as well as providing unspecified
"operating costs" to MEGA.
All MEGA had to do was bring them the contract with SOCAR, the
Azeri state oil company.
Best promptly faxed it over.
It was written in Russian, and no one in Ponder's office could read
it.
Incredibly, they took Best's word that the fax was exactly what he
said it was: a joint venture agreement between MEGA Oil and SOCAR
to service the abandoned oil wells.
"Ponder began flying their equipment and staff into Azerbaijan
in late 1991 and January of 1992.
The latter was the date when the conflict in Karabakh, which had
hitherto been fought by guerrillas and militias, exploded into a
full-scale war as Azeri soldiers pounded the Karabakh Armenians'
"capital," Stepanakert, with thousands of rounds of artillery
fire.
It was intended to soften the Armenians' position, with thousands
of fresh troops following the path of fire.
"The hopes of the Azeris for a quick and decisive thrust into
Karabakh were bolstered when their American friends offered to help
train-and-equip their beleaguered armed forces, and even bring in
some of their old special forces friends to lend a hand in drilling
and structural reorganization.
MEGA Oil, a company in Azerbaijan which was created in order to
fund a farcical search for POWs in Vietnam, was now hiring
mercenaries.
http://www.diacritica.com/sobaka/2003/shah2.html
Deterring Democracy
Excerpt, Noam Chomsky South End Press, 1991
... the CIA shifted its attention to the terrorist war against
Nicaragua and the Afghan resistance against Soviet occupation.
The complicity of the Reagan-Bush administrations in the drug
rackets in Central America as part of their contra support
operations is by now well known.
Pakistan is reported to have become one of the major international
centers of the heroin trade when Afghan manufacturers and dealers
found their operations restricted after the Soviet invasion in
1979,' and moved the enterprise across the borders (South).
"The U.S. government has for several years received, but declined
to investigate, reports of heroin trafficking by some Afghan
guerrillas and Pakistani military officers with whom it
cooperates," the Washington Post reported well after the drug war
was charging full steam ahead. U.S. officials have received
first-hand accounts of extensive heroin smuggling' by the leading
Afghan recipients of U.S. aid and the Pakistani military
establishment, who gave detailed information to the press in
Pakistan and Washington.
Nevertheless, according to U.S. officials, the United States has
failed to investigate or take action against some [read any'] of
those suspected.' U.S. favorite Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the terrorist
leader of the fundamentalist Hizbe-Islami party, is reported to be
deeply implicated in drug trafficking.
Other reports indicate that the Aghan rebels are being debilitated
by increasingly fierce local battles for the lucrative heroin
trade.'"
www.zmag.org/chomsky/dd/dd-c04-s04.html#FN22
"How to Unseat the War Criminals and
Reverse the Tide of War "
Exposing the Links between Al Qaeda and the Bush
Administration
by Michel Chossudovsky
www.globalresearch.ca 15 March 2003
Colin Powell's Role: From Iran-Contra to September
11
"Both Colin Powell and his Deputy Richard Armitage, who casually
accuse Baghdad and other foreign governments of "harboring" Al
Qaeda,
played a direct role, at different points in their careers, in
supporting terrorist organizations.
"Although Colin Powell was not directly
involved in the arms' transfer negotiations, which had been
entrusted to Oliver North,
he was among at least five men within the Pentagon who knew arms
were being transferred to the CIA.' (The Record, 29 December
1986).
Lieutenant General Powell was directly instrumental in giving
the green light' to lower-level Irangate officials in blatant
violation of Congressional procedures.
According to the New York Times, Colin Powell took the decision (at
the level of military procurement), to allow the delivery of
weapons to Iran:
"Hurriedly, one of the men closest to Secretary of Defense
Weinberger, Maj. Gen. Colin Powell,
bypassed the written "focal point system" procedures and ordered
the Defense Logistics Agency
[responsible for procurement] to turn over the first of 2,008 TOW
missiles to the C.I.A.,
which acted as cutout for delivery to Iran" (New York Times, 16
February 1987) ... More on Colin Powell ...
Both Colin Powell and his Deputy
Richard Armitage, who casually accuse Baghdad and other foreign
governments of "harboring"
Al Qaeda, played a direct role, at different points in their
careers, in supporting terrorist organizations.
Both men were implicated --operating behind the scenes-- in the
Irangate Contra scandal during the Reagan Administration,
which involved the illegal sale of weapons to Iran to finance the
Nicaraguan Contra paramilitary army.
(Michel Chossudovsky, "Colin Powell's Role: From Iran-Contra to
September 11")
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO303D.html
Colonel
Oliver North
set up a team including [Richard] Secord; Noel Koch [Armitage's
deputy] , then assistant secretary at the Pentagon responsible for
special operations;
George Cave, a former CIA station chief in Tehran, and Colin
Powell, military assistant to U.S. Defense Secretary Caspar
Weinberger...
(The Guardian, December 10, 1986)
Colin Powell [was] was among "at least five men within the Pentagon
who knew arms were being transferred to the CIA."
(The Record, 29 December 1986).
Lieutenant General Powell was directly instrumental in giving the
"green light" to lower-level Irangate officials in blatant
violation of Congressional procedures.
According to the New York Times, Colin Powell took the decision (at
the level of military procurement),
to allow the delivery of weapons to Iran: Hurriedly, one of the men
closest toSecretary of
Defense Weinberger,
Maj. Gen. Colin Powell, bypassed the written "focal point system"
procedures and ordered the Defense Logistics
Agency
[responsible for procurement] to turn over the first of 2,008
TOW
missiles to the C.I.A., which acted as cutout for delivery to
Iran"
(New York Times, 16 February 1987)
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO303D.html
"CIA Director William Casey with the collaboration of Richard
Armitage in the Pentagon ran the Mujahideen covert war
against the Soviet Union' (quoted in Domestic Terrorism: The Big
Lie The "War")
"Contragate was also an off-the-shelf drug-financed operation run
by Casey." (Ibid ).
"The Washington Post reported that profits from the Iran arms
sales were deposited in one CIA-managed account
into which the U.S. and Saudi Arabia had placed $250 million
apiece.
That money was disbursed not only to the contras in Central America
but to the rebels fighting Soviet troops in Afghanistan."
(U.S. News & World Report, 15 December 1986)
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO303D.html
In appearances on several television news programs, Mr. Cheney
said "it would be a mistake" to give broad Congressional
access
to the Aug. 6 memorandum to the president, which ignited a
political uproar over whether the nation
could have anticipated the attacks on the World Trade Center and
the Pentagon.
(Alison Mitchell , "Cheney Moves to Block 9-11 Probe")
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/05.21A.Cheney.Block.911.p.htm
Not mentioned on Kean's official Commission biography was his
role as director of Amerada Hess
Corporation,
which in 1998 formed joint venture Delta-Hess, with Delta Oil, in
part owned by Khalid bin Mahfouz.
Mahfouz inherited a controlling interest in the National Commercial
Bank of Saudi Arabia, the country's largest bank,
and was a director with 20% interest in BCCI, the now defunct
financial conglomerate involved in money laundering,
bribery,
support of terrorism, arms trafficking and other crimes.
Mahfouz paid $225 million to escape prosecution for his role in the
BCCI scandal. Mahfouz also inherited the assets
of the Saudi bin Laden group when Salem bin Laden died in a 1988
plane crash.
These included an interest in Arbusto
Energy, a Houston, Texas oil company founded byGeorge
W. Bush.
Bin Mahfouz's interests were managed in part by James
R. Bath, a close friend of Bush, who served in the Texas ANG
with him.
Bath's name was inexplicably redacted in Bush's Air National Guard
military medical reports.
http://www.worldhistory.com/wiki/K/Khalid-bin-Mahfuz.htm
.
The emergence of William
Casey and his 'off-the-shelf' (meaning unaccountable and
invisible) covert operations as Director
of the CIA
led from the arming of the fundamentalist Islamic mujehaddin to the
intricacies of Contragate.
This covert funding included profits from the sale of opium and
illicit drugs, and half was funneled through BCCI at the
behest of the Saudi Arabian government,
working closely with the American CIA that used a proxy to cover
its involvement,
Pakistan's Inter Service Intelligence agency, or ISI.
These funds went to a drug dealer named Hekmyatar and to his
protégé, Osama bin
Laden.
CIA funding is reported to have stopped when the USSR withdrew, and
the Taliban came to power.
However, the US continued to fund the Taliban as well, giving them
$43 million in 2001 to stop growing opium.ISI
funding to Mohammed Atta,
allegedly linked to bin Laden continued as late as August, 2001
http://www.williambowles.info/911/911_critique.html
T
The Contragate team that was only partially exposed by the
Congressional investigations continued to operate in the deeper
politics
that combine drugs, oil and war. Linda Tripp, whose taping of
Monica Lewinsky was reportedly inspired by Lucianne
Goldberg,
was in Army intelligence, held a GS-16 federal job rating, and
transferred into the White House from her job with President Bush,
Sr.
He had of course presided over the White House operations with
Ronald Reagan at the time of the Contragate operations, and was
involved in them.
Linda Tripp at the time was a personal secretary to Richard Secord
of the Army's secret Delta Force team,
and a partner in Oliver North's company that assisted in illegally
passing funds through to the Nicaraguan rebels
against yet another socialist government. Another covert operation
run by William Casey at the CIA.
It is in this deeper context that others responsible for the
Iran-Contra secret and illegal shipments of missiles,
guns and drugs came back into the new Bush White House in the
months prior to 9/11.
They include Powell, Poindexter, Reich, Negroponte, Armitage,
Abrams, among others.
(See Drugs, Oil and War, Peter
Dale Scott)
http://www.williambowles.info/911/911_critique.html
At one point Kissinger
& Associates members were considering a merger with the
infamous Bank for Credit & Commerce International (BCCI),
which was deeply involved in the covert funding of both the Afghan
resistance and Contragate
(Congressional Report, December 1992, Senate Committee
on Foreign Relations, Kerry-Brown).
http://www.williambowles.info/911/911_critique.html
Poindexter was recruited by Syntek Technologies, a firm in bed
with DARPA.
His hand was back in the hi-tech cookie jar. As a company
vice-president, Poindexter helped develop Genoa -
- an "intelligence
mining, information harvesting" system designed to explore
(clandestinely) large computer
databases.
Listen in on America'selectronic
conversations, that is. Poindexter is, once again, one of the
most powerful men in America.
His job description is "crisis manager".
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/NoMoreMrSguy.html
US alleges Pan Am 103
bombed by Gaddafi in retaliation.
Bankrupt Pan Am said Bush White House's Iran-Contra CIA drug
dealers did it to murder Pentagon cops "
Ahmed
Chalabi, Janos Kadar of Iraq Chalabi, a
non-practicing Shia and reportedly a close friend of the late Shah
of Iran,
the former Crown Prince Hassan of Jordan and Col. Oliver North of
the Reagan Administration, whose name came to prominence in the
1980s
during the exposure of the Iran-Contra scandal, is the head of the
Iraqi National Congress (INC),
which is a member of the anti-Saddam Hussein coalition clubbed
together and funded by the CIA and the MI-6 and used by the
Pentagon
as its cat's paw in an attempt to cover its invasion with the fig
leaf of Iraqi support.
In August,1989, Chalabi fell foul of the late King Hussein of
Jordan, who had him sacked after the bank had incurred huge
liabilities
and was on the verge of collapse. This, however, did not affect his
personal friendship with Prince Hassan,
who allegedly helped him to escape from Jordan before the Police,
on the orders of King
Hussein,
could arrest him for investigation into the alleged mismanagement
of the affairs of the bank.
It was alleged that during his association with the bank he had
embezzled nearly US $ 70 million
and spirited it away in secret Swiss bank accounts According to
sources close to Chalabi,
part of the money was also allegedly used to fund Col. Oliver
North's travels abroad in connection with the Iran-Contra
operation.
http://www.saag.org/papers7/paper659.html
Details of George
Bush's five arrests, including stripped of his TxANG flying
license for desertion from Nam; Dick Cheney's 2 arrests;
Bush Jr's First Lady's DWI homicide; Bush Sr's DWI arrest as Veep
with mistress as told by First Lady Nancy Reagan;
Bush Girls Gone Wild; Noelle Bush's narcotics arrest Invisible,
hijacked, Mob-infested, Republican-infiltrated Knoxville Green
Party
- this website is censored and banned by the Knoxville Green
Part.
KGP does NOT allow its members to run for political office. Details
of Ralph Nader's Y2K lawsuit
to police and his lawsuit against the Bush Sr. White House for
murder of journalists and narcoterrorism during Iran-Contra.
Knoxville, Tennesseeóhome of the Mafia-connect world-wide cartel
for nuclear waste, garbage-trucking, tow-trucking;
the only city in world history to nuke another city; where our
nuke-bomb factory INTENTIONALLY releases radiation
to experiment on damage to local residents (link to 1994 White
House report); ranked in 2001 as having the worst air
pollution is USA by EPA;
and where Mohammed Atta, an
alleged terrorist on 9/11 and Saudi pilot trained by the US Navy
flight school,
allegedly took additional flying lessons in Knoxville to inquire
about local nuke plants
http://www.geocities.com/september911surprise/september911surprise.html
Untold story of US Special Forces rescuing Gaddafi
before USAF bombed his home in alleged assassination
attempt,
as told by Pentagon Chief of Public Affairs and editor of Al Gore's
Carthage, TN Courrier. US alleges Pan Am 103 bombed by Gaddafi in
retaliation.
Bankrupt Pan Am said Bush White House's Iran-Contra CIA drug
dealers did it to murder Pentagon cops...
http://www.geocities.com/pentagon_whistleblower/
During the 1980ís, Sheikh Adham and his successor as Saudi
Intelligence Director, Abdul Khalil,
secretly acted as BCCI nominees in a hostile take-over of
Washington D.C.ís largest bank, Financial General Bankshares,
that soon became First American Bankshares.
First American was, in fact, a [BCCI] front for Mahfouz
that was set up in the U.S.
with the pivotal assistance of billionaireJackson
Stephens, a lavish financial backer of many political campaigns
for both Bush presidents.
Another principle shareholder of 25 million dollars in First
American was arms merchant, Mohammed Hammoud,
a long-time friend and business associate of Bahrain's Ambassador
Hostler.
And according to the Kerry Committee report, five Iran-contra
related wire transfers
were made out of North/Secord accounts at First American in the
amount of $346,000.00.
http://www.whale.to/b/rivers.html
One of Kamel Adham's close contacts, Adnan
Khashoggi, is among the richest men in the world, who is a
life-long friend of the bin Laden family
and was the arms merchant at the center of the whole Iran-Contra
scandal.
In 1985, Sheikh Mahfouz's Saudi National Commercial Bank loaned
Khashoggi 35 million dollars
to purchase weapons to illegally sell to Iran, at the behest of
Oliver North
http://www.whale.to/b/rivers.html
A major investor in BCCI and a key
player in the Iran-Contra affair.
[Slate, 12/4/00, Slate, 11/14/01, Slate, 3/12/03] <
timeline="complete_911_timeline&theme=incompetence"
timeline.jsp www.cooperativeresearch.org>
A long-time friend of George W. Bush, [James R.] Bath was
connected to a number of covert financing operations in the
Iran-Contra scandal,
which also linked to bin Laden friend Adnan Khashoggi. Khashoggi,
whose connections to the bin Ladens is more than
superficial,
got his first business break by acting as middle-man for a large
truck purchase byOsama
bin Laden's older brother, Salem.
[See, Khashoggi XIX Appendix]
http://www.factnet.org/discus/messages/5/277.html
1089859823
Osama bin Laden's attacks on the WTC and Pentagon, with the
resulting massive increase in the U.S. defense budget,
have just made his family a great big pile of money. More Bush
connections appear in relation to the bin Ladens.
The WSJ story also notes that, "During the past several years, the
[bin Laden] family's close ties to the Saudi royal family
prompted executives and staff from closely held New York publisher
Forbes, Inc. to make two trips to the family headquarters,
according to Forbes Chairman Caspar Weinberger, a former U.S.
Secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration
. 'We would call on them to get their view of the country and what
would be of interest to investors.'"
President G.H.W. Bush pardoned Weinberger for his criminal conduct
in the Iran-Contra scandal in 1989
www.factnet.org/discus/messages/5/277.html
1089859823
Daniel Hopsicker: "In the early 1960s there was a CIA
assasination squad called 'Operation 40,'
commanded by E. Howard
Hunt (of Watergate fame) operating under the supervision of
Vice President Nixon.
A photo of several members of the group was found in the safe of
[CIA cocaine smuggler]
Barry Seal after the Justice (sic) Department arranged his
murder.
In the photo, seated between Seal and Cuban terrorist/Iran-Contra
alum Felix Rodriguez,
across the table from Watergate burglar Frank Sturgis and Kennedy
assasination suspect William Seymour,
and together with Iran-Contra memberLuis
Carriles Posada and 'Blonde Ghost' Ted Shackley, is Porter
Goss!"
http://www.madcowprod.com
During his Arbusto
period, in 1979, James Bath purchased a Houston mansion for Mahfouz
at 4.3 million dollars, with the payment
made through none other than James
Baker III's law firm, Bakers and Botts. In 1990, during his
Harken period,
Bath obtained a 1.4 million dollar loan from Mahfouz.
Bath was also the sole director for Mahfouz's
Skyway Aircraft Leasing Ltd, which did a brisk business with
Saudi Sheikhs
and began in the Grand Cayman Islands in 1980 as a company briefly
called Cotopax Investments.
It should be noted that several unusual business behaviors of
Mahfouz's Skyway Aircraft Leasing Ltd.
demonstrated a pattern reminiscent of money laundering.
First, within a month of its incorporation, the temporary board at
Cotopax named Bush's friend James Bath as company president,
changed the company name to Skyways and then resigned en mass,
leaving Bath as a sole director.
Second, the Cayman Islands are an effective tax-shelter and haven
for banking secrets.
Third, one of the original subscribers to Cotopax, a company called
Cayhaven Corporate Services, Ltd., was also a subscriber to IC,
Inc.
In reality, IC Inc. was the same entity as ICIC, which is the
International Credit and Investment Corporation of Grand
Caymans,
termed BCCI's "bank-within-a-bank" in the Kerry Committee report.
Curiously, Mahfouz's "IC Inc.,"
the company related to George W. Bush's friend James Bath, was
found by investigators to be at the very center of a chart
drawn by Oliver North, in North's own White House safe, that showed
the private banking network supporting the Iran-Contra
operation
http://www.whale.to/b/rivers.html
The warnings about the Carlyle
Group, the nation's 11th largest defense contractor, and the
Bushes came long before the World Trade Center attacks.
The Carlyle Group is a
closely held corporation, exempt, for that reason, from reporting
its affairs to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
As of October 4, 2001, it has removed its corporate web site from
the World Wide Web making further investigation through that
channel impossible.
Its Directors include Frank Carlucci, former Reagan Secretary of
Defense; James Baker, former Bush Secretary of State; and Richard
Darman,
a former White House aide to Ronald Reagan and Republican Party
operative.
http://www.factnet.org/discus/messages/5/277.html 1089859823
Armitage received Pakistan's highest award available to a civilian
by virtue of his assistance to the mujahideen in Afghanistan during
the 1980s,
in part, by supplying the fighters with shoulder-launched Stinger
missles, that have not yet been recovered by the U.S..
Currently, Carlyle's
Frank Carlucci and the re-emergedRichard
Armitage, are board members of the influencial Washington think
tank,
the Middle East Policy Council.
http://www.whale.to/b/rivers.html
The Sultan of Brunei and Elliot
Abrams, current National Security
Council special assistant for democracy,
human rights and international operations Another Iran-Contra
conspirator is Elliot Abrams.
As the Assistant Secretary of State during the Reagan-Bush
administration, Abrams was charged with contempt of Congress
by Iran-contra Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh after evading
questions about Oliver North's secret mission
to extract 10 million dollars from the Sultan of Brunei and about
the Contra supply plane shot down.
Abrams gave the Sultan of Brunei the number of the bank
account owned by InterMaritime Bank president, Bruce
Rappaport,
a golfing friend of then CIA director, William Casey.
General Secord was the subsequent recipient of the $10 million
cash, which was used for distribution to the contras.
Elliot Abrams, the current National Security Advisor, earlier had
pleaded guilty for withholding information from Congress
and was pardoned by the former President Bush in 1992.
http://www.whale.to/b/rivers.html
BCCI funded Osama
Bin Laden in Afghanistanâs fight against the Soviet Union,
and
helped fund operations in the Iran-Contra,
guns for drugs affair which also tied in with Central America
during the elder Bush's Vice Presidency. 1981-1989 Bush Sr. was US
Vice President.
In 1986 G.W. Bush, son of then Vice president G.H.W. Bush, merged
his Arbusto Energy company with Harken
Energy Corp.
Saudi
Sheik Abdullah Taha Bakhsh then bought into the company, buying
17.6%.
The Saudi Sheik was associated with Khalid bin Mahfouz, who
inherited Salim
Bin Ladin's interest when he died in 1988.
From several different angles, the Bush family was tied to the
Bin
Laden family, passing finances back and forth, making G.W.
Bush
an indirect financier of Osama Bin Ladin.
Mahfouz reportedly attempted in 1999 to transfer $3 million to
Osama
http://www.rense.com/general30/cart.htm
"Many of those involved in the Reagan Administration's war
against Nicaragua shared a common desire to consolidate support for
right-wing guerillas....
"Gen. John Singlaub set up committees within the World
Anti-Communist League for eight different guerilla groups....
Singlaub also drafted a memo outlining a contra international of
sorts with its own arms company,
financed by a series of technology transfers among Israel, South
Africa and China.
Once this flow of technology was in place, they wrote, 'The United
States then has at its disposal a large and continuous
supply
of Soviet technology and weapons to channel to Freedom Fighters
worldwide.'
... [The Singlaub memo] was later found in Oliver
North's safe. "Even the Saudis got into the act, with a
proposal
to establish offshore companies to serve a multiplicity of
purposes.
Palestinian-American businessman Sam Bamieh says he was approached
by Prince Bandar bin Sultan,
Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States, and at a separate
time, by a member of the embassy's staff, and asked 'to set
up a company,
an offshore company, whereby we will supply goods and services to
different anti-communist movements in different parts of the world.
...'
"Bamieh said that the offshore company would buy the oil from Saudi
Arabia - which nominally adheres to the UN oil embargo against
the apartheid regime
- and resell it to South Africa at a markup of 75 cents to one
dollar a barrel.
He said while he was discussing this with Bandar in Cannes in
February 1984, Bandar sought to reassure him it was in line with
U.S. policy
by telling him that CIA Director Casey and King
Fahd were at that very moment discussing the same topic in a
yacht in the Mediterranean
[Adnan Khashoggi's ]. (This was later confirmed.)
Bamieh said he refused the request, even though Bandar
told him such a company could make $50 to $100 million in annual
profits.
" Jane Hunter, "Tricontranental," Report on the Americas,
September-October 1988, p. 15.
"Former Senator
Slade Gorton served on the notorious
Senate Intelligence Committee for over a decade.
Throughout his career, over scores of hearings', the hawkish Gorton
consistently ran interference for Iran-Contra-smeared
Republicans,
such as Robert
Gates..."
http://www.williambowles.info/911/911_coverup.html
"Charles M. McKee, ostensibly a military attaché for the
DIA in
Beirut, Matthew Gannon, CIA Deputy Station Chief in
Beirut,
and three others were on board Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded
over Lockerbie, Scotland.
They were part of a counterterrorist team in Beirut investigating
the possible rescue of 9 American hostages in Lebanon.
The McKee team uncovered evidence that a rogue CIA unit called
COREA, based in Wiesbaden, was doing business
with a man called Monzer Al-Kassar,
a Syrian arms dealer and drug trafficker. "Al-Kassar
was part of the covert network run by U.S. Lieut. Colonel Oliver
North.
Outraged that the COREA unit in Wiesbaden was doing business with a
Syrian who had close terrorist connections
and might endanger their chances of rescuing the hostages, the
McKee team decided to fly back to Virginia unannounced
and expose the COREA unit's secret deal with al-Kassar.
They never got there. For three years, I've had a feeling that if
Chuck hadn't been on that plane, it wouldn't have been
bombed,'
said Beulah McKee, 75, Charles McKee's mother, to Time
Magazine.
Four months after her son was killed for his efforts to expose the
CIA, Mrs. McKee received a sympathy letter from George H. W.
Bush.
Mrs. McKee has never been satisfied with the government's version
of events."
http://bushbodycount.com/voices/thelist.php?catid=24&blogid=4
"He chaired the three-man presidential review board that probed
the Iran-contra affair. He died in a plane crash in April
1991..."
http://bushbodycount.com/voices/thelist.php?catid=24&blogid=4
"September 01, 2004 - Ledeen has been branded an 'ultra
neo-conservative' and is seen by his critics as the most sinister
and radical of them all.
He is a scholar at the
neo-conservative think tank The American
Enterprise Institute, which also counts
the former chair of Pentagon
Defence Policy Board Richard Perle among its members.
"He also writes regularly for American Spectator magazine. A
former Rome Correspondent for the New Republic newspaper,
Ledeen first
rose to political prominence as a member of the National Security
Council during Ronald Reagan's reign.
"But it was in 1985, that he became a well-known figure in the US
when his
Israeli intelligence contacts were used to help broker
the illegal Iran/contra rebel affair - a move was aimed at
destablising the left-wing government in Nicaragua.
"However, he does say that he didn't approve of the final deal in
that affair. Prof Ledeen is also a student of Machiavelli
and has written a book about the Renaissance philosopher whose name
has become synonymous with strong and brutal governments.
He is also the author of The War Against the Terror Masters, which
claims that America must topple the regimes
of the terror masters such as Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia to
eliminate the threat of terrorism.
"Prof.
Ledeen is also believed to have the ear of the White House's
current Chief of
Staff Karl Rove, and has regular conversations with
him.
His view on the war on terror is clear, he said: "Iraq is just one
battle in a larger war, bringing down the regime in Iran is the
central act,
because Iran is the world's most dangerous terrorist country."
http://dual-loyalties.blogspot.com/2004/09/bbc-michael-ledeen-advisor-to-carl.html