[Home] [Headlines] [Latest Articles] [Latest Comments] [Post] [Sign-in] [Mail] [Setup] [Help] [Register]
Status: Not Logged In; Sign In
|
9/11 See other 9/11 Articles Title: Bandar Bush the Black Ops Bagman (SAUDI ARABIA AND THE PAYOFFS BEHIND 9/11) Bandar Bush the Black Ops Bagman by LondonYank [Subscribe] Old CIA hands like Bush 41 and Robert Gates had a problem in the early 1980s. Congress had outlawed CIA funded deathsquads, assassinations, false flag operations and other methods beloved of black ops specialists. What to do? Go to your closest ally, Britain, whose like-minded leader, Thatcher, will help you set up an arrangement for plausible deniability. Go to your favorite like-minded Saudi intelligence thug Prince Bandar to act as procurement agent and bagman for the terrorist cells, assassinations, deathsquads, false flag operations and coups you want engineered. Wrap the project up as the Al-Yamamah contract to sell jet fighters from near-bankrupt UK defense company BAe (formerly British Aerospace) to Saudi Arabia with kickbacks to accounts of Bandar for spending on black ops worldwide. Then give BAe lots of Pentagon contracts to fund the process. Voila! You can start funding Saddam, the Taliban, Al Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden, the Nicaraguan Contras and other pet projects with no fingerprints! The above is the favorite quotation of Robert Gates, now defense secretary and in the 1980s the deputy director of the CIA under William Casey. The Al-Yamamah contract for the sale of jet fighters from BAe (formerly British Aerospace) to Saudi Arabia caused controversy from the start because it never made any sense. If you are going to spend tens of billions over a long period on a critical national defense requirement like fighter jets, you don't buy them from a near bankrupt has-been player like BAe. Until 1982 all Saudi air force planes had come from US defense contractors. The Al-Yamamah agreement has always been complicated and its provisions secret between the governments of Britain and Saudi Arabia. The terms were negotiated by Charles Powell (pronounced pole), then private secretary to Margaret Thatcher and a long time neo-con affiliate, and Prince Bandar, son of the Saudi defense minister and a long time crony of the Bushes. What is known is that it involved the provision of off-the-books oil from Saudi reserves to British oil companies in a barter for the BAe jet fighters and other aircraft. In addition, secret agreements provided for large payments to intermediaries who included Prince Bandar, Wafic Said (a Saudi arms dealer), Charles Powell, Mark Thatcher and others. Over the 20 years since the contract was inked, billions have been paid to the intermediaries, with most of it apparently going to Prince Bandar. Saudi procurement from Britain, and particularly BAe, has grown hugely in the years that followed. In addition, BAe has prospered on its American contacts to gain market share with the Pentagon, rising to become the 6th largest contractor. In the meanwhile, Prince Bandar, Wafic Said and other Saudis have been tied to some of the most notorious events of the past quarter century, which are all pet projects of the US intelligence operatives. The list that follows isn't intended to be conclusive, but rather to indicate that a pattern can be discerned. I expect that a bit of digging into the Mark Thatcher-funded coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea in 2004 would throw up some links to Saudi money too. Perhaps there are more, but this will do for a start. 1979 financing of the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan 1983 $10 million to the Vatican Bank to support election of the Christian Democrat ticket He is quoted saying he did this at the request of the Pope, Lady Thatcher and then head of the CIA, Bill Casey. They wanted him to shift the cash so no western fingerprints would be on it. 1984-1985 at least $32 million in funding and weapons for the Nicaraguan Contras In 1985, when the Saudis doubled their annual contra gift from $12 million to $25 million, Vessey quickly passed on word to Weinberger again. This time, the record is clear that the Defense Secretary understood that the contribution to buy weapons was part of the larger contra-aid strategy. "Jack Vessey in office alone," Weinberger wrote on March 13, 1985. "Bandar is giving $25 million to Contras -- so all we need is non-lethal aid." 1984-present funding and arming of Al Qaeda via Pakistan 2000-2001 funding of the 9/ll hijackers by Bandar's wife, Princess Haifa "The money moved into the family’s bank account beginning in early 2000, just a few months after hijackers Khalid Almidhar and Nawaf Alhazmi arrived in Los Angeles from an Al Qaeda planning summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, according to the sources. Within days of the terrorists’ arrival in the United States, Al Bayoumi befriended the two men who would eventually hijack American Flight 77, throwing them a welcoming party in San Diego and guaranteeing their lease on an apartment next door to his own. Al Bayoumi also paid $1,500 to cover the first two months of rent for Al Midhar and Alhazmi, although officials said it is possible that the hijackers later repaid the money." (15) Prince Bandar and Princess Haifa professed their ignorance of the whole affair. Mark Stein speculates about the recent visit Prince Bandar and Princess Haifa paid to George and Laura at the Crawford ranch, where they were received with the accolades usually reserved for heads of state. Bush must have known about the money transfers and Bandar must have known Bush knew, but apparently a good time was had by all. 2004 rigging of pre-election gasoline prices to favor GOP 2006 funding of the Palestinian Sunni militias in Lebanon The plot was reportedly cooked up in Washington before Christmas after talks between Bush’s deputy national security adviser Elliot Abrams and Saudi Arabian prince Bandar Ibn Sultan. That was after 2 million people—nearly half of Lebanon’s population—rallied in Beirut Dec. 10 to demand a greater voice for opposition parties in Lebanon’s government. Abrams was Reagan’s assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs in the 1980s, when U.S.-trained death squads slaughtered tens of thousands in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. Abrams also arranged Saudi funding for terrorist operations against Nicaragua after the Boland Amendment cut off direct U.S. aid to the contras. ‘Democracy’ or secret government? Details of the Lebanon plan’s "existence" are "known only to a small circle of White House officials, intelligence officials and members of Congress," the Telegraph reported. So much for democracy in the United States. "The secrecy of the finding means that U.S. involvement in the activities is officially deniable." The interesting thing about setting up terrorism financing through Saudi friends is that it makes it even easier to direct false flag operations. Imagine how much better if you deploy a Saudi jihadi to encourage a plot in Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan or Gaza! Bottom line, I'm suggesting that Al-Yamamah was less about selling jet aircraft and more about providing an off-the-books means of funding global instability and violence with plausible deniability. Robert Gates, Stephen Hadley, John Negroponte and Condi Rice get to stand in front of Congress and swear that US taxpayer dollars are not being spent on black operations to assassinate, promote deathsquads, instigate coups, finance terrorists and other nasty things that are illegal under US law. If the BAe Al-Yamamah contracts act like a moneylaundering facility, those activities are financed and arranged by our friends in Saudi Arabia instead. BAe gets reimbursed through all the other business being routed its way by the Pentagon. No fingerprints. Tony Blair had no choice but to kill the investigation of the BAe payments to Bandar under this interpretation of events. If I'm right, the British government has been complicit in moneylaundering Pentagon funds through BAe to Saudi intelligence for illegal operations. That wouldn't look good.
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#1. To: All (#0)
There's a new thread on Daily Kos that tries to connect this slush fund with Cheney: Fourthbranch, Bandar Bush, and the $80 billion dollar slush fund.
To reason, indeed, he was not in the habit of attending. His mode of arguing, if it is to be so called, was one not uncommon among dull and stubborn persons, who are accustomed to be surrounded by their inferiors. He asserted a proposition; and, as often as wiser people ventured respectfully to show that it was erroneous, he asserted it again, in exactly the same words, and conceived that, by doing so, he at once disposed of all objections. - Macaulay, "History of England," Vol. 1, Chapter 6, on James II.
Good one. Princess Bandar pops up in Jack Anderson's posthumous "fiction" novel - the Saudi Connection. Just a misunderstood innocent. I think Bandar may well have not only had foreknowledge.......
The BBC mentioned the DOJ is starting its own investigation after Blair ensured the British rather lackadaisical one got spiked. Perhaps the DOJ case is a sign of conflicting factions in the USG. After 6 years of successfully dodging and suppressing info about the Riyadh's role, an old arms deal may expose more than what has come to light so far, albeit in a piecemeal and fragmented passion which diminishes the impact. A slender thread, I grant you. Byzantine Kremlinesque is our DC.
Were it only that clean.
|
||
|
[Home]
[Headlines]
[Latest Articles]
[Latest Comments]
[Post]
[Sign-in]
[Mail]
[Setup]
[Help]
[Register]
|
||