Peter Dale Scott on CIA Drug Trafficking, Managed Violence & the Russian 9/11

[Peter Lemkin]

Peter Dale Scott on CIA Drug Trafficking, Managed Violence & the Russian 9/11

By Peter Dale Scott / May 8th, 2014

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Related: The Path to 9/11 (Part 11): Adnan Khashoggi & the 1999 Trial Run in Moscow

(I wish to acknowledge the invaluable assistance in the preparation of this essay from N, a Russian who for the time being prefers to remain anonymous.)

Tajik authorities have claimed repeatedly that neither the US nor NATO exerts any pressure on the drug warlords inside Afghanistan. "There's absolutely no threat to the labs inside Afghanistan," said Avaz Yuldashov of the Tajikistan Drug Control Agency. "Our intelligence shows there are 400 labs making heroin there, and 80 of them are situated right along our border … Drug trafficking from Afghanistan is the main source of support for international terrorism now," Yuldashov pointed out last year. … [1]

I. The Meta-Group, the Russian 9/11, and Kosovo

Violence and the Political Requirements of the Global Drug Traffic

In the last three decades, three important facts have emerged about the international drug traffic. The first is that it is both huge and growing.

Narcotics are estimated to be worth between $500 billion and $1 trillion a year, an amount, according to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in remarks to a United Nations General Assembly session in June 2003, that is greater than the global oil and gas industry, and twice as large as the overall automobile industry.[2]

The second is that it is both worldwide and above all "highly integrated."[3] At global drug summits such as the one in Armenia in 1993, representatives of the Sicilian Mafia, the Brighton Beach Organizatsiya, and Colombian drug lords, have worked out a common modus operandi, with the laundering of dirty money entrusted chiefly to the lawless Russian banks.[4]
The third important fact, undeniable since the 1980 U.S. intervention in Afghanistan, is that governments with global pretensions will avail themselves, in pursuit of their own political ends, of the resources, both financial and political, of the drug traffic. It was striking in the 1980s that the CIA, in its choice of Afghan mujahedin leaders to back against the Soviet Union, passed over those with indigenous support in favor of those, notably Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who dominated the heroin trade. The result was to enhance Hekmatyar's power until he became a leading heroin trafficker, not just in Afghanistan but in the world.[5]
Three more important features of the global drug traffic have been less noticed; thus although I regard them as facts I shall refer to them not as facts but as propositions to be tested against evidence. The first proposition is that the highly integrated drug traffic industry, in addition to serving the political ends of world powers, has its own political as well as economic objectives. It requires that in major growing areas there must be limited state control, a condition most easily reached by fostering regional rebellion and warfare, often fought by its own private armies. This is the on-going situation of designed violence in every major growing area, from Lebanon to Myanmar, Colombia to Afghanistan.
Once the local power of drug armies was enough in itself to neutralize the imposition of state authority. But today there are increasing signs that those at the highest level of the drug traffic will plot with the leaders of major states to ensure, or even to stage, violence that serves the power of the state and the industry alike.
Thanks to extensive research in Russia, we now have initial evidence of a second and even more significant proposition: There exists on the global level a drug meta-group, able to manipulate the resources of the drug traffic for its own political and business ends, without being at risk for actual trafficking. These ends include the creation of designed violence to serve the purposes of cabals in political power most conspicuously in the case of the Yeltsin "family" in the Kremlin, but allegedly, according to Russian sources, also for those currently in power in the United States.
One piece of evidence for this consists in a meeting which took place in July 1999 in southern France near Nice, at the villa in Beaulieu of Adnan Khashoggi, once called "the richest man in the world." Those at the meeting included a member of the Yeltsin cabal in the Kremlin and four representatives from the meta-group, with passports from Venezuela, Turkey, United Arab Emirates and Germany. Between them they allegedly enjoyed excellent relations with:
1) Ayman al-Zawahiri, the acknowledged mastermind of 9/11 and senior mentor to Osama bin Laden.
2) Soviet military intelligence.
3) the FARC, the Colombian revolutionary group that has become increasingly involved in the drug traffic.
4) the Kosovo Liberation Army, a similarly involved group.
5) (according to a well-informed Russian source) the CIA.
The third important proposition is that a meta-group of this scale does not just help government agencies make history. I hope to show that it, and its predecessors, are powerful enough to help make history themselves. However they do not do so overtly, but as a hidden Force X whose presence is not normally acknowledged in the polite discourse of academic political scientists. On the contrary, as we shall see, references to it are usually suppressed.

A Digression: Drugs, Meta-Groups and the Compradorial Revolution

The question arises whether this is the only such meta-group in the international drug milieu. My tentative answer is that there are indeed other focal nodes for organized international drug trafficking, often above the reach of the law. (The remnants of the dissident Hekmatyar drug network in Afghanistan would be a prime example.) What is special about this meta-group is its global reach, which makes it of especial interest to the CIA and other pro-American agencies committed to globalization.
A drug meta-group with such broad connections is not unprecedented. A clear predecessor was the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), a drug-laundering bank which was of use to CIA Director William Casey precisely because of its corrupt global reach. As a Washington insider said to two Time reporters covering BCCI,

They were the only way we could talk to certain folks, and they were the only vehicle available for some transactions. Who else could wire something together to Saudi Arabia, China, Israel, and the U.S.?[6]

It is worthy of note that Khashoggi has enjoyed intimate connections to both, as well as to western intelligence and western politicians.
The "wiring together" effected by drugs has helped give a significant boost to the global banking network, particularly in Russia and southeast Asia. In these areas it has also fostered trade and investment, bringing businessmen from previous diverse commercial areas into increasing contact with each other. From this perspective globalization can be seen as a compradorial revolution: compradorial classes have moved into positions of power, and in some cases their international networks have been more than a match for local state power.[6a]
There are three different ways in which this compradorial revolution has proceeded, and it could be shown that drugs have often helped supply a base for all three:
1) In some countries (as in Thailand, South Korea, Taiwan, and to some extent Indonesia) these classes have displaced military regimes. Drug-based fortunes clearly played a major role in the compradorial revolution of Thailand.
2) In some countries compradorial elements have succeeding in converting (or, depending on your point of view, corrupting) the cadres of socialist governments. Drugs have played a significant role in the compradorial embourgeoisement of China, Laos, and Cambodia, and may have played an indirect role in the case of Vietnam.
3) Recently as in the "color revolutions" of eastern Europe and central Asia compradorial elements have helped to oust the remnants of the former Soviet governing apparatus. I hope in this essay to give preliminary evidence that the global drug meta-group I have described has played a role in the "color revolutions" as well.
As to how many drug meta-groups exist in the world, I believe there are at least two. A second, which we will not examine here, oversees the new drug highway from north Myanmar (Burma) through the entrepreneurial zones of south China, and manages the international connections necessary to arrange for the smuggling of heroin and people into Australia and the eastern and western United States.
The relation of the west to this second or eastern meta-group is unknown, and in all probability it is highly complex and ambiguous. It is probably safe to say however that the global reach of the second meta-group, overseeing the much smaller flow of drugs east from Myanmar, is less than the first or western meta-group we shall discuss here, overseeing the far greater flow of drugs west from Afghanistan. (It has been estimated that by now Afghanistan supplies from 80 to 90 percent of the global heroin trade.)[7]
The west, and particularly the United States, have not concealed their interest in the success of globalization and the "color revolutions." Unfortunately those who sing the praises of both neglect the terrible social costs of the drug traffic, and the Force X which so often is the underpinning of the compradorial revolution. Because the drug economy is often not integrated into the legal one, it tends to foster superwealth and income disparity. The benefits tend not to be enjoyed by a society as a whole, or even its middle class. This is even more true when the masters of the drug-traffic are not indigenous but alien (as is conspicuously the case in eastern Myanmar).[8]
There is an undeniable western face to the dominant meta-group. One member of the meta-group at the 1999 meeting, Anton Surikov, had spent time at the London Centre for Defence Studies; and in addition Surikov had had contacts with at least one senior CIA representative.[9] (Another member of the meta-group, former Lithuanian Defense Minister Audrius Butkevicius, was with Surikov at the London Centre.) We shall see that a third member, Ruslan Saidov, is said to have been paid as a CIA contract agent.
One of the alleged purposes of the meeting at the villa but not the only one was to give the Yeltsin "family" what it supposedly needed: a Russian 9/11.

The "Russian 9/11″ in 1999: Bombings and Plans for War

Russia has been familiar for some time with charges that the bombings in Moscow in 1999, and an accompanying invasion of Russian Dagestan that rekindled the ongoing war in neighboring Chechnya, were both planned by representatives of the Islamist element in the Chechen resistance, in collusion with a representative of the Russian Kremlin.
Read synoptically, these stories indicate that the well-connected drug-trafficking meta-group, with connections to both the Kremlin and the CIA, arranged in advance for the bombings and invasion at the meeting in July 1999, at a French villa owned by the superrich arms merchant Adnan Khashoggi. The group allegedly operated with support from Saudi Arabia and organized global drug trafficking, some of it probably through Kosovo.
The group's business front, Far West, Ltd., is said to have CIA-approved contractual dealings with Halliburton for geopolitical purposes in the Caucasus, as well as dealings in Iraq with Diligence LLC, a group with connections to Joe Allbaugh (the FEMA chief in 2001) and to the President's younger brother Neil Bush. The head of Far West recently told a Russian outlet that "a well-known American corporation… is a co-founder of our agency."[10]
The evidence for this western face of the group is laid out in an article by a so-called Yuri Yasenev, which is clearly a compilation of extracts from intelligence reports, on a Russian website.[11] The article is cited very selectively as authoritative by a reputable Hoover Institution scholar, John B. Dunlop.[12] But Dunlop completely ignores, one might say, suppresses, Yasenev's case as I have summarized it above. He uses the article instead to document a more familiar case: that in 1999 the Yeltsin "family" in the Kremlin dealt with this same group to create what might be called the "Russian 9/11."
When I say that Dunlop suppresses certain details, I do not mean to suggest that he does so conspiratorially, or even consciously. My notion of deep politics, which I have developed elsewhere, posits that in every culture and society there are facts which tend to be suppressed collectively, because of the social and psychological costs of not doing so.[13] Like all other observers, I too have involuntarily suppressed facts and even memories about the drug traffic that were too provocative to be retained with equanimity.[14]
The drug traffic is often the beneficiary of this suppression, which leaves it more free to act without interference. In Deep Politics I referred to the pervasive influence of a U.S. government-drug collaboration which I called "Operation X," looking at it from the perspective of a parapolitical manipulation of the traffic by the government.[15] I wish now that I had written of a "Force X," a force which was no longer under total government control, and indeed could influence government behavior for its own ends.[16]
Dunlop's thesis is in itself an alarming one. It is that men of influence in the Kremlin, building on the connections established by the wealthy oligarch Boris Berezovskii, were able to arrange for staged violence, in order to reinforce support for an unpopular Russian government. This staged violence took the form of lethal bombings in the capital and an agreed-upon incursion by Chechens into Russian Dagestan.
This credible thesis is even more alarming when we consider that both Khashoggi and Berezovskii have purchased significant political influence in the West as well. In 2003 Khashoggi was negotiating with Richard Perle, a member of the Cheney-Rumsfeld clique who at the time was still Chairman of the U.S. Defense Policy Board, to invest considerable Saudi money in Perle's company Trireme.[17] Berezovskii is a shareholder in the software company, Ignite, of President Bush's delinquent brother Neil Bush.[18]
More significantly, Khashoggi and his connections have shown in the past their ability to influence, even distort, U.S. foreign policy, to the detriment of the latter. An important example was the ill-fated so-called Ghorbanifar initiative during Iran-Contra, to sell arms to the mullahs in Iran in exchange for the release of American hostages:

Ghorbanifar was not acting alone. Although he led us to believe he was using Iranian money, his forward purchases and bridge deposits were actually being bankrolled by Adnan Khashoggi [and BCCI]….Khashoggi had an on-and-off relationship with Israel for many years and evidently had been in the loop as Ghorbanifar's backer from the very beginning.[19]

Ghorbanifar could never have caused such embarrassment to the Reagan Administration if he had not been backed by deeper, hidden forces.
By the "Russian 9/11″ I mean the bombings of Russian apartment buildings in 1999, accompanied by the pre-arranged (and partly staged) second Russian invasion of Chechnya. For some time the West has heard versions of the claim that both events were planned at the time by Russian intelligence. For example Patrick Cockburn reported as follows in the Independent:

Boris Kagarlitsky, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Comparative Politics, writing in the weekly Novaya Gazeta, says that the bombings in Moscow and elsewhere were arranged by the GRU (the Russian military intelligence service). He says they used members of a group controlled by Shirvani Basayev, brother of the Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, to plant the bombs. These killed 300 people in Buikask, Moscow and Volgodonsk in September.[20]

Cockburn's source, Boris Kagarlitskii, also accused Russian intelligence agents of planting at least one of the bombs.

Boris Kagarlitsky, a member of the Russian Institute for Comparative Politics, stated: "FSB officers were caught red-handed while planting the bomb. They were arrested by the police and they tried to save themselves by showing FSB identity cards." The first man to enter the basement, Police Inspector Andrei Chernyshev, related: "It was about 10 in the evening. There were some strangers who were seen leaving the basement. We were told about the men who came out from the basement and left the car with a licence number which was covered with paper. I went down to the basement. This block of flats had a very deep basement which was completely covered with water. We could see sacks of sugar and in them some electronic device, a few wires and a clock. We were shocked. We ran out of the basement and I stayed on watch by the entrance and my officers went to evacuate the people." Despite the arrest of the FSB officers by the police, they were quietly released when the secret service's Moscow headquarters intervened. The Observer reports that the next day, in an attempt to cover-up the discovery, "the FSB in Moscow announced that there had never been a bomb, only a training exercise."[21]

Western scholarly analyses have seen the bombings and war as part of a stratagem to boost the popularity of the Kremlin, and particularly the little-known new Prime Minister Putin, for the coming presidential elections in November 1999. The most thorough study, by John Dunlop of the Hoover Institution, blames the plotting on three protégés of the Russian oligarch Boris Berezovskii Valentin Yumashev, Alexander Voloshin, and Roman Abramovich who at this point were members of Yeltsin's "Family" in the Kremlin.[22] (As for Berezovskii himself, Dunlop writes that by mid-1999 "all of his real but beginning-to-dwindle political influence was obtained through the intercession of D'yachenko [Yeltsin's daughter] and Yumashev.")[23]

The Meeting in Khashoggi's Villa, July 1999

A crucial piece of evidence for this thesis of Kremlin-structured violence is the meeting in July 1999, when Alexander Voloshin met in southern France with the Chechen warlord Shamil Basaev. In Dunlop's words,

On the day following the initial incursion of rebel forces into the Dagestani highlands in early August of 1999, the investigative weekly Versiya published a path-breaking report claiming that the head of the Russian Presidential Administration, Aleksandr Voloshin, had met secretly with the most wanted man in Russia, Shamil' Basaev, through the good offices of a retired officer in the GRU, Anton Surikov, at a villa belonging to international arms merchant Adnan

Khashoggi located between Nice and Monaco.109 A source in French intelligence was credited by Versiya with supplying this information. The article stirred major interest in the Russian media, but at the time documentary confirmation was lacking.

By July of 2000, Versiya, in an effort of persistent journalistic digging, had unearthed what it regarded as the full story of what had occurred, with an acknowledged assist from French and Israeli intelligence. "The meeting [of Voloshin and Basaev]," the weekly related, "which supposedly took place at the dacha of the international arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi in the small town of Beaulieu near Nice, occurred on 4 July 1999.[24] Sources in the French special services had earlier communicated that information, in particular a certain professor of political science, a specialist in issues of Russian defense, security,

and organized crime. He is well known for his contract work for French government establishments, including French counter-intelligence."110….

The investigative weekly then went on to summarize what it had learned from French and Israeli intelligence, as well as from its own journalistic digging: "A luxurious villa in the French city of Beaulieu, located between Nice and the principality of Monaco. This villa, according to the French special services, belongs to the international arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi. He is an Arab from Saudi Arabia, a billionaire with a complicated reputation. According to the French special services, and also to the French press, in June of 1999 there took up residence at the villa a Venezuelan banker named Alfonso Davidovich.111

In the Latin American press, he is said to be responsible for laundering the funds of the Columbian left insurrection organization FARC, which carries out an armed struggle with the official authorities, supported by the narcotics business."

110 Petr Pryanishnikov, "Voloshin I Basaev na lazurnom beregu: foto na pamyat'," Versiya, 4 July 2000. The article, accompanied by a photo, can be found at:http:www.compromat.ru/main/voloshin/basaev.htm

111 The article "Rossiyu zhdet oranzhevaya revolytsiya," compromat.ru, 17 December 2004 reports that Davidovich lives in Munich and enjoys both German and Venezuelan citizenship. He is also said to be personally acquainted with international arms dealer Khashoggi.[25]

Dunlop's massively documented essay is 52 pages long, with 142 footnotes. But having thus provocatively included references to both Khashoggi and narcotics, Dunlop does not mention either again. The failure to discuss Khashoggi is particularly surprising. If indeed the meeting took place at his villa, the proceedings were not only likely to be recorded, one would think that they were intended to be recorded.
One would also expect the participants to be confident that the recordings would reach western intelligence, as apparently they promply did. "In France and in the ranks of Israeli intelligence, Versiya wrote, it had been reported that `there exists a video-tape of the meeting at the villa in Beaulieu.'"[26] One would have expected that this video-tape might reach, not just the French and Mossad, but Khashoggi's long-time associates in U.S. intelligence as well.[27]

Khashoggi's Interest in Chechnya

Just as Berezovskii was at one point the richest man in Russia, so Khashoggi was once (according to his American biographer) "The Richest Man in the World." At one point indeed Khashoggi had an influence in American politics analogous to Berezovskii's in Russia. For example, Khashoggi attended both Nixon inaugurals and contributed money to his electoral campaigns. He admitted to giving $58,000 in 1968, but allegedly told Pierre Salinger he gave $1 million in 1972.[28] He also arranged a fund-raising event for Jimmy Carter's Center in Plains, Georgia, an event which probably originated in both men's connections to the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).[29]
Khashoggi is usually thought of as an arms salesman. Although he has never been directly linked to the drug traffic, he was intimately involved in the affairs of the drug-laundering bank BCCI, with which he arranged an arms shipment as part of Oliver North's dealings in Iran-Contra.[30] He also became notorious for flying into Las Vegas from abroad and then rapidly losing vast sums of cash at the casino tables a traditional form of money-laundering.[31] His name has surfaced in connection with a number of other scandals, from the illicit real estate ventures of the Marcos family in New York to a major defrauding of a Thai bank in 1998, which was followed by the Asian financial crisis of that year.
Khashoggi had had a financial interest in Chechnya, and connections with its leaders, since 1996, from his participation in a consortium called Caucasian Common Market AO. This was designed to raise $3 billion in the West and Japan for investment in Chechnya.[32] A principal organizer was former Chechen First Deputy Premier Khozh-Akhmed Nukhaev, in conjunction with Lord McAlpine of the Goldsmith family interests in London, and also American capital.[33] But according to the late Paul Klebnikov, Nukhaev had a background in Chechen organized crime, before developing "a radical ideology in line with the one espoused by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network."[34]
Despite this background, Nukhaev found support and financing in Washington for his Caucasian-American Chamber of Commerce. According to once source, in 1997 Khashoggi introduced Nukhaev to former Secretary of State James Baker.[35]
However Dunlop's inquiry is focused, not on Khashoggi, but on Berezovskii and his representative Voloshin in the Kremlin:

In March of 2002 Interfax reported that, through his long-time business partner Badri Patarkatsishvili, Berezovskii had "supplied Chechen figures Kazbek Makhashev and Movladi Udugov with money to purchase the raid against Dagestan. According to witnesses, Berezovskii contributed 30 million rubles

for the purpose."120 This payment, amounting to more than $1 million, if it occurred, may have been only one of several intended to underwrite a "short victorious war" in Dagestan.

120 "Berezovskii Sponsored Dagestan Raid, Top Policeman's Abduction Prosecutors," Interfax, 5 March 2002. A well-known journalist for RFE-RL, Andrei Babitskii, who frequently visited Chechnya during this period and was acquainted with a number of leading separatists, writes that he can confirm that Berezovskii did indeed speak by telephone with both Basaev and Movladi Udugov at this juncture. See Andrei Babibitskii, "Na voine," hro.org, 2 March 2004.

Dunlop is not alone in suspecting the hand of Berezovskii behind Voloshin's meeting with Basaev. So does Cockburn's source Boris Kagarlitskii (about whom we shall have more to say).[36] The Russian observer Lilia Shevtsova reports a rumor at this time that Berezovskii himself, along with his agent Alexander Voloshin, had met in France with Bazayev in the summer of 1999, just before the Dagestan invasion of August 2.[37]

Dunlop's Redactions of His Source Yasenev

Though he says nothing more about Khashoggi or drugs, Dunlop does however make one more reference to the alleged drug-money launderer Alfonso Davidovich:

"It soon emerged," Versiya continued, "that a very frequent visitor to Davidovich was a certain French businessman of Israeli-Soviet origin, a native of Sokhumi [Abkhazia], 53-year-old Yakov Kosman. 112 Soon Kosman brought with him six persons who arrived via Austria carrying Turkish passports.[38] In one of the passports the French [authorities] identified a certain Tsveiba, who is accused by the Tbilisi authorities of having committed genocide during the Georgia-Abkhaz conflict." All of the visitors settled into the villa for a three weeks' stay.

"Soon," the account continues, "the special services succeeded in establishing that

Kosman and Tsveiba went to the Nice airport, where they met two men who had arrived from Paris. Judging from their documents, one of those who arrived was Sultan Sosnaliev, who in the years of the Georgian-Abkhaz war served as the minister of defense of Abkhazia.113 Second there emerged from the airport one more native of Sokhumi Anton Surikov. According to rumors, during the years of the war in Abkhazia, he was subordinated to Sosnaliev and was responsible for questions of the organization of sabotage and was friendly with field commander Shamil' Basaev, who at that time headed the Chechen battalion."

The next arrival came by sea: "According to the precise information of the French and the Israelis, on 3 July at the port of Beaulieu a private English yacht Magiya' [Magic] arrived from Malta. From it to the shore came two passengers. If one is to believe the passport information, one of the Englishmen' was a certain Turk, in the past an advisor to the Islamicist premier of Turkey, [Necmettin] Erbakan, a rather influential figure in the Wahhabi circles of Turkey, the Middle East, and the Caucasus.114 From sources in the Russian special services we learned that Mekhmet is also a close friend of the not unknown Khattab."

"The second person," the account goes on, "to the surprise of the intelligence officers, was the Chechen field commander Shamil' Basaev.

112 Kosman is reported in the same 17 December 2004 issue of compromat.ru, to live in Nice and to possess German and, possibly, Israeli citizenship.

113 On Sosnaliev as Abkhazia's defense minister, see RFE-RL Newsline, 2 November 1993.

114 On Erbakan, see Shireen T. Hunter, Islam in Russia: The Politics of Identity and Security (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2004), p. 365.

Dunlop's cited source for information about both Davidovich and Kosman is an article by Yuri Yasenev, "Rossiyu zhdet oranzhevaya revolytsiya" ("An Orange Revolution is in Store for Russia"), on a Russian website, ru.compromat.[39] But Dunlop has significantly edited, one must even say censored, what Yasenev wrote.
In footnote 111 Dunlop says

The article "Rossiyu zhdet oranzhevaya revolytsiya," compromat.ru, 17 December 2004 reports that Davidovich lives in Munich and enjoys both German and Venezuelan citizenship. He is also said to be personally acquainted with international arms dealer Khashoggi.

radically curtailing Yasenev's description of Davidovich:

Alfonso Davidovich (1948), Venezuelan, lives in Munich. Has German and Venezuelan citizenship.

Speaks Spanish, English, French, German, and Russian fluently. In the 1970s went through special training in the USSR (Privol'noe, Nikolaevskaya oblast) and East Germany.

Owns companies and banks in Barbados, the Caymans and other off-shores.

Has friendly relations with Hugo Chavez, and is acquainted with Fidel Castro, Marcus Wolf and Adnan Khashoggi. Has many contacts in Colombia, including FARC. In 1999 Davidovich was alleged to have engaged in arms trafficking for guerillas in Chiapas, Mexico and in money laundering for the Colombian drug mafia. Finances antiglobalization movement in Europe and Latin America."[40]

With respect to Yakov Kosman, Dunlap says: "Kosman is reported in the same 17 December 2004 issue of compromat.ru, to live in Nice and to possess German and, possibly, Israeli citizenship."
Compare this with what Yasenev wrote:

Yakov Abramovich Kosman (b. 1946), resides in Nice, France. Has German and, possibly, Israeli citizenship. Involved in real estate operations and banking. Has contacts with Kosovo Albanian criminal societies in European countries. In 1997-2000 he served as financial consultant to Hashim Thaçi, the chief commander of KLA."[41]

Consider that "In 1998, the U.S. State Department listed the KLA formally known as the Ushtria Clirimtare e Kosoves, or UCK as an international terrorist organization, saying it had bankrolled its operations with proceeds from the international heroin trade and from loans from known terrorists like Osama bin Laden."[42]

The Khashoggi Villa Meeting, Drugs, and Kosovo

It would appear that Davidovich and Kosman were in Khashoggi's villa to talk about more than just Chechnya, but that Dunlop did not wish to explore this possibility. For example, he acknowledges the presence of no less than four men of Abkhazian origin and/or influence at the meeting Kosman, Tsveiba, Sosnaliev, and Surikov and yet offers no explanation whatsoever for their presence. (A glance at a map will show that Abkhazia is irrelevant to the subsequent events in Dagestan and Chechnya.)
It seems likely that a drug-route was discussed involving Abkhazia, which now "has become a key heroin transiting point."[43] Its drug-trafficking importance is noted by none other than Surikov himself:

In general then, the Chechen [drug-trafficking] group has allotted a very important place to Abkhazia in its plans. This is due firstly to the strong position of local field commanders after the end of the Georgian/Abkhazian conflict….Secondly…a large number of `volunteers' [notably Basaev] came from Chechnia and other North Caucasian republics….Amongst these people were a number of criminals whose presence facilitated later contacts with local undesirables….As a result of these developments Abkhazia today is one of the most criminalised areas of the former Soviet Union.[44]

Note that in this passage Surikov makes no reference to his own Abkhazian origin, his involvement as a GRU officer in the Russian-backed Abkhazian insurrection, and his friendship there with Basaev (referred to by Dunlop). Here and elsewhere in his text it would appear that the "Chechen group" he describes is one overseen by his own meta-group.
Russian observers have pointed out that the meeting(s) in France, which took place in June and/or July 1999, came shortly after the unexpected entry of Russian troops into Kosovo.

On June 11, 1999, 200 Russian troops in SFOR drove from Bosnia to Prishtina and secured Slatina airport. Gen Wesley Clark then ordered [UK] Gen. Sir Mike Jackson (who on June 9 had signed technical agreement for withdrawal of Yugoslav troops from Kosovo) "to seize the airport. Jackson responded, famously, that he would not start World War Three for him"[45]

Following two days of talks directly between Clinton and Yeltsin, the crisis was averted.
Instead there followed weeks of "protracted negotiations on Russia's role in the Kosovo peacekeeping mission."[46] In the end, under circumstances still not fully understood, the United States and NATO agreed that the Russians could stay.
The Russian troops finally withdrew from the airport in July 2003.[47] Significantly, a chart of Russian drug-trafficking prepared by one of Surikov's partners, Sergei Petrov, indicates that in 2003 Kosovo ceased to be a main point of export for Russian drugs, its place being taken by the Black Sea oil port of Novorossiysk.[48]
Within a year of the troops' arrival, 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 was now distributed in America by Kosovar Albanians.[49]
It is significant therefore that

The `Pristina dash' by Russian parachutists in 1999 during the Kosovo crisis (the purpose of the `dash' was to force NATO to guarantee for Russia a separate sector of responsibility in Kosovo) was organized by the head of the General Staff, Anatoly Kvashnin, and his deputy, Leonid Ivashov, without the knowledge of minister of defense Igor Sergeyev and most likely without Yeltsin's knowledge.[50]

Yasenev says nothing about this, but does assert that Kvashnin was the Russian Army connection of two leading drug traffickers (Vladimir Filin andAlexey Likhvintsev) in the Saidov-Surikov group.

II. The Meta-Group, Drugs, Salafist Islam, and America

The Role of Anton Surikov: The Dunlop and Yasenev Versions

As we have seen, Dunlop describes Anton Surikov, the organizer of the Beaulieu meeting between Voloshin and Basaev, as "a retired officer in the GRU." He fails to quote from his source Yasenev's description of Surikov:

Anton Victorovich Surikov (b. 1961). Presents himself as political scientist. Responsible for informational and political projects. Actively publishes in press. Some of his publications resemble ciphered directives to the elements in Russian special services disloyal [emphasis added] to President Vladimir Putin. His other articles contain political messages intended for abroad. Surikov has contacts with F[ritz] Ermarth, former leading CIA analyst of the USSR and Russia, now in the Nixon Foundation….[51]

Surikov has close relations with Alexander Prokhanov and Alexander Nagorny [respectively, chief editor and assistant chief editor of newspaper "Zavtra"], Anatoly Baranov [chief editor of Pravda.info and KPRF.ru], Mikhail Delyagin,[52] former advisor to Mikhail Kasyanov[53], Alexei Kondaurov (head of YUKOS security department, former general of KGB and FSB, State Duma deputy from CPRF), Ilya Ponomarev (former YUKOS CEO, CPRF).

In 2002-03, together with Kondaurovwho represented Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Leonid NevzlinSurikov, with the help of Victor Vidmanov, organized financing of CPRF by YUKOS shareholders and the individuals associated with OPS [the organized criminal society] (Yakov Kosman, Nikolai Lugovskoi) to the tune of $15 million.

Boris Kagarlitskii's essay and Yasenev's memo, taken from intelligence files, talk about Surikov, but from opposing perspectives. Kagarlitskii, a longtime dissident and foe of Putin, saw the Beaulieu meeting as the venue for Kremlin-instigated violence, designed to restore the Kremlin's popularity before the coming election. Yasenev's memo sees Surikov as part of an on-going effort to destabilize Russia, and weaken the Kremlin.
Kagarlitskii (and after him Dunlop) say almost nothing about Surikov, other than to refer to his past years with Russian military intelligence, the GRU. To quote Dunlop,

Kagarlitskii also notes: "During Primakov's time, Surikov worked on the staff of the government of the Russian Federation. Despite this fact, he also developed regular work relations with Voloshin's people." It seems therefore quite likely that Surikov and Voloshin were personally acquainted.[54]

However Yasenev's memo in December 2004 links Surikov, not to the government or Kremlin, but (through Kondaurov) to the sphere of the man who by that time had emerged as America's best friend and Putin's most powerful enemy in Russia, the oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovskii. (The Kondaurov-Khodorkovskii connection is abundantly documented: both men freely admit it.)
Forbes magazine, which underwrote Klebnikov's damning accounts of both Berezovskii and Nukhaev, wrote on March 18, 2002 that Khodorkovskii appeared "to be the West's best friend" in Russia. According to PBS in 2003, Khodorkovskii's firm Menatep shared business interests with the western investment firms Global Asset Management, the Blackstone Group, the Carlyle Group and AIG Capital Partners. In addition

He frequently travels to the United States. He reportedly dined with Condoleezza Rice last year and recently was a guest at Herb Allen's Idaho ranch, along with Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and other luminaries, for an annual telecommunications executives meeting.[55]

Quoting from an anti-Yeltsin essay of May 1999 by Surikov in Versiya, the American right-wing Jamestown Foundation agrees with Yasenev (against Kagarlitskii) that "Surikov is clearly in the camp of Yeltsin's opponents."[56] More recently Surikov has also shown himself to be anti-Putin, criticizing Putin's "obvious inability … to struggle against terrorism effectively."[57]
Furthermore Surikov clearly had western support in his opposition to government corruption under Yeltsin. We need only look to the following description of a Surikov book published in London:

Crime in Russia: the international implications Anton Surikov London Defence Studies.
Examines (1) the growth of organized crime in post-Soviet Russia (2) the extraordinary extent to which the Colombian cartel has targeted Russia as a conduit for its penetration of the world market (3) the scale of drug-trafficking in Russia, predominantly by the Chechen group' controlled by the Dudayev regime.[58] The author's interesting career details are set out on a prelim page. The monograph is introduced by Jonathan Aves (lecturer in Russian studies at the University of Sussex) Introduction' pp1-6, 12 refs, detailing both the scale of the problem and Surikov's background expertise. This expertise has to be assumed by the reader, as the monograph contains no literature references of its own.[59]

According to his webpage at the IPROG website, Surikov spent the year 1994 at the Centre for Defence Studies, King's College, London.[60] (Audrius Butkevicius is said to have spent the year there as well.)
As for Yasenev's allegations that "Surikov has contacts with F. Ermarth," Surikov when questioned about this admitted it frankly: "I am personally acquainted with Mr. Ermarth as political scientist since 1996. It's well known by many people and we never hid this fact."[61] In saying this, Surikov was admitting to a CIA connection: Ermarth, a senior officer who twice served on the National Security Council, did not retire from the CIA until 1998. The two men had met in April 1996 at a Global International Security Seminar in Virginia.[62]
Above all, Kagarlitskii is silent about the charge which has since aroused controversy in the Russian media: Surikov's supposed involvement with "a group of renegade Soviet secret service officers who are allegedly involved in international drug trafficking and have ties with Western and Saudi security apparatus."[63]
It would be interesting to learn at what point Kagarlitskii first met Surikov, and whether Surikov was in fact the source for Kagarlitskii's article about the meeting in southern France. Today the two men are close, and serve together at the Moscow Institute for the Study of Globalization (IPROG).[64]

Saidov, Surikov, Muslim Insurrectionism, and Drug Trafficking

The most conspicuous clue to Dunlop's selectivity in his use of the Yasenev memo is his failure to identify "Mekhmet," the "certain Turk, in the past an advisor to the Islamicist premier of Turkey, [Necmettin] Erbakan."[65] Yasenev identifies Mekhmet, linking him not only to Erbakan but also to the CIA, to Saudi intelligence, and to al-Qaeda:

In 2003 the Turkish citizen Mehmet whose real name is Ruslan Saidov, persuaded the President of the Chechen Republic, Ahmed Kadyrov, that he could be of use with Kadyrov's policy of "national reconciliation." Saidov took part in organizing Kadyrov's visit to Saudi Arabia. There Kadyrov made an agreement with the head of Saudi intelligence, Prince Naif Ibn Abdel-Aziz, that the Arab militants under the Lieutenant Colonel Aziz ben Said ben Ali al Hamdi (alias Abu al Walid al-Hamadi), Prince Naif's subordinate, would be removed from Chechnya by May 2004. The agreement stipulated that Kadyrov guaranteed safe passage to Abu al-Walid. Playing a double game and intending to set up both parties, Saidov (probably together with Abu al-Walid himself) gave this information to the CIA. Apparently the CIA was concerned that having left Chechnya the Arab militants would resurface in Iraq and join the terrorist group of the Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi that belongs to the al-Qaida network.

Trying to prevent this, and besides, wanting to discredit Kadyrov in the eyes of Prince Naif, the CIA gave Saidov an "assignment". On April 13 in the Nozhai-Yurt district of Chechnya, Russian troops killed Abu al-Walid (or alleged having done so). Saidov paid $300,000 to those who carried out this operation. Their bosses in Moscow received $500,000. How much the CIA paid Saidov is unknown….

Yasenev describes Saidov as both a drug trafficker and an arms trafficker, involved with the supply of Russian arms to the Saudi-backed secessionists from Yemen in Aden. This was at a time when Russia had officially ceased support to the one-time Marxist country in favor of supporting Yemeni unity:[66]

In May-June 1994, Saidov together with Usman Imaev and Khozh-Ahmed Nukhaev and under an agreement with Pavel Grachev and Dzhohar Dudaev, organized twenty-two flights to airlift arms and ammunition via the Chechen airport Sheikh Mansur to the airport Aden in Yemen.[67]

In the spring of 1995 Saidov began to cooperate with the organized society, led by Vladimir Filin and Alexei Likhvintsev [see below] in handling [narcotics] traffic through the port of Novorossiysk.

Saidov is described by Yasenev as having good relations not only with the CIA, but also with both Turkish Islamists and even with Ayman al-Zawahiri, the man often described as both the "mastermind" behind 9/11 and the senior partner in al Qaeda with the younger bin Laden:[68]

Since August 1995 Saidov resides in Turkey.

In December 1995 he published an extremist book in Turkish The Muslims of the Caucasus in the 19[SUP]th[/SUP] century: Genocide by Russia. The leader of the Welfare Party and the future Turkish Prime Minister, Necmettin Erbakan, gave a good review of this book. In July 1996 Saidov became his advisor.[69]

In December 1996 Ayman al-Zawahiri was arrested in Dagestan for illegal entry.[70] He carried a false Sudanese passport. When he was arrested Saidov went to Makhachkala [the capital of Dagestan]. There he organized a petition to the authorities in support of Zawahiri. It was signed by twenty-six Muslim clergymen and the Russian State Duma deputy, Nadirshakh Khachilaev.[71] Saidov managed to obtain a court decision, condemning Zawahiri to a six-month prison term, which had actually expired by that time….

Since the middle of the nineties, Saidov formed stable relations with the Saudi businessman Adnan Khashoggi, Prince Turki al-Faisal (then head of the Saudi intelligence and at present, Saudi Ambassador to Great Britain) and Prince Naif.[72]

In addition Yasenev made it clear that Saidov was not pro-Putin, but a Muslim activist who was passionately anti-Putin and indeed anti-Russian:

In September 2003, Saidov participated in the congress of the extremist organization Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami in Jordan. At this congress he announced that Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami was an organization effectively acting in the underground throughout Russia, Central Asia and the Crimea….[73]

On December 8, 2004 Saidov addressed Muslim youth in Moscow. In his words, "following Ukraine, the Orange Revolution is coming to Russia." "Our liberals say that in 2008 the situation in Moscow will be like the one in Kiev." However, everything will be different, and not in 2008, but earlier." "Amirs and mudjahideen will soon make the Kremlin shudder with horror." In 2005, "they will throw into hell the servant of Satan," i.e., President Putin, who is allegedly "wanted by the International Tribunal at The Hague."

The same goal of Muslim liberation was attributed by Yasenev to the organizer of the meeting in France, Anton Surikov:
On December 13 2004, in Adygeia, Surikov had a meeting with a group of Sufi believers and said this: "In the past we were against ahl-ad-dalala (those who gone astray) with their Arab money. We used to say that one should not separate from Russia. But now "Russia is on the brink of collapse and chaos." So "we'll be separating [from Russia] with all Muslims of the Caucasus." A new state will be created on our historical lands from Psou and the Black Sea to Laba and Kuban."
(The goal of splitting up Russia attributed here to Surikov is that which, in an earlier text co-authored by Surikov, is attributed by Russian "radicals" to the United States:
The radicals believe that the US actively utilizes Turkish and Muslim elements….From Azerbaijan, radicals foresee a strategic penetration which would irrevocably split the Federation. US influence would be distributed to the former Soviet Central Asian Republics, to Chechnya and the other North Caucasus Muslim autonomous republics of T[at]arstan and Bashkortostan. As a result Russian territorial integrity would be irreparably compromised.)[74]
Yasenev claims also that, in the summer of 2004, the meta-group
started a project in the Near-Volgian Federal District to train cadres for Volga-Urals chapter of the international extremist organization Hizb ut-Tahrir, banned by the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation in 2003. The project is financed by private philanthropic foundations of the Arabic Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
In this context we can further question Dunlop's assumption that the 1999 meeting organized by Surikov in southern France was called to promote the intentions of the Yeltsin "family." In the light of the Yasenev essay, it is more likely to have served the purposes of militant Islam and the drug traffic.
The portraits of Saidov's and Surikov's connections with al-Zawahiri, Erbakan, and Hizb ut-Tahrir confirm the criticism, by the Indian analyst B. Raman and others, that American studies of Islamist jihadism err in their restrictive focus on al-Qaeda.[75] The full range of Islamic jihadism is far more complex.
In my conclusion I shall return to the possibility that U.S. government might share common goals with Hizb ut-Tahrir and the meta-group in Russia, even while combating the Islamist terrorism of al-Qaeda in the Middle East and the West.

III. Allegations of Drug-Trafficking and Far West, Ltd

Yasenev links Saidov, Surikov, and others to their former service in a drug-interception group in Afghanistan, under a Leonid Kosyakov who now headed a company called Far West, Ltd.:

Leonid Leonidovich Kosyakov, b. 1955, Ukrainian citizen. Until 2005 resided in Arab Emirates and Switzerland. Citizen of Ukraine. Retired from the service in May 1993. Presently the president of Far West Ltd. In 1983-85 Kosyakov was in command of a special group in Shindand (Afghanistan), assigned to intercept caravans with drugs. In different times under his direct command served Filin, Lunev, Likhvintsev, Surikov, Petrov, as well as Saidov[76]

Yasenev also presents testimony that this group developed into what the Russians call an OPS (an Organized Criminal Society) responsible for massive drug-trafficking:

These accusations were made by the former officer of the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine Sergei Petrov (alias Serge Rodin, French citizen).

According to his testimony:

"The OPS [organized criminal society] was involved in drug trafficking since the beginning of 1990s:

-from 1995 the OPS transports heroin (produced in Afghanistan) from Tajikistan to European countries via Russia with the assistance of the Russian Defense Ministry.

- from 2000 the OPS is involved in smuggling Colombian cocaine to Russia through the seaports of Novorossiysk and St. Petersburg under the disguise of import shipments from Latin America.

Among the OPS contacts in Novorossyisk is Saidov; in St. Petersburg it used to be Roman Tsepov.

Received profits are used for personal enrichment of the OPS leaders, the officials at the Ministry of Defense who provide them with "the roof" [protection], and for financing extremist activities."

In November of 2003, Rodin contacted the law enforcement agencies of Germany and France. Their investigation did not result in any actions against Filin, Likhvintsev, and their partners.

In January 2004, Rodin was blown up in his car in South Africa.

Yasenev's charge of a military organized crime group under Filin had been reported a year earlier by Russian journalist Nikita Kaledin:

There is a powerful military organized crime community which from 1992 through to the present has controlled substantial drug flows from Afghanistan to Russia and Europe and is also involved in laundering "dirty" money and is actively involved in Russia's political life. The community is controlled by former intelligence officers, Afghan war veterans, and now drugs barons Vova Filin and Lesha Pribalt. The former lives in Switzerland, the latter in London. Both make quite frequent trips to Moscow, Dushanbe, Nazran, and Khankala….

Filin and Pribalt literally flooded Russia with heroin. The Kremlin could not tolerate this abomination any longer and ordered a mighty "Chekist raid" [i.e., ordered the FSB to shut down the operation] against the narcobarons. However, it is rumored that the raid has ended up with the agreement that the latter would 1) share their profits; 2) help in the facilitating the peaceful referendum on the constitution in Chechnya; 3) bring some order to the drug market by liquidating the leaders of ethnic criminal groups."[77]

As if in fulfillment of the third point, Surikov in 2001 denounced the leaders of an influential Tajik heroin cartel, including the mayor of the Tajik capital, Dushanbe.[78] (Tajiks until then had been one of the ethnic mafias who most dominated the trafficking of Afghan heroin through Russia.)

Far West, Ltd, Halliburton, Diligence LLC, New Bridge, and Neil Bush

The connection to Far West, Ltd, of Filin, Likhvinsky, Surikov, and Saidov (along with Alfonso Davidovich) has since been stunningly corroborated by a news story on the Pravda-info website about Far West, Ltd, and Kosyakov's resignation from it.

At a meeting of its stockholders on 2 May in the Hotel Ritz Carlton in Dubai "Far West Ltd." accepted the retirement of the president of the Agency Leonid Kosiakov, who moved to government service in Ukraine. Vladimir Filin, member of the Editorial Board of "Pravda-info," was elected the new president, at the same time retaining his previous position as executive director. The meeting of stockholders, in accordance with its charter, selected new members of the board of directors of "Far West Ltd.," which will now contain 9 members. Besides Vladimir Filin, Anatolii Baranov and Anton Surikov, it will include four more members if the Editorial Board of "Pravda-info": Audrius Butkevicius, Aleksei Likhvintsev, Natal'ia Roeva, and Ruslan Saidov, and also Valerii Lunev,[79] a veteran of the Armed Forces, and Alfonso Davidovich, a political scientist from Venezuela.

Far West, the story said,

specializes in consulting work on questions of security in conducting business in regions of the world with unstable environments and hiring personnel for foreign private military companies [last three words in English]. Its head office is located in Switzerland. In addition, the Agency has a network of representatives in OAE [United Arab Emirates], Afghanistan, Colombia, the autonomous region of Kosovo, the autonomous republic of Crimea, Georgia, and the Volga Federal District of the RF [Russian Federation].[80]

Recently Filin gave Pravda.info some details about Far West's work, and revealed that the firm had been co-founded by "a sub-division of a well-known American corporation." He said that the company's new contract is

connected with the secured transport of commercial shipments from Afghanistan, where we have an office, to ports on the Black Sea. In Afghanistan there is a well-known U.S. air base in Bagram. It is connected by an aerial bridge with a number of other US air bases. For example, with the largest base in Frankfurt-on-Main, that's in Germany, with an intermediary landing in Chkalovsk, in the Moscow area. But the most commercially attractive route seems to be that from Bagram to the US air base in Magas, in Kyrgyzstan. By the way, it is quite near the Russian air base in Kant. A significant flow of shipments passes through Magas, there is a niche there for commercial shipments too. This is very profitable. It is much more profitable than routing commercial shipments from Afghanistan through Tajikistan. Therefore last year we completely withdrew from all shipping through Tajikistan and closed our office in that country.Who are your partners?
Who our partners are is a commercial secret. I can say that they are four private firms from three countries, Turkey, Russia, and the USA,which engage among other things in shipping. One of these firms is a sub-division of a well-known American corporation. This firm is a co-founder of our agency.[81]

We can assume that Pravda.info is an inside source for information about Far West, for the two organizations seem in fact to be two different manifestations of the same group. Among the directors of Far West on the masthead of Pravda.info we find first of all Anton Surikov, followed by Anatolii Baranov, Aleksei Likhvintsev, Ruslan Saidov, Vladimir Filin, Natal'ia Roeva, and Audrius Butkevicius.[82]
Also on the P

[Anthony Thorne]

The John Dunlop article referenced by Peter in the text (which, in another essay online, Peter notes was taken down from the supplied link shortly after he first wrote about it) is readable in an expanded version here -

http://www.scribd.com/doc/88092910/John-...ize-Russia

It's worth noting too, Peter has another book due out in the near (hopefully) future - THE AMERICAN DEEP STATE. He's apparently just finishing it off, and posted the informative postscript to the book on his Facebook page yesterday.