Bandar Bush, The Black Ops Bagman

By LondonYank
Wed Jun 13, 2007
At 09:36:56 AM PDT
DailyKos

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!

"Negotiations without arms are like music books without instruments." - Frederick the Great

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.

The chart provides an outline of the deal structure, including the side agreements.

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.

1. 1979 Financing Of The Mujahedeen In Afghanistan:

At the instigation of Carter’s National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, a US-Pakistani-Saudi network is organized to aid the insurgent mujahadeen, with the Saudis providing a large part of the funds, the US procuring the weapons and providing overall coordination through the CIA, and Pakistani intelligence (the ISI) handling training and indoctrination. Brzezinski blocks a plan to assist moderate resistance groups, and instead channels aid to Muslim extremist factions who he hopes will be effective at undermining Soviet control of Central Asia, saying "It is time to finally sow shit in (the Soviets’) backyard." From 1981, Reagan’s CIA Director William Casey pursues this scheme with even greater enthusiasm. The Pakistani ISI - rather than the CIA - handles nearly all direct contact with the Afghan resistance, and the ISI makes most of the decisions on how to prosecute the war and on which Afghan resistance groups to assist. The ISI funnels the largest share of aid to the ambitious, ruthless Islamic extremist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who is more interested in fighting rival mujahadeen factions than taking on the Russians. Hekmatyar will later actively support Osama bin Laden. Moderate-secular groups are marginalized, and some of their leaders are killed by the ISI and its Islamist allies. Richard Murphy, Reagan’s Assistant Secretary of State for the Middle East, later admits "We did spawn a monster in Afghanistan." In the mid-1990’s, a State Department report concludes that this war was the birthplace of the ‘transnational terrorist.’ [hiro1 / hiro4 / berg / lat.Sep.21.2001]

2. 1983 $10 Million To The Vatican Bank To Support Election Of The Christian Democrat Ticket:

[Bandar] is quoted in a recent biography saying that he personally flew $10m in a suitcase to Rome and gave it to a priest at the Vatican Bank, in order to covertly fund the Christian Democrats against the Communists in the 1983 Italian elections.

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.

3. 1985-1990 Sales Of Weapons and Components To Saddam To Use Against Iran:

Iraq's main financial backers were the oil-rich Persian Gulf states, most notably Saudi Arabia ($30.9 billion), Kuwait ($8.2 billion) and the United Arab Emirates ($8 billion).

The Iraq-gate scandal revealed that an Atlanta branch of Italy's largest bank, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, relying partially on U.S. taxpayer-guaranteed loans, funneled $5 billion to Iraq from 1985 to 1989. In August 1989, when FBI agents finally raided the Atlanta branch of BNL, the branch manager, Christopher Drogoul, was charged with making unauthorized, clandestine, and illegal loans to Iraq—some of which, according to his indictment, were used to purchase arms and weapons technology.

4. 1984-1985 At Least $32 Million In Funding and Weapons For The Nicaraguan Contras:

What is known from the public record, however, is that on June 20, 1984, Weinberger attended a State Department meeting about the contra operation. His scribbled notes cited the need to "plan for other sources for $." But secrecy would be vital, the defense secretary understood. "Keep US fingerprints off," he wrote. . . .

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."

5. 2004 Rigging Of Pre-Election Gasoline Prices To Favor GOP:

'Bandar wanted Bush to know that the Saudis hoped to fine-tune oil prices to prime the economy in 2004. What was key, Bandar understood, were the economic conditions before a presidential election.'

6. 2006 Funding Of The Sunni Militias In Lebanon:

On Jan. 10, the British Daily Telegraph revealed that the CIA "has been authorized to take covert action against Hezbollah as part of a secret plan by George Bush to help the Lebanese government." Bush’s "finding" directs the "CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies to fund anti-Hezbollah groups in Lebanon and pay for activists who support the Siniora government."

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.