“Thank God for the Saudis and Prince Bandar,” John McCain told CNN’s Candy Crowley in January 2014. “Thank God for the Saudis and Prince Bandar, and for our Qatari friends,” the senator said once again a month later, at the Munich Security Conference.

McCain was praising Prince Bandar bin Sultan, then the head of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence services and a former ambassador to the United States, for supporting forces fighting Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria. McCain and Senator Lindsey Graham had previously met with Bandar to encourage the Saudis to arm Syrian rebel forces.

(snip)

“Thank God for the Saudis and Prince Bandar,” John McCain told CNN’s Candy Crowley in January 2014. “Thank God for the Saudis and Prince Bandar, and for our Qatari friends,” the senator said once again a month later, at the Munich Security Conference.

McCain was praising Prince Bandar bin Sultan, then the head of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence services and a former ambassador to the United States, for supporting forces fighting Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria. McCain and Senator Lindsey Graham had previously met with Bandar to encourage the Saudis to arm Syrian rebel forces.

more
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/isis-saudi-arabia-iraq-syria-bandar/373181/

The State, the Deep State, and the Wall Street Overworld

By Prof Peter Dale Scott
Global Research, March 10, 2014
The Asia-Pacific Journal, Volume 12, Issue 10, No. 5

EXCERPT...

The Safari Club Milieu: George H.W. Bush, Theodore Shackley, and BCCI

The usual account of this super-agency’s origin is that it was

the brainchild of Count Alexandre de Marenches, the debonair and mustachioed chief of France’s CIA. The SDECE (Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage)…. Worried by Soviet and Cuban advances in postcolonial Africa, and by America’s post-Watergate paralysis in the field of undercover activity, the swashbuckling Marenches had come to Turki’s father, King Faisal, with a proposition…. [By 1979] Somali president Siad Barre had been bribed out of Soviet embrace by $75 million worth of Egyptian arms (paid for… by Saudi Arabia)….95

Joseph Trento adds that “The Safari Club needed a network of banks to finance its intelligence operations,… With the official blessing of George Bush as the head of the CIA, Adham transformed… the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), into a worldwide money-laundering machine.”.96

Trento claims also that the Safari Club then was able to work with some of the controversial CIA operators who were then forced out of the CIA by Turner, and that this was coordinated by perhaps the most controversial of them all: Theodore Shackley.

Shackley, who still had ambitions to become DCI, believed that without his many sources and operatives like [Edwin] Wilson, the Safari Club—operating with [former DCI Richard] Helms in charge in Tehran—would be ineffective. … Unless Shackley took direct action to complete the privatization of intelligence operations soon, the Safari Club would not have a conduit to [CIA] resources. The solution: create a totally private intelligence network using CIA assets until President Carter could be replaced.97

Kevin Phillips has suggested that Bush on leaving the CIA had dealings with the bank most closely allied with Safari Club operations: the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). In Phillips’ words,

After leaving the CIA in January 1977, Bush became chairman of the executive committee of First International Bancshares and its British subsidiary, where, according to journalists Peter Truell and Larry Gurwin in their 1992 book ‘False Profits’ [p. 345], Bush ‘traveled on the bank’s behalf and sometimes marketed to international banks in London, including several Middle Eastern institutions.’98

Joseph Trento adds that through the London branch of this bank, which Bush chaired, “Adham’s petrodollars and BCCI money flowed for a variety of intelligence operations”99

It is clear moreover that BCCI operations, like Khashoggi’s before them, were marked by the ability to deal behind the scenes with both the Arab countries and also Israel.100

It is clear that for years the American deep state in Washington was both involved with and protected BCCI. Acting CIA director Richard Kerr acknowledged to a Senate Committee “that the CIA had also used BCCI for certain intelligence-gathering operations.”101

Later, a congressional inquiry showed that for more than ten years preceding the BCCI collapse in the summer of 1991, the FBI, the DEA, the CIA, the Customs Service, and the Department of Justice all failed to act on hundreds of tips about the illegalities of BCCI’s international activities.102

Far less clear is the attitude taken by Wall Street banks towards the miscreant BCCI. The Senate report on BCCI charged however that the Bank of England “had withheld information about BCCI’s frauds from public knowledge for 15 months before closing the bank.”103

CONTINUED...

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-state-the-deep-state-and-the-wall-street-overworld/5372843

George Bush Takes Charge

The Uses of "Counter-Terrorism"

By Christopher Simpson
Covert Action Quarterly 58

A paper trail of declassified documents from the Reagan‑Bush era yields valuable information on how counter‑terrorism provided a powerful mechanism for solidifying Bush's power base and launching a broad range of national security initiatives.

During the Reagan years, George Bush used "crisis management" and "counter‑terrorism" as vehicles for running key parts of the clandestine side of the US government.

Bush proved especially adept at plausible denial. Some measure of his skill in avoiding responsibility can be taken from the fact that even after the Iran‑Contra affair blew the Reagan administration apart, Bush went on to become the "foreign policy president," while CIA Director William Casey, by then conveniently dead, took most of the blame for a number of covert foreign policy debacles that Bush had set in motion.

The trail of National Security Decision Directives (NSDDS) left by the Reagan administration begins to tell the story. True, much remains classified, and still more was never committed to paper in the first place. Even so, the main picture is clear: As vice president, George Bush was at the center of secret wars, political murders, and America's convoluted oil politics in the Middle East.

SNIP...

Reagan and the NSC also used NSDDs to settle conflicts among security agencies over bureaucratic turf and lines of command. It is through that prism that we see the first glimmers of Vice President Bush's role in clandestine operations during the 1980s.

CONTINUED...

EXCERPT...

NSDD 159. MANAGEMENT OF U.S. COVERT OPERATIONS, (TOP SECRET/VEIL‑SENSITIVE), JAN. 18,1985

The Reagan administration's commitment to significantly expand covert operations had been clear since before the 1980 election. How such operations were actually to be managed from day to day, however, was considerably less certain. The management problem became particularly knotty owing to legal requirements to notify congressional intelligence oversight committees of covert operations, on the one hand, and the tacitly accepted presidential mandate to deceive those same committees concerning sensitive operations such as the Contra war in Nicaragua, on the other.

The solution attempted in NSDD 159 was to establish a small coordinating committee headed by Vice President George Bush through which all information concerning US covert operations was to be funneled. The order also established a category of top secret information known as Veil, to be used exclusively for managing records pertaining to covert operations.

[font color="red"]The system was designed to keep circulation of written records to an absolute minimum while at the same time ensuring that the vice president retained the ability to coordinate US covert operations with the administration's overt diplomacy and propaganda.

Only eight copies of NSDD 159 were created. The existence of the vice president's committee was itself highly classified.[/font color] The directive became public as a result of the criminal prosecutions of Oliver North, John Poindexter, and others involved in the Iran‑Contra affair, hence the designation "Exhibit A" running up the left side of the document.

CONTINUED...

CovertAction Quarterly no 58 Fall 1996 pp31-40.

'SPOOKS' MAKE LIFE MISERABLE FOR AMBASSADOR LODGE

'Arrogant' CIA Disobeys Orders in Viet Nam

Richard Starnes
The Washington Daily News, Wednesday, October 2, 1963, p.3

SAIGON, Oct.2 - The story of the Central Intelligence Agency's role in South Viet Nam is a dismal chronicle of bureaucratic arrogance, obstinate disregard of orders, and unrestrained thirst for power.

Twice the CIA flatly refused to carry out instructions from Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, according to a high United States source here.

In one of these instances the CIA frustrated a plan of action Mr. Lodge brought with him from Washington because the agency disagreed with it.

This led to a dramatic confrontation between Mr. Lodge and John Richardson, chief of the huge CIA apparatus here. Mr. Lodge failed to move Mr. Richardson, and the dispute was bucked back to Washington. Secretary of State Dean Rusk and CIA Chief John A. McCone were unable to resolve the conflict, and the matter is now reported to be awaiting settlement by President Kennedy.

It is one of the developments expected to be covered in Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's report to Mr. Kennedy.

Others Critical, Too

Other American agencies here are incredibly bitter about the CIA.

"If the United States ever experiences a 'Seven Days in May' it will come from the CIA, and not from the Pentagon," one U.S. official commented caustically.

("Seven Days in May" is a fictional account of an attempted military coup to take over the U.S. Government.)

CIA "spooks" (a universal term for secret agents here) have penetrated every branch of the American community in Saigon, until non-spook Americans here almost seem to be suffering a CIA psychosis.

An American field officer with a distinguished combat career speaks angrily about "that man at headquarters in Saigon wearing a colonel's uniform." He means the man is a CIA agent, and he can't understand what he is doing at U.S. military headquarters here, unless it is spying on other Americans.

Another American officer, talking about the CIA, acidly commented: "You'd think they'd have learned something from Cuba but apparently they didn't."

Few Know CIA Strength

Few people other than Mr. Richardson and his close aides know the actual CIA strength here, but a widely used figure is 600. Many are clandestine agents known only to a few of their fellow spooks.

Even Mr. Richardson is a man about whom it is difficult to learn much in Saigon. He is said to be a former OSS officer, and to have served with distinction in the CIA in the Philippines.

A surprising number of the spooks are known to be involved in their ghostly trade and some make no secret of it.

"There are a number of spooks in the U.S. Information Service, in the U.S. Operations mission, in every aspect of American official and commercial life here, " one official - presumably a non-spook - said.

"They represent a tremendous power and total unaccountability to anyone," he added.

Coupled with the ubiquitous secret police of Ngo Dinh Nhu, a surfeit of spooks has given Saigon an oppressive police state atmosphere.

The Nhu-Richardson relationship is a subject of lively speculation. The CIA continues to pay the special forces which conducted brutal raids on Buddhist temples last Aug. 21, altho in fairness it should be pointed out that the CIA is paying these goons for the war against communist guerillas, not Buddhist bonzes (priests).

Hand Over Millions

Nevertheless, on the first of every month, the CIA dutifully hands over a quarter million American dollars to pay these special forces.

Whatever else it buys, it doesn't buy any solid information on what the special forces are up to. The Aug. 21 raids caught top U.S. officials here and in Washington flat-footed.

Nhu ordered the special forces to crush the Buddhist priests, but the CIA wasn't let in on the secret. (Some CIA button men now say they warned their superiors what was coming up, but in any event the warning of harsh repression was never passed to top officials here or in Washington.)

Consequently, Washington reacted unsurely to the crisis. Top officials here and at home were outraged at the news the CIA was paying the temple raiders, but the CIA continued the payments.

It may not be a direct subsidy for a religious war against the country's Buddhist majority, but it comes close to that.

And for every State Department aide here who will tell you, "Dammit, the CIA is supposed to gather information, not make policy, but policy-making is what they're doing here," there are military officers who scream over the way the spooks dabble in military operations.

A Typical Example

For example, highly trained trail watchers are an important part of the effort to end Viet Cong infiltration from across the Laos and Cambodia borders. But if the trailer watchers spot incoming Viet Congs, they report it to the CIA in Saigon, and in the fullness of time, the spooks may tell the military.

One very high American official here, a man who has spent much of his life in the service of democracy, likened the CIA's growth to a malignancy, and added he was not sure even the White House could control it any longer.

Unquestionably Mr. McNamara and Gen. Maxwell Taylor both got an earful from people who are beginning to fear the CIA is becoming a Third Force co-equal with President Diem's regime and the U.S. Government - and answerable to neither.

There is naturally the highest interest here as to whether Mr. McNamara will persuade Mr. Kennedy something ought to be done about it.

SOURCE:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=7534&mode=threaded

“The most important consequence of the Cold War remains the least discussed. How and why American democracy died lies beyond the scope of this introductory essay. It is enough to note that the CIA revolt against the presidency of John Fitzgerald Kennedy – the single event which did more than any other to hasten its end – was, quite contrary to over forty years of censorship and deceit, both publicly anticipated and publicly opposed.

No American journalist worked more bravely to thwart the anticipated revolt than Scripps-Howard’s Richard Starnes. His ‘reward’ was effectively to become a non-person, not just in the work of mainstream fellow-journalists and historians, but also that of nominally oppositional Kennedy assassination writers. It could have been worse: John J. McCone, Director of Central Intelligence, sought his instant dismissal; while others within the agency doubtless had more drastic punishment in mind, almost certainly of the kind meted out to CBS’ George Polk fifteen years earlier.

This time, shrewder agency minds prevailed. Senator Dodd was given a speech to read by the CIA denouncing Starnes in everything but name. William F. Buckley, Jr., suddenly occupied an adjacent column. In short, Starnes was allowed to live, even as his Scripps-Howard career was put under overt and intense CIA scrutiny - and quietly, systematically, withered on the Mockingbird vine.”

From “Light on a Dry Shadow,” the preface to ‘Arrogant’ CIA: The Selected Scripps-Howard Journalism of Richard T. Starnes, 1960-1965 (provisionally scheduled for self-publication in November 2006).

As far as I am aware, the remarkable example (above) of what Claud Cockburn called “preventative journalism” has never appeared in its entirety anywhere on the internet. Instead, readers have had to make do with the next-day riposte of the NYT’s Arthur Krock. The latter, it should be noted, was a veteran CIA-mouthpiece and messenger boy.

Dick Starnes was 85 on July 4, 2006. He remains, in bucolic retirement, a wonderfully fluent and witty writer; and as good a friend as any Englishman could wish for.

I dedicate the despatch’s web debut to Judy Mann, in affectionate remembrance.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=7534

Annals of Government - (How the US Armed Iraq)

In the Loop: Bush's Secret Mission

By Murray Waas and Craig Unger
The New Yorker Magazine - Originally published November 2, 1992
Posted to the web November 14, 2002

Introduction

This article, originally published in New Yorker Magazine, provides a clear picture of the direct involvement of the United States in arming Iraq, providing Saddam Hussein with technology, weapons, intelligence and funding - even in contravention of American law - enabling Iraq to amass the nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons that threaten the world. While the US does not openly acknowledge its role in arming Iraq, it now prepares to go to war against a monster of its own creation...

Since this article provides an excellent in-depth analysis of the US's dysfunctional Middle East policy dating back to the administrations of Presidents Reagan and Bush, it also provides the best perspective from which to view the Pollard case. As long as the US acknowledges no responsibility for its role in arming Iraq, Jonathan Pollard will continue to be buried alive in prison by successive American administrations fearing exposure and embarrassment.

***

In late July, 1986, William J. Casey, then the Director of Central Intelligence, sat down with George Bush, then the Vice-President of the United States, in an out-of-the-way study that Casey maintained on the third floor of the old Executive Office Building, the rococo structure adjoining the White House. Casey had something he wanted Bush to do.

For many years, both Bush and Casey had moved easily in the worlds of foreign policy and Republican politics, and Bush had once held Casey's job. But their relationship was never entirely comfortable. Casey, gruff and perpetually disheveled, was the product of public and parochial schools in Queens and on Long Island - his father was a Tammany Hall pension bureaucrat - and of Fordham. Bush, elaborately friendly in manner, was the offspring of Connecticut gentry. Like his father, an investment banker who served in the Senate, Bush attended Yale and was tapped for Skull and Bones. Casey made millions on his own as a stock speculator; Bush, with family help, grew moderately prosperous in the oil business before his political rise in Houston. Both men held high posts under Richard Nixon, but Nixon himself treated Casey as an equal and Bush condescendingly. It was under Gerald Ford that Bush was appointed to the job Casey now held.

The two men were different in more than background. Casey was part of the rising conservative movement, the historic antagonist of Bush and his ancestors within the Republican Party. In the Cold War, Casey believed not in containment but in what in the late forties and early fifties had been called rollback. He saw every stirring in every corner of the world through an unchanging ideological prism. Bush, by contrast, was a consummate pragmatist. As Casey knew, Bush was capable of rapidly adopting new positions if expediency or advancement seemed to demand it. He had done so on the issue of recognizing China under Nixon, and he had done so on abortion and on economic policy when he became Ronald Reagan's running mate. According to someone who knew both men, Casey had originally distrusted Bush's lack of conviction. Lately, however, he had begun to see Bush's pragmatism in a new light. Whatever vision the Vice-President might lack, he was a man of immense personal discipline, and he understood accommodation as a way to achieve goals. Moreover, during his service as permanent representative to the United Nations, as chief of the United States liaison office in China, and as director of the C.I.A., he had mastered the arts of compartmentalization and secrecy. "Casey knew there was nobody in government who could keep a secret better," a former high-level C.I.A. official who worked with Casey has told us. "He knew that Bush was someone who could keep his confidence and be trusted. Bush had the same capacity as Casey to receive a briefing and give no hint that he was in the know."

Now, in 1986, Casey, seventy-three years old and suffering from prostate cancer, said he needed Bush to run a covert errand. Iran was proving recalcitrant in secret negotiations to exchange arms for hostages who were being held in Beirut by terrorists with links to Iran, so Casey had dreamed up a scheme for forcing Iran's hand. It requires someone of authority to convey a message to Iran's enemy Saddam Hussein, the President of Iraq, indirectly and without leaving fingerprints. Vice-President Bush was the ideal courier. He was about to visit the capitals of countries in the Middle East in order to "advance the peace process" between Israelis and Arabs, as he told the New York Times. But if he accepted Casey's assignment he would also be there to advance the war process; that is, to heat up the war between Iran and Iraq, with an incendiary message from Washington to Baghdad - escalate the air war and escalate the bombing deep inside Iranian territory.

Casey's reasoning was that if Saddam Hussein could be induced to order his fastidiously cautious Air Force to attack Iran in strength, Iran would be forced to turn anew to the United States for missiles and other weapons of air defense. The United States would then use its enhanced leverage to get better terms from the Iranians for the release of the hostages. (Casey may have been particularly concerned about the plight of one of the hostages, the Lebanon C.I.A. station chief William A. Buckley.) And for Casey there was another enticement as well, according to two Reagan Administration officials whom he frequently confided in; by bringing off this scheme, he would be manipulating two rival policy factions in the Administration.

CONTINUED...

http://www.jonathanpollard.org/2002/111402.htm

Exclusive: Saddam key in early CIA plot

By RICHARD SALE
UPI Intelligence Correspondent | April 10, 2003

EXCERPT....

While many have thought that Saddam first became involved with U.S. intelligence agencies at the start of the September 1980 Iran-Iraq war, his first contacts with U.S. officials date back to 1959, when he was part of a CIA-authorized six-man squad tasked with assassinating then Iraqi Prime Minister Gen. Abd al-Karim Qasim.

In July 1958, Qasim had overthrown the Iraqi monarchy in what one former U.S. diplomat, who asked not to be identified, described as "a horrible orgy of bloodshed."

According to current and former U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, Iraq was then regarded as a key buffer and strategic asset in the Cold War with the Soviet Union. For example, in the mid-1950s, Iraq was quick to join the anti-Soviet Baghdad Pact which was to defend the region and whose members included Turkey, Britain, Iran and Pakistan.

Little attention was paid to Qasim's bloody and conspiratorial regime until his sudden decision to withdraw from the pact in 1959, an act that "freaked everybody out" according to a former senior U.S. State Department official.

Washington watched in marked dismay as Qasim began to buy arms from the Soviet Union and put his own domestic communists into ministry positions of "real power," according to this official. The domestic instability of the country prompted CIA Director Allan Dulles to say publicly that Iraq was "the most dangerous spot in the world."

In the mid-1980s, Miles Copeland, a veteran CIA operative, told UPI the CIA had enjoyed "close ties" with Qasim's ruling Baath Party, just as it had close connections with the intelligence service of Egyptian leader Gamel Abd Nassar. In a recent public statement, Roger Morris, a former National Security Council staffer in the 1970s, confirmed this claim, saying that the CIA had chosen the authoritarian and anti-communist Baath Party "as its instrument."

According to another former senior State Department official, Saddam, while only in his early 20s, became a part of a U.S. plot to get rid of Qasim. According to this source, Saddam was installed in an apartment in Baghdad on al-Rashid Street directly opposite Qasim's office in Iraq's Ministry of Defense, to observe Qasim's movements.

Adel Darwish, Middle East expert and author of "Unholy Babylon," said the move was done "with full knowledge of the CIA," and that Saddam's CIA handler was an Iraqi dentist working for CIA and Egyptian intelligence. U.S. officials separately confirmed Darwish's account.

Darwish said that Saddam's paymaster was Capt. Abdel Maquid Farid, the assistant military attaché at the Egyptian Embassy who paid for the apartment from his own personal account. Three former senior U.S. officials have confirmed that this is accurate.

The assassination was set for Oct. 7, 1959, but it was completely botched. Accounts differ. One former CIA official said that the 22-year-old Saddam lost his nerve and began firing too soon, killing Qasim's driver and only wounding Qasim in the shoulder and arm. Darwish told UPI that one of the assassins had bullets that did not fit his gun and that another had a hand grenade that got stuck in the lining of his coat.

"It bordered on farce," a former senior U.S. intelligence official said. But Qasim, hiding on the floor of his car, escaped death, and Saddam, whose calf had been grazed by a fellow would-be assassin, escaped to Tikrit, thanks to CIA and Egyptian intelligence agents, several U.S. government officials said.

CONTINUED...

http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Security-Industry/2003/04/10/Exclusive-Saddam-key-in-early-CIA-plot/65571050017416/

IRAQGATE: United States Illegally Armed Saddam Hussein

EXCERPT...

Iraqgate Scandal Documents
National Security Decision Directive

Text Transcript | Document Image 1 | Document Image 2 | Document Image 3 |

This National Security Decision Directive, signed by President George Bush on October 2, 1989, states that "normal relations between the United States and Iraq would serve our long-term interests" and mandates a series of moves to strengthen economic and military ties. One year after ordering these attempts to improve relations with Saddam Hussein's government, Bush was preparing for war against "the butcher of Baghdad."

Secret Message From James Baker to Tariq Aziz

Text Transcript | Document Image 1 | Document Image 2 |
This October 21, 1989 cable carries the text of a secret message from Secretary of State James Baker to Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz. Baker informs Aziz, whose government 13 months previously had gassed Kurdish villages, that "the United States seeks a broadened and deepened relationship with Iraq." President Bush's policy, writes Baker, "is to work to strengthen the relationship between the United States and Iraq whenever possible."

CONTINUED...

http://www.apfn.net/messageboard/8-10-03/discussion.cgi.53.html

ARTICLE ARCHIVE

From 1992: On the floor of the House, an exasperated Henry Gonzalez exposes the first Bush administration's longstanding support for Saddam Hussein, and the insanity of imperial war.

THE BANCA NAZIONALE DEL LAVORO SCANDAL:

HIGH-LEVEL POLITICS TRY TO HIDE THE EVIDENCE

Henry B. Gonzalez, (TX-20)

(House of Representatives - September 14, 1992)


The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Dooley). Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Texas is recognized for 60 minutes.

SNIP...

You had E. Howard Hunt. The only thing I know about E. Howard Hunt was 2 years ago in July, in fact July 14, I go back to my district every weekend, and I came in that Saturday morning. I arrived at the San Antonio Airport, and there was a couple there that used to be in my district and moved to a small town up in what we call the hill country.

They recognized me and said, `Oh, Congressman. How are you? We are so glad to see you.'
I saluted them and addressed them. I was leaving when this individual comes up. I had never met him before, but from his pictures and all I could tell that what he said was true.

He said, `You are Congressman Gonzalez?'

I said, `Well, I am E. Howard Hunt, and you are nothing but a--' and then he used a bad word.
Well, I had two little bags I was carrying, very small, so I just dropped them. I noticed he had a shoulder holster with a pistol. It was obvious.

So I said, `Mister, since you want to use sailors' language, here is what I think of you.' And then I used some choice words.

I said, `Let me tell you something else. You take one step forward closer to me or you make a move for the gun in your shoulder holster, and I will swear to you I will take it from you and in self defense I will kill you with it.'

He looked at me startled, turned around, and walked away. I picked up my bags and walked out of the airport.

That is all I know. Now, was he E. Howard Hunt? Well, he sure looked like him. What was his beef? I do not know. What was he doing in San Antonio? I do not know. Why does he still have a shoulder holster and pistol? I do not know. He is ex-CIA. They say ex, but there ain't no such thing.

(Page: H8353)

SOURCE: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/congress/1992_cr/h920914g.htm

This incredible image is by Abbas Kowsa and comes from his series Shade of Earth: 2007-8 which documents some of the “hundreds of thousands of Iranians visit the fronts of the Iran -Iraq war (1980-1988) during their New Year (Noruz) holiday…

The pilgrims, often family members of those who died, travel with buses from all over the country to visit the places where the fighting was the heaviest. Iran lost over half a million soldiers during the eight year trench war with neighbouring Iraq.”

The photograph and another from the series are currently are view at the Gallery of Photography in Dublin in an exhibition of works shortlisted for the Prix Pictet award.

SOURCE: http://nialldebuitlear.com/blog/?p=771

The enemy of my enemy is my customer:

Iraq and the Bush administrations

by Margie Burns
Online Journal, Sept. 5, 2002

Saddam Hussein received tremendous help from Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, and from US corporations, and continues to receive passive economic assistance from the current Bush administration. One article could hardly list everything the Reagan and Bush administrations have given Iraq, but even a quick overview suggests the picture.

Reagan official Howard Teicher was a staffer for the National Security Council from 1982 to 1987, where he had regular contact with CIA Director William Casey and traveled with Donald Rumsfeld to Iraq. In a 1995 affidavit for a civil lawsuit, Teicher describes Reagan's Iraq policy as one of consistent, unequivocal support for Saddam Hussein in the war against Iran, when Iran was perceived to be the greater threat (to Saudi Arabia).

"CIA Director Casey personally spearheaded the effort to ensure that Iraq had sufficient military weapons, ammunition and vehicles to avoid losing the Iran-Iraq war . . . the United States actively supported the Iraqi war effort by supplying the Iraqis with billions of dollars of credits, by providing US military intelligence and advice to the Iraqis, and by closely monitoring third country arms sales to Iraq to make sure Iraq had the military weaponry required. The United States also provide strategic operational advice to the Iraqis to better use their assets in combat. For example, in 1986, President Reagan sent a secret message to Saddam Hussein telling him that Iraq should step up its air war and bombing of Iran. This message was delivered by Vice President Bush who communicated it to Egyptian President Mubarak, who in turn passed the message to Saddam Hussein. Similar . . . advice was passed to Saddam Hussein through various meetings with European and Middle Eastern heads of state," Teicher said.

"I personally attended meetings in which CIA Director Casey or CIA Deputy Director Gates noted the need for Iraq to have certain weapons such as cluster bombs and anti-armor penetrators in order to stave off the Iranian attacks. When I joined the NSC staff in early 1982, CIA Director Casey was adamant that cluster bombs were a perfect 'force multiplier' that would allow the Iraqis to defend against the 'human waves' of Iranian attackers. I recorded those comments in the minutes . . . ," Teicher noted.

Teicher's NSC files are in the Ronald Reagan presidential archives in Simi Valley, California. The affidavit can be found online under "Real History Archives."

Moving to direct military aid, in 1982 President Reagan legalized conventional military sales to Iraq. Resulting sales amounted to more than a billion dollars' worth of exports with military ends.

Along with intelligence--if you call it that--and money and arms, the United States also furnished Saddam with biological and chemical capabilities. The US Department of Commerce licensed 70 biological exports to Iraq between 1985 and 1989, including at least 21 batches of lethal strains of anthrax, sent by the American Type Culture Collection, then situated in Rockville and now in Virginia. (It shares one building with George Mason University.) Shipments continued beyond Reagan under President Bush, after the Iran-Iraq war ended in 1988. In other words, Saddam Hussein was still able to purchase biological products for at least four more years after the justification of US/administration worry about Iran was past.

Also between 1985 and 1989, Iraq's Atomic Energy Commission got 17 batches of "various toxins and bacteria." In 1985, the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) shipped at least three samples of West Nile Fever virus to Basra University. Other lethal samples included botulins and E. coli.

In 1994, Senator Don Riegle (D-MI, 1976-94) reported a list of lethal bio-products sent to Iraq. Their presence was verified by UN inspectors in Iraq.

CONTINUED...

http://www.hermes-press.com/burns.htm

The Teicher affidavit merited only a brief reference in a “defense & diplomacy” round-up in the Washington Post (2/4/95). The New York Times also published a cursory account of the new information (2/5/95); almost all other major newspapers ignored it. Indeed, among America’s major papers and networks, only the Miami Herald has given the trial regular coverage.

Beyond the Teledyne case itself, the affidavit raises questions about the credibility of leading Reagan/Bush figures. During the 1991 hearings to confirm Robert Gates as CIA director, Gates denied under oath that he had played a role in Cardoen cluster bomb sales to Iraq, as arms dealers had charged. Teicher’s affidavit provides new evidence that Gates misled the Senate.

Teicher’s affidavit also bolsters a New Yorker article (11/2/92) by reporters Murray Waas and Craig Unger, which asserted that Vice President George Bush in 1986 urged Saddam Hussein to intensify his air war against Iran–in order to increase Iran’s demand for U.S.- made anti-aircraft weapons. Appearing two weeks before the ’92 election, the New Yorker article was attacked in the conservative press. On the Wall Street Journal‘s editorial page (10/28/94), Steven Emerson mocked the article as a “Byzantine conspiracy theory.”

In one of those post-modern political moments, fictional reporters in the “Doonesbury” comic strip questioned Bush about the New Yorker story. But no real-life reporter covering the Bush campaign asked the president about his tactical air-war advice to Saddam. Now, however, Teicher has corroborated much of the Waas/Unger story.

Given the significance of the Teledyne trial and Teicher’s affidavit in judging the actions and integrity of the Reagan/Bush and Clinton administrations, why the near-total press blackout? -- Robert Parry

http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/iraqgate-confession-and-cover-up/

Clinton & a BCCI Lawyer

Robert Parry, ConsortiumNews (1995)

WASHINGTON -- The Clinton Administration is giving serious consideration to putting a former BCCI lawyer in charge of policing drug money-laundering. One senior administration official told The Consortium that E. Lawrence Barcella Jr. was "at the top of the list" for the post of under-secretary of the Treasury for law enforcement. Barcella is said to have impressed Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin in a job interview. But the senior official said others in the administration opposed Barcella's appointment.

In the 1980s, Barcella and his law firm earned more than $2 million from the Bank of Credit and Commerce International for giving legal advice, lobbying and handling public relations problems. Barcella denounced as "absurd" early press allegations that BCCI had secretly gained control of First American Bank in Washington. (The story turned out to be true.) In 1991, BCCI collapsed amid scandal over its ties to international drug money-laundering and influence-peddling.

A former assistant U.S. attorney in Washington, Barcella had close ties to President Reagan's foreign policy team, especially former national security consultant Michael Ledeen. Barcella played a minor role in the Iran-contra affair (advising the Pentagon how to skirt the Arms Export Control Act and still ship weapons to the Nicaraguan contra rebels). He also directed the House October Surprise task force.

https://consortiumnews.com/archive/story3.html

Iraqgate Cover-Up Goes After Defense Lawyers

Robert Parry, ConsortiumNews, (1995)

WASHINGTON -- Outside the view of the national media, the federal government is escalating its now-bipartisan war against the Iraqgate allegations and those who made them. According to legal sources, federal charges are being weighed against attorneys and a former Reagan administration official for publicizing claims that the CIA authorized covert military aid to Saddam Hussein's Iraq during the 1980s.

A closed hearing was scheduled Dec. 14 in Miami for possible sanctions against lawyers, who defended Teledyne Inc. and one of its salesmen in a criminal case earlier this year. That hearing was postponed. But sources said a federal grand jury has begun hearing testimony on a related complaint over submission of a defense affidavit in that case.

"There's something going on," said federal prosecutor Frank Tamen. "I can confirm that." But Tamen refused to provide anything more specific about the pending investigation.

Last January, defense attorney Gerald Houlihan angered the federal prosecutors by publicly filing a sworn affidavit from Howard Teicher, a staff aide on Ronald Reagan's National Security Council. Teicher asserted that CIA Director William J. Casey and his deputy, Robert M. Gates, "authorized, approved and assisted" the delivery of cluster bombs to Iraq as part of a covert strategy to bolster Saddam Hussein in his war with Iran.

But both the Bush and Clinton administrations have denied that any such policy to arm Iraq existed. Immediately, the federal government sealed Teciher's affidavit as a state secret, whileassailing his credibility. Teicher's statements were kept fromthe jury on grounds of relevance, and he was blocked from testifying.

With Teicher's claims excluded, a Teledyne salesman named Edward Johnson was convicted last April of illegally selling explosive zirconium pellets to Chilean arms manufacturer Carlos Cardoen, who then shipped them to Iraq as part of cluster bombs.

Though Johnson's appeal is expected to challenge the decision to exclude Teicher's testimony, the Teledyne salesman must begin serving a 3 1/2-year prison sentence on Jan. 4. Meanwhile, the federal government is taking aim at those who came to Johnson's defense. The possible criminal complaints against them range from perjury to violation of federal secrecy rules.

Some defense attorneys expressed concern that the government's strategy could intimidate lawyers who defend clients in national security cases. "It scares you," said one lawyer close to the defense. "It's intended to scare you." The lawyer spoke only after an assurance of anonymity.

https://consortiumnews.com/archive/story1.html

Hillary Signals Free Pass for Bush

By Robert Parry
December 31, 2007

Hillary Clinton’s campaign is signaling that a second Clinton presidency will follow the look-to-the-future, don’t-worry-about-accountability approach toward Republican wrongdoing that marked Bill Clinton’s years in office.

That was the significance of former President Clinton’s remarkable Dec. 17 comment that his wife’s first act in the White House would be to send Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush on an around-the-world mission to repair America’s damaged image.

“The first thing she intends to do is to send me and former President Bush and a number of other people around the world to tell them that America is open for business and cooperation again,” said Bill Clinton, who has accompanied the senior Bush on international humanitarian missions over the past several years.

What was perhaps most stunning about the remark was its assumption that Americans would be impressed that the country’s two dominant political dynasties would team up in early 2009 to tidy up some of the mess created by the headstrong son of the senior dynasty, the Bush Family.

The Bushes and the Clintons – who have held pieces of the nation’s executive power for more than a quarter century dating back to George H.W. Bush’s election as Vice President in 1980 – essentially would be keeping matters within the board rooms of the Washington Establishment.

In responding to Bill Clinton’s remark, George H.W. Bush issued a statement making clear he would not join in any slap at his son’s foreign policy. That also means Hillary Clinton’s “first thing” is unthinkable if her new administration were trying to exact any accountability from George W. Bush for his wrongdoing.

So, to get the senior Bush’s cooperation on the worldwide tour, there would have to be an implicit understanding that the second Clinton administration wouldn’t investigate the younger Bush’s crimes – from authorizing torture, ordering warrantless wiretaps, exposing CIA officer Valerie Plame’s identity, waging war under false pretenses and other abuses of executive powers.

If Hillary Clinton does get elected, you can expect to hear lots of talk about “leaving that one for the historians” or about the danger of increased partisanship if the Democrats were viewed as trying to “get even” by exposing Bush’s offenses.

The wise heads of Washington surely would nod in approval at this “bipartisanship” of a Democratic administration deciding not to get bogged down in “refighting the battles” of the second Bush administration.

The First Clinton-Bush Deal

That’s exactly what happened in 1993 when Bill Clinton entered the White House after defeating George H.W. Bush.

Clinton and other senior Democrats shut down or wrapped up four investigations that implicated senior Republicans, including Bush, in constitutional abuses of power and criminal wrongdoing during the Reagan-Bush years.

The Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages case was still alive, with special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh furious over new evidence that President George H.W. Bush may have obstructed justice by withholding his own notes from investigators and then ducking an interview that Walsh had put off until after the 1992 elections.

Bush also had sabotaged the investigation by pardoning six Iran-Contra defendants on Christmas Eve 1992, possibly the first presidential pardon ever issued to protect the same President from criminal liability.

In late 1992, Congress also was investigating Bush’s alleged role in secretly aiding Iraq’s Saddam Hussein during and after Hussein’s eight-year-long war with Iran.

Representative Henry Gonzalez, a Democrat from Texas who had served three decades in Congress, had exposed intricate financial schemes that the Reagan-Bush administrations employed to assist Hussein. There also were allegations of indirect U.S. military aid through third countries, including the supply of dangerous chemicals to Iraq.

Lesser known investigations were examining two other sets of alleged wrongdoing: the so-called October Surprise issue (allegations that Bush and other Republicans interfered with Jimmy Carter’s hostage negotiations with Iran during the 1980 campaign) and the Passportgate affair (evidence that Bush operatives improperly searched Clinton’s passport file in 1992, looking for dirt that could be used to discredit his patriotism and secure reelection for Bush).

All told, the four sets of allegations, if true, would paint an unflattering portrait of the 12-year Republican rule, with two illegal dirty tricks (October Surprise and Passportgate) book-ending ill-considered national security schemes in the Middle East (Iran-Contra and Iraqgate).

Had the full stories been told, the American people might have perceived the legacies of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush quite differently.

But the Clinton administration and congressional Democrats dropped all four investigations beginning in early 1993, either through benign neglect – by failing to hold hearings and keeping the issues alive in the news media – or by actively closing the door on investigative leads.

Clinton let George H.W. Bush retreat gracefully into retirement. [For details on the scandals, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.]

Joining the Cover-ups

In his 2004 memoir, My Life, Clinton wrote that he “disagreed with the [Iran-Contra] pardons and could have made more of them but didn’t.” Clinton cited several reasons for giving his predecessor a pass.

“I wanted the country to be more united, not more divided, even if that split would be to my political advantage,” Clinton wrote. “Finally, President Bush had given decades of service to our country, and I thought we should allow him to retire in peace, leaving the matter between him and his conscience.”

By his choice of words, Clinton revealed how he saw information – not something that belonged to the American people and had intrinsic value to the democratic process – but as a potential weapon that could be put to “political advantage.”

On the Iran-Contra pardons, Clinton saw himself as generously passing up a club that he could have wielded to bludgeon an adversary. He chose instead to join in a cover-up in the name of national unity.

Similarly, the Democratic congressional leadership ignored the flood of incriminating evidence pouring in to the “October Surprise” task force in December 1992.

Chief counsel Lawrence Barcella told me later that he urged task force chairman Lee Hamilton to extend the investigation several months to examine this new evidence of Republican guilt, but Hamilton ordered Barcella simply to wrap up the probe with a finding that the 1980 Reagan-Bush campaign had done nothing wrong.

Some of the new incriminating evidence – including an unprecedented report from the Russian government about its knowledge of illicit Republican contacts with Iran – was simply hidden away in boxes that I discovered two years later and dubbed “The October Surprise X-Files.”

The “Iraqgate” investigation met a similar fate under Clinton’s Justice Department, which chose to ignore or dismiss evidence of covert shipments of war materiel to Saddam Hussein during the 1980s.

In 1995, when former Reagan national security official Howard Teicher came forward with an affidavit describing secret U.S.-backed arms shipments to Iraq, Clinton’s Justice Department went on the offensive – against Teicher, trying to discredit him and bullying him into silence.

That same year, the Clinton administration did nothing when Reagan’s 1984 campaign chief Ed Rollins wrote in his 1996 memoir Bare Knuckles and Back Rooms that a top Filipino politician had admitted delivering an illegal $10 million cash payment to Reagan from Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

"I was the guy who gave the ten million from Marcos to your campaign," the Filipino told Rollins in 1991, according to the memoir. "I was the guy who made the arrangements and delivered the cash personally. ...It was a personal gift from Marcos to Reagan."

The stunning anecdote did attract some press coverage in 1996 but the story died because the Clinton administration made no effort to follow it up. No government investigator demanded that Rollins reveal the identities of the Filipino politician and the Republican lobbyist who handled the pay-off.

(Rollins is now chairman of Republican Mike Huckabee’s presidential campaign.) [For details on Marcos-Reagan case, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Huckabee’s Chairman Hid Payoff Secret.”]

Proving Themselves

In the mid-1990s, even as the Republican attack machine pounded the Clintons with allegations about alleged ethical lapses and marital infidelities, the Clinton administration acted like it was determined to prove that it could be trusted with the nation’s dark secrets, that it could cover up wrongdoing with the best of them.

The consequence for America, however, was different. With George H.W. Bush’s dubious public record whitewashed, the door was opened to the restoration of the Bush Dynasty. If the full truth had been known about former President Bush, it’s hard to conceive how George W. Bush ever could have become President.

Now, as Hillary Clinton seeks a strong showing in the Iowa caucuses to solidify her image as the inevitable Democratic nominee, she appears ready to pick up the mantle as the Democratic protector of the Bush Family’s legacy. Though she may utter some tough words about George W. Bush on the campaign trail, she’s not likely to follow up if she wins the White House.

If Bill Clinton is telling the truth about Hillary Clinton’s “first thing” to do as President – recruiting George H.W. Bush for a worldwide goodwill tour on behalf of America’s image – that will require closing the door on any serious investigation of George W. Bush.

The two dynastic families then can look to the future, again.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.

https://consortiumnews.com/2007/123107.html