AMERICAN JUDAS
Selling the Security of America and the World for 30 Pieces of Silver
By Robert Paulsen
Compiled From the Research by Posters on “The Plame Indictment Threads”
At democraticunderground.com
1st Edition
[some links need updating]
A. Introduction
This
paper is intended as a supplement to The Waterman Paper and an
exploration into Goal #3: Why Cheney Exposed Plame. It involves
researching possible connections between businesses connected to Vice
President Dick Cheney that may be associated with the sale of WMD
components to countries in the Middle East and Asia.
In addition
to reviewing known information regarding the “leaking” of CIA operative
Valerie Plame’s identity and the nature of her work, there will be an
overview of A.Q. Khan’s network of nuclear proliferation, a listing of
compromising positions involving financial ties in Cheney’s past and
finally an exploration into possible links connecting Cheney to nuclear
proliferation markets for profit.
All evidence shall be cited in a source guide available upon request.
B. Valerie Plame’s “Sting Operation”
On
July 14,2003, Robert Novak exposed Valerie Plame’s identity as a CIA
agent in his syndicated column. He sourced his story to two senior
White House officials. (http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0602/p08s02-comv.html
) It is important to understand that, as Plame’s husband, former
Ambassador Joseph Wilson says, “Compromising the officer means
compromising a career, a network, and every person with who the officer
might have ever worked. Slips of the tongue cost people their
lives.”(The Politics of Truth by Joseph Wilson, p. 13.)
What was
the nature of this career, this network that was compromised? Joe Klein
hints at the broad outlines of this nature. “Furthermore, there is
intense anger over the White House’s revealing the identity of Plame,
who may have been active in a sting operation involving the trafficking
of WMD components.”(http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,11010... )
According
to Wayne Madsen, the cover company that Plame was connected with was a
CIA firm called Brewster, Jennings & Associates. “Active since
1994, Brewster-Jennings was instrumental in tracking the proliferation
of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and had agents or correspondents
in a number of countries…Sensitive CIA operations that were compromised
by the leak included companies, government officials, and individuals
associated with the nuclear smuggling network of Pakistan’s chief
nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.”(http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/062504_grand_... )
Yet
in spite of, or perhaps as a result of, the compromises resulting from
the leak, the CIA helped expose Khan’s network, according to Newsweek..
It involves a CIA investigation into a company in Malaysia called Scomi
connected with an A.Q. Khan “middleman” named Bukhari Sayed Abu Tahir.
Last August, the company's name was found stamped in bold letters on
five crates of centrifuge parts seized en route to Libya. Since then
Scomi has been at the center of an international detective story that
has uncovered an astonishing global nuclear-weapons "black market." All
of it leads back to Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who fathered
the underground network. In pursuit of both profits and a kind of
Islamic nuclear parity, Khan passed on equipment and know-how to Iran
and Libya, and made offers to Iraq and most recently Syria, officials
say. Khan also helped North Korea's covert program.(http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4270904 )
Is
it possible that Plame’s “sting operation” directly tracked and helped
expose the nuclear proliferation network of A.Q. Khan? If so, why was
Plame’s operation exposed from the White House? Joe Klein says, “’Only
a very high-ranking official could have had access to the knowledge
that Plame was on the payroll’ of the CIA, an intelligence source told me.”(http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,11010...
) And Mohamed El Baradei says A.Q. Khan is just the tip of the nuclear
iceberg. “Dr. Khan was not working alone,” International Atomic Energy
Association chief Mohamed El Baradei told reporters, adding he had help
from people in many countries.(http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_7-2... )
Could
Cheney have had a financial relationship with the Nuclear Walmart,
which would have provided a motive for exposing Plame’s operation? We
shall explore this in sections D and E of this paper. First it is
important to understand what is currently known about A.Q. Khan’s
network before we uncover Cheney’s connection with it. The purpose of
this examination is not intended as a comprehensive index of the
network, but as an exploration into some of the more sinister elements
of the network that led to relationships not only among state sponsors
of terrorism, but to relationships with terrorist organizations
themselves.
C. A.Q. Khan’s Nuclear Walmart
Nuclear
experts are aghast at the size of the network, which extends from
Switzerland to Japan to Dubai. Over 30 years, Khan put together what
Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency,
called "a veritable Wal-Mart" for nuclear-weapons buyers, a
not-so-secret netherworld where proliferation meshed with
globalization. Khan even held nuclear-related symposiums. "The horse is
out of the barn. At this point, we can't stop the technology from
spreading," says former Clinton official Gary Samore. One senior U.S.
official told NEWSWEEK that Khan's role in destabilizing the 21st
century will "loom up there" with Hitler's and Stalin's impact in the
20th. Even so, most of the A.Q. Khan network's key operatives will
likely escape punishment, officials concede.(http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4270904 )
Who were some of the people and organizations connected with A.Q. Khan?
1.
B.S.A. Tahir - The recent investigations into the clandestine nuclear
proliferation activities of A.Q.Khan, the so-called father of the
Pakistan atom bomb, have revealed that Bukhary Seyed Abu Tahir, a Sri
Lankan Tamil Muslim of Indian origin, married in Malysia and with
business interests in Kuala Lumpur and Dubai, was one of the external
kingpins of Pakistan's clandestine nuclear procurement network. In a
speech at the National Defence University of Washington DC in February
last, President Bush had described this Sri Lankan Tamil-speaking
Muslim as the "chief financial officer and money-launderer" of
A.Q.Khan's clandestine operations.(http://www.saag.org/papers11/paper1026.html
) As chief financial officer, B.S.A. Tahir played an important role in
his connection with a Malaysian company called Scomi that will be
explored in greater detail in section E of this paper.
2.
Lashkar-e-Toiba - or LET is a terrorist group of Pakistan, consisting
of Pakistani, Afghan and Arab cadres, headed by Pakistani
office-bearers, with its headquarters at Muridke near Lahore. Its
annual conventions at Muridke are attended, amongst others, by serving
and retired officers of the Pakistani military and intelligence
establishment, by serving and retired scientists of the Pakistani
nuclear and missile establishment and by political leaders.
Amongst
those, who regularly attend its annual conventions, are Lt. Gen. (retd)
Hamid Gul and Lt.Gen.(retd) Javed Nasir, both former Directors-General
of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI),Dr. Abdul Qadir Khan, the
self-styled father of the Pakistani atom bomb, Dr.Sultan Bashiruddin
Mahmood, the former scientist of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission
who was recently detained by the Pakistani authorities under US
pressure for being in contact with bin Laden and Mohd.Rafique Tarar,
former President of Pakistan.(http://www.saag.org/papers4/paper381.html )
To
finance its day-to-day activities, the LeT leverages its contacts in
Saudi Arabia as well as launches donation campaigns with overseas
Pakistanis, especially middle class and wealthy Punjabis in Britain,
Australia and the Middle East. According to Jane's Terrorism &
Insurgency Centre, Osama bin Laden has also financed LeT activities
until recently. The LeT, under its new name JuD, uses its outreach
networks including schools, social service groups and religious
publications to attract and brainwash recruits for jihad in Kashmir and
other places.(http://www.crikey.com.au/politics/2004/05/18-0003.html )
Lashkar-e-Toiba
(LET) has been showing increasing interest in taking jihad to the
Muslims of the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka. The LET is very close to
the ISI and it would not have taken its initial moves to explore the
possibility of using Sri Lanka as a clandestine base for its activties
and for creating sleeper cells there without the knowledge and prior
clearance of the ISI.(http://www.saag.org/papers11/paper1026.html
) Since there is such a close relationship between ISI and this
terrorist organization whose conventions ISI officials and A.Q. Khan
attended, it is important to take a closer look at ISI, as well as
another cited convention attendant, Dr. S.B. Mahmood, to uncover the
relationship they share with al Qaeda and expose how their actions
aided them.
a. Inter Services Intelligence Agency (ISI) The
ISI plays a much more significant role in the Pakistani government than
do its counterparts in other countries. Time Magazine has noted, "Even
by the shadowy standards of spy agencies, the ISI is notorious. It is
commonly branded 'a state within the state,' or Pakistan's 'invisible
government.'"
The ISI grew into its present form during the
war between the Soviet Union and mujaheddin guerrillas in Afghanistan
in the 1980s. The CIA thought the Afghan war could be Russia's own
costly Vietnam War, and they funneled billions to the mujaheddin
resistance to keep them a thorn in Russia's side. The strategy worked:
Soviet soldiers withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, and the Soviet Union
collapsed two years later, partly due to the costs of the war.
But
the costs to keep the mujaheddin fighting were staggering, with
estimates ranging between $6 billion and $40 billion. While a
substantial portion of this amount came from the CIA and the Saudi
Arabian government, who were both funneling the money through the ISI,
much of the cost was deferred by Afghanistan's opium trade. Although
the Afghan war has ended, the ISI has continued to profit from opium.
In 1999, the United Nations Drug Control Programme estimated that the
ISI was making around $2.5 billion annually from the sale of illegal
drugs. The drug trade helped unite the ISI and Osama bin Laden, who was
said to have taken a 15% cut of the Afghan drug trade money in exchange
for protecting smugglers and laundering their profits. By 1994, the
Taliban, a group of Muslim radicals studying in Pakistan, began
conquering Afghanistan. The Taliban had been recruited by the ISI and
molded into a fanatical force that conquered Afghanistan's capital by
1996. CNN reported, "The Taliban are widely alleged to be the creation
of Pakistan's military intelligence . Experts say that
explains the Taliban's swift military successes." The ISI didn't create
the Taliban simply for strategic reasons; they shared the Taliban's
extreme radical vision. As the Wall Street Journal remarked in November
2001, "Despite their clean chins and pressed uniforms, the ISI men are
as deeply fundamentalist as any bearded fanatic; the ISI created the
Taliban as their own instrument and still supports it."
The
relationship between the US and the ISI is hard to fathom. On September
4, 2001, ISI Director Mahmood Ahmed arrived in Washington, D.C. On
September 10, a Pakistani newspaper reported on the visit, saying that
it had "triggered speculation about the agenda of his mysterious
meetings at the Pentagon and National Security Council" as well as
meetings with CIA Director George Tenet, unspecified officials at the
White House and the Pentagon, and his "most important meeting" with
Mark Grossman, US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. In
May 2001, both CIA Director George Tenet and Deputy Secretary of State
Richard Armitage had visited South Asia. It's not known if they met
with Mahmood or anyone else in the ISI, but according to credible news
reports, Tenet had "unusually long" consultations with President
Musharraf. It is also worth noting that Armitage is known for his
"large circle of friends in the Pakistani military and ISI" as well as
his connections to the Iran-Contra affair. On the morning of September
11, Lt. Gen. Mahmood was at a breakfast meeting at the Capitol with the
chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, Senator Bob
Graham (D) and Representative Porter Goss (R). The meeting was said to
have lasted at least until the second plane hit the World Trade Center.
Goss is a self-admitted 10-year veteran of the CIA's clandestine
operations wing. Goss and Graham were later the heads of the joint
House-Senate investigation into the September 11 attacks, and Goss in
particular made headlines for saying there was no "smoking gun"
indicating that the government had sufficient foreknowledge to prevent
the September 11 attacks. (http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/main/essays... )
1) Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed - On October 7, 2001, Pakistani President
Musharraf fired Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed, the head of the ISI. The next
day, some newspapers, mostly in India but also in Pakistan, shockingly
said he was fired for his role in the 9/11 attacks. For instance, a
Pakistani newspaper stated, "Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed has been replaced
after the FBI investigators established credible links between him and
Umar Sheikh, one of the three militants released in exchange for
passengers of the hijacked Indian Airlines plane in 1999... Informed
sources said there were enough indications with the US intelligence
agencies that it was at Gen. Mahmood's instruction that Sheikh had
transferred 100,000 US dollars into the account of Mohammed Atta..." In
the US, surprisingly, the only mention was in a one short piece in the
Wall Street Journal, mentioning that, "The US authorities ... confirm the fact that $100,000 wired to WTC hijacker Mohammed Atta from Pakistan by Ahmad Umar Sheikh at the insistence of General Mahmood." (http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/main/essays... )
2) Saeed Sheikh - He was born in Britain with the name Ahmed Omar Saeed
Sheikh. In 1993 he emerged in Pakistan as a member of a militant group
fighting for the liberation of Kashmir from India. Pakistan has been
fighting India for years over control of Kashmir, and it appears Saeed
was put on the ISI payroll around this time, to help the Pakistani
cause in Kashmir. In 1994, Saeed began training at a training camp in
Afghanistan. He soon was teaching the classes. He developed close ties
with al-Qaeda while training there. By the end of the year he was known
as Osama bin Laden’s "favored son" or "my special son." Even more
curiously, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review suggested in March 2002,
"There are many in Musharraf's government who believe that Saeed
Sheikh's power comes not from the ISI, but from his connections with
our own CIA. The theory is that ... Saeed Sheikh was bought and paid
for." (http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/main/essays... )
While
this exploration may seem like a diversion from finding the answer to
why Valerie Plame had her cover blown as a CIA agent, it is intended to
illustrate that the network was so vast that many relationships
overlapped, and the CIA was no stranger to the network. Now, getting
back to the focus of Plame’s operation, WMD trafficking, here is a
seemingly altruistic organization created by a Lashkar-e-Toiba
convention attendant whose actions are worth noting.
b.Ummah
Tameer-e-Nau (UTN) - Reconstruction of the Muslim Ummah, a
non-governmental organization whose stated mission was to conduct
relief work and investment in Afghanistan. It was established by two
well-respected Pakistani nuclear scientists, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood
and Chaudiri Abdul Majeed. Not much is known about Majeed. But Mahmood
had a long career in Pakistan's nuclear program and held a variety of
senior positions. The Associated Press reported on October 24, 2001
that officials in the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) said
Mahmood had been a director for the nation's nuclear program and
remained in key positions until his retirement. In publications, he is
credited with playing a pioneering role in establishing the uranium
enrichment project in Pakistan. Subsequently, Abdul Qadeer Khan took
over and is known as the father of Pakistan's uranium enrichment
program. He ended his career as Director for Nuclear Power at the PAEC.
For his outstanding contributions to Pakistan's nuclear program, he was
awarded the prestigious Sitara-e-Imtiaz award by the President of
Pakistan in March 1999.
Mahmood is reported to have resigned
from the PAEC in the spring of 1999 in protest of the government's
willingness to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) after
Pakistan conducted a series of underground tests in May 1998. There was
also pressure put on Mahmood to resign. The New York Times reported
that the United States wanted Mahmood removed after it learned that he
had sympathies for Islamic militant groups, including the Taliban.
Mahmood was often publicly supportive of the Taliban in Pakistan and in
speeches at universities said that the Taliban was a model for
Pakistan. Even after September 11th, Mahmood remained supportive of the
Taliban, addressing a gathering of intellectuals in mid-October 2001
where he proposed a three-month cease-fire to resolve the situation in
Afghanistan. Senior Pakistani officials reportedly were concerned
because Mahmood had been vocally advocating extensive production of
weapon-grade plutonium and uranium to help equip other Islamic nations
with these materials.
According to the Washington Post, however,
Mahmood and Majeed admitted that they had long discussions with al
Qaeda officials in August 2001 about nuclear, chemical, and biological
weapons. Pakistani intelligence officials told the Washington Post that
they believe that the scientists used UTN partially as a cover to
conduct secret talks with bin Laden. During repeated UTN visits to
Afghanistan, UTN directors and members met with bin Laden, al Qaeda
leaders, and Mullah Omar and discussed the development of chemical,
biological, and nuclear weapons; UTN has been linked to WAFA
Humanitarian Organization and Al Rashid Trust, two other NGOs with ties
to al Qaeda that have been designated as supporters of terrorism under
Executive Order 13224.
During 2001, Mahmood met with Mullah Omar
and bin Laden. During a follow-up meeting where bin Laden's associate
indicated he had nuclear material and wanted to know how to use it to
make a weapon, Mahmood provided information about the infrastructure
needed for a nuclear weapon program and the effects of nuclear weapons;
and after the fall of the Taliban regime, searches of UTN locations in
Kabul yielded documents setting out a plan to kidnap a U.S. attaché and
outlining basic nuclear physics related to nuclear weapons.
In
the August 2001 meeting, Mahmood and his colleagues appear to have
provided al Qaeda a road map to building nuclear weapons. This
information is typically very helpful in understanding the steps that
must be accomplished in making a nuclear weapon, identifying the
necessary equipment and technology, and locating suppliers of key
equipment. In addition, Mahmood and his colleagues appear to have
recruited other scientists with more direct knowledge of making nuclear
weapons.
Transfer of sensitive nuclear weapons information could
have happened in many ways. The scientists could have provided direct
assistance to al Qaeda's nuclear weapons program, including nuclear
weapons and RDD information. They may have obtained secret documents
during the course of their career that they passed to the Taliban or al
Qaeda. They also could have been a "funnel" through which Pakistani
nuclear weapons experts provided sensitive assistance, including
documents or technical advice. The transfer of sensitive information by
UTN officials or their colleagues may have occurred either in Pakistan
or Afghanistan.
UTN officials may have had another advantage.
The success of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program depended on extensive
illicit foreign procurement. Mahmood headed a large reactor project
that also needed to import illicitly or secretly many items, including
sensitive technology, materials, components, and manufacturing
equipment. He and his colleagues must have had extensive information
about procuring sensitive items for a nuclear weapons program.
Several
UTN projects were aimed at reestablishing Afghanistan's manufacturing,
scientific, and engineering capabilities in universities and
industries. Projects focused on such reconstruction could have provided
a convenient cover for importing sensitive items for WMD programs. Even
if the procurement was illicit, a procurement effort is more likely to
succeed if the exporting company believes it is sending items to a
civil institution. Because many UTN projects were medical or
humanitarian in nature, imports to these projects may have been exempt
from the UN embargo on Afghanistan.
Some nuclear dual-use
equipment, such as vacuum furnaces, would have been hard to procure,
especially for al Qaeda. The involvement of the Pakistani scientists
may significantly eased the task of obtaining such equipment.
In
late January 2002, Pakistan officials said that Pakistan decided not to
press criminal charges against Mahmood and Majeed, despite concluding
that the scientists violated a secrecy oath during trips to
Afghanistan. The main reasons reported in the media were Pakistan's
concern that a trial would cause further international embarrassment
and risk disclosure of nuclear secrets. (http://www.exportcontrols.org/pakscientists.html )
3.
B.C.C.I.
BCCI was the largest criminal corporate enterprise ever, the
biggest Ponzi scheme, the most pervasive money-laundering operation in
history, the only bank - so far as anyone knows - that ran a brisk
sideline business in both conventional and nuclear weapons, gold,
drugs, turnkey mercenary armies, intelligence and counterintelligence,
shipping, and commodities from cement in the Middle East to Honduran
coffee to Vietnamese beans.
Though it was fundamentally a
financial fraud, BCCI itself was not a bank in any conventional sense.
Or, more precisely, banking was only a part of the global organism, the
ingeniously constructed platform from which its other lines of business
were launched....
This "bank" possessed its very own diplomatic
corps, intelligence network, and private army, its own shipping and
commodities trading companies. And BCCI itself was so thoroughly
enmeshed in the official affairs of Pakistan that it was often
impossible to separate the two.
BCCI was bigger even than that:
It was the unsettling next-stage evolution of the multinational
corporation, the one the theorists had been predicting for years but
which never seemed to be able to shed its sovereign boundaries.
(General Motors and Mitsubishi are both good examples of this - huge
companies with holdings and operations all over the world that
nonetheless persist in being fundamentally American and Japanese
entities.) In taking that step, BCCI became truly stateless and very
nearly invisible to the authorities in each country where it did
business.
{BCCI founder} Abedi had money to spare to underwrite
the protocol department: In 1981 Ghulam Ishaq Khan granted BCCI a
special tax-free status allowing Abedi to avoid tens of millions of
dollars in taxes and to pour his huge Pakistan profits into one of his
front companies and into Pakistan's atomic bomb project. Most of the
millions that flowed through the foundation went to two uses: first, to
investments - patently noncharitable - in a company called Attock
Cement, owned by Abedi's associate and U.S. front man Ghaith Pharaon.
The second beneficiary was something called the Ghulam Ishaq Khan
Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology. According to its
brochures, the Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute trains young scientists and
engineers. The reality is a little more ominous . . .
The
director of the institute is Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the man most
closely linked with Pakistan's efforts to develop nuclear weapons.
Khan, a German-trained metallurgist, once worked as a classified
enrichment plant in the Netherlands, where he gained access to key
plans. So important is he to the Pakistani national interest that even
his whereabouts are considered a national secret.(http://www.the-catbird-seat.net/BCCI.htm )
Right
from its inception, the clandestine nuclear and missile projects in
Pakistan were treated as a top secret intel op of the ISI to ensure
deniability. All payments to the foreign suppliers were made not from
the accounts of the Govt of Pakistan, but from private accounts in the
BCCI, which collapsed in 1991, and other Dubai and Geneva based banks.
These accounts were opened by the Gokul brothers of Geneva, one of whom
was jailed for cheating in the UK after the collapse of the BCCI;
Shaukat Aziz, Pakistan’s present Finance Minister, who was working in
the Gulf for the Citibank in the 1990s; Dawood Ibrahim, the mafia
leader who was designated by the US as an intl terrorist in Oct;
Dubai-based Pakistani smugglers, and AQ Khan and other trusted
Pakistani scientists.(http://www.kashmirherald.com/featuredarticle/nuclearjih...
) Given that A.Q. Khan began his network from such sinister and corrupt
beginnings, this next relationship should come as no surprise.
4.
Osama bin Laden – The following is an excerpt from an investigation by
the Kashmir Herald into several of A.Q. Khan’s travels to Africa.
He
had kept the Pakistani Foreign Office informed of his travels. The
Foreign Office had instructed the Pakistani diplomatic missions in the
countries visited by him to accord the due honours of protocol to him.
In
all the countries, he was received by officers of the Pakistani
diplomatic missions and entertained by the heads of missions.
In
Sudan, he was accorded the honours of protocol generally given to a
member of the Cabinet and called on the President of the country. He
was accompanied by senior serving scientists of Pakistan's nuclear
establishment, who were among those responsible for Pakistan's military
nuclear development. They could not have gone abroad and remained
absent for days without the knowledge and clearance of the Government. At
least one Lt.Gen. belonging to the Pakistan Army's Medical Corps, who
had headed it, and two Brigadiers had accompanied him. They could not
have gone and remained away from the country without the knowledge and
clearance of the Military Headquarters. The uranium enriched at
KRL, Kahuta, used to come from Africa, mainly Niger. This partly
explains the frequent travels of A.Q.Khan to Africa. From the accounts
given by the Pakistani author, two intriguing questions arise:
Why
did Khan consider it necessary to visit the site of a factory in Sudan,
which became the target of US Cruise missile attacks after the
explosions outside the US Embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam by Al
Qaeda in August 1998? The Americans had alleged at that time that this
factory belonged to Osama bin Laden and was producing chemicals for
weaponisation purposes. Denying this, the Sudanese authorities had
claimed that it was producing anti-malaria drugs.
Why was he
visiting frequently Timbuktu, which has apparently no importance from
the nuclear point of view? Pakistani officials have alleged that he had
illegally constructed a hotel there ( Hotel La Colombe?) in the name of
his wife. If he was going there to supervise the construction of the
hotel, he should have been accompanied by experts in building
construction and the hotel industry. No such person accompanied him. He
was always accompanied by scientists and Army officers associated with
KRL and Tahir Mian, who was helping him in the procurement of
centrifuges.
It is reliably learnt from well-placed observers
that it also came out during the recent interrogation of the associates
of Khan in Pakistan's nuclear establishment that after Osama bin Laden
shifted from Khartoum to Afghanistan in 1996, Dr.Khan was also looking
after bin Laden's extensive investments in the mining industry in many
African countries and that the money invested in the Timbuktu hotel had
come from these investments of bin Laden. The Pakistani authorities
have reportedly suppressed this information and not shared it with the
US.(http://www.kashmirherald.com/featuredarticle/khanandbin... )
This
investigation has yielded some amazing information. In addition to
widespread government cooperation with the network that has not been
reported to the US, A.Q. Khan obtained uranium from Africa, mainly from
Niger, where Valerie Plame’s husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson,
discovered the evidence that Iraq was trying to obtain uranium there
was a forgery. Most frightening is the extent of Khan’s relationship
with bin Laden, apparently trusted enough to look after bin Laden’s
investments in Africa. Only time will tell how much bin Laden profited,
both in monetary terms and in expanding al Qaeda’s WMD potential, from
the generosity of Khan’s nuclear Walmart.
5. Unnamed U.S. Firm
More than 20 firms - including at least one American company - have
supplied rogue nations seeking nuclear arms, marking the first time a
U.S. company has been linked to the black market network.
International
Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, who is heading
a probe into the illicit sales, avoided specifics on the locations of
the companies in an interview with The Associated Press Friday.
But
a senior diplomat said at least one was in the United States - the
first time in five months of investigations by the U.N. nuclear agency
that an American company has been implicated in the black market
network headed by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Kahn.(http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?id=1&display=r... )
What
American company would possibly have had the means and the motive to
risk potentially treasonous activity by profiting off black market
nuclear proliferation to terrorist organizations and their state
sponsors? In the next two sections, an examination into the motives of
why Dick Cheney, through his association with Halliburton, would have
wanted a sting operation focused on A.Q. Khan’s nuclear Walmart
terminated will be conducted, as well as an exploration into how the
profits from such a treacherous enterprise could possibly have been
laundered.
D. Compromising Positions in Cheney's Past
1.
Cheney helped cover-up Pakistani nuclear proliferation in 1989 so US
could sell country fighter jets. - When Pakistan's clandestine program
involving its top nuclear scientist selling rogue nations, such as Iran
and North Korea, blueprints for building an atomic bomb was uncovered
last month, the world's leaders waited, with baited breath to see what
type of punishment George W. Bush would inflict upon Pakistan's
President Pervez Musharaff. Bush has, after all, spent his entire term
in office talking tough about countries and dictators that conceal
weapons of mass destruction and even tougher on individuals who supply
rogue nations and terrorists with the means to build WMD. For all
intents and purposes, Pakistan and Musharraf fit that description.
Remember,
Bush accused Iraq of harboring a cache of WMD, which was the primary
reason he gave for the United States launching a preemptive strike on
that country a year ago, and also claimed that Iraq may have given its
WMD to al-Qaeda terrorists and/or Syria, weapons that, Bush said, could
be used to attack the U.S. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and top
members of the administration reacted with shock when they found out
that Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistan's top nuclear scientist, spent the
past 15 years selling outlaw nations nuclear technology and equipment.
So it was sort of a surprise when Bush, upon finding out about Khan's
proliferation of nuclear technology, let Pakistan off with a slap on
the wrist. But it was all an act. In fact, it was actually a
coverup designed to shield Cheney because he knew about the
proliferation for more than a decade and did nothing to stop it.(emphasis added)
Like
the terrorist attacks on 9-11, the Bush administration had mountains of
evidence on Pakistan's sales of nuclear technology and equipment to
nations vilified by the U.S. nations that are considered much more of a
threat than Iraq but turned a blind eye to the threat and allowed it to
happen. In 1989, the year Khan first started selling nuclear secrets on
the black-market; Richard Barlow, a young intelligence analyst working
for the Pentagon prepared a shocking report for Cheney, who was then
secretary of defense under the Bush I administration: Pakistan built an
atomic bomb and was selling its nuclear equipment to countries the U.S.
said was sponsoring terrorism. But Barlow's findings, as reported in a
January 2002 story in Mother Jones magazine, were "politically
inconvenient."
"A finding that Pakistan possessed a nuclear
bomb would have triggered a congressionally mandated cutoff of aid to
the country, a key ally in the CIA's efforts to support Afghan rebels
fighting a pro-Soviet government. It also would have killed a
$1.4-billion sale of F-16 fighter jets to Islamabad," Mother Jones
reported. Ironically, Pakistan, critics say, was let off the hook last
month so the U.S. could use its borders to hunt for al-Qaeda leader and
alleged 9-11 mastermind Osama bin Laden. Cheney dismissed Barlow's
report because he desperately wanted to sell Pakistan the F-16 fighter
planes. Several months later, a Pentagon official was told by Cheney to
downplay Pakistan's nuclear capabilities when he testified on the
threat before Congress. Barlow complained to his bosses at the Pentagon
and was fired. (http://www.pakistan-facts.com/article.php/2004031621042... )
During
the time that Barlow prepared his report on Pakistan, Bryan Siebert an
Energy Department analyst, was looking into Saddam Hussein's nuclear
program in Iraq. Siebert concluded that "Iraq has a major effort under
way to produce nuclear weapons," and said that the National Security
Council should investigate his findings. But the Bush
administration—which had been supporting Iraq as a counterweight to the
Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran—ignored the report, the magazine reported.
"This was not a failure of intelligence," Barlow told Mother Jones. "The intelligence was in the system."(http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/031004Leop... )
Cheney
went to great lengths to cover-up Pakistan's nuclear weaponry. In a New
Yorker article published on March 29, 1993, investigative reporter
Seymour Hersh quoted Barlow as saying that some high-ranking members
inside the CIA and the Pentagon lied to Congress about Pakistan's
nuclear arsenal so as not to sacrifice the sale of the F-16 fighter
planes to Islamabad, which was secretly equipped to deliver nuclear
weapons. Pakistan's nuclear capabilities and had become so grave by the
spring
of 1990 that then CIA deputy director Richard Kerr said the Pakistani
nuclear threat was worse than the Cuban Missile crisis in the 1960s.
"It
was the most dangerous nuclear situation we have ever faced since I've
been in the U.S. government," Kerr said in an interview with Hersh. "It
may be as close as we've come to a nuclear exchange. It was far more
frightening than the Cuban missile crisis."
Still, in 1989
Cheney and others in the Pentagon and the CIA continued to hide the
reality of Pakistan's nuclear threat from members of Congress. Hersh
explained in his lengthy New Yorker article that reasons behind the
cover-up "revolves around the fact . . . that the Reagan Administration
had dramatically aided Pakistan in its pursuit of the bomb."(http://www.newyorker.com/archive/content/?040119fr_arch... )
In
addition to these three sources that corroborate the fact that Cheney
knew about A.Q. Khan’s network and rather than report it, chose to
profit through sales to Pakistan of fighter jets that could deliver
nuclear weapons, Cheney was caught on another case of nuclear
proliferation.
2. Halliburton fined $1.2 million in 1995 for
selling dual-use nuclear equipment to Libya. - Halliburton came under
fire in the early '90s for supplying Libya and Iraq with oil drilling
equipment which could be used to detonate nuclear weapons. Halliburton
Logging Services, a former subsidiary, was charged with shipping six
pulse neutron generators through Italy to Libya. In 1995, the company
pled guilty to criminal charges that it violated the U.S. ban on
exports to Libya. Halliburton was fined $1.2 million and will pay $2.61
million in civil penalties.
During his chairmanship of
Halliburton, Cheney criticized U.S. sanctions against "rogue" nations
such as Iran and Libya in a 1998 speech. According to a July 26, 2000,
Washington Post story, Cheney complained the sanctions "are nearly
always motivated by domestic political pressure, the need for Congress
to appeal to some domestic constituency." (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/article... )
3.
Current criminal probe - - A grand jury issued a subpoena to oil field
services company Halliburton Co. seeking information about its Cayman
Islands unit's work in Iran, where it is illegal for U.S. companies to
operate, Halliburton said on Monday.
The company, formerly
headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, said it understood the
investigation of its subsidiary's work in Iran had been transferred to
the U.S. Department of Justice from the Treasury Department, which
first initiated an inquiry in 2001. (http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&s... )
4.
Existing Halliburton ties to Vice President Dick Cheney – Rather than
crack down on Halliburton, however, the Bush administration’s Energy
Task Force, which was headed by Cheney, presented a draft report in
April 2001 saying the United States should reevaluate the sanctions
against Iran, Iraq, and Libya that prohibited U.S. oil companies from
“some of the most important existing and ‘prospective’
petroleum-producing countries in the world.” Cheney asserted there was
no conflict on his part because “Since I left Halliburton to become
George Bush’s vice president, I’ve severed all my ties with the
company, gotten rid of all my financial interest.” Cheney neglected to
mention that he was still due approximately $500,000 in deferred
compensation from Halliburton and could potentially profit from his
433,333 shares of unexercised Halliburton stock options.
A
Congressional Research Service report requested by Senate Democrats
concluded that unexercised stock options in a private corporation, as
well as deferred salary received from a private corporation, were
“retained ties” or “linkages” to a former employer and should be
reported as “financial interests.”(House of Bush House of Saud by Craig
Unger, p. 225.)
Since Halliburton continues to engage in
business practices with state sponsors of terrorism and Cheney
continues to profit from it, all that is left to do is, in the words of
Deep Throat, “Follow the money.” The proceeding section uses
circumstantial evidence to show a relationship between several
individuals and companies through which the unnamed US firm in Khan’s
nuclear Walmart, presumably Halliburton, profited from nuclear
proliferation.
E. Links in the Chain Connecting Cheney with Nuclear Proliferation
1.
B.S.A. Tahir – Remember this man from Section C? This associate of A.Q.
Khan who was identified by President Bush in a speech as the nuclear
Walmart’s "chief financial officer and money launderer."(http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4270904
) BSA TAHIR, a SRI LANKAN businessman based in DUBAI was a trusted and
close confidante of A. Q. Khan and was actively involved in supplying
centrifuge components for Libya's uranium-enrichment program. BSA
TAHIR, who was involved in the business of SCOMI PRECISION ENGINEERING
SDN BHD (SCOPE). He used the company to produce components for the
centrifuge unit for the uranium enrichment program. However,
investigations have revealed that the components, on their own, cannot
form a complete centrifuge unit. In this context, it has to be noted
that SCOPE is a subsidiary of SCOMI GROUP BHD, i.e. a company involved
in the petroleum services industry. As a subsidiary, SCOPE is also
involved in precision engineering services, which involves the
production of components for a variety of equipments including parts
for cars, petroleum and gas. This makes evident that SCOPE could not be labeled as a company directly involved in nuclear proliferation.
Furthermore, the supply of components by middlemen was carried out in a discreet manner and involved suppliers from other countries to blur the sources of the components. Some of the suppliers were believed to be aware that these components could be for uranium enrichment centrifuges. Generally
these suppliers mostly from Europe were those who had dealings with the nuclear expert since the 1980s, at a time when PAKISTAN was developing its nuclear technology. There were a number of individuals and companies which supplied the components but were unaware of the implications because some of the components were similar to components used in oil drilling, water
treatment and equipment for several other general use.(http://icssa.org/Nuclear_Malaysia.htm )
Which
companies could possibly have been connected with the suppliers that
helped blur the source of the components? Amazingly, a connection
between Scomi and Halliburton can be established with only one other
company serving as a buffer between the two: Cognis.
a. Cognis
– Service specialist Scomi Group Bhd, is offering multinational oil and
gas companies a special fluid to make offshore drilling friendlier to
the sea and its inhabitants. Scomi, together with German chemicals
specialist, Cognis Gmbh, offers ester-based drilling fluid derived from
palm kernel oil. The agreement is between Scomi’s wholly-owned Kota
Minerals & Chemicals Sdn Bhd (KMC) and Cognis’ 50%-owned unit,
Cognis Oleochemicals (M) Sdn Bhd.(http://www.mida.gov.my/beta/news/view_news.php?id=398 )
Sounds
like a perfectly benign, perhaps even altruistic enterprise. How is
this company connected with Halliburton? It’s through collaboration
with one of Halliburton’s subsidiary companies.
b. Baroid – The
drilling fluids containing esters based on renewable natural resources
are developed by Cognis in collaboration with Baroid, the drilling
fluids service company within the Halliburton Energy Services Group.(http://bbriefings.com/cdps/cditem.cfm?NID=252&CID=10&CF... )
To reiterate the serpentine link:
A.Q. Khan's financial officer (money launderer) was B.S.A. Tahir. (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4270904 )
Tahir used Scomi to produce components for the centrifuge unit for the uranium enrichment program. (http://icssa.org/Nuclear_Malaysia.htm )
Scomi, through its company KMC, worked with Cognis Oleochemicals. (http://www.mida.gov.my/beta/news/view_news.php?id=398 )
Cognis is connected with Baroid (part of the Halliburton Group). (http://bbriefings.com/cdps/cditem.cfm?NID=252&CID=10&CF... )
But
the extent of Halliburton/Cheney profiting from nuclear proliferation
does not stop there. And Cheney is not the only member of the Bush
administration to profit from it.
2. Donald Rumsfeld - Rumsfeld was on ABB board during deal with North Korea.
The
Swiss-based ABB on Friday told swissinfo that Rumsfeld was involved
with the company in early 2000, when it netted a $200 million
(SFr270million) contract with Pyongyang. The ABB contract was to
deliver equipment and services for two nuclear power stations at Kumho,
on North Korea’s east coast. Rumsfeld – who is one of the Bush
administration’s most strident “hardliners” on North Korea – was a
member of ABB’s board between 1990 and February 2001, when he left to
take up his current post. Wolfram Eberhardt, a spokesman for ABB, told
swissinfo that Rumsfeld “was at nearly all the board meetings” during
his decade-long involvement with the company.(http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=10... )
It's
a well-known fact--oft detailed in this column--that the boys in the
Bush Regime swing both ways. We speak, of course, of their
proclivity--their apparently uncontrollable craving--for stuffing their
trousers with loot from both sides of whatever war or military crisis
is going at the moment.
That's why it came as no surprise to
read last week that just before he joined the Regime's crusade against
evildoers everywhere (especially rogue states that pursue the
development of terrorist-ready weapons of mass destruction), Pentagon
warlord Donald Rumsfeld was trousering the proceeds from a $200 million
deal to send the latest nuclear technology--including plenty of
terrorist-ready "dirty bomb" material--to the rogue state of North
Korea, Neue Zurcher Zeitung reports.
In 1998, Rumsfeld was
citizen chairman of the Congressional Ballistic Missile Threat
Commission, charged with reducing nuclear proliferation. Rumsfeld and
the Republican-heavy commission came down hard on the deal Bill Clinton
had brokered with North Korea to avert a war in 1994: Pyongyang would
give up its nuclear weapons program in exchange for normalized
relations with the United States, plus the construction of two
non-weaponized nuclear plants to generate electricity. The plants were
to be built by an international consortium of government-backed
business interests called KEDO.
Whatever happened to Bush's
much-trumpeted "era of responsibility?" These guys are not only
chiselers, hustlers, hypocrites and war profiteers--they're a bunch of
gutless wonders as well. So you'll pardon us if we are just the tiniest
bit cynical about the "moral arguments for war" and other such buckets
of warm spit this gang is now forcing down the world's throat.
(http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd03042003.html
) It’s bad enough for Rumsfeld to profit off selling nuclear equipment
to North Korea. But it doesn’t end there, the organizations involved in
this transaction link back to Halliburton once again.
a. KEDO -
ABB, which was already building eight nuclear reactors in South Korea,
had an inside track on the $4 billion U.S.-sponsored North Korea
project. The firm was told "our participation is essential," recalls
Frank Murray, project manager for the reactors. (He plays the same role
now at Westinghouse, which was acquired by Britain's BNFL in 1999, a
year before it also bought ABB's nuclear power business.) The North
Korean reactors are being primarily funded by South Korean and Japanese
export-import banks and supervised by KEDO, a consortium based in New
York. "It was not a matter of favoritism," says Desaix Anderson, who
ran KEDO from 1997 to 2001. "It was just a practical matter."(www.worldmessenger.20m.com/news4.html )
b.
KNOC - The KEDO (Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization) is
the official Korean government energy corporation. By reading their
2001 energy development summary one can make out all the myriad
countries that contribute to KEDO. North Korea lacks necessary
production facilities to drill and test for its oil. It is reaching out
to many firms and countries to help them while the government attempts
to develop some oil fields with as much capital as it can muster. A
Singapore firm recently announced (August 29, 2002) significant oil and
gas reserves in North Korea. Additionally, Halliburton has partnered
with KNOC to develop offshore drilling platforms in South Korea.(www.rmfdevelopment.com/political/NorthKoreaOil.htm )
Yet another serpentine link through which money could be laundered into the willing hands of Halliburton.
Rumsfeld-ABB (http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=10... )
ABB-KEDO (www.worldmessenger.20m.com/news4.html )
KEDO-KNOC-Halliburton (www.rmfdevelopment.com/political/NorthKoreaOil.htm )
But
were these links completely separate, or is it possible that there were
any other companies besides Halliburton involved with both links of
possible proliferation profits? One company not previously mentioned
has relationships with companies on both links.
3. Goldman Sachs
– a lucrative investment firm that is listed quite prominently as one
of the main investors in Cognis on their website.(http://www.cognis.com/framescout.html?/company/company....
) Also there is a link with Donald Rumsfeld to two organizations,
Bilderberg and ABB through the chairman of Goldman Sachs, General Peter
Sutherland from Ireland. Some of the Western world's leading financiers
and foreign policy strategists attend Bilderberg. Rumsfeld is an active
Bilderberger. So is General Peter Sutherland from Ireland, a former
European Union commissioner and chairman of Goldman Sachs and of BP.
Rumsfeld and Sutherland served together in 2000 on the board of the
Swedish/Swiss energy company ABB. ( http://www.fact-index.com/b/bi/bilderberg_group.html )
These
links are not in and of themselves direct proof of the laundering of
nuclear proliferation profits. But they are proof of a relationship
between these companies sharing common goals, through which individuals
involved in nuclear proliferation, and there were many in these
companies, could operate their network covertly.
F. Conclusions
and Recommendations – To conclude, this paper asserts that Dick Cheney
is directly responsible for the leaking of Valerie Plame’s name that
resulted in sabotaging her CIA career and her cover company, Brewster,
Jennings & Associates. CIA operations that were compromised by the
leak were associated with A.Q. Khan’s network of nuclear smuggling.
Khan’s network, vast enough to be dubbed by IAEA chief Mohamed El
Baradei a “nuclear Walmart”, was examined here for the connections it
has with terrorist organizations and state sponsors, as well as areas
in which the CIA could have been following their activities.
It
proves conclusively that Dick Cheney knew about A.Q. Khan’s nuclear
Walmart as early as 1989, and chose not to expose the network but to
profit from it, which gives him the strongest motive to blow Valerie
Plame’s cover. State sponsors of terror that were proven recipients of
Cheney’s nuclear proliferation include Pakistan, Libya and possibly
Iran. The links between Khan and Cheney involved suppliers from other
countries designed to blur the source of the components, but research
concludes individuals affiliated with collaborative companies such as
Cognis and their investor Goldman Sachs would be the most obvious links
in the chain. Such links also exist in the case of Donald Rumsfeld
profiting through ABB’s $200 million sale of nuclear equipment to North
Korea, which would prove that Halliburton profited from this example of
nuclear proliferation as well.
The main recommendation to all
who read this is to spread the word. Anyone who reads this who is in a
position to investigate this matter further, whether as an activist,
investigative reporter or government official, should do so with care
and thoroughness. The names and organizations listed in the paper
should, with a proper investigation, lead to more damaging evidence
that will help solve the crime and establish justice. That is perhaps
the most important aspect of this case to remember, that regardless of
the prestige and power connected with the parties involved, this is a
criminal investigation. It is hoped that no matter what your political
persuasion is, that as a law abiding citizen, you stand with us in
condemnation of the exposure of Valerie Plame’s identity as a CIA agent
as a highly criminal act, and join us in the pursuit of justice for the
perpetrators.
Download AMERICANJUDAS.pdf
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Sibel Edmonds’ 2005 Spring Offensive:FBI Shields Pakistan/Turkey Nuclear Weapons Development,Drug Trade, Cheney, Rumsfeld
It's
not too much of a stretch to say that the FBI's interest in asserting a
"State Secrets" privilege begins way back in 1972 at which time
Pakistan decided to begin development of a nuclear weapons program that
would culminate in the detonation of a nuclear weapon in 1998 (Turkey
can't be far behind in 2005), and successful US weapons sales of
helicopters, fighter aircraft, missile guidance software, combat
vehicles and parts to both Turkey and Pakistan over the same 1972 to
1998 timeframe, despite US arms strictures on sales of US weapons
technology. In the seven years since 1998, matters have gotten worse.
It really is the same old story we've all read about for so many
decades and features these recurring themes: the black market for
nuclear weapons technology, drug trade and money laundering, lobbyists
housed in powerful organization, espionage and bribes, and big
political and business names. These murky matters are always classified
by governments and business groups as Top Secret or Proprietary and
always involve criminal activity on behalf of national security.
Unfortunately, criminal, classified and business/national security
interests have always managed to find their way into the same bed
whether here in the USA or abroad.
It would be nice to say that the black market for nuclear weapons
had its zenith in 1998. But that's not the case. It is larger and more
daring with more economic clout and political cover than ever. Not a
bad development for a network created on the back of a drug trafficking
network established long before there was a Cold War. And with the
current US administration implementing a "new" counterintelligence
directorate, seemingly to trump the bad stuff that Sibel Edmonds'
litigation might produce, it all seems to make some sense that in 2005
the US government and industry would be in preemptive/recreate threat
mode.
Exorcise Me!
Religious types like to say that "God/Allah works in mysterious
ways." Interestingly, thanks to September 11, 2001, it appears that
such a God/Allah may have been at work to expose some of the demons in
American government and business, and their counterparts at work around
the world. Who would have thought that Sibel Edmonds would encounter a
lot of archived and/or then current documentation flowing through the
intelligence pipeline that exposed criminal activity across the board
by an array of conniving characters. American, Turkish and Pakistani
operations (and history), planned and unplanned, were, perhaps,
uncovered by her in the brief but heady days of worldwide
cross-intelligence agency sharing following 9-11. Imagine the treasure
trove of finds!
The actors in this drama include cultural and semi-legitimate groups
like the American Friends of Turkey/American Turkish Council (and
affiliates and chapters); the Atlantic Council; American (CIA), Turkish
(MIT) and Pakistan (ISI) intelligence agencies; Pentagon intelligence
operatives like USAF Major Douglas Dickerson and Jan Malek Can
Dickerson; former Turkish ministers like Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz
under investigation for corruption; Turkish-run companies like Giza
Technologies of New Jersey, implicated and then cleared of WMD
proliferation charges; and US officials Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
As an aside, US defense contractors—like Textron, Lockheed Martin
and Halliburton–figure in this story too as they, with US government
approval, have regularly exhibited at defense weapons expos in Turkey,
Pakistan, and elsewhere for decades. Why China and Iran are vilified as
of late for being legitimate participants in these Expos there and here
in the USA remains an intriguing question. It's interesting to note
that MSNBC reported that Cheney's big visit to China in 2004 included
marketing Westinghouse's nuclear reactors to China. No surprise there
as US nuclear technology has been marketed to the world over the years
by Cheney and Rumsfeld (the latter in North Korea).
But
go figure. Buying some conventional weapons capability and basic
nuclear generation technology from dullard US defense contractors is
one thing. The real question is this: How did
Pakistan and Turkey escaped US scrutiny while developing nuclear
weapons and Turkey helped pay for them with drug money and technology?
Dick and Don's Fabulous Adventure
The names Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld recur as reference points
throughout American, Turkish, Pakistani relationships beginning as
early as 1975 when President Gerald Ford, taking the advice of then
staff members Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, vetoed the arms embargo
on Pakistan. Earlier in 1974, the same two would save Turkey from a
dreaded arms embargo. In 1999, with the Halliburton CEO hat on and
before a crowd at the CATO Institute, a Cheney gem would surface
telling the audience what the American people would never hear or
understand. Cheney reminisced about Turkey and indicated, quite
appropriately, that national security policy in the USA depends on
lobbyists and the omnipotent organizations that house them.
"When I went to work for President Ford back in the summer of 1974,
our first foreign policy crisis had to do with a dust up between the
Greeks and the Turks, who had gone to war over the fate of Cyprus. The
response of the Congress at that point was to impose an arms embargo on
Turkey . . . we placed sanctions on Turkey and not on Greece. Why? It
was not because it made sense from the standpoint of what was going on
in Cyprus, or made sense from the standpoint of overall U.S. foreign
policy. We sanctioned Turkey because the Greek-American lobby was
significantly bigger and more effective than the Turkish-American lobby
here at home. That's the sum total of why we did it. Ultimately, we
were able to get it reversed. But it took numerous votes in Congress
before we were able to turn it around."
Yes, indeed, and it wasn't long after 1974 that that the American
Friends of Turkey/American Turkish Council (and affiliates) and the
Atlantic Council would be up and running in Washington, DC, with the
former featuring chapters and affiliations in Illinois, New Jersey,
Texas and just about every state in the Union, plus overseas
affiliations. The American Turkish groups are likely the
"semi-legitimate" non-profit business and cultural groups housing the
powerful lobbyists that Edmonds is referring to and that Cheney turns
to for policy guidance.
But who can say?
The US has changed since Cheney and Rumsfeld appeared on the
scene and it's tough to tell whether under their guidance the US
government is a branch of Wall Street or some other madness. Most
likely both, but that's another long story. Suffice it to say that
Cheney has always believed that US business interests trump the whiney
and ineffective elected US government representatives and civil
servants.
In the same speech at the CATO Institute in
1999, he said, "I think it is a false dichotomy to be told that we have
to choose between "commercial" interests and other interests that the
United States might have in a particular country or region around the
world. Oftentimes the absolute best way to advance human rights and the
cause of freedom or the development of democratic institutions is
through the active involvement of American businesses. Investment and
trade can oftentimes do more to open up a society and to create
opportunity for a society's citizens than reams of diplomatic cables
from our State Department."
The Brotherhood: Pakistanis, Turks and Americans
Against the backdrop of the USA versus USSR Cold War, and the
Iran versus Iraq war—US officials like Cheney and Rumsfeld—and those
operating in and out of government, (and their counterparts in Pakistan
and Turkey) took a Pontius Pilate approach to Pakistan's black market
acquisition of nuclear weapons components, as well as Turkey's
complicity in helping that cause through drug trade profits, to include
the illicit manufacture of parts essential to a nuclear weapon.
According to Anwar Iqbal of UPI (October 2004), Turkish workshops "made
the centrifuge motor and frequency converters used to drive the motor
and spin the rotor to high speeds. These workshops imported
subcomponents from Europe and elsewhere, and they assembled these
centrifuge items in Turkey. Under false end-user certificates, the
components were then shipped to Dubai . . ."
It's 2005 and the US State Department has reported that Turkey
remains one of the premier players in the world's drug trade. "Turkey
remains a major route, and storage, production and staging area, for
the flow of heroin to Europe. Turkish-based traffickers and brokers
operate in conjunction with narcotics smugglers, laboratory operators,
and money launderers in and outside Turkey . . . Turkish-based traffickers control much of the heroin marketed to Western Europe." Such
a well established and efficient network has always been ideal for
moving nuclear weapons components around the world and that effort
continues unabated to this day. The high-altitude breathers in US
government and industry could care less and they joke while diligent
field agents around the globe follow dead ends confined in safely
classified compartments.
Writing in 1997, Ertugrul Kurkcu commented that "few recall the era
of military juntas in the early 1980s when Turkey's military rulers
adopted a green belt strategy after the revolution in Iran and the
Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan. The idea, promoted in
Washington circles was to construct a bulwark alliance of US-backed
Muslim countries [Pakistan and Turkey] in order to confine Soviet
southward expansion and to combat Radical Islamist power in Iran and
elsewhere in the region."
Even with the USSR gone, US policy makers figured in the 1990s that
Russia could never be trusted and "bad" Islamic regimes like Iran
needed to be cut off from the rest of the world. After all, if for no
reason other than spite, those nasty Iranians took a US Embassy hostage
in 1978 and now in 2005 they have the audacity to try and build a
nuclear weapon. One can only imagine that if the Shah of Iran had
stayed in power the USA would be gloating over its wonderfully nuclear
capable allies Iran and Turkey and their role in the War on Terror.
Be that as it may, through the years, the USA found alternatives to
the Shah, most notably in Pakistan's current, and Western educated,
President Musharaff, leader of the 1999 coup that made him president of
Pakistan, and a host of other USA sponsored characters ostensibly in
charge of Pakistan and Turkey since WWII. It was a perfect match
made better by the fact that Musharaff—like most US supported rulers in
the two countries—stated that "Pakistan and Turkey share a commonality
of vision and a commonality of thought. Turks to me are brothers. Even
to Pakistani children, Turks are brothers."
Add Americans and their children to all that brotherly love.
Deal of the Century
Pakistan's
nuclear weapons technology acquisition program apparently piggybacked
on Turkey's heroin trafficking expertise—an expertise established long
before 1972. Pakistan could afford the price tag since it was being
paid for by Turkish-laundered drug money with the technology invariably
stolen by Pakistani and Turkish operatives working through
"semi-legitimate" groups in the USA and elsewhere.
No operation of this scope or magnitude could go unnoticed by the US government, particularly since in Turkey's case, the CIA had been conducting post WWII "stay-behind" operations for at least 50 years.
If such activity was exposed, albeit indirectly through a nuclear
test or a translator like Sibel Edmonds, it sure would be easy enough
to blame a failure to detect it (just like 9-11) on a lack of human
intelligence or the "peace dividend" that the end of the Cold War
brought, or claim "State Secret" if someone like Sibel Edmonds were to
see the goods and ask questions. Then again, there is the "compromising
ongoing intelligence/military operations" rationale, but that moniker
has been used and abused so many times that its usage is comedic.
In the end, no matter how the story is spun, it threatens to
implicate the high and mighty in government and business in the USA,
Turkey and Pakistan, and who knows how many assorted intelligence
groups around the globe.
But that comes as no surprise to those in the governments that
condone the criminal enterprises that run the show in the name of
national security interests. But once and awhile, the upstarts and
whistleblowers speak through intrepid journalists like Seymour Hersh of
the New Yorker. Quoting former US and Pakistani diplomats in both The Deal (March 2004) and The Coming Wars (January 2005) published in the New Yorker, it's very obvious to any inquisitive person what's been going on for 33 years.
"Much of this has been known for decades to the American
intelligence community. Sometimes you know things and don't want to do
anything about it. Americans need to know that your government is not
only downplaying this but covering it up. You go to bed with our ISI.
They know how to suck up to you. You let us get away with everything.
Why can't you be more honest? There's no harm in telling us the
truth—'Look, you're an ally but a very disturbing ally.' You have to
nip some of these things in the bud . . . The former senior American
intelligence official was equally blunt. He told me, 'Khan [Father of
the Pakistani bomb] was willing to sell blueprints, centrifuges, and
the latest in weaponry. He was the worst nuclear-arms proliferator in
the world and he's pardoned—with not a squeak from the White House.'"
(excerpt)
John Stanton
Online Journal
Mar09.2005
U.S.-Iran nuclear cooperation in the 1970s
By 1975, The U.S.
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, had signed National Security
Decision Memorandum 292, titled "U.S.-Iran Nuclear Cooperation," which
laid out the details of the sale of nuclear energy equipment to Iran
projected to bring U.S. corporations more than $6 billion in revenue.
At the time, Iran was pumping as much as 6 million barrels (950,000 m³)
of oil a day, compared with about 4 million barrels (640,000 m³) daily
today.
President Gerald R. Ford even signed a directive in 1976
offering Tehran the chance to buy and operate a U.S.-built reprocessing
facility for extracting plutonium from nuclear reactor fuel. The deal
was for a complete "nuclear fuel cycle", with all the dangerous
consequences that would entail including the possibility of this
plutonium being used sooner or later to make weapons. The Ford strategy
paper said the "introduction of nuclear power will both provide for the
growing needs of Iran's economy and free remaining oil reserves for
export or conversion to petrochemicals."[3]
President Ford's
team endorsed Iranian plans to build a massive nuclear energy industry,
but also worked hard to complete a multibillion-dollar deal that would
have given Tehran control of large quantities of plutonium and enriched
uranium -- the two pathways to a nuclear bomb. Either can be shaped
into the core of a nuclear warhead, and obtaining one or the other is
generally considered the most significant obstacle to would-be weapons
builders. Iran, a U.S. ally then, had deep pockets and close ties to
Washington. U.S. companies, including Westinghouse and General
Electric, scrambled to do business there.
'I don't think the
issue of proliferation came up', Henry A. Kissinger, who was President
Ford's secretary of state, said in an interview for this article". [4]
A
number of declassified documents were found on the website of the
President Ford Library and Museum in Ann Arbor, Michigan [5]. Two
documents in particular, dated April 22, 1975 and April 20, 1976, show
that the United States and Iran held negotiations for cooperation in
the use of nuclear energy and the United States was willing to help
Iran by setting up uranium enrichment and fuel reprocessing facilities
[6]
Accordingly, vice-president Dick Cheney, secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz were all involved in
backing Iran's Nuclear Program designed to extract plutonium from
nuclear reactor fuel [7].
Iran's Nuclear Program (wikepedia)
On the Nuclear Edge by Seymour M. Hersh
The Deal:Why is Washington going easy on Pakistan’s nuclear black marketers?
by Seymour M. Hersh
Plame Flow Chart
Also See:
Nuclear Weapons Index
The Samson Option
The Invisible Man
Dario Argento's Suspiria (1977)
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