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A. B. Krongard
#1
A. B. Krongard




[/url]A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard, full name Alvin Bernard Krongard,[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._B._Krongard#cite_note-0][1] was the Executive Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He was appointed by George Tenet on March 16, 2001.
The Executive Director is the third ranking position within the CIA and the incumbent functions essentially as the Chief Operating Officer of the Agency. For three years prior, Krongard had served as Counselor to the DCI.
A longtime consultant to DCIs, Krongard joined the Agency full time in February 1998, following a 29-year business career. During his private sector career, he served as Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of Alex. Brown & Sons, the nation’s oldest investment banking firm, and Vice Chairman of the Board of Bankers Trust.
Krongard received an A.B. degree (1958) with honors from Princeton University and a Juris Doctor degree with honors from the University of Maryland School of Law. While at Princeton, Krongard played lacrosse. In 1980, he was inducted as a member of the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame. [2] He served three years of active duty as an infantry officer with the United States Marine Corps.
Krongard resigned from the CIA shortly after the arrival of DCI Porter Goss in September 2004. While at the CIA, he was the connection between Erik Prince of Blackwater Security Consulting and the CIA. Through his influence, Blackwater was able to receive its first black contract.[citation needed]
On March 18, 2005, Krongard was appointed as an outside US director to the Global Board of Directors organized to oversee and coordinate the worldwide operations of DLA Piper, one of the world’s leading law firms.

Family

Krongard is the brother of State Department Inspector General Howard Krongard.[3] Unlike "Buzzy", Howard does not use his nickname ("Cookie") professionally.
Krongard is a native of Baltimore, Maryland, and resides in Baltimore, Maryland and McLean, Virginia. He was married to the late Patricia A. Lion and has three adult sons including Alexander Lion Krongard (US Navy), Randall Harris Krongard (film maker).
Patrica Lion's sister, Margo Lion is a Broadway theatre producer.
On 31 July 2004 Krongard married Cheryl Gordon (née Cheryl Gruetzmacher), at that time a senior executive for Apollo Management[4]. She has since become a director of Legg Mason and US Airways.

Controversies

Krongard's name was brought up in conjunction with investigations into suspected 9/11-related insider trading because of timely Wall Street trades made through the investment bank he used to head, Alex. Brown.[5]
At a November 14, 2007 House oversight committee hearing about Blackwater, investigating allegations of improper interference by Krongard's brother, Howard, in Justice Department investigations of Blackwater and other State Department contractors, Chairman Henry Waxman stated that A. B. Krongard was on "Blackwater's advisory board".[6] Howard Krongard at first denied that his brother had any connection with Blackwater, saying:
I can tell you, very frankly, I am not aware of any financial interest or position he has with respect to Blackwater. When these ugly rumors started recently, I specifically asked him. I do not believe it is true that he is a member of the advisory board that you stated. And that's something I think I need to say.[7] However, when confronted with a July 26 letter from Blackwater founder and CEO Erik Prince to Buzzy Krongard asking him to join Blackwater's advisory board, followed by a September 5 letter welcoming Krongard to the board and a report from Rep. Elijah Cummings stating that Buzz Krongard had been expected to attend a Blackwater board meeting earlier that week[7], Krongard said he had called his brother during the ensuing break in the hearings and learned of this conflict of interest for the first time, saying "I'm not my brother's keeper, and we don't discuss our business with each other".[8] He then recused himself from the investigation.[8],[7] ,[9] Committee chairman Henry Waxman issued a memorandum [10] summarizing the discrepancies between the two brothers' recollections of what Buzzy told Howard.

References


  1. ^ Howard J. Krongard
  2. ^ "Krongard, Alvin B.". US Lacrosse, Inc.. http://www.uslacrosse.org/museum/hofbios...arda.phtml. Retrieved on 2007-08-07. "Krongard . . . was captain of every team on which he ever played."
  3. ^ State IG Accused of Averting Probes - washingtonpost.com
  4. ^ WEDDINGS/CELEBRATIONS; Cheryl Gordon, A. B. Krongard - New York Times
  5. ^ Suppressed Details of Criminal Insider Trading Lead Directly Into The CIA's Highest Ranks
  6. ^ TPMmuckraker | Talking Points Memo | Waxman: State IG's Brother Sits on Blackwater's Advisory Board
  7. ^ a b c Brother of State Dept. Official Linked to Blackwater, Matthew Jaffe, ABC News, November 14, 2007
  8. ^ a b State Dept. official withdraws from Blackwater probe by Matt Kelley, USA Today, November 14, 2007.
  9. ^ State Dept. inspector-general bows out of Blackwater probe - CNN.com
  10. ^ The ballad of Cookie and Buzzy Krongard. - By Bonnie Goldstein - Slate Magazine
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx

"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.

“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
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#2
SUPPRESSED DETAILS OF CRIMINAL INSIDER TRADING LEAD DIRECTLY INTO THE CIA's HIGHEST RANKS
CIA EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR "BUZZY" KRONGARD MANAGED FIRM THAT HANDLED "PUT" OPTIONS ON UAL
by
Michael C. Ruppert
[© COPYRIGHT, 2001, Michael C. Ruppert and FTW Publications, www.copvcia.com. All Rights Reserved. - May be reprinted or distributed for non-profit purposes only.]
FTW, October 9, 2001 - Although uniformly ignored by the mainstream U.S. media, there is abundant and clear evidence that a number of transactions in financial markets indicated specific (criminal) foreknowledge of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In the case of at least one of these trades -- which has left a $2.5 million prize unclaimed -- the firm used to place the "put options" on United Airlines stock was, until 1998, managed by the man who is now in the number three Executive Director position at the Central Intelligence Agency. Until 1997 A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard had been Chairman of the investment bank A.B. Brown. A.B. Brown was acquired by Banker's Trust in 1997. Krongard then became, as part of the merger, Vice Chairman of Banker's Trust-AB Brown, one of 20 major U.S. banks named by Senator Carl Levin this year as being connected to money laundering. Krongard's last position at Banker's Trust (BT) was to oversee "private client relations." In this capacity he had direct hands-on relations with some of the wealthiest people in the world in a kind of specialized banking operation that has been identified by the U.S. Senate and other investigators as being closely connected to the laundering of drug money.
Krongard (re?) joined the CIA in 1998 as counsel to CIA Director George Tenet. He was promoted to CIA Executive Director by President Bush in March of this year. BT was acquired by Deutsche Bank in 1999. The combined firm is the single largest bank in Europe. And, as we shall see, Deutsche Bank played several key roles in events connected to the September 11 attacks.
THE SCOPE OF KNOWN INSIDER TRADING
Before looking further into these relationships it is necessary to look at the insider trading information that is being ignored by Reuters, The New York Times and other mass media. It is well documented that the CIA has long monitored such trades - in real time - as potential warnings of terrorist attacks and other economic moves contrary to U.S. interests. Previous stories in FTW have specifically highlighted the use of Promis software to monitor such trades.
It is necessary to understand only two key financial terms to understand the significance of these trades, "selling short" and "put options".
"Selling Short" is the borrowing of stock, selling it at current market prices, but not being required to actually produce the stock for some time. If the stock falls precipitously after the short contract is entered, the seller can then fulfill the contract by buying the stock after the price has fallen and complete the contract at the pre-crash price. These contracts often have a window of as long as four months.
"Put Options," are contracts giving the buyer the option to sell stocks at a later date. Purchased at nominal prices of, for example, $1.00 per share, they are sold in blocks of 100 shares. If exercised, they give the holder the option of selling selected stocks at a future date at a price set when the contract is issued. Thus, for an investment of $10,000 it might be possible to tie up 10,000 shares of United or American Airlines at $100 per share, and the seller of the option is then obligated to buy them if the option is executed. If the stock has fallen to $50 when the contract matures, the holder of the option can purchase the shares for $50 and immediately sell them for $100 - regardless of where the market then stands. A call option is the reverse of a put option, which is, in effect, a derivatives bet that the stock price will go up.
A September 21 story by the Israeli Herzliyya International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism, entitled "Black Tuesday: The World's Largest Insider Trading Scam?" documented the following trades connected to the September 11 attacks:
- Between September 6 and 7, the Chicago Board Options Exchange saw purchases of 4,744 put options on United Airlines, but only 396 call options. Assuming that 4,000 of the options were bought by people with advance knowledge of the imminent attacks, these "insiders" would have profited by almost $5 million.
- On September 10, 4,516 put options on American Airlines were bought on the Chicago exchange, compared to only 748 calls. Again, there was no news at that point to justify this imbalance; Again, assuming that 4,000 of these options trades represent "insiders," they would represent a gain of about $4 million.
- [The levels of put options purchased above were more than six times higher than normal.]
- No similar trading in other airlines occurred on the Chicago exchange in the days immediately preceding Black Tuesday.
- Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co., which occupied 22 floors of the World Trade Center, saw 2,157 of its October $45 put options bought in the three trading days before Black Tuesday; this compares to an average of 27 contracts per day before September 6. Morgan Stanley's share price fell from $48.90 to $42.50 in the aftermath of the attacks. Assuming that 2,000 of these options contracts were bought based upon knowledge of the approaching attacks, their purchasers could have profited by at least $1.2 million.
- Merrill Lynch & Co., with headquarters near the Twin Towers, saw 12,215 October $45 put options bought in the four trading days before the attacks; the previous average volume in those shares had been 252 contracts per day [a 1200% increase!]. When trading resumed, Merrill's shares fell from $46.88 to $41.50; assuming that 11,000 option contracts were bought by "insiders," their profit would have been about $5.5 million.
- European regulators are examining trades in Germany's Munich Re, Switzerland's Swiss Re, and AXA of France, all major reinsurers with exposure to the Black Tuesday disaster. [FTW Note: AXA also owns more than 25% of American Airlines stock making the attacks a "double whammy" for them.]
On September 29, 2001 - in a vital story that has gone unnoticed by the major media - the San Francisco Chronicle reported, "Investors have yet to collect more than $2.5 million in profits they made trading options in the stock of United Airlines before the Sept. 11, terrorist attacks, according to a source familiar with the trades and market data.
"The uncollected money raises suspicions that the investors - whose identities and nationalities have not been made public - had advance knowledge of the strikes." They don't dare show up now. The suspension of trading for four days after the attacks made it impossible to cash-out quickly and claim the prize before investigators started looking.
"October series options for UAL Corp. were purchased in highly unusual volumes three trading days before the terrorist attacks for a total outlay of $2,070; investors bought the option contracts, each representing 100 shares, for 90 cents each. [This represents 230,000 shares]. Those options are now selling at more than $12 each. There are still 2,313 so-called "put" options outstanding [valued at $2.77 million and representing 231,300 shares] according to the Options Clearinghouse Corp."
"The source familiar with the United trades identified Deutsche Bank Alex Brown, the American investment banking arm of German giant Deutsche Bank, as the investment bank used to purchase at least some of these options." This was the operation managed by Krongard until as recently as 1998.
As reported in other news stories, Deutsche Bank was also the hub of insider trading activity connected to Munich Re. just before the attacks.
CIA, THE BANKS AND THE BROKERS
Understanding the interrelationships between CIA and the banking and brokerage world is critical to grasping the already frightening implications of the above revelations. Let's look at the history of CIA, Wall Street and the big banks by looking at some of the key players in CIA's history.
Clark Clifford - The National Security Act of 1947 was written by Clark Clifford, a Democratic Party powerhouse, former Secretary of Defense, and one-time advisor to President Harry Truman. In the 1980s, as Chairman of First American Bancshares, Clifford was instrumental in getting the corrupt CIA drug bank BCCI a license to operate on American shores. His profession: Wall Street lawyer and banker.
John Foster and Allen Dulles - These two brothers "designed" the CIA for Clifford. Both were active in intelligence operations during WW II. Allen Dulles was OSS station chief in Berne, Switzerland, where he met frequently with Nazi leaders and looked after U.S. investments in Germany. John Foster went on to become Secretary of State under Dwight Eisenhower and Allen went on to serve as CIA Director under Eisenhower and was later fired by JFK. Their professions: partners in the most powerful - to this day - Wall Street law firm of Sullivan, Cromwell.
Bill Casey - Ronald Reagan's CIA Director and OSS veteran who served as chief wrangler during the Iran-Contra years was, under President Richard Nixon, Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. His profession: Wall Street lawyer and stockbroker.
David Doherty - The current Vice President of the New York Stock Exchange for enforcement is the retired General Counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency.
George Herbert Walker Bush - President from 1989 to January 1993, also served as CIA Director for 13 months from 1976-7. He is now a paid consultant to the Carlyle Group, the 11th largest defense contractor in the nation, which also shares joint investments with the bin Laden family.
A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard - The current Executive Director of the Central Intelligence Agency is the former Chairman of the investment bank A.B. Brown and former Vice Chairman of Banker's Trust.
John Deutch - This retired CIA Director from the Clinton Administration currently sits on the board at Citigroup, the nation's second largest bank, which has been repeatedly and overtly involved in the documented laundering of drug money. This includes Citigroup's 2001 purchase of a Mexican bank known to launder drug money, Banamex.
Nora Slatkin - This retired CIA Executive Director also sits on Citibank's board.
Maurice "Hank" Greenburg - The CEO of AIG insurance, manager of the third largest capital investment pool in the world, was floated as a possible CIA Director in 1995. FTW exposed Greenberg's and AIG's long connection to CIA drug trafficking and covert operations in a two-part series that was interrupted just prior to the attacks of September 11. AIG's stock has bounced back remarkably well since the attacks. To read that story, please go to [URL="http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ciadrugs/part_2.html"]http://www.fromthewilderness.com/
free/ciadrugs/part_2.html[/URL].
One wonders how much damning evidence is necessary to respond to what is now irrefutable proof that CIA knew about the attacks and did not stop them. Whatever our government is doing, whatever the CIA is doing, it is clearly NOT in the interests of the American people, especially those who died on September 11.
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww...ngard.html
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx

"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.

“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
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#3
Buzzy and Cookie Krongard grew up five years apart in middle-class Baltimore. Both brothers went to Princeton University, played lacrosse, enjoyed successful business careers, and then entered government.



Alvin "Buzzy" Krongard, the older brother, led his company through a $1.7 billion merger with Bankers Trust and then became the third-highest-ranking official at the Central Intelligence Agency. Buzzy is now semiretired as nonexecutive board chairman to a mortgage company, sits on several corporate boards, and, apparently, advises government contractors. Howard "Cookie" Krongard chose corporate law, then in 2005 was appointed by President George W. Bush to be inspector general of the State Department.
The brothers' parallel career arcs crossed disastrously last week when Cookie, at a House oversight committee hearing to clear up a number of troubling allegations about his performance as inspector general, misremembered a fraternal conversation that had occurred a few weeks earlier and testified emphatically that Buzzy was not affiliated with the State Department's troublesome contractor Blackwater Worldwide. (See below and the following page for a recap by committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif.) During a hearing recess, Buzzy, who had been watching his brother's mistaken testimony on C-SPAN, reminded Cookie by phone that he had indeed recently joined a Blackwater advisory board and added that he'd just participated in his first board meeting. Cookie came back to the hearing and quickly corrected his testimony. While insisting that he is not his brother's keeper, Cookie has now recused himself from Blackwater-related oversight. Buzzy, meanwhile, has stepped down reluctantly from the security contractor's board in order to minimize any appearance of conflict-of-interest. The committee has invited both brothers to clear up additional misunderstandings at their witness table next week.

[Image: p-e4m3Yko6bFYVc.gif?labels=NewsAndRefere...AndFinance]



[Image: krongard-recap-1.jpg]
[Image: krongard-recap-2.jpg]
http://www.slate.com/id/2178277/entry/2178279/
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx

"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.

“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
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#4
Let Bin Laden stay free, says CIA man

Tony Allen-Mills

THE world may be better off if Osama Bin Laden remains at large, according to the Central Intelligence Agency’s recently departed executive director. If the world’s most wanted terrorist is captured or killed, a power struggle among his Al-Qaeda subordinates may trigger a wave of terror attacks, said AB “Buzzy” Krongard, who stepped down six weeks ago as the CIA’s third most senior executive.
“You can make the argument that we’re better off with him (at large),” Krongard said. “Because if something happens to Bin Laden, you might find a lot of people vying for his position and demonstrating how macho they are by unleashing a stream of terror.”
Krongard, a former investment banker who joined the CIA in 1998, said Bin Laden’s role among Islamic militants was changing.
“He’s turning into more of a charismatic leader than a terrorist mastermind,” he said. “Some of his lieutenants are the ones to worry about.”
Krongard, 68, said he viewed Bin Laden “not as a chief executive but more like a venture capitalist”.
He added: “Let’s say you and I want to blow up Trafalgar Square. So we go to Bin Laden. And he’ll say, ‘Well, here’s some money and some passports and if you need weapons, see this guy’.
“I don’t see him keeping his fingers on everything because the lines of communications are just too difficult.”
Several US officials have privately admitted that it may be better to keep Bin Laden pinned down on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan rather than make him a martyr or put him on trial. But Krongard is the most senior figure to acknowledge publicly that his capture might prove counter-productive.
Krongard also acknowledged that the CIA was still having trouble planting spies in Islamic militant ranks. “There are hundreds and hundreds of (Al-Qaeda) cells — it’s like a living, moving bit of protoplasm,” he said.
“In order to penetrate you not only have to be language-proficient, you also have to commit acts that exceed criminality. It’s very hard.”
His comments came as it emerged that new laws to combat the Al-Qaeda threat in Britain and keep the Belmarsh terror suspects in jail will be unveiled next month.
The draft terrorism bill will propose that “acts preparatory to terrorism” become a criminal offence to catch those who provide accommodation, finance, identity papers and other support. The bill will prove controversial because it could be applied restrospectively against many of the 11 foreign terror suspects being detained in Belmarsh, south London, and Broadmoor secure hospital.
Charles Clarke, the home secretary, is also planning to announce a civil punishment for those suspected of “associating” with terrorist suspects, but where there is insufficient proof to press charges.
Additional reporting: David Leppard
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/wo...410125.ece
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx

"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.

“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
Reply
#5
Peter Dale Scott: Al Qaeda and the U.S. Establishment


This is an early draft of Chapter 10 from Peter Dale Scott’s book, “The Road to 9/11"

——————————————————————————-

Al Qaeda and the U.S. Establishment

The then leader of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, Sayed Kuttub, a man Faisal sponsored to undermine Nasser, openly admitted that during this period [the 1960s] “America made Islam.” (1)

What is slowly emerging from Al Qaeda activities in Central Asia in the 1990s is the extent to which they involved both American oil companies and the U.S. government. (2) By now we know that the U.S.-protected movements of al Qaeda terrorists into regions like Afghanistan, Azerbaijan and Kosovo have served the interests of U.S. oil companies. In many cases they have also provided pretexts or opportunities for a U.S. military commitment and even troops to follow.

This has been most obvious in the years since the Afghan War with the Soviet Union ended in 1989. Deprived of Soviet troops to support it, the Soviet-backed Najibullah regime in Kabul finally fell in April 1992. What should have been a glorious victory for the mujahedin proved instead to be a time of troubles for them, as Tajiks behind Massoud and Pashtuns behind Hekmatyar began instead to fight each other.

The situation was particularly difficult for the Arab Afghans, who now found themselves no longer welcome. Under pressure from America, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, the new interim president of Afghanistan, Mojaddedi, announced that the Arab Afghans should leave. In January 1993 Pakistan followed suit, closed the offices of all mujahedin in its country, and ordered the deportation of all Arab Afghans. (3) Shortly afterwards Pakistan extradited a number of Egyptian jihadis to Egypt, some of whom had already been tried and convicted in absentia. (4) Other radical Islamists went to Afghanistan, but without the foreign support they had enjoyed before.

Fleeing the hostilities in Afghanistan, some Uzbek and Tajik mujahedin and refugees started fleeing or returning north across the Amu Darya. (5) In this confusion, with or without continued U.S. backing, cross-border raids, of the kind originally encouraged by CIA Director Casey back in the mid-1980s, continued. (6) Both Hekmatyar and Massoud actively supported the Tajik rebels, including in the years up to 1992 when both continued to receive aid and assistance from the United States. (7) The Pakistani observer Ahmed Rashid documents further support for the Tajik rebels from both Saudi Arabia and the Pakistani intelligence directorate ISI. (8)

These raids into Tajikistan and later Uzbekistan contributed materially to the destabilization of the Muslim Republics in the Soviet Union (and after 1992 of its successor, the Conference of Independent States). This destabilization was an explicit goal of U.S. policy in the Reagan era, and did not change with the end of the Afghan War. On the contrary, the United States was concerned to hasten the break-up of the Soviet Union, and increasingly to gain access to the petroleum reserves of the Caspian Basin, which at that time were still estimated to be “the largest known reserves of unexploited fuel in the planet.” (9)

The collapse of the Soviet Union had a disastrous impact on the economies of its Islamic Republics. Already in 1991 the leaders of Central Asia “began to hold talks with Western oil companies. The first Bush Administration actively supported the on the back of ongoing negotiations between Kazakhstan and the US company Chevron.” (10) The first Bush Administration actively supported the plans of U.S. oil companies to contract for exploiting the resources of the Caspian region, and also for a pipeline not controlled by Moscow that could bring the oil and gas production out to the west. The same goals were enunciated even more clearly as matters of national security by Clinton and his administration. (11)

Eventually the threat presented by Islamist rebels persuaded the governments of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan to allow U.S. as well as Russian bases on their soil. The result is to preserve artificially a situation throughout the region where small elites grow increasingly wealthy and corrupt, while most citizens suffer from a sharp drop in living standards. (12)

The gap between the Bush Administration©s professed ideals and its real objectives is well illustrated by its position towards the regime of Karimov in Uzbekistan. America quickly sent Donald Rumsfeld to deal with the new regime in Kyrgyzstan installed in March 2005 after the popular ©Tulip Revolution© and overthrow there of Askar Akayev. (13) But Islam Karimov©s violent repression of a similar uprising in Uzbekistan saw no wavering of U.S. support for a dictator who has allowed U.S. troops to be based in his oil- and gas-rich country. (14)

U.S. Operatives, Oil Companies and Al Qaeda in Azerbaijan

In one former Soviet Republic, Azerbaijan, Arab Afghan jihadis clearly assisted this effort of U.S. oil companies to penetrate the region. In 1991, Richard Secord, Heinie Aderholt, and Ed Dearborn, three veterans of U.S. operations in Laos, and later of Oliver North©s operations with the Contras, turned up in Baku under the cover of an oil company, MEGA Oil. (15) This was at a time when the first Bush administration had expressed its support for an oil pipeline stretching from Azerbaijan across the Caucasus to Turkey. (16) MEGA never did find oil, but did contribute materially to the removal of Azerbaijan from the sphere of post-Soviet Russian influence.

Secord, Aderholt, and Dearborn were all career U.S. Air Force officers, not CIA. However Secord explains in his memoir how Aderholt and himself were occasionally seconded to the CIA as CIA detailees. Secord describes his own service as a CIA detailee with Air America in first Vietnam and then Laos, in cooperation with the CIA Station Chief Theodore Shackley. (17) Secord later worked with Oliver North to supply arms and materiel to the Contras in Honduras, and also developed a small air force for them, using many former Air America pilots. (18) Because of this experience in air operations, CIA Director Casey and Oliver North had selected Secord to trouble-shoot the deliveries of weapons to Iran in the Iran-Contra operation. (19) (Aderholt and Dearborn also served in the Laotian CIA operation, and later in supporting the Contras.)

As MEGA operatives in Azerbaijan, Secord, Aderholt, Dearborn, and their men engaged in military training, passed ©brown bags filled with cash© to members of the government, and above all set up an airline on the model of Air America which soon was picking up hundreds of mujahedin mercenaries in Afghanistan. (20) (Secord and Aderholt claim to have left Azerbaijan before the mujahedin arrived.) Meanwhile, Hekmatyar, who at the time was still allied with bin Laden, was ©observed recruiting Afghan mercenaries (i.e. Arab Afghans) to fight in Azerbaijan against Armenia and its Russian allies.© (21) At this time, heroin flooded from Afghanistan through Baku into Chechnya, Russia, and even North America. (22) It is difficult to believe that MEGA©s airline (so much like Air America) did not become involved. (23)

The operation was not a small one.

Over the course of the next two years, (MEGA Oil) procured thousands of dollars worth of weapons and recruited at least two thousand Afghan mercenaries for Azerbaijan – the first mujahedin to fight on the territory of the former Communist Bloc.© (24)

In 1993 the mujahedin also contributed to the ouster of Azerbaijan©s elected president, Abulfaz Elchibey, and his replacement by an ex-Communist Brezhnev-era leader, Heidar Aliyev.

At stake was an $8 billion oil contract with a consortium of western oil companies headed by BP. Part of the contract would be a pipeline which would, for the first time, not pass through Russian-controlled territory when exporting oil from the Caspian basin to Turkey. Thus the contract was bitterly opposed by Russia, and required an Azeri leader willing to stand up to the former Soviet Union.

The Arab Afghans helped supply that muscle. Their own eyes were set on fighting Russia in the disputed Armenian-Azeri region of Nagorno-Karabakh, and in liberating neighboring Muslim areas of Russia: Chechnya and Dagestan. (25) To this end, as the 9/11 Report notes, the bin Laden organization established an NGO in Baku, which became a base for terrorism elsewhere. (26) It also became a transshipment point for Afghan heroin to the Chechen mafia, whose branches ©extended not only to the London arms market, but also throughout continental Europe and North America.© (27)

The Arab Afghans©Azeri operations were financed in part with Afghan heroin.

According to police sources in the Russian capital, 184 heroin processing labs were discovered in Moscow alone last year. ‘‘Every one of them was run by Azeris, who use the proceeds to buy arms for Azerbaijan’s war against Armenia in Nagorno- Karabakh,’‘ (Russian economist Alexandre) Datskevitch said. (28)

This foreign Islamist presence in Baku was also supported by bin Laden©s financial network. (29) With bin Laden©s guidance and Saudi support, Baku soon became a base for jihadi operations against Dagestan and Chechnya in Russia. (30) And an informed article argued in 1999 that Pakistan©s ISI, facing its own disposal problem with the militant Arab-Afghan veterans, trained and armed them in Afghanistan to fight in Chechnya. ISI also encouraged the flow of Afghan drugs westward to support the Chechen militants, thus diminishing the flow into Pakistan itself. (31)

As Michael Griffin has observed, the regional conflicts in Nagorno-Karabakh and other disputed areas, Abkhazia, Turkish Kurdistan and Chechnya each represented a distinct, tactical move, crucial at the time, in discerning which power would ultimately become master of the pipelines which, some time in this century, will transport the oil and gas from the Caspian basin to an energy-avid world. (32)

The wealthy Saudi families of al-Alamoudi (as Delta Oil) and bin Mahfouz (as Nimir Oil) participated in the western oil consortium along with the American firm Unocal.

It is unclear whether MEGA Oil was a front for the U.S. Government or for U.S. oil companies and their Saudi allies. U.S. oil companies have been accused of spending millions of dollars in Azerbaijan, not just to bribe the government but also to install it. According to a Turkish intelligence source who was an alleged eyewitness, major oil companies, including Exxon and Mobil, were ©behind the coup d©état© which in 1993 replaced the elected President, Abulfaz Elchibey, with his successor, Heydar Aliyev. The source claimed to have been at meetings in Baku with ©senior members of BP, Exxon, Amoco, Mobil and the Turkish Petroleum Company. The topic was always oil rights and, on the insistence of the Azeris, supply and arms to Azerbaijan.© Turkish secret service documents allege middlemen paid off key officials of the democratically elected government of the oil-rich nation just before its president was overthrown. (33)

The true facts and backers of the Aliyev coup may never be fully disclosed. But unquestionably, before the coup, the efforts of Richard Secord, Heinie Aderholt, Ed Dearborn and Hekmatyar©s mujahedin helped contest Russian influence and prepare for Baku©s shift away to the west. (34) Three years later, in August 1996, Amoco©s president met with Clinton and arranged for Aliyev to be invited to Washington. (35) In 1997 Clinton said that

In a world of growing energy demand©our nation cannot afford to rely on a single region for our energy supplies. By working closely with Azerbaijan to tap the Caspian©s resources, we not only help Azerbaijan to prosper, we also help diversify our energy supply and strengthen our energy©s security. (36)

But the interest in Azerbaijan was bipartisan. James Baker, George H.W. Bush©s Secretary of State, was and is a member of the U.S.-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce. So was Dick Cheney, During the 1990s the council©s co-chairman was Richard Armitage, who in this period visited Aliyev in Azerbaijan on behalf of Texaco. (37)

Unocal, the Taliban, and bin Laden in Afghanistan

The accusations against Amoco, Exxon, and Mobil in Azerbaijan parallel those from European sources against Unocal in Afghanistan, which has been accused of helping, along with Delta Oil, to finance the Taliban©s seizure of Kabul in 1996. (This was at a time when the Taliban was also receiving funds from Saudi Arabia and Osama bin Laden.)

The respected French observer Olivier Roy has charged that “When the Taleban took power in Afghanistan (1996), it was largely orchestrated by the Pakistani secret service [ISI] and the oil company Unocal, with its Saudi ally Delta.© (38) Unocal executive John Maresca then testified in 1998 to the House Committee on International Relations on the benefits of a proposed oil pipeline through Afghanistan to the coat of Pakistan. (39) A second natural gas pipeline (Centgas) was also contemplated by Unocal.

For Unocal to advance its own funds for the Taliban conquest would have been in violation of U.S. law, which is why such companies customarily resort to middlemen. No such restraints would have inhibited Unocal’s Saudi partner in its Centgas consortium, Delta Oil. Delta Oil certainly had the assets; it was ©owned by a Jeddah-based group of 50 prominent investors close to the [Saudi] royal family.© (40) Delta was already an investor with Unocal in the oilfields of Azerbaijan, and may have been a factor in the October 1995 decision of Turkmenistan to sign a new pipeline contract with Unocal. (41)

As I wrote a decade ago, citing the case of a U.S. oil company in Tunisia, “it is normal, not unusual, for the entry of major U.S. firms into Third World countries to be facilitated and sustained, indeed made possible, by corruption.” (42) This has long been the case, but in the Reagan 1980s it was escalated by a new generation of aggressively risk-taking, law-bending, ©cowboy© entrepreneurs. The pace was set by new corporations like Enron, a high-debt merger that was in part guided by the junk-bond impresario Michael Milken.

Some have speculated that Enron also had a potential interest in the Unocal gas pipeline project through Afghanistan. By 1997 Enron was negotiating a $2 billion joint venture with Neftegas of Uzbekistan, to develop Uzbekistan’s natural gas. This was a huge project backed by a $400 million commitment from the U.S. Government through OPIC. Uzbekistan also signed a Memo of Agreement to participate in the Centgas gas pipeline. But the Enron Uzbek negotiations collapsed in 1998. (43)

Enron©s short-term plans had been to export Uzbek gas west to Kazakhstan, Turkey, and Europe. However it has been claimed that Enron hoped eventually to supply, via the Centgas pipeline, its failing energy plant in Dabhol, India. (Without a cheap gas supply, the cost of electricity from Dabhol was so great that Indians refused to buy it.) (44)

In the first half of 2001 the Bush Administration attempted to revive negotiations with the Taliban for the pipeline, as a quid pro quo for agreeing to a national unity government with Massoud©s Northern Alliance, and extraditing Osama bin Laden. (45) As Chalmers Johnson has commented, ©Support for this enterprise [the dual oil and gas pipelines] appears to have been a major consideration in the Bush administration©s decision to attack Afghanistan on October 7, 2001.© (46)

In my book Drugs, Oil, and War, I quote again from Olivier Roy: “It is the Americans who have made inroads in Central Asia, primarily because of the oil and gas interests. Chevron and Unocal are political actors who talk as equals with the States (that is, with the presidents).© (47)

It is clear they talk as equals in the current Bush Administration. Both the President and Vice-President are former oilmen, as were some of their oldest friends and political backers, like Kenneth Lay of Enron. (48)

Al Qaeda, the KLA in Kosovo, and the Trans-Balkan Pipeline

The U.S., Al Qaeda and oil company interests converged again in Kosovo. Though the origins of the Kosovo tragedy were rooted in local enmities, oil became a prominent aspect of the outcome. There the al Qaeda-backed UCK or ©Kosovo Liberation Army© (KLA) was directly supported and politically empowered by NATO, beginning in 1998. (49) But according to a source of Tim Judah, KLA representatives had already met with American, British, and Swiss intelligence agencies in 1996, and possibly ©several years earlier.© (50) This would presumably have been back when Arab Afghan members of the KLA, like Abdul-Wahid al-Qahtani, were fighting in Bosnia. (51)

Mainstream accounts of the Kosovo War are silent about the role of al Qaeda in training and financing the UCK/KLA, yet this fact has been recognized by experts and to my knowledge never contested by them. (52) For example, James Bissett, former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia, said ©Many members of the Kosovo Liberation Army were sent for training in terrorist camps in Afghanistan©. Milosevic is right. There is no question of their (al Qaeda©s) participation in conflicts in the Balkans. It is very well documented.” (53) In March 2002, Michael Steiner, the United Nations administrator in Kosovo, warned of “importing the Afghan danger to Europe” because several cells trained and financed by al-Qaeda remained in the region. (54)

As late as 1997 the UCK/KLA had been recognized by the U.S. as a terrorist group supported in part by the heroin traffic. (55) The Washington Times reported in 1999 that

The Kosovo Liberation Army, which the Clinton administration has embraced and some members of Congress want to arm as part of the NATO bombing campaign, is a terrorist organization that has financed much of its war effort with profits from the sale of heroin. (56)

Alfred McCoy supplies a detailed and footnoted corroboration:

Albanian exiles used drug profits to ship Czech and Swiss arms back to Kosovo for the separatist guerrillas of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In 1997-98, these Kosovar drug syndicates armed the KLA for a revolt against Belgrade©s army©.Even after the 1999 Kumanovo agreement settled the Kosovo conflict, the UN administration of the province©allowed a thriving heroin traffic along this northern route from Turkey. The former commanders of the KLA, both local clans and aspiring national leaders, continued to dominate the transit traffic through the Balkans. (57)

Yet once again, as in Azerbaijan, these drug-financed Islamist jihadis received American assistance, this time from the U.S. Government. (58) At the time critics charged that US oil interests were interested in building a trans-Balkan pipeline with US Army protection; although initially ridiculed, these critics were eventually proven correct. (59) BBC News announced in December 2004 that a $1.2 billion pipeline, south of a huge new U.S. army base in Kosovo, has been given a go-ahead by the governments of Albania, Bulgaria, and Macedonia. (60)

The closeness of the UCK/KLA to al-Qaeda was acknowledged again in the western press, after Afghan-connected KLA guerrillas proceeded in 2001 to conduct guerrilla warfare in Macedonia. Press accounts included an Interpol report containing the allegation that one of bin Laden´s senior lieutenants was the commander of an elite UCK/KLA unit operating in Kosovo in 1999. (61)

This was probably Mohammed al-Zawahiri. The American right wing, which opposed Clinton©s actions in Kosovo, has transmitted reports ©that the KLA’s head of elite forces, Muhammed al-Zawahiri, was the brother of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the military commander for bin Laden’s Al Qaeda.© (62) Meanwhile Marcia Kurop in the Wall Street Journal has written that ©The Egyptian surgeon turned terrorist leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri has operated terrorist training camps, weapons of mass destruction factories and money-laundering and drug-trading networks throughout Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Bosnia.© (63)

According to Yossef Bodansky, director of the U.S. Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare,

Bin Laden©s Arab `Afghans© also have assumed a dominant role in training the Kosovo Liberation Army©[by mid-March 1999 the UCK included] many elements controlled and/or sponsored by the U.S., German, British, and Croatian intelligence services. (64)

Meanwhile by 2000, according to DEA statistics, Afghan heroin accounted for almost 20 percent of the heroin seized in the United States — nearly double the percentage taken four years earlier. Much of it is now distributed by Kosovar Albanians. (65)

The most flagrant and revealing evidence that as late as 2004 some U.S. bureaucratic sectors were still working with veterans of al Qaeda networks came in respect to Haiti:

In 2004 a USAID Report confirmed that “Training and management specialists of the Kosovo Protection Corps, a civilian response unit consisting primarily of former Kosovo Liberation Army members, have been brought to Haiti” (66)

Why would AID bring veterans of the Kosovo Liberation Army, ©a major force in international organized crime, moving staggering amounts of narcotics,© (67) to train and manage the Haitian Army, an organization traditionally ©corrupted by Colombian cocaine kingpins©? (68) Whatever the answer, it is hard to imagine that AID did not have drugs somehow in mind.

Al Qaeda and the Petroleum-Military Complex

It is important to understand that the conspicuous influence of petroleum money in the administration of two Bush presidents was also prominent under Clinton. A former CIA officer complained about the oil lobby©s influence with Sheila Heslin of Clinton©s National Security Council staff:

Heslin©s sole job, it seemed, was to carry water for an exclusive club known as the Foreign Oil Companies Group, a cover for a cartel of major petroleum companies doing business in the Caspian. . . . Another thing I learned was that Heslin wasn©t soloing. Her boss, Deputy National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, headed the inter-agency committee on Caspian oil policy, which made him in effect the government©s ambassador to the cartel, and Berger wasn©t a disinterested player. He held $90,000 worth of stock in Amoco, probably the most influential member of the cartel. . . . The deeper I got, the more Caspian oil money I found sloshing around Washington. (69)

The oil companies© meeting with Sheila Heslin in the summer of 1995 was followed shortly by the creation of an interagency governmental committee to formulate U.S. policy toward the Caspian.

The Clinton Administration listened to the oil companies, and in 1998 began committing U.S. troops to joint training exercises in Uzbekistan. (70) This made neighboring countries like Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, wary of Russia, more eager to grant exploration and pipeline rights to American companies. (71)

But Clinton did not yield to Unocal©s strenuous lobbying in 1996 for U.S. recognition of the Taliban, as a condition for building the pipeline from Turkmenistan. Clinton declined in the end to do so, responding instead to the strongly voiced political opposition, especially from women©s groups over the Taliban©s treatment of women. (72)

The three way symbiosis of Al Qaeda, oil companies, and the Pentagon is still visible in the case of Azerbaijan, for example. Now the Pentagon is protecting the Aliyev regime (where a younger Aliyev, in a dubious election, succeeded his father).

The Department of Defense at first proposed that Azerbaijan also receive an IMET [International Military Education and Training] grant of $750,000 and an FMF [Foreign Military Financing] grant of $3 million in 2003 as part of the war on terrorism but later admitted that the funds were actually intended to protect U.S. access to oil in and around the Caspian Sea. (73)

We have seen that, thanks to al Qaeda, U.S. bases have sprung up close to oilfields and pipelines in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Georgia, and Kosovo. And as Michael Klare has noted,

Already [U.S.] troops from the Southern Command (Southcom) are helping to defend Colombia©s Cano Limón pipeline©.Likewise, soldiers from the European Command (Eurcom) are training local forces to protect the newly constructed Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline in Georgia©.Finally, the ships and planes of the U.S. Pacific Command (Pacom) are patrolling vital tanker routes in the Indian Ocean, South China Sea, and the western Pacific©.Slowly but surely, the U.S. military is being converted into a global oil-protection service. (74)

A survey of U.S. history since World War Two suggests that the United States power state has consistently used the resources of drug-trafficking terrorists, and more recently those of al Qaeda, to further its own ends, particularly with respect to oil, at the expense of the public order and well-being of the American public state. (75) For at least two decades, from Brzezinski©s backing of Hekmatyar in 1979 to Bush©s backing of the Afghan Northern Alliance in 2001, the United States has continued to draw on the resources of drug-trafficking Islamic jihadists who are or were associated at some point with Al Qaeda.

In the next chapter I shall argue that this alliance with al Qaeda terrorists against the United States public order underlies the conspiracy that made 9/11 possible. But we must also look at how the military-petroleum complex came to project long-term military budgets, in the order of a trillion dollars, that its advocates acknowledged that the American public state could not be persuaded easily to support©..

In the absence, that is, of ©some catastrophic and catalyzing event © like a new Pearl Harbor.© (76)

Copyright 2006 Peter Dale Scott
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