20th Annaversary of the fairytale of Big Lies

[Peter Lemkin]

With the resulting massive accumulation of petrodollars by Saudi Arabia and Iran, the Middle East became an even more essential pillar of U.S. hegemony. Major oil producers like the Saudis and Iran used these dollars to buy U.S. Treasuries, invest in Western (especially U.S.) banks, and purchase arms from U.S. and British companies.
Nixon with the Shah of Iran in the White House in 1973. [Source: usmcu.edu]
Beyond shoring up the dollar-dominated post-Bretton Woods monetary system, the wealth of these countries—along with their ties to U.S. economic elites and to the U.S. national security state—allowed them to play important roles in the evolution of a supranational American deep state. Powerful actors associated with the CIA needed to ensure that the post-Watergate intelligence investigations in Congress could not derail U.S. covert-operation capabilities.
President Nixon shaking hands with King Faisal of Saudi Arabia following talks at the Risal Palace in Riyadh in July 1974. [Source: commons.wikimedia.org]
To this end, the CIA-connected Saudi arms tycoon Adnan Khashoggi—along with intelligence officials from France, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, Israel, and Morocco—established the Safari Club. Prince Turki Al Faisal, the former head of Saudi intelligence, explained it thusly:

In 1976, after the Watergate matters took place here, your intelligence community was literally tied up by Congress. It could not do anything. It could not send spies, it could not write reports, and it could not pay money. In order to compensate for that, a group of countries got together in the hope of fighting communism and established what was called the Safari Club. The Safari Club included France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Iran … so, the Kingdom, with these countries, helped in some way, I believe, to keep the world safe when the United States was not able to do that. That, I think, is a secret that many of you don’t know.[31]

Theodore Shackley, left, was a key CIA contact for the Safari Club. [Source: wikipedia.org]
Another former head of Saudi intelligence, Kamal Adham, was an early insider with the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), a bank that came to play an important role in the financial side of the U.S.-dominated covert netherworld.

• Adnan Khashoggi [Source: wikipedia.org]
  
• Kamal Adham [Source: alchetron.com]
  

This milieu—which included the Safari Club, BCCI, and Adnan Khashoggi’s enterprises—was described by our co-author Peter Dale Scott as being

part of a supranational deep state, whose organic links to the CIA may have helped consolidate it. It is clear however that decisions taken at this level by the Safari Club and BCCI were in no way guided by the political determinations of those elected to power in Washington [and were instead] expressly created to overcome restraints established by political decisions in Washington.[32]

In the latter half of the 1970s and in the 1980s, BCCI would play a key role in facilitating the financing of various covert operations and illicit enterprises. This institutional evolution represented by BCCI and the Safari Club should be placed in the context of key U.S. intelligence creations.
[Source: theguardian.com]
In his dissertation, Aaron Good wrote,

The embryonic [i.e., early-Cold War] deep state had seminal parapolitical institutions including banks (e.g., Castle Bank and Nugan Hand) or privatized paramilitary / intelligence outfits like the World Commerce Corporation and the various Anti-Communist Leagues. The late 1970s saw more powerful iterations, most notably the BCCI-Safari Club milieu which brought together right-wing Republicans, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and networks of wayward and disaffected spooks. With Reagan’s victory, many of these players were brought in from the cold.[33]

This is all to say that while Vietnam, Watergate, and the post-Watergate intelligence revelations all may have appeared as setbacks for U.S. imperialism and its covert apparatus, the outcome was quite opposite. The U.S. became even more dominant with the emergence of the post-Bretton Woods dollar and oil-dominated system. The clandestine realm, dominated by the U.S., became even more powerful and less accountable.
“Reaganism” and Beyond: America’s Deniable Islamist Proxies
With the right-wing Ronald Reagan in the White House, those scattered deep state elements were brought back into the fold. To employ a hyperbolic metaphor: It was as if Sauron and the One Ring had finally been reunited.
Ronald Reagan dines with his future Vice President George H.W. Bush, the former CIA director, before a debate in the 1980 Republican primaries. Reagan’s victory ushered in morning again for the U.S. deep state. [Source: cah.utexas.edu]
In 1981, after twisting some arms in the Senate, President Reagan secured the $8.5 billion sale of Boeing AWACS to Saudi Arabia. A number of sources reported that the deal included a promise from the Saudis to fund Reagan’s covert operations in such a way as to avoid congressional oversight.[34]
Ronald Reagan applauds as Saudi King Fahad speaks at a ceremony at the White House in February 1985. [Source: twitter.com]
The Saudis would go on to play key roles in the creation and funding of the mujahideen in Afghanistan and in the Iran-Contra scandal. To summarize: In the wake of Watergate and the intelligence scandals of the 1970s, the end result was essentially an evolved deep-state system that was even more opaque and less accountable to any lawful public authority.
As referenced above, the Saudis would play a key role in the CIA’s Operation Cyclone, the funding of Islamist militants in Afghanistan to inflict a costly blow against the Soviet Union. Repeating a pattern from the war in Southeast Asia, the U.S. allies in this conflict became the world’s top heroin traffickers—Gulbuddin Hekmatyar first and foremost among them. Sometimes called the “Arab Afghans,” the fighters and their Saudi-led logistical support networks would evolve into al-Qaeda in the 1990s.
Ronald Reagan meeting with mujahideen leaders in the White House in 1983. [Source: wikipedia.org]
It was in this post-Cold War era that the U.S. began to use Arab Afghan / mujahideen assets in a number of conflicts in regions that had previously been under Soviet influence. An example was an early 1990s operation in Azerbaijan.
Richard Secord [Source: wikipedia.org]
The murky Azerbaijan affair involved the U.S. oil majors, military / intelligence veterans like Richard Secord, and Islamist Arab Afghans—some of whom were recruited by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. The dénouement was the installation of a regime in Baku that broke with Russia and brought in Western oil companies.[35]
Islamist militants were also used to advance U.S. aims in Bosnia. Some of these fighters were trained by an Egyptian, Ali Mohamed, from the JFK Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg. The Egyptian terrorist leader Omar Abdel-Rahman (aka the “blind sheikh”) played a lead role from his headquarters in Brooklyn, with Saudi and U.S. assistance.[36]
Mujahideen battalion within the Bosnian army in the 1990s Balkans War. [Source: bbc.com]

• Ali Mohamed [Source: ctc.usma.edu]
  
• Omar Abdel-Rahman, the blind sheikh [Source: washingtonpost.com]