Far West LLC A company behind many black operations. Some names and information for further research

[Magda Hassan]

Below are a series of articles mentioning activities of Far West LLC A consulting firm with an odd way of doing business. Also some pictures of players in the company and some background information on them. Researchers and readers familiar with Peter Dale Scott (see his work in the Global Drug Meta Group which I think we have in the drugs board here) will recognise many here. I have only included the English articles. There is much more in Russian at Лефт.Ру

IPROG "Experts" Update Their Mug Shots

Ruslan Saidov aka Ugur Mehmed (left) and Vladimir Filin aka "Ilyich", "El Buho". Photos courtesy Pravda.info

"Somewhere near Moscow": Anton Surikov (center) with Shatbai Shavit (left) and Dov Kontorer at the recent conference of Israeli and Russian intelligence services organized by Sergei Kurginyan and his Experimental Creative Center. Photo courtesy Forum.msk.ru

Owners of Far West Ltd (from the left): Ruslan Saidov, Vladimir Filin, Anton Surikov

Davidoviz-Muller's ties to LA fascism, to death squads, his double game with FARC are logical outcome of the social nature of FarWest -- the mafiiso-political society born out of the New World Order, new fascism.


From the left: Filin, Saidov, Surikov. Recent photo from Finland



[size=12]Vladimir Vladimirovich Litovchenko (b. 1960)
General-Major of the Main Intelligence Directorate, Ukrainian Ministry of Defense,
Vice-president of Far West LLC
Owner of several ethanol factories in Brazil,
business partner of George Soros
Known cover names:
Vladimir Ilyich Filin (Ukrainian and British passports)
[/SIZE][size=12]F. P. Carvallo (Brazilian passport)
Stoikovich (Serbian passport)
Known handles: "Ilyich," "El Buho"[/SIZE]

Anton Surikov -- Mansour Nathoev
Rt. Colonel of GRU, commander of the "security service" of the Cherkess Congress. Received special training in guerilla war and psychological operations.

Fritz Ermarth of the Nixon Center and SAIC.
"Former" CIA officer, probably partly ethnic Adygei and distant relative of Surikov-Natkhoev. Main contact of Farwest in the United States. Specialist in disinformation and false-flag operations. Representative of the US military-industrial complex and post-Nazi elites in the Atlantic intelligence community. Member of the Bushes' inner circle of political and intelligence operatives. Ideologically motivated Russophobe, one of the central figures in the ongoing secret war against Russia.

Sir Rodric Braithwaite of
Deutsche Bank and
David Cameron's Advisory Council on Foreign Affairs


Ruslan Saidovich Sadulaev (b. 1960)
Major-General, Advisor to the Minister of Defense, Republic Uzbekistan, head of the illegal "external intelligence service of Chechen Republic," formerly "The Istambul Bureau" under President Maskhadov. Close associate of Khozh Nukhaev, wanted for the murder of Paul Khlebnikov.
Known cover names
Ruslan Saidov (Russian passport),
Ruslan Muhammedovich Muhammedov (Uzbek passport), Nihat (Turkish passport)

Alexei Kolosovskii (b. 1960)
Ulrainian and British passports on
Alexei Likhvintsev
Major-General of
Ukrainian military intelligence, in charge of the Special Department "R" (Russia). Married to Liudmilla Rozkina, US and British passports, former GRU agent.
Handles: "Pribalt"
Photo circa 1988-89


Igor Sechin (b. 1960), Kremlin functionary and the informal leader of Russian siloviki.
Served in Angola under Kolosovskii's command as military interpretor.

Major-General Valery Lunev (cover name)
KGB, Belarus
Handle: Lun

Alfonso Davidoviz-Mueller,
Cuban-Soviet double agent, banker, involved in narcotrafficking and money laundering, known to major secret services and used by them. Married to the relative of Venezuelan General Mueller Rojas.
Handle: "Felix"

Barbarossa at Our Gates? The Anti-Russian Alliance of Western and Saudi Intelligence Behind “Far West LLC“ Prepares Bloody Sunday in the Northern Caucasus, Food and Gas Blockade against Russia
During the last few days the International Editorial Board of burtsev.ru—a group of investigative reporters associated with the Internet weekly Left Russia (left.ru)--received information from several reliable sources about latest activities of the international alliance of secret services who have been engaged in subversive activities against Russia under the cover of the “consulting company” Far West LLC, with headquarters in Dubai.
The alliance includes the secret services of the USA and UK (CIA, DIA, MI-6, MI-5, and the Scotland Yard), represented by their front companies: Diligence LLC, KBR, New Bridge Strategies, Erinys International, Titon International, Meteoric Tactical Solution, and Aegis Defence Services. From Saudi Arabia-- the General Intelligence Service, represented by Prince Rasheed as Rasheed, a relative of Prince Turki al Faisal, and the family of Adnan Khashoggi. The Turkish General Staff and the Gray Wolves, as well as the President Kadyrov's military, are represented by the “Istambul Bureau,” or the Information Service of the Ministry of Defense of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, under the command of the brigadier-general Ruslan Saidov and Khozh Nukhaev, wanted by Russian Prosecutor for the murder of Paul Khlebnkov of Forbes Magazine. The Ukrainian military intelligence (GUR), represented by generals Vladimir Filin and Alexei Likhvintsev. KGB of Belorussia, represented by General Valery Lunev and the vice-president Viktor Sheiman. Lithunian military intelligence, represented by Audrius Butkevicius and Rolandas Paksas.
Their senior partners are said to be the defense minister Robert Gates, his close associate Fritz Ermarth, formerly (?) of the CIA, NSC, NIC, and the Rand Corporation, who since his retirement has been working under the cover of the Nixon Center and the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), the former ambassador in the Soviet Union Sir Roderic Braithwaithe, his close associate Ruslan Berenis, thought to be senior officer of British military intelligence, and Prince Faisal al Turki, former head of the General Intelligence Service of Saudi Arabia, and ambassador in Britain and the United States.
Below we publish our summary of the information we received from several sources.
1. The chief of the Istambul Bureau Ruslan Saidov and the billionaire Mikhail Gutseriev who recently fled Russia and filed for political asylum in England, prepare a bloody provocation during the coming opposition meeting in the North Caucasian city of Nazran, Ingush Republic on November 24. There is a strong possibility that the violence they plan will lead to human victims and will be recorded on video, blamed on federal authorities and used for a new round of the psychological warfare waged by the corporate press in the West against the independent course of President Putin.
2. One of the shadow chiefs of the Ukrainian military intelligence (GUR), Vladimir Filin, has recently been given additional political role. Following his appointment as the head of the Working Group for coordinating the intelligence activities of Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, and Belorussia, Filin was assigned to coordinate the collaboration of Ukrainian intelligence with their Georgian counterparts. This means that GUR will provide the Georgian military with th e intelligence about Russian special services in the Caucasus. The strong operational capacities that GUR has in Moscow and Rostov-on-the Don will assure the quality of intelligence that the Georgians will be receiving now. This can indicate that after he has crushed the recent protests in Tbilisi, President Saakashvili and his US advisers now plan a military provocation in the breakaway South Ossetia.
3. After consultations with Robert Gates and Condoleeza Rice, Ukraine, Poland, the Baltic States, and Belorussia begin to prepare for a warfare against Gasprom, Russian natural gas state monopoly, and indirectly against Germany. Filin will coordinate the activities of special services in this operation. It is expected that around the New Year these countries will succeed in blocking 100 percent of Russia's natural gas deliveries to the EC (with the exception of Finland). For this purpose, Ukraine filled to the fullest all its natural gas storage facilities in the western parts of the country. Theoretically, this reserves will last for the participating countries till the next fall.

1. The gas blockade will be supplemented by the blockade of food deliveries from the EC to Russia through Poland, Ukraine, Belorussia, and the Baltic states.
   

1. There has been an increase in the activity of the Chehen gangsters from the former “Alazan” organized crime group of Khozh Nukhaev in the Russian ports of Novorossiisk, Tuapse, and Jugbe. This indicates that closer to the New Year one can expect that these entry points will be used for the arrival of professional commando teams from Saidov's “Istambul Bureau.”
   

6. In coordination with the above preparations, US state agencies are about to make highly visible arrests of and accusations against several highly placed Russian officials under the article 312 of the Patriotic Act . These officials are associated with Gasprom, Transneft, and Ministry of Agriculture. The last can be used as pretext for a food blockade against Russia.
7. At the same time, the US officials pressure the leadership of Turkmenistan for sharp increase of the natural gas sold to Gasprom. This pressure tactics include threats to arrest Western bank accounts of unnamed Turkmen officials.

1. The intelligence information suggest that the US, Britain, and their allies in Asia prepare serious military provocations in Kyrgyzstan and the Uzbekistan part of the Fergana Valley.
   

1. The situation in Russia will become most critical January and February of 2008. In the words of one of our sources, “If in addition something bad happens inside the country we may not be able to control the situation.”
   

Russian original is at < http://left.ru/2007/15/barbarossa167.phtml >
Our comments

The first confirmation of this information came when this English translation was being prepared. On November 14thGlenn R. Simpson of the WSJ reported that “the government of the British Virgin Islands told the U.S. Justice Department there is "overwhelming evidence" Russian Telecommunications Minister Leonid Reiman secretly owns a large chunk of Russia's telecoms industry through an offshore fund.”
It is not accidental that this news comes from the WSJ crowd that have been the cheerleader of the psychological warfare against Russia in past few years of which Dr. Goebbels himself would have been proud. An analysis of WSJ anti-Putin publications since the summit in Bratislava might have revealed an uncanny coordination with a number of subversive activities in Russia and London that FarWest undertook during this period. We believe that WSJ is extremely well connected both with the influential nucleus of the Council for International Relations and the right-wing elements (perhaps even rogue elements) in the US intelligence community who have been pulling the strings behind the FarWest alliance.
In the specific case of Glenn R. Simpson's piece “Russian Regulator Under Fire; Virgin Islands Says Evidence Points To Telecom Holdings,” out attention was drawn to Simpson's failure to inform his readers about the relations between the Alfa Group and its owner Russian oligarch Mikhail Friedman and the elements of the US intelligence community behind FarWest. According to Simpson,

• The case [against Reiman – ed.] originates from a dispute over the rights to a 25% stake in Megafon, one of Russia's biggest mobile carriers, between Russian tycoon Mikhail Fridman and IPOC. The evidence that IPOC is owned by Mr. Reiman was the subject of an Oct. 17, 2006, article on page one of The Wall Street Journal.
  

Indeed, that article, “Russian Connection: Why Putin's Telecom Minister Is in Investigators' Sights Abroad; German and Swiss Probes Tag Leonid Reiman as Owner Of Businesses He Oversees,” also failed even to mention one piece of information that was in public domain: Friedman's Alfa was in bed with Diligence LLC and that was only the tip of the iceberg. Alfa's international advisory board of directors included the chairman of Diligence LLC Richard Burt and Lord Charles Powell, member of its advisory board.

Richard Burt of Diligence LLC and Mikhail Friedman of Alfa Group: a dangerous alliance against Russia

Simpson, who co-authored that article with Gregory L. White, David Crawford, might have missed the importance of this fact at that time. But since then the BusinessWeek investigation revealed that Diligence was doing some dirty job for Friedman, spying on IPOC and violating laws. Strangely enough, the experienced team of investigative journalists working for BusinessWeek has also failed to notice that Ambassador Burt was on the board of Alfa Capital when the company hired Diligence LLC and that Burt was also the international director with the influential Washington lobbying firm Barbour, Griffith and Rogers that hired Diligence for Friedman. In short, Burt's Alfa Group hired Burt's Diligence LLC through Burt's Barbour, Griffith and Rogers to dig some dirt on Reiman. What for? Why would Ambassador Burt and his friends in Diligence LLC like the former director of the CIA and FBI William Webster, managing director of the Carlyle Group Edward Mathias, former adviser to Margaret Thatcher and John Major Lord Charles Powell, former President Clinton's Chief of Staff Thomas F. McLarty and other luminaries of the conservative TransAtlantic cabal – why would they be interested digging dirt on Leonid Reiman and other Russian crooks in high positions? Do they have in mind blackmailing Russian leadership into surrendering Russia and its natural wealth to Western crooks in power? Hm... how can one entertain such a ridiculous proposition even for a moment! Shame on us!
For more on Diligence LLC, Farwest LLC, and Alfa Group see our article “US Companies Linked to Vice-President Cheney Supervised the Transfer of Ukrainian WMD to Iran .”

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Valentin Zorin
Last October President of the non-recognized Chechen Republic of Ichkeria Doku Umarov proclaimed a new formation - the Caucasian Emirate, and declared himself the Emir of the Caucasian militants and the leader of Jihad. Umarov's seemingly unmotivated proclamation of the caliphate came as surprise to Chechnya watchers Western and Russian think tanks. Why would the leader of the embattled Chechen Islamists suddenly decide to antagonize the West who is interested in stoking the unrest in the Russian Caucasus? The international research group burtsev.ru has the answer to this question.
According to sources close to Ukrainian and Russian intelligence, Doku Umarov's declaration of “Islamic Caucasian Emirate” was the result of his manipulation by Brigadier-General Ruslan Saidov, head of the “Istanbul Bureau” of the External Intelligence of the Republic of Ichkeria (formerly, the Department of Information of the Defense Ministry of Ichkeria).
Umarov made this declaration under the pressure from Anzor Astemirov, aka Emir Seyfullah. Astemirov—ethnically Adygei-Kabardinian—has been Saidov's agent for a long time. Saidov helped him to became the head of the Supreme Sharia Court in 2005, after Russians eliminated Sadulaev, who had had this important position before being appointed the president of Ichkeria after the death of Maskhadov. Sadulaev was also considered to be controlled by Saidov and was probably betrayed by him when Saidov officially changed sides and gave oath of loyalty to Ramzan Kadyrov.
It is said that Akhmed Zakaev, the former foreign minister of the so-called Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (ChRI), was horrified by Umarov's declaration that presented him as a de facto representative of the Caucasian branch of al Qaeda, not the most comfortable position in England these days. Waxed hysterical, he resigned his post, but does not dare to expose Astemirov's provocation. In the 1980s the KGB used Zakaev, as well as Movladi Udugov and Zelimkhan Yandarbiev, as their agent in the circles of nationalist Chechen and Ingush intelligentsia. In September 1991 the KGB files with their personal information were captured by the Dudaev people when they stormed the KGB office in Grozny, and got in Saidov's hands. Zakaev and Udugov know this and are afraid to confront Saidov. i
Saidov has made the goals of his provocation clear by the very title of his recent article “Now the West Has No Choice but Choose Between al Qaeda and Kadyrov.” ii By presenting Umarov and Zakaev as pan-Islamists and al Qaeda jihadists, Saidov wants to secure support for Ramzan Kadyrov from those sections of Western elites and intelligence services that still see Kadyrov as pro-Russian and continue to support the opposition to his rule, while trying to explain to them that Kadyrov's regime is a form of the Qadiri tactics of deceptive surrender to Moscow in order to regroup and make another bid for independence when the time comes.
What we know about Saidov

According to the recent book by the editor of Left.ru Anton Baumgarten, Ruslan Saidov (cover name for Ruslan S-ev) is a former officer of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Soviet General Staff (GRU) who was trained as a “deep penetration” agent for the Near East and Central Asia. iii He was born in Daghestan, half Akin-Chechen, half Spaniard. His father, important Communist functionary in the Ferghana Valley, died under the arrest for corruption. After special training in a GRU school served in Afghanistan with a group of other young officers who later formed the organized criminal group known in the Russian press as FarWest. In 1991 Saidov was sent to Dudaev and since then worked together with Dudaev's and Maskhadov's intelligence chief Khozh Nukhaev, former Moscow gangster wanted for the murder of American journalist Paul Khlebnikov. Both are thought to be Sufi sheiks. In the early 1990s Saidov and Nukhaev spent much time in London. Saidov's relations with British intelligence can be dated by that time at the latest. In London Nukhaev was observed and eventually embraced by the Atlantist elites around Margaret Thatcher and the Bush family. Hozh Nukhaev, wanted for the murder of American journalist Paul Khlebnikov, together with Margaret Thatcher in London.
In the mid-1990s Saidov was introduced to Prince Turki al-Faisal and can be described as his “junior partner” in the Russian Caucasus since then. According to Saidov, he was the one to greet Turki's agent Abu al -Walid in Chechnya. Earlier he had established business relations with the family of Adnan Khashoggi. Also in the mid-1990s Saidov developed strong relations with the Turkish General Staff and one of the branches of the extremist pan-Turkists organization Grey Wolves. Since then Istanbul has been his operational base. Shortly before the second war with Russia in 1999 Saidov and Nukhaev moved to Istanbul the newly formed Bureau of External Intelligence, a secret mini-intelligence organization within the Interior Ministry.
In September 1999 Saidov was badly wounded during the fighting in Daghestan and received medical treatment in Switzerland, where a year before his GRU colleagues and partners, together with US private intelligence companies, set up the “consulting agency” Far West Ltd. Saidov claims that the hitman was sent by al-Walid. It appears that al-Walid, the resident of Saudi intelligence in Chechnay, suspected that Saidov was a double agent, working for the pan-Turkists of the General Staff and having commercial realations with some old hands in GRU. Saidov's revenge came in 2004 when he was contracted by the CIA to prevent al-Walid's move from Chechnya to Iraq that was agreed upon during President Akhmat Kadyrov's visit to Saudi Arabia. Saidov gave al-Walid's whereabouts to the GRU battalion “East” under the command of Yamadaev and he was killed.
The journalistic investigation by burtsev.ru has also revealed that throughout the 1990s Saidov and Nukhaev provided financing to Chechen separatists in part through the family of Adnan Khashoggi, partly through narcotrafficking and racket. In the process, Saidov amassed significant personal wealth. With the help of Saudi intelligence, Saidov received access to construction business and his companies now participate in the management of commercial real estate, including Jumeira Beach Residence and Mall of the Emirates . Using his connections in Russian Ministry of Defence Saidov played important role in the heroin operation by the FarWest organized crime group, moving dozens tons of heroin from Afghanistan to Kosovo. After the withdrawal of Russian troops from Kosovo, Saidov and his FarWest partners became more involved in subversive politics in Russia. There are reasons to believe that Saidov played some role in events in Andijan and in the bloodshed in Nalchik in 2005. According to our sources, Saidov's Istanbul Bureau carried out the assassination of Paul Khlebnikov and Anna Politkovskaya, as well as assisted in the assassination of Andrei Kozlov, the first deputy chairman of the Central Bank, in 2006. iv Ruslan Saidov with close associate Natalia Roeva. Photo courtesy Forum.msk.ru
Saidov is a a vice-president of Far West LLC, a “consulting company” based in Dubai, which serves as front for the anti-Russian alliance of secret services of US, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, Lithuania, and (partly) Belorussia. The other vice-president is Vladimir Filin, general of the Ukrainian General Staff and one of the shadow power brokers in Ukrainian politics.
Saidov has Russian, Turkish and Jordanian passports, possibly other citizenships. Regularly visits the United States.
Примечания

i Saidov has publicly alleged Udugov's service for KGB and FSB in a number of articles, the latest is “The West Blackmails Russian Elite by Swiss Bank Accounts” 11.06.2007 <http://news.rin.ru/news///144893/> . Saidov tied Zakaev to Soviet KGB in “A Brawl Among Chechen Emigre: former actor Akhmed Zakaev is responsible for the liquidation of Aslan Maskhadov.” Forum.msk.ru 11.25. 2007 <http://forum.msk.ru/material/news/408816.html>
ii “Выбор для Запада, кого поддерживать в Чечне, упрощен до предела: Рамзана Кадырова или местный филиал «Аль-Каиды»” Forum.msk.ru 11.23.2007 <http://forum.msk.ru/material/region/408023.html>
iii Anton Baumgarten. Third Barbarossa. <http://www.left.ru/2007/11/baumgarten163.phtml>
iv Первые отклики начальства и Фарвеста на книгу Антона Баумгартена «Третья Барбаросса». Left.ru no. 12 (2007) <http://left.ru/2007/12/burtsev164.phtml>



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US Companies Linked to Vice-President Cheney Supervised the Transfer of Ukrainian WMD to Iran
On 27-30 November 2006, the Russian news agency Novyi Region published a three-part investigation, signed by Valery Briusov, of the illegal sale of Ukrainian KH-55 cruise missiles to Iran in 2001, which contains new and quite sensational information. 1 According to the news agency, the new information-- which includes copies of the SBU internal correspondence--comes from a “former officer of the SBU” (Ukrainian Security Service), who has accused the Ukrainian leadership in suppressing the report on the investigation prepared by then SBU Chairman Alexander Turchinov in the spring of 2005. In April of that year Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko acknowledged the illegal sale of strategic cruise missiles KH-55 to Iran and China from Ukraine. But Turchinov soon was fired and so far only one member of the criminal group was tried and sentenced to prison, while another suspect, Oleg Orlov, extradicted to Ukraine from the Czech Republic last spring remains “out of his mind.” The news agency quotes its source as rhetorically asking:
Is it believable that two petty middlemen were able to carry out such a grandiose operation, during which several great powers for the first time in history blatantly violated the holy of holies: the international agreements on the non-proliferation of strategic arms? Where are the rest of the people involved? Where are the crews of the heavy transport planes loaded with those missiles, which took off from the airport near Kiev and flew to Iran and China instead of Zhukovskoe, near Moscow? Where are those who allowed these flights? How could these planes cross the borders of several states? Who received them in Iran and China and where did they get afterwards?
Clearly, someone was very interested in hushing up the “affair with KH-55s.” The article then quotes a list of companies which allegedly took part in the conspiracy. The quote comes from a “fragment of the secret letter” by Alexander Turchinov to the Secretary of the National Security Council (NSC), Petr Poroshenko, dated by August 25, 2005 (facsimile of page 4 of the letter is attached):
...under the cover of credit lines for “ZAO Atomstroyexport” (Russia), and [they? - burtsev.ru] guaranteed to the Iranians and the Chinese the transfer of necessary payments through the controlled investment firms CTF Holdings Ltd, AB Holdings Ltd (Gibraltar), ARS Nova Ltd, Volgen Trading Ltd, Alfa Star Ltd, Investworld Ltd, (Cyprus). Isofert Trading INC, Transchem International INC (Panama), EMM Arab Systems Ltd (Cyprus) were used for transactions with the Chinese.
The company Far West Ltd (Switzerland) provided, under the control of Diligence LLC (USA), the general management of this operation and the contacts with the Iranians through its branch office in Tehran.
Тесhnocalty INC and SP-Trade INC, controlled by KBR INC (all from USA) were used for payments to S.H. Heritage Holding Ltd (Cyprus), which acted as financial middleman in contacts with the Iranians, who were represented by SATAK Co Ltd, controlled by the Committee of Foreign Operations of the High Command of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Department 140/16 of the Organization of Defense Industry of Iran. 2
This information was obtained from Israeli National Police by the SBU delegation that visited Israel in the summer of 2005. The head of the delegation was General Mikhail Kozhemiakin, one of Turchinov's deputies. The Israelis were happy to share with the Ukrainians what they knew about the KH-55 deal.
In his letter to Poroshenko, Turchinov argues that the list of the companies obtained from Israeli intelligence suggests that this large-scale operation was sanctioned by the governments of Russia, the United States, and Iran. He also points out that the conspiracy assigns Ukraine the role of the chief perpetrator of the crime and that Ukraine's reputation may be badly damaged as the result. To avoid this, he proposed that the NSC considered giving the Ukrainian Parliament the documents that reveal the real organizers of the KH-55 sales.

Instead, in September 2005 Turchinov, Kozhemiakin, and Poroshenko were fired, subjected to smear and threatened with criminal prosecution. It seemed that the “affair with KH-55” was forgotten for good.
The article then quotes a memo from August 2006 by the deputy head of the SBU, Nikolai Kurkin, to his boss. Kurkin writes that he received a request by the first deputy of the Secretary of the NSC, Yurii Tereshchenko, who is also the head of the Ukraine’s State Service on Export Control (SSEC), for a copy of Turchinov's report on the illegal sales of KH-55 to China and Iran that Turchinov sent to Poroshenko in August 2005. According to Tereshchenko, the report was not discussed by the NSC and its text had disappeared, with only the cover sheet left, a copy of which Kurkin attached to his memo. Kurkin concludes by arguing that since Turchinov's report contains “information that is damaging to Ukrainian state leaders“ and considering frequent leaks of secret information from the NSC it is not advisable to give Tereshchenko a copy of the report.
According to the source, the SBU then was given the oral order to destroy all the documents received by Kozhemiakin's group from the Israelis and to inform the NCS that “Turchinov's report never existed.” The source also explained that the SBU officers made copies of Turchinov's report as precaution and sent them to a number of addressees, including in the United States.
The Organizers

The article points out as organizers of the illegal sales a group of former high-ranking Soviet bureaucrats: Yury Masliukov, Leonard Vid, and Alexander Fain. The story begins in the 1980s, when the Soviet government resumed its military-technical cooperation with Iran.
In 1986 Mikhail Gorbachev signed a secret executive order by the Politburo “On shipments of special equipment to Iran in 1986-87, sending military specialists to Iran, and receiving Iranian specialists for training in the operation, use, and repairs of special equipment.”
In accordance with this decision, Iran received, among other things, the first party of the ballistic missiles “Scud.”
Yurii Masliukov was the one responsible for preparing this decision and carrying it out. At that time he was the chairman of Gosplan and of the Military-Industrial Commission at the Council of Ministers of the USSR. The Commission coordinated the work of the Soviet military-industrial complex, as well as the export-import of arms and dual technologies, both legal and not.

Masliukov's experience and connections in the international arms trade and military-industrial espionage can be appreciated from this description by one of the owners of Far West Ltd, Ruslan Saidov, describing this aspect of Masliukov's activities.
In the past there was an organization called COCOM--Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls. This international organization controlled Western exports to East Bloc countries. CoCom had 17 member states—all Nato members (except Iceland, Japan, and Australia). Five neutral countries and New Zealand closely cooperated with this organization. The leading role in CoCom was played, of course, by the United States. The Soviet Union responded by creating an effective system against the CoCom embargo. It included foreign trade organizations, KGB, GRU, industry, and the Academy of Sciences. Thousands firms were created abroad (some of them continue to operate today), billions of dollars were budgeted for these activities. This work was deemed so important that it was presided over by Yury Dmitrievich Masliukov, first deputy of the prime minister.

Masliukov's first deputy was one Leonard Vid. He also took active part in the preparation of the Politburo decision on Iran. After 1991 they parted. Masliukov became a high functionary in the CPRF (presently he is State Duma deputy) and, from time to time, held important positions in the government under Yeltsin. Leonard Vid went to private banking and became the chairman of the Alpha-Bank (retired in 2002).
Company Far West Ltd was registered in 1998 in Switzerland by a group of former GRU officers and agents (GRU--The Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff). Among them was Anton Surikov, who at that time was in charge of Masliukov's secretariat in Evgeny Primakov's government (Masliukov served as Primakov's vice-premier, 1998-99).
According to a number of open sources, Far West Ltd operates in the “gray”and “black” arms markets. It has branches in Iran and Ukraine, among other countries. The article alleges that the company has been used to cash in on some “special connections” that Masliukov and Vid cultivated back in the Soviet period of their careers.

Interestingly, Masliukov's business relations with Vid also continued in quite respectable areas: a significant number of military enterprises in Izhevsk and Votkins (Masliukov represents this region in the State Duma), including the factory producing the ICBMs Topol—the main weapon of Russia's strategic nuclear forces—keep their accounts in the Alpha-Bank.

Another long-time associate of Masliukov, Alexander Fain, is the General Director of the Alfa-Eco Group (biggest shareholder of Alfa-Bank). When Masliukov presided over the Soviet military-industrial complex, Fain was a chief designer at one of the enterprises engaged in a nuclear related military production. It was thanks to the efforts of Fain, supported by Masliukov, that Alfa-Group landed the contract to serve the accounts of Rosatom enterprises, including Atomstroiexport that builds the famous Busher station in Iran and another nuclear station in China (in Tianwan).
The article describes close relations between Alfa Group and the circle of Vice-President Dick Cheney. The highest level management of Alfa Group includes US citizens linked to the Anglo-American intelligence community. The leaders of Alfa Group have close contacts with Dick Cheney and the management of Halliburton.
The best known example of these relations was the $600 million credit that the Tyumen Oil Company (TNK), controlled by the consortium of Alfa Group and Access Industries Inc, received from the American Exim-Bank after the political lobbying by Dick Cheney. The deal was followed by TNC's strategic alliance with Cheney's Halliburton in the reconstruction of the huge Samotlor oil fields and the inclusion of several managers from Diligence LLC in the leadership of Alfa Group.
Diligence LLC is a so-called private military company (PMC) created by former officers of the CIA and British MI-5. In fact, it is a private intelligence service that serves the interests of the financial-industrial groups linked to the Republican party. The head of Diligence LLC, Richard Burt, is also a member of the board of directors of Alfa Capital that serves the accounts of Russia's most sensitive military-industrial companies and Rosatom.
In addition, Diligence LLC is a partner of another PMC--KBR Inc, subdivision of Halliburton.
The Conspiracy. A reconstruction.

The article reconstructs the events of 1999-2001 as follows.
In 1998-99 the neocon wing of the Republican party, led by Cheney and Rumsfeld, designed a strategy for establishing the US control over the Persian Gulf region that envisioned military interventions in Iraq and Iran. A war against Iraq was much easier to justify than against Iran because of the bad reputation of Saddam's regime after its aggression against Kuwait. To obtain a casus belli against Iran was much more problematic. There were no international sanctions against Iran and, their despite the ferocious anti-Israeli rhetoric, the Iranian leadership conducted a very cautious foreign policy, aan the Iranian intelligence services were effective. In short, presenting to UN mythic evidence of WMD in Iran would not work, real were needed. Iran had to be trapped and caught red-handed in violating the regime of non-proliferation. But how to lure Iran into the lethal trap?
According to the source, it was obvious that the WMD were to be "leaked" from the territory of the fSU. But how to convince the Iranians to take the bait? Only a private company with financial resources and unique connections could help Cheney, and this company was Alfa Group.
The Iranian leadership and intelligence knew and trusted Masliukov, Vid, and Fain. After all, they lobbied Soviet arms sales to Iran and also served the credit lines for the Busher project (Vid and Fain). They were well positioned to convince the Iranians to accept the unexpected "present." Alfa Group had a dense network of offshore companies to hide the financial transactions of the deal while Masliukov had the Far West Ltd people, experienced in black market arms deals, to carry out the operation. When the Republicans won the 2000 elections and Cheney became the vice-president, the conspiracy got under way.
The Spoiler

The operation to create a casus belli against Iran lasted over one year and was the result of a unique confluence of business and political interests of several powerful groups in the United States, Russia, Ukraine, Iran, and China. It was carried out without a hitch, and by 2002 the Cheney-Rumsfeld group had in its sleeve the joker to be used when the moment comes. Iran indeed had violated the international law on WMD and deserved a good bombing. But then something went wrong.
The Baptist pastor Alexander Turchinov was an outsider to the intelligence community and its con games. His appointment as the head of the SBU was the result of the complex and short-lasting power sharing arrangements between the “orangist” factions in Kiev (Turchinov is Yulia Timoshenko's man).
When Turchinov became acquainted with the SBU dossier on the KH-55 affair, he realized that it was a colossal conspiracy which painted Ukraine as a country capable for any crime if it pays, including arming with WMD the newly appointed enemies of mankind--”Islamic terrorists.” He was pro-American, as all “orangists,” but he could not agree with this role for Ukraine. So, according to the source, Turchinov began his own investigation and sent Kozhemiakin to Israel, because he knew that only the Israelis were interested in the truth. After all, no matter what would be the results of Cheney's game, the Iranian made KH-55s would be falling on Israel. Kozhemiakin and his group received a warm welcome in Israel and were given all the information known by that time. And the Israelis knew a lot.
Prior to Kozhemiakin's trip, Turchinov put some pressure on Ukrspetsexport and GUR (Ukrainian military intelligence). There were people in these establishments who knew the details of the deal. A certain bureaucratic struggle began and it was reflected in the press.
As early as in April 2005 Turchinov apparently found out that the Far West partners, Alexei Likhvintsev and Leonid Kosiakov from GUR and Valery Lysenko from Ukrspetsexport were directly linked to the KH-55 affair. There had been also new details about the role of Alfa Group, which was mentioned in the famous parliamentary inquiry of deputy Hryhoriy Omelchenko in January 2005, there surfaced also the names of two Panamanian offshore companies: Isofert Trading INC and Transchem International INC, belonging to the oligarch Viacheslav Kantor , protege of Mikhail Friedman, owner of Alpha Bank, in the Jewish Congress of Russia.
Then came the most unexpected and revealing reaction to the first publication based on Turchinov's investigation. The head of Far West Ltd, Vladimir Filin, publicly accused Valery Lysenko in receiving a huge bribe of $3 million from his company (FWL) for facilitating the secret deals of Far West Ltd with Syria and Iraq.

After this confession, it became clear that the KH-55 deal was gone public in a very different way than its organizers hoped to use it. The role of KBR Inc and Diligence LLC, who supervised the operation both in Alfa-Group and Far West Ltd, became visible, as well as Cheney's ears behind them. Turchinov requested a meeting of NSC and that was the end of his career in the SBU. The article concludes by observing the ironic outcome of Cheney's conspiracy: the Islamic Republic received the WMD thanks to US neocons and some leaders of Russia's Jewish Congress.
Burtsev.ru

Other publications (in English) on this affair from burtsev.ru <http://left.ru/burtsev/index_en.html>

Filin-"El Buho" Is Getting Nervous <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/filinnervous.phtml>
"Consulting" Agency Far West, LLC Paid $3 Million Bribe to Ukrainian Official For Illegal Arms Deals with Syria and Iran <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/lysenko.phtml>
Far West, Ltd. Leaves Europe Under the Threat of Criminal Persecution. Renamed Far West, LLC <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/filin.phtml>
“Far West, LLC” Co-Owner, mentioned in X-55 Scandal, Accuses US Military Intelligence of Using the Hawala Network for Money Laundering and Personal Enrichment <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/hawala.phtml>
New Information on the Involvement of Far West, Ltd in Illegal Arms Smuggling <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/x-55en.phtml>

Примечания

1 Pt. 1 <http://www.nr2.ru/kiev/93615.html/print/>, Pt.2 <http://www.nr2.ru/kiev/93830.html>, Pt. 3 <http://www.nr2.ru/dnepropetrovsk/94036.html/print/>
2 The Instrumentation Factory Plant or Department 140/16 <http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles
/Iran/Missile/3876_4098.html>




________________________________________________________


New Information on the Involvement of Far West, Ltd in Illegal Arms Smuggling:
Did Far West, Ltd. Supply SAMS “Igla” to Chechen Separatists?
First, we want to quote a typical piece of news about the evolving scandal with the illegal deliveries of Ukrainian cruise missiles X-55 to China and Iran. It will be followed by additional information
Ukraine Goes After Missile Dealers


http://templetonthorp.com/fr/news862



KIEV -- A Ukrainian government probe into lucrative illicit weapons sales by officials loyal to former President Leonid Kuchma has led to secret indictments or arrests of at least six arms dealers accused of selling nuclear-capable missiles destined for Russia to Iran and China, a high-ranking intelligence official said Friday.

The deals with Moscow-allied nations -- which violate international nonproliferation treaties -- put pressure on Ukraine's new president to halt the country's well-established illegal arms trades as he tries to boosts ties with and join NATO and the European Union.

President Victor Yushchenko has promised to investigate illicit weapons dealing, including a U.S. allegation that Kuchma approved the sale of a sophisticated Kolchuga radar system to Iraq despite UN sanctions against Saddam Hussein's regime. Kuchma denied the allegations.

Ukraine's intelligence agency, the State Security Service, launched its investigation of the case involving Iran and China on Feb. 14, 2004, during Kuchma's presidency. But the probe was never publicized until this week when lawmaker Hrihoriy Omelchenko -- a reserve colonel in the intelligence service -- wrote to Yushchenko asking him to pursue a full investigation. Omelchenko made his letter available to The Associated Press.

Six missiles purportedly ended up in Iran and another six allegedly went to China, although export documents known as end-user certificates recorded the final recipient of some 20 Kh-55 missiles for sale as "Russia's Defense Ministry," according to Omelchenko's letter. He did not say what happened to the eight remaining missiles.

The missiles allegedly sold to Iran were unarmed, but are designed to carry 200-kiloton nuclear warheads. Western nations have accused Iran of trying to develop a nuclear weapons program, an allegation Tehran denies. China is a declared nuclear weapons state.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko and Defense Ministry spokesman Colonel Vyacheslav Sedov said Ukraine had not informed Russia of the allegations that missiles meant for Moscow had been diverted, and that Moscow would await Ukraine's investigation. Russia's state arms export company, Rosoboronexport, declined comment.

Omelchenko's letter to Yushchenko and another to the Prosecutor General, Svyatoslav Piskun, refer to a Ukrainian Security Service report that includes details of the allegations.

At least three people were arrested and another three were indicted last year in connection with the illicit arms trade -- including some of those mentioned by name in the letters -- according to the intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

According to Omelchenko's letter, in 2000 Russian national Oleg Orlov and a Ukrainian partner identified as E.V. Shilenko "exported 20 Kh-55 cruise missiles through a fake contract and end-user certificate" with Russia's state-run arms dealer and with a firm called Progress, which is a daughter company of Ukrspetseksport -- Ukraine's weapons exporting agency.

Last year, Ukrainian prosecutors indicted Orlov and Shilenko in absentia for illegal weapons trading, the intelligence official said. Orlov was detained on July 13 in the Czech Republic.

There is an ongoing extradition procedure to return Orlov to Ukraine for possible prosecution, a spokesman for the Czech Justice Ministry, Petr Dimun, confirmed Friday. Dimun said the procedures were interrupted recently because Orlov suffered a stroke and was hospitalized, although he was "recovering well."

Shilenko remains at large, said Omelchenko's letter, which also notes an attempt on Orlov's life, saying: "The physical elimination of Orlov in a Czech prison was prevented."

The State Security Service has also issued an official inquiry about a Cyprus-based Russian man identified in the letters as G. K. Shkinov, who also remains at large.

"The law enforcement bodies of that country [Cyprus] are performing an investigation," Omelchenko wrote.

Another three Ukrainians were detained last year in connection with the deal, and the case was forwarded to a Kiev court, Omelchenko wrote.

Orlov is reputed to be a prominent weapons broker. In its 2001 report, the UN Security Council implicated Orlov and his Cyprus- and Dubai-based EMM Arab Systems Ltd. in sanctions busting related with ferrying weapons and supplies to Angola's rebel UNITA group. The Kh-55, known in the West as the AS-15, has a range of 2,975 kilometers and is designed to carry a nuclear warhead with a 200-kiloton yield. Iran does not operate long-range bombers but it is believed it could adapt its Soviet-built Su-24 strike aircraft to launch the missile. The missile's range would put Israel and a number of U.S. allies in the region within reach.

Ukrainian weapons dealers ferried missiles to China through a Ukraine-based cargo company run by a former secret service agent, the letters said. Omelchenko also said in 2001 that weapons dealers sent ground targeting systems, maintenance equipment and missile technicians to Iran.

Profits from the sales were estimated at $2.1 million or more, the letters said.

Valery Malev, the head of Ukrspetseksport, has also been implicated in the deals. But he died in 2002 in Ukraine when his car collided with a truck. Police concluded he fell asleep behind the wheel, but many speculate his car had been tampered with.

"Valery Malev, the head of Ukrspetseksport, knew that missiles were not exported to Russia but to third countries and with forged documents," Omelchenko wrote.

A multimillion-dollar deal involving sales of oil-processing equipment to Iran was used as a mask for the sales, Omelchenko's letters claim. They add that a Cyprus-based company, S.H. Heritage Holding Ltd., and Iran-based Satak Co. Ltd. of NIOC were involved in the concealment. Internet search and telephone inquiries turned up no information about the companies.

S.H. Heritage owner Haider Sarfraz, an Australian national, died in a 2004 car accident, the letters claim. They do not specify where the accident occurred.

Although Ukraine in the 1990s renounced the nuclear armaments it inherited in the Soviet breakup, the country remains a sizable producer of weapons including missiles, aircraft and tanks.

The country has also remained under scrutiny for its murky weapons deals. In 2000, the United States accused Ukraine of selling infantry weapons to Afghanistan's Taliban regime. Russia has charged Ukraine with doing the same for Chechen rebels.

In 2001, Kuchma acknowledged that $32 billion worth of Ukrainian military hardware had found its way illegally into international markets during the 1990s. Last year, Ukrainian police arrested four men from Greece, Pakistan and Iraq, on suspicion of attempted illegal weapons trade and hiring mercenaries in a deal worth more than $800 million for an unspecified force fighting in Iraq.

In March 2004, former Defense Minister Yevhen Marchuk warned that several hundred SA-2 surface-to-air missiles brought to Ukraine for decommissioning were unaccounted for, due to "accounting problems" and "the absence of records."
(The Moscow Times 07.02.05)


Comments by burtsev.ru

Let us begin with several details omitted in this article.

Company "Progress" was paid by the US firm "TECHNOCALITY, INC"

1. for the delivery of 6 X-55 to China in April 2000: in May the firm transferred $600, 000 to "Central European International Bank" (Budapest) received by "Progress". In its turn TECHNOCALITY, INC received from two Cyprus firms $500,000 (from Investworld, Ltd) and $200,000 (from EMM ARAB SYSTEMS, Ltd)
   
2. for the delivery in May 2001 of six X-55 and the system KHO-120 to Iran, TECHNOCALITY, INC paid to PROGRESS $800,000. As a cover up they used a fictive contract between the Iranian firm SATAK Co. Ltd. of NIOC and the companyS. H. Heritage Holding, Ltd. owned by Haider Sarfrazand registered in Cyprus. The contract was allegedly for delivery to Iran equipment for oil distilleries. The Iranians had one condition: regular technical service of these missiles. In 2002-2003 Ukrainian military specialists made trips to Iran for this purpose.
   

The information and what follows is from the piece published in January 4 2006 at the forums of compromat.ru and pravda.info. i

"The Ukrainian public learned about these swindles in spring 2005 from the Prosecutor Genera Stanislav Piskun and the SBU Director Alexander Turchinov. Victor Yushchenko confirmed their statements 'with bitterness.' But already in September 2005 Piskun and Turchinov had to leave their posts. However, according to the source close to Turchinov, the ex-Director continues to monitor the situation.

The collected information allows to expand the information, already made public by the press, about the role of the middleman company FAR WEST LTD with headquarters in Switzerland and the two offshores in Panama: ISOFERT TRADING COMPANY INC and TRANSCHEM INTERNATIONAL INC. ii

According to this information, the opening of the criminal investigation in February 2004 was prompted by the documents which came from Germany. In October 2003, the Ukrainian businessman Sergei Petrov, iii formerly one of the CIOs of FAR WEST, LTD, turned to German law enforcement agencies. He accused his former companions in arms smuggling in violation of international agreements and sanctions. iv Specifically, Petrov revealed the shipment of portable SAMs "Igla" to FARC in exchange to 600 kilograms of cocaine in August 2002 through Brazil. Incidentally, one of the participants of this deal was soon after blown up in the suburbs of Moscow. v


Another episode relates to illegal shipments of light arms, mortars and ammunition from Belorussia to Kosovo and Palestinian Autonomy in 2001. These arms were immediately used by the Albanians in the ethnic conflict in Macedonia and by the Palestinians against Israel.

Petrov also revealed the details of deals with X-55. According to his testimony [sic], out of six missiles shipped to China (with technical documentation) three were meant for Pakistan. Besides their payments to PROGRESS, the Chinese transferred $3 million through Cyprus to one of the Panamanian offshores, while Pakistan transferred to another offshore $4 million from Karachi. In case of Iran, besides payments to PROGRESS, the executors [of the deal] in Dubai received two tons of golden ingots. These ingots were taken from Kuwait to Iraq in 1990, and in December 2002, on the eve of US military operation, were shipped to Iran.

Petrov also revealed a number of arms smuggling episodes in the 1990s, such as:

- arms deliveries to the former Yugoslavia from the Western Army Group of Russia, Ukraine, and Belorussia.
- arms deliveries to Yemen (through Chechnya in May-June 1994) and some African countries with armed conflicts. vi
- arms deliveries to Taliban in Afghanistan in exchange to heroin.
- arms shipments to Saddam Hussein through Belorussia and Syria.
- arms deliveries to Chechen fighters, including a big party of AK rifles from Izhevsk in 1995 and a party of SAMs "Igla" from Ukraine in 1997.

Besides, Petrov informed about the mechanisms of corrupt lobbying for legal arms sales in 1995-2001 from Ukraine and Belorussia of aviation to Yemen, Sudan, and Peru, and tanks to Sudan and Pakistan. In response to Petrov's information, in December 2003 German special services, together with their French colleagues, interrogated the head of Far West Ltd. Vladimir Filin, his deputies Yakov Kosman and Sultan Suleimenov and the board members Alexei Likhvintsev, Anton Surikov, and Venezuelan citizen Alfonso Davidovich. They denied all allegations and explained them by Petrov's mental illness.
A month later Petrov was killed (blown up in his car) in SA. Simultaneously, the Iran-Australian middleman Haider Sarfraz was killed in a strange car accident, while driving in the defective car of his Turkish companion Ugur Mekhmed [sic] (aka Ruslan Saidov), a member of the Far West Ltd leadership. But by that time the Germans lost interest to this case having given the information about it to SBU."

This was the part concerning FWL. Here follows the information about Orlov and the Americans. Note that in the piece in The Moscow Times contains not a single word about the US connection.

"SBU arrested Evdokimov and announced international search for Orlov and Shilenko. The last has disappeared without a trace. As to Orlov, he lived in Karlovy Vara until August 2004, before he attempted to flee from Czechia to Dubai through Frankfurt. It appears that during those several months [in Chechnya] Orlov bargained with the CIA. His attempt to escape failed. He was apprehended.

Apparently, during one and half year since his arrest, the Americans were able to come to an agreement with Orlov. According to a source close to Turchinov, he was promised a minimal sentence in Ukraine where he apparently will be deported. Orlov will give testimony agreed upon with the CIA, which will not politically harm the United States.

Specifically, Orlov will tell about the "gray" deliveries of SAMs "Igla" and the anti-tank systems 9K11 "Fagot" to Georgia from Ukraine through Bulgaria in summer 2004, on the eve of his arrest. It is possible that this deal was meant as a cover for another, when in March 2004 a large party of SAMs "Igla" was sold to Syria from Ukraine through Georgia and Lebanon. It was paid for by one Islamist foundation in Saudi Arabia.

Another topic is the lobbying of legal arms deals with "problem" countries, allegedly also known to Orlov. Specifically, it concerns the corrupted mechanisms of access to the highest levels of power in Moscow for Venezuela, Iran, Yemen, Syria, and Sudan, labeled "outlaw regimes" by Washington. Already after Orlov's arrest, Russia delivered fighter planes MIG-29 to Sudan and Yemen, and began deliveries of light arms to Venezuela, and signed contracts with Iran and Syria for sales of AA systems. Orlov's trial will be full of scandal."
Примечания

i The owner of compromat.ru, Sergei Gorshkov, removed this information from the board several days later without explanations.
ii On the connection between Far West, Ltd. and these banks, see: http://ru.obkom.net.ua/articles/2005-11/....shtml?rss
iii On Sergei Petrov (aka Serge Rodin), see: his intervew <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/petrov_en.phtml> and his secretely recorded conversation with the leaders of Far West Ltd. <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/bristol_en.phtml>
iv See Petrov's interview at http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/petrov_en.phtml
v His name was Mikhail Vunsh, the owner of the big company OMNIFUD, importer of "Bush's legs." His car was blown on December 2 2002. The driver and the guard were also killed. Vunsh was close to Petrov and Roman Tsepov, both killed in 2004. According top one source, they wanted to split from Filin and take control of cocaine deliveries through Petersburg port. On Vunsh's death , see: http://www.vremya.ru/2002/223/3/29858.html
vi On deliveries to Aden, Yemen, see: http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/yasenev_en.phtml


_________________________________________________________________

“Far West, LLC” Co-Owner, mentioned in X-55 Scandal, Accuses US Military Intelligence of Using the Hawala Network for Money Laundering and Personal Enrichment
Mr. Ruslan Saidov (Turkish passport in the name of Ugur Mehmed)--Major of GRU 1 in reserve and co-owner of the "consulting" agency Far West LLC (formerly Far West Ltd)--has recently accused the high ranking officer of US military intelligence (DIA) Colonel Caleb Temple and his colleagues of running a heroin operation in the Near East and using the hawala money-transfer system for money laundering.
Just as his business partner Vladimir Filin 2 , Ruslan Saidov has emerged in public domain only recently from that murky anonymous zone where for the last fifteen years or so, former officers of Soviet secret services have been converting their expertise and connections into wealth, power, and more connections. What is different about Saidov is that this son of a high-ranking party apparatchik, known for his militant atheism, is a hardcore convert to Muslim fundamentalism and thought to be a representative of the Muslim Brotherhood's “Special Organization” in the former Soviet Union. 3
It may seem that Mr. Saidov's credentials make him an unlikely partner of DIA, the CIA, Mossad, MI6 and similar pillars of the Western security state. But the world of late imperialism creates most strange bedfellows. Especially when things concern Russia, or the Soviet Union before it. Suffices it to recall the well-documented alliance of Islamic fundamentalists, Osama bin Laden's Maktab al-Khidimat, and the choicest set of Afghan drug lords with the “land of the free” in the 1980s. Imperialism's war on “international terrorism” includes imperialism's use of “international terrorism” as its proxy for war against Russia. In this war people like Saidov and his friends are invaluable assets. Thus, according to one source, the CIA contracted Saidov for the liquidation of Abu al-Walid in 2004, when this officer of Saudi General Intelligence Service was about to leave Chechnya with his men and possibly join the Resistence in Iraq. 4 Recently, however, Saidov's and his Far West, Ltd partner's relations with Western intelligence came under the stress of Oleg Orlov's affair and the information about Far West, Ltd involvement in illegal arms smuggling, including the sale of Ukrainian X-55 cruise missiles to Iran and China. 5 Perhaps, this explains Saidov's recent “leak” about the involvement of US intelligence services in heroin trade and money laundering. Saidov's (and his FWL partners') own expertise in these activities has been recently the subject of substantial interest in Russian press, including the journalistic investigation by burtsev.ru in the course of which our intelligence source was killed. 6 What follows is an excerpt from Saidov's article about the recent reports in British press that Iran provides training camps for Chechen terrorists. 7 We hope that this information can be of interest to researches and all people of good will who believe that something is terribly wrong with the world where under the pretext of state security, cliques, unaccountable to the people, run amok and bring us ever closer to the brink of mutual annihilation.
Research group burtsev.ru
02.01.06
<...>
The hypocrisy of Western politicians and propagandists is well known. Just consider the public statements by US officials that hawala (a Muslim form of money transfers based on trust) is “the most important money-transfer service used for financing terrorists” and includes the financial and the banking systems of Dubai and Pakistan, where allegedly ”regulation and control of financial markets are practically non-existent.” This is what the senior officer of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Caleb Temple, told about the mechanism of hawala. He alleged that the money, moved through hawala, come from Syria (from smuggling), as well as from wealthy “extremists” and charities in Europe and the Middle East. Supposedly, also U.S. money is moved, by way of hawala, to “terrorists” in Iraq. 8
It is noteworthy that Americans do not mention that smuggling through Syria and Lebanon comes through the US occupied Iraq where it is brought by US military transport planes from Afghanistan via the US base in Qatar. In the “Sunni Triangle” the agents of US secret services give this smuggled goods, or, to put it simply, the Afghan heroin, to those very “terrorists” who they supposedly fight, but in reality provoke religious strife between the Iraqi Sunni and Shiia communities. As to the money which Colonel Temple's colleagues in DIA and the CIA receive for their part in heroin traffic through Iraq, Syria,...

[Jan Klimkowski]

Magda - excellent digging!

Here's the link to the key Peter Dale Scott article:

http://lobster-magazine.co.uk/articles/global-drug.htm

[Magda Hassan]

Лефт.Ру Версия
для печати Версия для печати
Rambler's Top100

Natasha Barch and Vadim Stolz
Obama and the Intelligence Cabal

Last April the international group of investigative journalists burtsev.ru published an expose of an anti-Obama group of intelligence officers from the former Soviet Union whose private intelligence company Far West LLC has been the object of considerable controversy in Russian and international press. This is an updated and expanded version of the original article in Russian, published in Left.ru 4 (2009) under the title "Kto gotovit pokushenie na Prezidenta SshA?" (Who Prepares the Assassination of the US President?). It includes a follow-up interview with Vadim Stolz by Natasha Barch which she took by correspondence in the summer - autumn of 2009. Vadim Stolz is a chairman of the International editorial board of burtsev.ru. Natasha Barch is a member of its Moscow chapter.

__________________
Threatening Noises from FarWest
From the left: Uzbek-Chechen General Ruslan Saidov (Sadullaev), Ukrainian General Vladimir Filin (Litovchenko) and Rt. Colonel of the General Staff Anton Surikov of Russia (aka Turkish citizen Mansur Nathoev, aka U.S. citizen Gregory Orloff) are extremely unhappy with US President Obama and would like to see him out of the Oval Office by whatever means. Last August these individuals met with Vice-President Biden in Washington.
From the left: Uzbek-Chechen General Ruslan Saidov (Sadullaev), Ukrainian General Vladimir Filin (Litovchenko) and Rt. Colonel of the General Staff Anton Surikov of Russia (aka Turkish citizen Mansur Nathoev, aka U.S. citizen Gregory Orloff) are extremely unhappy with US President Obama and would like to see him out of the Oval Office by whatever means. Last August these individuals met with Vice-President Biden in Washington.

Our monitoring of the public statements made in recent months by FarWest LLC vice-presidents Generals Vladimir Filin, Ruslan Saidov and the board member Rt. Colonel Anton Surikov--principal liaison of the group with right-wing circles in Washingtonbetray more that the aggressive Obamophobia of this group. In particular, Surikov/'s recent anti-Obama statements give reasons for concern. Here are some quotes.

"There are some serious people in the new Administration: the Vice-President Biden and the defense minister Gates. Presently they are not in the limelight but, I think, in two years or so they will come out of the shadow into the forefront and Biden will become the President."

"In this world crisis situation, Obama was meant to take the responsibility for some kind of extraordinary stint on a global scale... Following this he will be removed as an expendable intelligence asset."

Surikov's statement about Biden and Gates suggests a military coup or some sort of anti-constitutional conspiracy in the United States with the goal of "removing" President Obama.

In his recent "interview" with Natalia Roeva, Surikov identified Obama as American Gorbachev bent on the destruction of his country because of his religious mentors, "famous Negro racists Michael Pfleger and Jeremiah Wright, had brainwashed Obama with irrational hatred of America." This statement was followed by this exchange:

Roeva: - How is it possible to eliminate (ustranit) Obama before 2012?

Surikov: - Oh, there are many ways. Leave this for Americans to choose. Mechanisms for removing (otstranit')[the President] do exist, as well as precedents. i
Anton Surikov, board member of Far West LLC. Natalia Roeva (nee Valiahmetova), wife of a wealthy oil trader, FarWest LLC partner, specializes on organizing the "national-liberation struggle" of Ugro-Finn ethnicities in the Russian Federation.
Anton Surikov, board member of Far West LLC. Natalia Roeva (nee Valiahmetova), wife of a wealthy oil trader, FarWest LLC partner, specializes on organizing the "national-liberation struggle" of Ugro-Finn ethnicities in the Russian Federation.

The inflammatory language aside, the question that the U.S. and Russian authorities should ask is: What "ways" and "precedents" to "remove" Obama Surikov is talking about? There is only one constitutional way of "removing" a President of the United States. It is called impeachment. Surikov is supposed to know this. As naturalized U.S. citizen, he had to pass the exam on the constitution of the United States. But the US Congress did not accuse President Obama in violating the laws of the country and there is no indication whatsoever that such an accusation is forthcoming. As to Roeva's inquiry about the ways to "eliminate" President Obama, it is true that such ways do exist and the U.S. history has a plenty of "precedents" of this sort. But they are all criminal and as such are subject to state prosecution. These include calls and plans for a coup d'etat or the murder of a U.S. President. This is why public statements by and discussions between Russian and foreign citizens about "removing" or "eliminating" President Obama should attract serious attention of the U.S. Secret Service and the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation.

From what follows it will become clear that these statements and discussions come from the group of individuals who own the private intelligence company Far West LLC, with the head-quarters in Dubai, and include high ranking intelligence officers, both on active service and retired, of Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, Britain, the United States, Belarus, and Russia. It will also become clear that this group of people has regular contacts with a set of right-wing operatives and think-tank "analysts" in Washington, DC.

But first let us hear and SEE a few more threatening noises from FarWest. What follows are graphics and statements by the Far West LLC partners that we have copied from their blog at http://www.far-west.livejournal.com .

* * *

Obama as the Anti-Christ is the recurrent theme of the anti-Obama hate speech by the executives of FarWest LLC. Below is one example from the blog entry by the Uzbek-Chechen General Ruslan Saidov. In the early 1990s Saidov was a Russian GRU "handler" of Shamil Basaev and other future masters of terror; then he moved to Istanbul as a deputy of Khozh Nuhaev, chief of Dudaev's and Maskhadov's external intelligence. In Turkey, Saidov cultivated relations both with a branch of the Grey Wolves (a terrorist pan-Turkist organization) and Turkish Islamists. According to some unverified sources, in 1996 he served as adviser to the Islamist premier of Turkey Necmettin Erbakan. ii
"Ruslan Saidov: "The demand for the immediate withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan should be a priority in the struggle of all sane political forces in the world against Obama
"Ruslan Saidov: "The demand for the immediate withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan should be a priority in the struggle of all sane political forces in the world against Obama's global perestroika."

Our comment: The so-called "Bagram Department" of Saidov's intelligence service operates from the US Bagram Air Force base in Afghanistan. By coincidence or not, the private military company KBR (formerly KBR Halliburton) co-owner of Far West LLC with 13 percent of voting shareshas a big contract with this base. Could it be that Saidov's agents work under the cover provided by the KBR Bagram contractor? According to our sources in Germany, the Bagram group conducts "direct action" operations against the suspected intelligence assets of Germany, France, Russia, and China in Afghanistan and Waziristan. Saidov and his partners are worried that the US focus on Afghanistan and Waziristan distracts them from organizing a new Drang nach Osten with the goal of dismembering Russia.
"FarWest: Americans can grovel before Putin as they want but they will suffer a crushing defeat in Afghanistan and won
"FarWest: Americans can grovel before Putin as they want but they will suffer a crushing defeat in Afghanistan and won't be able to prevent Iran from having nuclear arms."

Our comment: This is an example of FarWest's nuclear blackmail of Europe and the United States another major thread in the subversive activities of this syndicate. The rogue intelligence services and operatives, who use Far West LLC as their commercial front, have been involved in the nuclear consortium between Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, Pakistan, Iran, North Korea, and China. Their activities included the smuggling of nuclear materials and technologies to these countries from Ukraine and Russia and the smuggling of KH-55 (Kent) cruise missiles to Iran and China in 2000-2001. According to the recent article in Australian press, this sale included four nuclear warheads 200 kiloton each. The vice-president of Far West LLC Ukrainian General Vladimir Filin was even nicknamed "the Radioactive Filin" for his advocacy of re-nuclearizing Ukraine. It is believed that rogue elements in the Soviet General Staff were able to hide an unknown number of nuclear devices during the break up of the Soviet Union. iii
"Vladimir Filin: A "reset" in the relations between the United States and Russia will not be allowed. Nobody wants it except Summers and Chubais."
"Vladimir Filin: A "reset" in the relations between the United States and Russia will not be allowed. Nobody wants it except Summers and Chubais."

Our comment: By "nobody" Filin refers to the Russophobic ultra-right/neocon circles in the US and the postfascist East European power groups who hope to use the United States as their proxy to settle old scores with Russia.
Obama Lenin commandeers an armored vehicle to trample on the American flag. The byline by Vladimit Filin says: "There is a growing understanding in the countries of Eastern Europe about the destructive consequences of Obama
Obama Lenin commandeers an armored vehicle to trample on the American flag. The byline by Vladimit Filin says: "There is a growing understanding in the countries of Eastern Europe about the destructive consequences of Obama's global perestroika as "the road to hell"." The quote underneath the picture says: "The more representatives of bourgeoisie we shoot the better. Lenin"

Our comment: In their anti-Obama hate speech FarWest habitually exploits the deeply ingrained anti-communism of American society. This also helps to keep their ultra-right partners in Washington and London happy.
"Anton Surikov: Barack Hussein Obama has agreed to become the leader of a global perestroika because he feels irrational hatred to his country that was taught to him by his spiritual mentors the Black racists Michael Pfleger and Jeremiah Wright. Like priest, like people."
"Anton Surikov: Barack Hussein Obama has agreed to become the leader of a global perestroika because he feels irrational hatred to his country that was taught to him by his spiritual mentors the Black racists Michael Pfleger and Jeremiah Wright. Like priest, like people."

Our comment: Rt. Colonel of the General Staff Anton Surikov is a naturalized US citizen who aspires to be holier than the Alabama redneck from the John Birch Society. Surikov's hate speech exploits not only the fears of the American Far Right, but also the white racism of their Russian counterparts in government, military, secret services, and business. Peaceful coexistence and partnership between Russia and the United States threaten the geopolitical dreams of ethno-nationalist Russophobic elites in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus about a new Operation Barbarossa and the dismemberment of Russia. The 'reset' in US-Russian relations also threatens to erode the profits of the US military-industrial complex, the power of the "national security establishment," and the financial support for the Cold War ideological apparatus the stable of "experts," "scholars," and "analysts" who pimp their knowledge for the sake of the TransAtlantic imperialism. Last not least, the possibility of the pacified US-Russian relations provokes the fury of the post-Nazi nucleus in the heart of Western imperialism as threatening its historical goal of taking revanche for the defeat in World War II. FarWest calls for these forces to unite in the common cause of "removing" Obama.
"Mikhail Gorbachev to Obama: We need a global perestroika... The process has begun..."
"Mikhail Gorbachev to Obama: We need a global perestroika... The process has begun..."

Our comment: Images like this are calculated to whip up hatred to Obama among U.S. and Russian militarists, paving the way for their alliance. If these forces come to power in our countries FarWest hopes to benefit by playing the role of a back channel between them.
"Gorbachev had called upon Obama to begin a global perestroika. The financial swindlers led by Summers have made it more sweeping by pumping hundreds billions of worthless paper into US economy. The foreign policy adventurists have imputed it with new thinking
"Gorbachev had called upon Obama to begin a global perestroika. The financial swindlers led by Summers have made it more sweeping by pumping hundreds billions of worthless paper into US economy. The foreign policy adventurists have imputed it with new thinking' by getting the US bogged down in the war they cannot win in Afghanistan and Waziristan. They have announced their readiness to negotiate with HAMAS terrorists against the wishes of the right-wing Israeli government. By declaring a reset in the US-Russia relations they have betrayed Eastern Europe, the Baltic states, Ukraine, and the peoples of the Caucasus."

Our comment: FarWest thrives on confrontation between the United States and Russia. Ukrainian secret services--reckless, violent and uncontrolled as they are, with the leadership ideologically committed to the Banderite vision of the Greater Ukraine--would like to use the United States as a big and stupid troll against Russia in hope to profit from the spoils of war like the hyenas rather that the pan-Turkist wolves on FarWest's blog logo.
Ruslan Saidov: "Iran is de facto a nuclear power and has been for at least three years."
Ruslan Saidov: "Iran is de facto a nuclear power and has been for at least three years."

Our comments: General Saidov knows what he is talking about. FarWest played central role in smuggling out of the former SU (mostly from Ukraine) nuclear materials, technology, and means of delivery for the nuclear consortium of Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, China and Northern Korea. According to the recent interview with Sam Haider, Saidov and his Far West LLC partners sold Iran not only six KH-55 Kent cruise missiles, but two nuclear warheads to them, 200 kiloton each.
"The Heritage Foundation has proposed to the US Administration their own plan of neutralizing Putin
"The Heritage Foundation has proposed to the US Administration their own plan of neutralizing Putin's regime."

FarWest signals their support to the right-wing Heritage Foundation and its very own war hawk Ariel Cohen. Cohen is a part of FarWest's crowd in Washington, together with Zeyno Baran, Fiona Hill, Joshua Muravchik, Robert Kagan and some other professional Russia-haters.
"Vladimir Filin: Obama
"Vladimir Filin: Obama's Gorbachev type of politics will free the Fourth Reich from US military control."

Our comment: Filin is a key figure of the neo-Banderite center in Ukraine's army and secret services. He and his kamaraden are full of hatred to German social-democrats for their resistance to the idea of Ukraine's membership in Nato and rational approach to relations with Russia.
The byline to this racist graphics says: "Ruslan Saidov: It is not Iran or the Taliban, not even Putin
The byline to this racist graphics says: "Ruslan Saidov: It is not Iran or the Taliban, not even Putin's Russia that embody the world's ultimate evil but the adventurer Obama and global Gorbachevism that Obama imposes on America and the world."ivhttp://far-west.livejournal.com/160955.html#cutid1

A monkey we know, who lives in the Bronx Zoo, made this comment: "If the likes of Saidov represent Homo sapient I better stay on the tree."
The Nazi Roots of Far West LLC. Interview with Vadim Stolz
Capable and Credible

NB. Vadim, first I would like you to discuss how serious are the anti-Obama statements by the Farwest "information agency"in their Live Journal and Pravda.info publications and whether these statements may or should be reviewed by the U.S. Secret Service which is the organization whose primary purpose is to protect the President of the United States. This is how the official Secret Service website describes their preventing activities.

The protection of an individual is comprehensive and goes well beyond surrounding the individual with well-armed agents. As part of the Secret Service's mission of preventing an incident before it occurs, the agency relies on meticulous advance work and threat assessments developed by its Intelligence Division to identify potential risks to protectees.
Protective research is an integral component of all security operations. Agents and specialists assigned to conduct protective research evaluate information received from law enforcement, intelligence agencies and a variety of other sources regarding individuals or groups who may pose a threat to Secret Service protectees. These agents review questionable letters and e-mails received at the White House and maintain a 24-hour operation to coordinate protection-related information.

I want to play devil's advocate. There is a lot of anti-Obama speech on the Web. Why should anybody care about a bunch of former Soviet spooks fulminating against the President of the United States? I recall how during Obama's election campaign a US law enforcement official was asked to comment on a spike in anti-Obama rhetoric on the Internet. He said that all of it was just "a lot of ranting and raving with no capability, credibility or specificity to it."

VS. This official might have been right back then. However, Filin, Saidov, Surikov and their Far West LLC partners in the United States, Ukraine and Ukrainian diaspora, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan are not harmless Internet windbags. They have all the capability and credibility in the world. Filin is a general of Ukrainian military intelligence and has under his command the Special Department "R" (for Russia), with a branch in the United States. Another resource he has there are Ukrainian nationalist circles, traditionally ultra-right and Russophobic. They don't like Obama at all, because they see him as being "soft" on Russia. Filin and his old partners from the Soviet military intelligence have "funny" businesses in Latin America Colombia, Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia and the Caribbean and a small private army there, trained and led by old GRU hands. They do the cocaine business with FARC since the 1980s and may well have relations with Colombian and Mexican drug cartels. In the 1990s early 2000s Filin, Likhvinsev, Saidov, and Surikov ran, under the protection of Russian General Staff, one of the largest heroin businesses in Eurasia, from Afghanistan to Kosovo. They are well-known figures in international intelligence circles. This milieu is potentially a very serious source of threat for a president who wants to make the world a more peaceful place. Vladimir Filin is not a chatterbox; he is the one Ukrainian prime minister Timoshenko reports to when discussing gas prices with Putin and the Gazprom. Filin coordinates intelligence gathering between Ukraine and Georgia and he supervised Ukrainian special operations in Georgia during its war with Russian last August, after meetings with influential neocons like Robert Kagan and a visit to Washington presumably for consultations with Robert Gates or his people in the DIA. v According to the intelligence information, published in 2004, "Filin's Gang" had over 70 bodies on their hands by then and kept counting. Our sources in CIS intelligence community claim that FarWest's victims include Paul Khlebnikov of the Forbes Magazine, Anna Politkovskaya, and central banker Andrei Kozlov. When someone like Filin openly talks about "removing" the President of the United States it seems to deserve more than passing attention from the people responsible for his safety.
"Saidov: Obama is the expendable puppet of the Federal Reserve and Goldman Saks. Sooner or later they will sacrifice him." viFarwest LJ <http://far-west.livejournal.com/215635.html>
"Saidov: Obama is the expendable puppet of the Federal Reserve and Goldman Saks. Sooner or later they will sacrifice him." viFarwest LJ <http://far-west.livejournal.com/215635.html>

General Ruslan Saidov is also a career military intelligence officer. After our publications about Saidov's terrorist activities, he was officially retired from his position of the special adviser to the Uzbek defense minister Ruslan Mirzaev. vii Saidov remains in charge of Chechnya's illegal external intelligence organization and has recently proved his "credibility" by organizing the liquidations of Ramzan Kadyrov's opponents in Moscow, Austria, Turkey, and Dubai. It is also common knowledge in Russia's intelligence community that Saidov and Nukhaev ordered the assassinations of the Forbes' editor Paul Khlebnikov and Anna Politkovskaya, carried out by the killers from Nukhaev's former "Lazan" organized crime organization. In 2006, together with Filin's men, they killed Russian Central Bank CEO Andrei Kozlov. Saidov is not only in charge of hundreds of armed and highly trained people in the Middle East and has his agents in every significant Chechen diaspora from Jordan to the United States, he is also a close associate and business partner of Prince Turki al-Faisal and the Khashoggi family, unarguably credible and capable gentlemen. Soviet GRU trained Saidov for the "deep penetration" of Middle Eastern elites, especially Sufi networks, widely used by regional intelligence services, as well as the other way around. He was quite successful in this and so was his and his partners' arms and heroin trade in this part of the world. I want to emphasize Saidov's ties not only to Saudi and Turkish intelligence, but also to Pakistan's ISI. According to our sources in Central Asia, last April Saidov brought to Tashkent Pakistani army chiefs, generals Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and Ahmad Shuja Pasha, for an unannounced half day long visit. Kayani is the current Chief of Army Staff of the Pakistan Army and the former director of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Pasha is the current Director of the ISI. In Tashkent they met with defense minister Mirzaev and President Karimov. The meetings were highly confidential, with Saidov acting as interpreter. Soon after that visit, the ISI controlled gang of Mullо Abdullo (Abdullah Rakhimov) crossed from Afghanistan into eastern Tajikistan. viii About 200 fighters slipped into the mountainous Tavildara district where it is difficult for the government troops to catch up with them. We have information that Rasheed, Saidov, and Lunev stayed in Abdullo's base in Afghanistan right before the raid and that Lunev has been pretty much sitting on the Afghan-Tajik border since then. This can mean only one thing Lunev supervises Abdullo's raid on behalf of the FarWest partners who had financed and prepared it. They know Abdullo since the civil war of 1992-3, when Filin, Saidov, and Lunev were on assignment in Tajikistan.

NB. Allow me to clarify that Lunev is Major-General Valery Lunev of Belorussian KGB. He was born in 1960 in the Kulyab Region of Tajikistan, fluent in Pushtu and Farsi. Served together with Filin, Saidov, and Surikov in the GRU special unit N (for narcotics) in Afghanistan. Later in the 80s Lunev was involved in the anti-COCOM network and stationed in the Netherlands. Has Dutch citizenship. Executive director of Far West LLC's central office in Dubai. Is this a fair introduction?
General-Major Valery Lunev (cover name) of Belorussian KGB.
General-Major Valery Lunev (cover name) of Belorussian KGB.

From our dossier: Born 1960 in Kulyab, Tajik SSR. Experience: Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff, Defense Ministry of the USSR. Prepared for work in the Middle East. Fluent in Russian, Belorussian, Farsi, Pushtu, Arabic (Iraqi dialect), English, Dutch. Service in Afghanistan (1982-84), Western Europe, Central Asia, the Caucasus, Iraq (1990-91, 2003). Since 1995 KGB, Republic of Belarus. Resided in the Netherlands in 1995-2006. Dutch passport. Has Chechen wife, Dudaev's relative, who served as a sniper with Basaev and Surikov during the Abkhaz-Georgian war and worked with Lunev for the GRU in Central Asia. Converted Muslim. Militant Russophobe. Said to be the leader of the pro-Nato lobby in Lukashenko's close circle of military and intelligence advisers. Since 2007 operates under the cover of the Executive Director of Far West LLC. We date this photo by the late 80s.

VS. Perhaps, a few other things can be added for those readers who have not been following our journalistic investigation. Lunev is the "funny name," as they say in Britain, of this ethnic Belorussian. We don't know his real one. He has been much less visible than his attention-hungry partners -- Filin, Saidov, and Surikov -- and was "outed" the latest. His name was not mentioned in the "conspiracy in Nice" fake of 1999-2000, either in Surikov's or Kagarlitsky's texts. Sergei Petrov had "introduced" Lunev to the public in his interview of Janury 2004, several days before he was blown apart by a bomb in South Africa. ix

NB. Do I recall it correctly that prior to their falling out Sergei Petrov was the second in command in Far West Ltd, wasn't he?

VS. This is correct. He used to be Filin's deputy. Then something happened between them and Petrov left the gang. Later, when he had learned that they were going to kill him--he tape-recorded their conversation--Petrov told the Germans and French about the criminal activities of his former company. x He also began to cooperate with Russian military counter-intelligence, apparently, hoping to nail his former partners before they got to him. Hence there was a number of "leaks" published in the fall-winter of 2003-04. This is how FarWest as organized criminal society was outed and had to withdraw from big-time narcotrafficking.

NB. They were outed but not prosecuted. Why?

VS. They were not prosecuted because they were and remain a part of the System. The Intelligence Cabal was behind them in the West as were some people in the Kremlin close to Putin. They were also protected by their own secret services-- Ukrainian, Uzbek, Belorussian, Chechen, Lithuanian. Generally, people do not realize that these relatively marginal countries have inherited powerful intelligence apparatuses of the Soviet Union. Ukrainian military intelligence is not a joke at all. It's a powerful force led by old Soviet GRU cadres of highest qualification. Besides, they have at their disposal the well-organized and politically active Ukrainian diaspora around the world. Anyway, when the Germans had gotten the goods on FarWest from Petrov (including the information on the Ukraine-to-Iran KH-55 cruise missiles deal ) they realized it was way too much for them to handle and could make the relations of the SD government with Washington even worse. I suspect that something similar happened with the French.

NB. Yet, Filin had to evacuate FarWest from Europe to Dubai and himself move to Brazil when they had that problem with Goss and Foggo. Doesn't this suggest that they are not that big, after all?

VS. That's a very different situation. There was never real threat of legal persecution in that episode. The problem was that Foggo's thugs could simply whack Filin and his associates. Actually, I tend to believe Filin that they planted a bomb under Davidovich's car in Bogota. The threat was physical, not legal. xi
Military intelligence officer Sergei Petrov (born Savchenko) aka French citizen Serge Rodin (? - 2004).
Military intelligence officer Sergei Petrov (born Savchenko) aka French citizen Serge Rodin (? - 2004).

From our dossier: Sergei Petrov (born Savchenko, ? - 2004). Former GRU officer, after 1993 served in Ukrainian military intelligence. Served in Afghanistan together with Filin, Likhvintsev, Saidov, Surikov, and Lunev. In the fall of 2003 Petrov gave German and French authorities information about the criminal activities of the "consulting firm" Far West LTD that included the sale of Ukrainian WMD to Iran and China and portable SAMs to FARC. In January 2004, he was blown up in his car while staying in Cape Town, SA. Several days later, in Cyprus, there died, allegedly in a strange accident, the international arms dealer Sarfraz Haider--key figure in the sale of the Ukrainian KH-55 (Kent) cruise missiles to Iran. That sale might have included several nuclear warheads.

NB. Let's go back to General Lunev.

VS. It is relevant in the context of FarWest's anti-Obama active measures that Petrov described Lunev as a specialist on "radical solutions." His long list of "achievements" included the assassination of Sangak Safarov and Faizullah Saidov -- socialist leaders of the People's Front of Tajikistan. Lunev masterminded this political crime in the spring of 1993 on the orders of defense minister Grachev and the personal request of Boris Yeltsin. However, Lunev is not only a specialist on Central Asia and "radical solutions." He is also a high-class military-political analyst and consummate organization man. From what we know, his activities in the FarWest Dubai office have the blessings of President Lukashenko, who apparently values Lunev and FarWest as his back channel for a dialog and deal-making with the right-wing Republicans and neocons in the United States, not to mention "gray" and "black" arms trafficking which is another of Lunev's specialties. Just as Filin and Saidov, Lunev is very dangerous and his presence on the Afghan-Tajik border--clearly sanctioned by the Saudis, Pakistanis, and the rogue CIA partners of FarWest--should be a cause for grave concern to all peace-loving people around the world and, especially, in Asia.

NB. Going back to Mullo Abdullo. Why did FarWest and the ISI people send him to Tajikistan?

VS. They wanted to demonstrate their ability to destabilize Central Asia.

NB. But why in the world do they want to destabilize whatever? And to whom did they "demonstrate" this?
The Intelligence Cabal

VS. To answer these questions, we need to place FarWest within a bigger picture. The Russian-speaking part of this organization are senior military intelligence officers and agents, who began their service in the last decade of the Soviet Union. Their professional carriers, power and personal wealth have come from the confluence of two factors: 1) the special place of intelligence in the military-industrial complex and its covert networks abroad, and 2) the destruction of the Soviet Union that had allowed them to capitalize on their position.

Their senior partners in the US, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Israel can be described as right-wing and post-Nazi elements from the national security state (NSS) establishments that have grown tremendously during the Cold War and whose power and wealth depend on war and international tension. In the core of this loosely-knit cabal is a group of ideologically committed people, often with the family histories of struggle against Russia and the Soviet Union, who ache to settle with us some old scores and take their revanche for our victory in 1945. The NSS establishments have behind them privileged groups and sections of their national ruling classes, which has been long established economically and politically and who traditionally have been in control of the state or its big chunks. They are right-wing Republicans, Democrats, and neocons in the U.S., Conservatives and part of New Labor in Britain, the Likud in Israel and the Saud family in SA, Turkish military and pan-Turkist underground, Pakistani military and the ISI, Sufi networks... In other words, the intelligence groups, both state and private, who are directly involved or indirectly interact with FarWest have a much broader social, economic, and political base than the Russian-speaking FarWest. To give one example, the board of Diligence LLC includes or included figures like Richard Burt, Michael Howard, Lord Charles Powell, William Webster, Edward Mathias, Thomas F. McLarty, Arnaud de Borchgrave. These guys are high level operatives of powerful Atlantic elites; they run the show while the professional intelligence hacks manage it on a day to day basis. It's different with Filin, Saidov, Lunev, Surikov and others on the former SU side. They are upstarts who do not represent any old interests. Their strongest power base is Ukraine where secret services and the military are their own masters and form a state within the state just like the military and ISI in Pakistan or the military and the Grey Wolves in Turkey. Indeed, Ukraine is referred to in Europe as the "European Pakistan." But they are pretty much helpless on their own, without their senior partners, especially, the United States, Britain, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. If the power of Turkish military diminishes, its bad news for Saidov, Nukhaev, and their organization, because they cannot feel safe in and operate from Turkey without the protection of the general staff and police. If Saidov looses the confidence of Saudi sheiks his construction and real estate companies in the Middle East will go belly up the next day. Same will happen to Filin's assets around the world if their relations with the US and British "partners" go sour as they did under Goss and Foggo in the CIA. These guys can have some leeway and power of decision only as long as they remain in good standing with their senior partners. Their leash may be long, but it's still a leash and no less strong for that. So, to stay in action, they have to prove again and again their worth, their ability to stir things up, especially in the areas where the US have little leverage as in Central Asia. However, these "unequal" relations are not fixed and can change. The Russian-speaking partners of FarWest play their own or partly their own games as well. Filin coordinates the anti-German activities of Ukrainian and Polish intelligence. Saidov's death squads in Bagram, sheltered and paid by the US military, roam Afghanistan, Waziristan and the Sunni Triangle in Iraq, but Saidov's killers also have been wiping out any real or potential opposition to Kadyrov, while his Sufi activities in the Middle East and elsewhere may remain impenetrable even for US and British intelligence. Also they can influence US internal politics through their agents of influence in the Ukrainian and other East European diaspora in Northern America.

NB. And how does Abdullo's last raid in Tajikistan fit into the bigger plans of this international Intelligence Cabal?

We hear from our German friends that the Republicans who are close to the military-industrial complex, the Pentagon and intelligence have conspired with the Likud to subvert Obama's foreign policy and eventually force him out of the White House. It appears they plan to attack Obama from several directions.

1. Likud will strike in the Near East, probably, at Gaza or Lebanon, with a massive "collateral damage." This will derail Obama's peace making in that region.

2. Even more important will be the proliferation of nuclear arms, with several new countries going nuclear, either officially or de facto, after the Israeli model. FarWest have played important role in the Nuclear Consortium between Ukraine, Pakistan, Iran, China, Saudi Arabia, and North Korea. The unknown quantities of Soviet nuclear materials and weapons were hidden in Ukraine around the breakup of the Soviet Union and later loaned to Iran or stored in Pakistan. This allows Ukrainian military to provide technical maintenance for their nuclear devices and perhaps even develop new ones while formally not violating the denuclearized status of Ukraine.

One well-publicized case was the sale of 12 cruise missiles KH-55 from Ukraine to China and Iran in 2000-2001. It was recently claimed that the deal also included four 200-kiloton nuclear war heads. xii According to Ukrainian national security figures around Yulia Timoshenko, the sales were handled by Far West LLC, with the U.S. private intelligence company Diligence LLC "supervising" it from a distance. Victor Bout's planes were used in this operation. xiii A less known case was the theft by FarWest of two kilograms of uranium-235 from the Sukhumi Physics and Technology Institute in the early 90s. The uranium went to Iran. And this might be just the tip of the iceberg. Filin and Saidov boast that Iran already has nuclear arms and that Ukraine with Saudi Arabia will soon follow it. At the same time, they accuse Obama of "weakening America and leaving the rest of the world in chaos." This tactics subverts Obama's commitment to the non-proliferation of nuclear arms and missile technology, while providing the military-industrial complex with arguments in favor of expanding the anti-missile defense R&D and deployment.

3. Afghanistan and Pakistan will be turned into examples of Obama's failure to fight "international terrorism." At the same time, Afghanistan territory will be used to destabilize Central Asia and increase pressure against Russia and China. Mullo Abdullo's raid into Tajikistan is a test of this mechanism. xiv Since the fall of 2008 at the latest, Saidov and Prince Rasheed concentrate on Afghanistan. They have been going back and forth between Kabul, Islamabad, Quetta, and El-Riyadh, meeting with Turki al-Faisal, Karzai, Nawaz Sharif and Mullah Omar. Their goal is to have an agreement between the United States and the Taliban through the mediation of the Saudis and Pakistanis. The Intelligence Cabal no longer needs Karzai. He has become a liability and has to go. But if Karzai makes a deal with the old anti-Taliban and anti-US warlords like Ismail Khan, Rashid Dostum, and Karim Khalili this can create a lot of problems for the Nato forces and the Cabal, making it impossible to use Afghanistan for de-stabilizing the Central Asia, China, and Russia.

Ruslan Saidov: Obama will suffer a humiliating defeat in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Ruslan Saidov: Obama will suffer a humiliating defeat in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

4. Those behind FarWest do not want Obama to have a new treaty with Russia on slashing nuclear stockpiles. They want a new arms race and they also see such a treaty as the important part of Obama's strategy to normalize relations with Russia. The U.S. militarists want Russia to remain the bogey man of Western propaganda.

5. They want to make permanent the simmering conflict between Russia and her neighbors Ukraine and Georgia -- so that their propaganda apparatus could continue picturing Russia as aggressor and poison our relations with Europe and the United States.

6. If they "remove" Obama, they will try to crash the oil prices and keep them below $30 for a long time, speed up the development and deployment of anti-missile defense systems against Russia and China under the pretext of the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs. Using Afghanistan as their forward base and proxies like Abdullo's gang, they will provoke military conflicts in Central Asia to make Russia and China busy. In other words, the Intelligence Cabal behind FarWest wants to copycat the strategies of the Reagan-Daddy Bush period. This is what we may get instead of a "reset" if they topple Obama.

All these directions for subverting international peace and Obama's presidency are discussed by Surikov and his buddies in the FarWest blog which serves as a semi-public transmitter of their positions to their partners and supporters.

NB. Can we then conclude that this program, as you have outlined it, puts the "neo-Trotskyism" Surikov style on the back burner, at least for the time being?

VS. For the time being, yes. The resignation of Korabelnikov (head of the GRU) and the rise of oil prices make the probability of a general unrest in Russia and its exploitation for a coup d'etat less likely. This is why Surikov has replaced the theme of a "neo-Trotskyist revolution" with the "national-liberation struggle against the evil empire." But this is simply a temporary tactical shift in focus. In their thinking, the fifth column of all colors--"ethnic," "liberal," "patriotic,"and "left"--remains central to the "final solution of Russian question."
The Oberländer Connection

"The Jewish proletarian is the real source of Bolshevism in Poland."

Theodore Oberländer

NB. Don't they also use their blog to "announce" what forces have come together behind this anti-Obama program and also to coordinate and rally behind it the Russian fifth columnists like Latynina, Albats, Piontkovsky and the rest of them?

VS. Absolutely! To give the latest example, their recent celebration of Theodore Oberländer and the World Anti-Communist League is meant to be a message that FarWest had behind them the right-wing and post-Nazi elements in the U.S. foreign policy establishment. It is also the way to amplify and say openly what their partners in the West cannot. They are also yearning for the Reagan-Bush "Bitburg" years-- when the Republican "ethnic outreach" program gave much visibility to Ukrainian, Belorussian, Baltic and other fascists. This is their model for the post-Obama America. Also, the rehabilitation of "moderate" Nazis like Oberländer and Canaris is important for their base support in Ukraine, Belorussia, the Caucasus, the Baltics and elsewhere in the former Soviet Union where Hitler had found ethnic collaborators. Again, they mimic the strategy of the Reagan -Bush administration and its Republican "ethnic outreach" to mobilize the old Nazi collaborators and their heirs against the Soviet Union under the slogan of national liberation. Hence the importance of Oberländer and Canaris who in 1943 advocated more reliance on anti-Soviet and anti-Russian ethnic elements after it had become clear that Germany could not win the war in the East.

Our dossier on Theodore Oberländer (1905-1998) - Professor of Ostforschung, political agent and officer of German military intelligence, WWII commander of "ethnic units" of Nazi collaborators in the Eastern Front, West German minister and ultra-right politician. War criminal.
Three SS men: from the left: Karl Frank, Rudolf Heydrich (sitting) and Theodore Oberländer (standing)
Three SS men: from the left: Karl Frank, Rudolf Heydrich (sitting) and Theodore Oberländer (standing)

Born in Meiningen. Lutheran. Education: Universities of Munich, Berlin, Hamburg. Diplom in Agronomy. Doctorate from the University of Konigsberg. Member of Freikorps Baden and Schwarzen Reichswehr. Boasted participation in the Beer Hall Putsch. Member of NSDAP since 1933. Member of the mystic-agrarian Artamanen-Gesellschaft (Darré, Himmler, Hoess, Kammler...). Member of the SA (Obersturmführer). Member of Karl and Albrecht Haushofers' "geopolitical" circle. 1928-34: Economic and political intelligence work in the Soviet Union under the cover of Krupp's agricultural company DRUSAG (Northern Causasus). Participation in the Soviet-German military cooperation (The Reichswehr's panzer school in Kazan), contacts with Soviet military intelligence and Comintern agents. Recipient of the Ford Foundation stipend (1932). World travel (1931-32). After 1933: Leader "Bund Deutscher Osten" (BDO - "League for a German East"), which advocated radical Germanization of the eastern provinces. Organizes the fifth column in the Klaipeda (Memel) Region. Accused by Lithuanian government in subversive activities and banned from entering the country. Professor at the University of Greifswald, struggle for the "judenfrei" (free of Jews) university and the Province of Pomerania. Assistant to Gauleiter Erich Koch ( East Prussia). 1939 - Officer of Abwehr II (Sabotage and Subversion), organizes special units of ethnic Germans against Poland. Begins to specialize on Ukrainian issues. Endorses ethnic cleansing of the Polish population. 1940: Head of the German Repatriation Mission in Eastern (Soviet) Galicia, frequents Lemberg (Lwow), intelligence contacts with Ukrainian nationalists, especially with OUN-B (Stepan Bandera's faction -- Yaroslav Stesko, Mykola Lebed, Roman Shukhevich); 1941 participates in the preparation for the invasion of the Soviet Union in the Abwehr main HQ, plans agricultural policy of Germany in the future occupation of the USSR. June 1941: Overall command of an Abwehr group of military-political units that march on Lwow where Ukrainian Batallion Nachtigall and Geheime Feldpolizei units from Oberländer's group participate in the murders and pogroms of Jewish and Polish population. 1942-summer 43: Commander of the mixed German and Caucasian unit "Sonderverband Bergmann" (Abweht II), deployed in the Northern Causasus and the Crimea. Subversions, propaganda, anti-partisan activities. Fall 1943-winter 1944: Released from the Wehrmacht, based in Prague, involved in a broad range of political, intelligence, and scholarly activities under the control and on the behalf of SS and NSDAP. Contacts with Fritz Kammler, Wernher von Braun, and Walter Dornberger in the Peenemunde Rocket Center. Was involved in the SS operations to transfer German military high-tech (V-2) and know-how to the Americans. March-April 1945: Assigned a liaison officer with Vlasov's Russian Liberation Army in Prague. In the end of April makes contact with the US military intelligence and negotiates the surrender of Maltsev's air corp to General Patton. Sent to England for intelligence debriefing. Released in 1946. After a short period of"denazification" and ideological retouching returns to politics as the ultra- right Christian-Democrat, pan-Western anti-communist, and champion of the United Europe. Member of Abendländische Aktionfounded by group of the Old Order elements and leaders of the extreme Christian-Democrat Right from several countries. 1948: Memorandum "On Psychological Warfare" -- a detailed political and social program of "a crusade against communism." Presents himself as "oppositionist" and victim of Himmler. Leader of West German resettlers movement for the return of "Eastern territories" and their BHE party. Federal Minister in Adenauer's cabinet. 1960: A court in German Democratic Republic sentences O. in absentia to life imprisonment for his involvement in the Lwow massacre in 1941. Under public pressure resigns from Adenauer's government. Leader of the World Anti-Communist Leaguean international extreme right and fascist network of intelligence and military groups. Had close relations with U.S. military intelligence General Charles Willoughby (Adolf C. Weidenbach), U.S. Army Colonel John Singlaub (Operation Phoenix), Fritz Ermarth and Robert Gates of the CIA and Wernher von Braun.

NB. Let me pick up the thread on the "national-liberation struggle against the evil empire" and "the final solution of Russian question." What are the origins of this juxtaposition of the leftish sounding slogan of "the "national-liberation struggle" with the Reaganism of "evil empire" and the genocidal Nazi phraseology of "final solution"? How does this unholy amalgam reflect on the political ideology or ideologies and histories behind the FarWest cabal? Let's talk about this and the concrete personalities who represent this trajectory.

VS. This "unholy amalgam," as you aptly call it, indeed reflects both the Russian and Western faces of FarWest, as well as their opportunistic tactics. Consider the political masks of Surikov, who is responsible for ideology in Far West LLC.

The director of "Trotsky Institute" is aggressive homophobe and racist who calls Obama "that Nigger," implores the Likudniks to bomb Iran, and would like to see Venezuela subverted by U.S. militarists as Nicaragua was by Reagan -- Surikov's model hero. In Turkey, Surikov has established relations with pan-Turkist circles in the military and intelligence. He was seen in the Kurdistan Front wearing Turkish military uniform. Together with Saidov and Nukhaev, Surikov have links to the Grey Wolves, the terrorist underground of Turkish fascists. At the same time, Surikov sits on the Council of the "Left Front" a fake Moscow organization, known for its street provocation tactics. Surikov is also a leader of the "left" Party of Social Justicea front organization of Russian secret services and army veteransand his own fictional "neo-Trotskyist party." In other words, Surikov presents himself as a right-winger and a leftist with equal ease, no questions asked. It may seem impossible but, as a matter of fact, Surikov takes cue from ideological amalgam of his neocon partners in Washington, like Joshua Muravchik and Zeyno Baran. Recall also that, historically, the CIA and British intelligence preferred the left masquerade for right-wing politics and anti-communism as most effective.

NB. Can you be more specific and give examples of what you call the Intelligence Cabal and its operations?

Historically, intelligence in the West has been a specialized apparatus of conservative elites, led and staffed by their own "good ol' boys." The first leaders of the OSS and CIA, Bill Donovan and Allen Dulles, came from the Wall Street, William Casey too, and so on. They had close links with private capitalists like Prescott Bush. After the war, Donovan even tried to create a private CIA financed by capitalists and corporations. There is nothing particularly new in the privatization of intelligence and the military that we have seen in the last 10-20 years. The Intelligence Cabal arose from the murky zone between the showcase democracy and the section of the ruling class that owns the military-industrial complex. It is its secret fighting organization, free from the legal restraints, democratic controls, and moral norms of the public facade. It is not a formal organization, of course, but a a self-reproducing network of informal and semi-official relations, sufficiently open and flexible to react to the changing world.

A good example of how this network works in its mature and "globalized" stage was the creation of the Safari Club in 1976 by the ad hoc group of the intelligence chiefs of France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Iran. They wanted to help their right-wing allies in US secret services to circumvent Carter's reforms and create a kind of the private CIA. As to the historical trajectory of the Intelligence Cabal, I would highlight the dialog between the US and British agencies with the Abwehr on the possibility of a separate peace and common front against the Soviet Union, the transfer of German military and scientific know-how to the US (Operation Paperclip and others), and the "ratlines." The Wernher von Braun-Dornberger group played a big role in the post-Nazi ideological influence on the US military-industrial complex, especially, its strategic nuclear forces component. Another important post-war development was the integration of Nazi intelligence apparatus (Gehlen.Org) into the US-British system of intelligence.

After FDR's death, the US became the heir of Nazi Germany in a number of ways. Truman undid every progressive achievement of Roosevelt's presidency; they imported thousands of Nazi criminals and tens if not hundreds of thousands of Nazi collaborators from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe who turned their old ethnic diasporas in the U.S. and Britain into rabidly anti-Soviet and Russophobic constituencies; they had their Kristallnacht American style in McCarthyism, and they had reduced the United States to the anticommunist ober crusader and the beacon of the world reaction, supporting every single reactionary force in the world, from Latin American and African dictators to Saudi feudals and jihadist mullahs to South-African and Israeli racists, Asian fascists, and so on. It was this historical transformation of the United States into the leading reactionary force, suppressing and subverting popular democratic movements and socialist countries that gave rise to the Intelligence Cabal and empowered it.

NB. I guess we can call it a kind of "Fascism Light"--democratic on surface, with a shadow government by Wall Street and the military-industrial complex.

VS. Yes, the post-war United States were all about anti-communism plus the amalgamation of corporate power with the state plus the great power chauvinism and messianism. These are classical ingredients of Fascism. Hitler and Mussolini would die of envy. But internal repressions have been comparatively mild, even in the 1950s. They were simply not needed in the absence of strong class organization by US workers. Due to its economic and military-political dominance in the post-war world, American capitalism was able to share out of its profits the proverbial "crumbles" with US workers and keep them loyal to its rule. As the result, the fascist nature of the post-war US has been reflected mostly in its international projection. Their "spheres of national interests" or "vital national security interests" is a neoimperialist equivalent of Nazi's Lebensraum. But Hitler was more modest and did not claim the entire globe for the Third Reich.

NB. What were the major manifestations of the Intelligence Cabal after the McCarthy years?

VS. The World Anti-Communist League (WACL) and its member--the Anti-Bolshevik Block of Nations run by the Banderites--was a major post-Nazi development. Essentially, it was a remake of the Hitler-Goebbels Anti-Comintern of 1939-40. WACL brought together the veterans of the Third Reich, Japanese war criminals, Nazi collaborators from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, Latin American death-squads types, Pan-Turkish and East Asian fascists. All this zoo came under the umbrella of the US, Taiwanese, and South Korean intelligence services. The WACL chapter in the US, headed by Singlaub, used the organization for all kind of frauds and as money channel for Iran-Contra activities and similar operations.

The Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), established in 1972, was the biggest criminal network of the Intelligence Cabal that we know of. The Bank preceded the Safari Club and financed it. The question now is what has replaced the BCCI after its debacle. Could it be that FarWest LLC is a visible part of this new structure? It's purely hypothetical, but it must exist. Just as the BCCI served to wed the Anglo-American intelligence with Saudi and other Arab intelligence networks, so in the 90s this new structure must have brought into the fold the nomadic groups of former Soviet intelligence cadres and chunks of their networks abroad. There is some circumstantial evidence that rogue elements in Soviet intelligence began to link with their Western counterparts as early as in the 1970s, especially in drugs and arms trafficking. The BCCI and the Eastern Block anti-COCOM networks could serve as umbrellas for their cooperation.
The Intelligence Cabal and Ukraine: Lebed Kupchinsky -- Skipalsky- Filin

NB. Speaking of the World Anti-Communist League, the Anti-Bolshevik Block of Nations and the broader Republican "ethnic outreach" program. How important these political-intelligence projects of the 1970s-80s have been for the post-Soviet developments? Is it worth piecing this information together today rather than leaving it in peace for future historians?

VS. The WACL and ABN provided vital historical continuity between the Old Conservative, Nazi and Post-Nazi projects of aggression against the Soviet Union and, after its destruction, against Russia. Besides their obvious propagandist, political, and financial value for Republicans and neocons--these organizations were used by the BCCI and Iran-Contra networks for tax and insurance fraud--these were the training grounds for the younger generation of the ultra-right candidates for a place in the foreign policy establishment and the Intelligence Cabal. For this reason alone, research of the WACL network and its activities is a necessary part of any resistance to these reactionary forces that has a chance for success. And there is more.

We believe that WACL, ABN and their national affiliates served as public fronts for clandestine networks engaged in political intelligence, special operations, and even terrorist activities against the Soviet Union, other socialist countries, and progressive regimes around the world. We also believe that--while the public faces of these two-tier organizations were engaged in the war of words with official Soviet propagandatheir clandestine layers served for an uninterrupted dialog with pro-capitalist and pro-nationalists elements in the Soviet political, military, and intelligence leadership. In other words, we simply cannot understand how the Soviet Union was destroyed without considering the role of these transnational networks of ethnic struggle against socialism and the Soviet Union.

NB. Can you describe how these networks had influenced the political trajectory of post-Soviet Ukraine and give an example of their dialog with the Soviets?

VS. To begin with, we need to keep in mind the existence of two currents of Ukrainian nationalismthe old nationalism of the Diaspora based UNO and the nationalism of the Soviet Ukrainian origin. The latter has always existed on all levels of Ukrainian party and state bureaucracy and this nationalism had been getting stronger as the Soviet bureaucracy evolved ideologically and politically towards open capitalist restoration.

The contacts between these two nationalist formations never stopped and were specially intensive, to the degree of partial osmosis, in the 1940s and 1970s-80s. In the former period, for instance, a number of UPA commanders went over to the Soviet side and were protected by the MGB-KGB. To give some concrete examples, the grandfather of Filin's wife was a UPA commander in the Volhynia Region and took part in the mass murders of Jews and Poles there. In the end of the 1940s, he was arrested and sentenced to 25 years in labor camps but was set free already in the 50s. His son, Filin's father-in-law, became the chairman of a collective farm in Ukraine. Filin's own father carried out forced Ukrainization of the Russian-speaking Eastern Ukraine under Khrushchev.

The CPSU leadership after Stalin was dominated by cadres from the Ukrainian CP, especially under Brezhnev and his Dnepropetrovsk retinue.

The Ukrainian "dissident" movement provided a back channel for discussions and deal-making between Soviet Ukrainian elites and the West.

Ukrainian nationalists are very skilled in penetrating the decision-making political and intelligence groups of U.S. Ultra-Right. So when the Soviet Union was dismantled, the Ukrainian nationalists in the United States moved in full force into Ukraine and, as we now know, were able to shape the political process into the direction of a radically anti-Russian and pro-US orientation. The same story happened in the Baltics and Moldova. But in Ukraine the old radical nationalists, Banderites, from the Diaspora were in a more difficult position because they were associated with the Nazis and U.S. imperialism and people remembered their horrible crimes committed in the 1940s. The majority of Ukrainians were pro-Russian, spoke Russian, had Russian relatives and friends, lived in the common economic space with Russia. Ethnic Russians constituted about 30 percent of Ukraine's population. Heavily pro-Russian was the population of the industrially developed east of the country while the popular base of anti-Russian nationalism was in the rural and backward formerly Polish provinces in the west. The post-communist ruling elite in Ukraineformer communist bosses, industrial and military-industrial management--were not eager to surrender their commanding positions to some crazy Banderites from Chicago and Ontario and to the papists of the Ukrainian Greco-Roman Church. The post-Soviet Ukrainian elites were anti-communist and nationalist, but they were not Russophobic and not ready to turn Ukraine into a front-line Nato state against Russia. So in the early 1990s the Diaspora Banderites found themselves in Ukraine somewhat isolated and with little hope to capture the commanding heights of the Ukrainian state. And here, I think, they were helped by the intelligence networks for which WACL and ABN served as fronts. This photo (below) with the luminaries of the anticommunist international provides some some interesting hints about these networks.

On the left from the top: Slava Stetsko, Roman Zvarych, and Katherine Chumachenko (bottom).

Slava Muzyka-Stetsko was the wife of Yaroslav Stetsko, the head of the self-proclaimed national government in Lwow, that existed for a day or so in July 1941. Slava was a Ukrainian fascist who could teach a few things a hardened Nazi with a pure Arian lineage of 600 years. She served as editor of the ABN and OUN-B publications. In this capacity she wrote a glowing forward to a book, "Captive Nations," with a glossary of political terms, including these entries:

-- Anti-Semitism: A smear word used by Communists against those who effectively oppose and expose them.

-- Fascist: An anti-Communist.

-- Nazi or Hitlerite: An active anti-Communist.

Actually, I agree with Slava on the last two. Reagan was an active Nazi by her definition and objectively speaking.

Roman Zwarycz (in Ukraine -- Zvarych) in the 1980s served as Yaroslav Stesko's personal secretary.

Roman Zwarycz, born in the United States into a Banderite family, personal secretary of the Nazi collaborator Yaroslav Stetsko, WACL operative, Ukrainian minister of justice (2006), personal representative of Yuschenko in the Ukrainian parliament. Falsified his educational record.
Roman Zwarycz, born in the United States into a Banderite family, personal secretary of the Nazi collaborator Yaroslav Stetsko, WACL operative, Ukrainian minister of justice (2006), personal representative of Yuschenko in the Ukrainian parliament. Falsified his educational record.

As to Katherine Chumachenko, President Yushchenko's future wife, she was born and raised in Chicago, where she became a member of a Banderite youth organization and was indoctrinated in the "social-nationalist" ideology of UNO-B. In the 1980s, the nationalists planted Chumachenko in Reagan's White House as Deputy Director for Public Liaison while she was a key official with the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA), the umbrella organization for OUN-B front groups in the U.S.

In the right column from the top you can see the Nazi spy master Theodore Oberländer, "the Executioner of Lwow," and two important US intelligence figures: Major General John Singlaub and Lt. General Daniel Graham who represented the ultra-right elements in U.S. intelligence and military. Graham served as the head of the CIA and DIA (military intelligence). Singlaub organized the murderous Phoenix Program in South Vietnam and was a key Iran-Contra operative who called for "sympathetic understanding of the death squads" in Latin America and used WACL as a front for this scam operation.

The mustached man at the bottom is Yaroslav Stetsko, Stepan Bandera's lieutenant since the 1930s. On June 30, 1941 he entered Lwow with a group of the OUN-B leaders that was a part Oberländer's German-Ukrainian task force. The next day Stetsko was proclaimed the prime minister of the short-lived Ukrainian state. After th

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Natasha Barch and Vadim Stolz
Obama and the Intelligence Cabal

Last April the international group of investigative journalists burtsev.ru published an expose of an anti-Obama group of intelligence officers from the former Soviet Union whose private intelligence company Far West LLC has been the object of considerable controversy in Russian and international press. This is an updated and expanded version of the original article in Russian, published in Left.ru 4 (2009) under the title "Kto gotovit pokushenie na Prezidenta SshA?" (Who Prepares the Assassination of the US President?). It includes a follow-up interview with Vadim Stolz by Natasha Barch which she took by correspondence in the summer - autumn of 2009. Vadim Stolz is a chairman of the International editorial board of burtsev.ru. Natasha Barch is a member of its Moscow chapter.

__________________
Threatening Noises from FarWest

From the left: Uzbek-Chechen General Ruslan Saidov (Sadullaev), Ukrainian General Vladimir Filin (Litovchenko) and Rt. Colonel of the General Staff Anton Surikov of Russia (aka Turkish citizen Mansur Nathoev, aka U.S. citizen Gregory Orloff) are extremely unhappy with US President Obama and would like to see him out of the Oval Office by whatever means. Last August these individuals met with Vice-President Biden in Washington.
From the left: Uzbek-Chechen General Ruslan Saidov (Sadullaev), Ukrainian General Vladimir Filin (Litovchenko) and Rt. Colonel of the General Staff Anton Surikov of Russia (aka Turkish citizen Mansur Nathoev, aka U.S. citizen Gregory Orloff) are extremely unhappy with US President Obama and would like to see him out of the Oval Office by whatever means. Last August these individuals met with Vice-President Biden in Washington.

Our monitoring of the public statements made in recent months by FarWest LLC vice-presidents Generals Vladimir Filin, Ruslan Saidov and the board member Rt. Colonel Anton Surikov--principal liaison of the group with right-wing circles in Washingtonbetray more that the aggressive Obamophobia of this group. In particular, Surikov/'s recent anti-Obama statements give reasons for concern. Here are some quotes.

"There are some serious people in the new Administration: the Vice-President Biden and the defense minister Gates. Presently they are not in the limelight but, I think, in two years or so they will come out of the shadow into the forefront and Biden will become the President."

"In this world crisis situation, Obama was meant to take the responsibility for some kind of extraordinary stint on a global scale... Following this he will be removed as an expendable intelligence asset."

Surikov's statement about Biden and Gates suggests a military coup or some sort of anti-constitutional conspiracy in the United States with the goal of "removing" President Obama.

In his recent "interview" with Natalia Roeva, Surikov identified Obama as American Gorbachev bent on the destruction of his country because of his religious mentors, "famous Negro racists Michael Pfleger and Jeremiah Wright, had brainwashed Obama with irrational hatred of America." This statement was followed by this exchange:

Roeva: - How is it possible to eliminate (ustranit) Obama before 2012?

Surikov: - Oh, there are many ways. Leave this for Americans to choose. Mechanisms for removing (otstranit')[the President] do exist, as well as precedents. i

Anton Surikov, board member of Far West LLC. Natalia Roeva (nee Valiahmetova), wife of a wealthy oil trader, FarWest LLC partner, specializes on organizing the "national-liberation struggle" of Ugro-Finn ethnicities in the Russian Federation.
Anton Surikov, board member of Far West LLC. Natalia Roeva (nee Valiahmetova), wife of a wealthy oil trader, FarWest LLC partner, specializes on organizing the "national-liberation struggle" of Ugro-Finn ethnicities in the Russian Federation.

The inflammatory language aside, the question that the U.S. and Russian authorities should ask is: What "ways" and "precedents" to "remove" Obama Surikov is talking about? There is only one constitutional way of "removing" a President of the United States. It is called impeachment. Surikov is supposed to know this. As naturalized U.S. citizen, he had to pass the exam on the constitution of the United States. But the US Congress did not accuse President Obama in violating the laws of the country and there is no indication whatsoever that such an accusation is forthcoming. As to Roeva's inquiry about the ways to "eliminate" President Obama, it is true that such ways do exist and the U.S. history has a plenty of "precedents" of this sort. But they are all criminal and as such are subject to state prosecution. These include calls and plans for a coup d'etat or the murder of a U.S. President. This is why public statements by and discussions between Russian and foreign citizens about "removing" or "eliminating" President Obama should attract serious attention of the U.S. Secret Service and the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation.

From what follows it will become clear that these statements and discussions come from the group of individuals who own the private intelligence company Far West LLC, with the head-quarters in Dubai, and include high ranking intelligence officers, both on active service and retired, of Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, Britain, the United States, Belarus, and Russia. It will also become clear that this group of people has regular contacts with a set of right-wing operatives and think-tank "analysts" in Washington, DC.

But first let us hear and SEE a few more threatening noises from FarWest. What follows are graphics and statements by the Far West LLC partners that we have copied from their blog at http://www.far-west.livejournal.com .

* * *

Obama as the Anti-Christ is the recurrent theme of the anti-Obama hate speech by the executives of FarWest LLC. Below is one example from the blog entry by the Uzbek-Chechen General Ruslan Saidov. In the early 1990s Saidov was a Russian GRU "handler" of Shamil Basaev and other future masters of terror; then he moved to Istanbul as a deputy of Khozh Nuhaev, chief of Dudaev's and Maskhadov's external intelligence. In Turkey, Saidov cultivated relations both with a branch of the Grey Wolves (a terrorist pan-Turkist organization) and Turkish Islamists. According to some unverified sources, in 1996 he served as adviser to the Islamist premier of Turkey Necmettin Erbakan. ii

"Ruslan Saidov: "The demand for the immediate withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan should be a priority in the struggle of all sane political forces in the world against Obama
"Ruslan Saidov: "The demand for the immediate withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan should be a priority in the struggle of all sane political forces in the world against Obama's global perestroika."

Our comment: The so-called "Bagram Department" of Saidov's intelligence service operates from the US Bagram Air Force base in Afghanistan. By coincidence or not, the private military company KBR (formerly KBR Halliburton) co-owner of Far West LLC with 13 percent of voting shareshas a big contract with this base. Could it be that Saidov's agents work under the cover provided by the KBR Bagram contractor? According to our sources in Germany, the Bagram group conducts "direct action" operations against the suspected intelligence assets of Germany, France, Russia, and China in Afghanistan and Waziristan. Saidov and his partners are worried that the US focus on Afghanistan and Waziristan distracts them from organizing a new Drang nach Osten with the goal of dismembering Russia.

"FarWest: Americans can grovel before Putin as they want but they will suffer a crushing defeat in Afghanistan and won
"FarWest: Americans can grovel before Putin as they want but they will suffer a crushing defeat in Afghanistan and won't be able to prevent Iran from having nuclear arms."

Our comment: This is an example of FarWest's nuclear blackmail of Europe and the United States another major thread in the subversive activities of this syndicate. The rogue intelligence services and operatives, who use Far West LLC as their commercial front, have been involved in the nuclear consortium between Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, Pakistan, Iran, North Korea, and China. Their activities included the smuggling of nuclear materials and technologies to these countries from Ukraine and Russia and the smuggling of KH-55 (Kent) cruise missiles to Iran and China in 2000-2001. According to the recent article in Australian press, this sale included four nuclear warheads 200 kiloton each. The vice-president of Far West LLC Ukrainian General Vladimir Filin was even nicknamed "the Radioactive Filin" for his advocacy of re-nuclearizing Ukraine. It is believed that rogue elements in the Soviet General Staff were able to hide an unknown number of nuclear devices during the break up of the Soviet Union. iii

"Vladimir Filin: A "reset" in the relations between the United States and Russia will not be allowed. Nobody wants it except Summers and Chubais."
"Vladimir Filin: A "reset" in the relations between the United States and Russia will not be allowed. Nobody wants it except Summers and Chubais."

Our comment: By "nobody" Filin refers to the Russophobic ultra-right/neocon circles in the US and the postfascist East European power groups who hope to use the United States as their proxy to settle old scores with Russia.

Obama Lenin commandeers an armored vehicle to trample on the American flag. The byline by Vladimit Filin says: "There is a growing understanding in the countries of Eastern Europe about the destructive consequences of Obama
Obama Lenin commandeers an armored vehicle to trample on the American flag. The byline by Vladimit Filin says: "There is a growing understanding in the countries of Eastern Europe about the destructive consequences of Obama's global perestroika as "the road to hell"." The quote underneath the picture says: "The more representatives of bourgeoisie we shoot the better. Lenin"

Our comment: In their anti-Obama hate speech FarWest habitually exploits the deeply ingrained anti-communism of American society. This also helps to keep their ultra-right partners in Washington and London happy.

"Anton Surikov: Barack Hussein Obama has agreed to become the leader of a global perestroika because he feels irrational hatred to his country that was taught to him by his spiritual mentors the Black racists Michael Pfleger and Jeremiah Wright. Like priest, like people."
"Anton Surikov: Barack Hussein Obama has agreed to become the leader of a global perestroika because he feels irrational hatred to his country that was taught to him by his spiritual mentors the Black racists Michael Pfleger and Jeremiah Wright. Like priest, like people."

Our comment: Rt. Colonel of the General Staff Anton Surikov is a naturalized US citizen who aspires to be holier than the Alabama redneck from the John Birch Society. Surikov's hate speech exploits not only the fears of the American Far Right, but also the white racism of their Russian counterparts in government, military, secret services, and business. Peaceful coexistence and partnership between Russia and the United States threaten the geopolitical dreams of ethno-nationalist Russophobic elites in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus about a new Operation Barbarossa and the dismemberment of Russia. The 'reset' in US-Russian relations also threatens to erode the profits of the US military-industrial complex, the power of the "national security establishment," and the financial support for the Cold War ideological apparatus the stable of "experts," "scholars," and "analysts" who pimp their knowledge for the sake of the TransAtlantic imperialism. Last not least, the possibility of the pacified US-Russian relations provokes the fury of the post-Nazi nucleus in the heart of Western imperialism as threatening its historical goal of taking revanche for the defeat in World War II. FarWest calls for these forces to unite in the common cause of "removing" Obama.

"Mikhail Gorbachev to Obama: We need a global perestroika... The process has begun..."
"Mikhail Gorbachev to Obama: We need a global perestroika... The process has begun..."

Our comment: Images like this are calculated to whip up hatred to Obama among U.S. and Russian militarists, paving the way for their alliance. If these forces come to power in our countries FarWest hopes to benefit by playing the role of a back channel between them.

"Gorbachev had called upon Obama to begin a global perestroika. The financial swindlers led by Summers have made it more sweeping by pumping hundreds billions of worthless paper into US economy. The foreign policy adventurists have imputed it with new thinking
"Gorbachev had called upon Obama to begin a global perestroika. The financial swindlers led by Summers have made it more sweeping by pumping hundreds billions of worthless paper into US economy. The foreign policy adventurists have imputed it with new thinking' by getting the US bogged down in the war they cannot win in Afghanistan and Waziristan. They have announced their readiness to negotiate with HAMAS terrorists against the wishes of the right-wing Israeli government. By declaring a reset in the US-Russia relations they have betrayed Eastern Europe, the Baltic states, Ukraine, and the peoples of the Caucasus."

Our comment: FarWest thrives on confrontation between the United States and Russia. Ukrainian secret services--reckless, violent and uncontrolled as they are, with the leadership ideologically committed to the Banderite vision of the Greater Ukraine--would like to use the United States as a big and stupid troll against Russia in hope to profit from the spoils of war like the hyenas rather that the pan-Turkist wolves on FarWest's blog logo.

Ruslan Saidov: "Iran is de facto a nuclear power and has been for at least three years."
Ruslan Saidov: "Iran is de facto a nuclear power and has been for at least three years."

Our comments: General Saidov knows what he is talking about. FarWest played central role in smuggling out of the former SU (mostly from Ukraine) nuclear materials, technology, and means of delivery for the nuclear consortium of Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, China and Northern Korea. According to the recent interview with Sam Haider, Saidov and his Far West LLC partners sold Iran not only six KH-55 Kent cruise missiles, but two nuclear warheads to them, 200 kiloton each.

"The Heritage Foundation has proposed to the US Administration their own plan of neutralizing Putin
"The Heritage Foundation has proposed to the US Administration their own plan of neutralizing Putin's regime."

FarWest signals their support to the right-wing Heritage Foundation and its very own war hawk Ariel Cohen. Cohen is a part of FarWest's crowd in Washington, together with Zeyno Baran, Fiona Hill, Joshua Muravchik, Robert Kagan and some other professional Russia-haters.

"Vladimir Filin: Obama
"Vladimir Filin: Obama's Gorbachev type of politics will free the Fourth Reich from US military control."

Our comment: Filin is a key figure of the neo-Banderite center in Ukraine's army and secret services. He and his kamaraden are full of hatred to German social-democrats for their resistance to the idea of Ukraine's membership in Nato and rational approach to relations with Russia.

The byline to this racist graphics says: "Ruslan Saidov: It is not Iran or the Taliban, not even Putin
The byline to this racist graphics says: "Ruslan Saidov: It is not Iran or the Taliban, not even Putin's Russia that embody the world's ultimate evil but the adventurer Obama and global Gorbachevism that Obama imposes on America and the world."ivhttp://far-west.livejournal.com/160955.html#cutid1

A monkey we know, who lives in the Bronx Zoo, made this comment: "If the likes of Saidov represent Homo sapient I better stay on the tree."
The Nazi Roots of Far West LLC. Interview with Vadim Stolz
Capable and Credible

NB. Vadim, first I would like you to discuss how serious are the anti-Obama statements by the Farwest "information agency"in their Live Journal and Pravda.info publications and whether these statements may or should be reviewed by the U.S. Secret Service which is the organization whose primary purpose is to protect the President of the United States. This is how the official Secret Service website describes their preventing activities.

The protection of an individual is comprehensive and goes well beyond surrounding the individual with well-armed agents. As part of the Secret Service's mission of preventing an incident before it occurs, the agency relies on meticulous advance work and threat assessments developed by its Intelligence Division to identify potential risks to protectees.
Protective research is an integral component of all security operations. Agents and specialists assigned to conduct protective research evaluate information received from law enforcement, intelligence agencies and a variety of other sources regarding individuals or groups who may pose a threat to Secret Service protectees. These agents review questionable letters and e-mails received at the White House and maintain a 24-hour operation to coordinate protection-related information.

I want to play devil's advocate. There is a lot of anti-Obama speech on the Web. Why should anybody care about a bunch of former Soviet spooks fulminating against the President of the United States? I recall how during Obama's election campaign a US law enforcement official was asked to comment on a spike in anti-Obama rhetoric on the Internet. He said that all of it was just "a lot of ranting and raving with no capability, credibility or specificity to it."

VS. This official might have been right back then. However, Filin, Saidov, Surikov and their Far West LLC partners in the United States, Ukraine and Ukrainian diaspora, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan are not harmless Internet windbags. They have all the capability and credibility in the world. Filin is a general of Ukrainian military intelligence and has under his command the Special Department "R" (for Russia), with a branch in the United States. Another resource he has there are Ukrainian nationalist circles, traditionally ultra-right and Russophobic. They don't like Obama at all, because they see him as being "soft" on Russia. Filin and his old partners from the Soviet military intelligence have "funny" businesses in Latin America Colombia, Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia and the Caribbean and a small private army there, trained and led by old GRU hands. They do the cocaine business with FARC since the 1980s and may well have relations with Colombian and Mexican drug cartels. In the 1990s early 2000s Filin, Likhvinsev, Saidov, and Surikov ran, under the protection of Russian General Staff, one of the largest heroin businesses in Eurasia, from Afghanistan to Kosovo. They are well-known figures in international intelligence circles. This milieu is potentially a very serious source of threat for a president who wants to make the world a more peaceful place. Vladimir Filin is not a chatterbox; he is the one Ukrainian prime minister Timoshenko reports to when discussing gas prices with Putin and the Gazprom. Filin coordinates intelligence gathering between Ukraine and Georgia and he supervised Ukrainian special operations in Georgia during its war with Russian last August, after meetings with influential neocons like Robert Kagan and a visit to Washington presumably for consultations with Robert Gates or his people in the DIA. v According to the intelligence information, published in 2004, "Filin's Gang" had over 70 bodies on their hands by then and kept counting. Our sources in CIS intelligence community claim that FarWest's victims include Paul Khlebnikov of the Forbes Magazine, Anna Politkovskaya, and central banker Andrei Kozlov. When someone like Filin openly talks about "removing" the President of the United States it seems to deserve more than passing attention from the people responsible for his safety.

"Saidov: Obama is the expendable puppet of the Federal Reserve and Goldman Saks. Sooner or later they will sacrifice him." viFarwest LJ <http://far-west.livejournal.com/215635.html>
"Saidov: Obama is the expendable puppet of the Federal Reserve and Goldman Saks. Sooner or later they will sacrifice him." viFarwest LJ <http://far-west.livejournal.com/215635.html>

General Ruslan Saidov is also a career military intelligence officer. After our publications about Saidov's terrorist activities, he was officially retired from his position of the special adviser to the Uzbek defense minister Ruslan Mirzaev. vii Saidov remains in charge of Chechnya's illegal external intelligence organization and has recently proved his "credibility" by organizing the liquidations of Ramzan Kadyrov's opponents in Moscow, Austria, Turkey, and Dubai. It is also common knowledge in Russia's intelligence community that Saidov and Nukhaev ordered the assassinations of the Forbes' editor Paul Khlebnikov and Anna Politkovskaya, carried out by the killers from Nukhaev's former "Lazan" organized crime organization. In 2006, together with Filin's men, they killed Russian Central Bank CEO Andrei Kozlov. Saidov is not only in charge of hundreds of armed and highly trained people in the Middle East and has his agents in every significant Chechen diaspora from Jordan to the United States, he is also a close associate and business partner of Prince Turki al-Faisal and the Khashoggi family, unarguably credible and capable gentlemen. Soviet GRU trained Saidov for the "deep penetration" of Middle Eastern elites, especially Sufi networks, widely used by regional intelligence services, as well as the other way around. He was quite successful in this and so was his and his partners' arms and heroin trade in this part of the world. I want to emphasize Saidov's ties not only to Saudi and Turkish intelligence, but also to Pakistan's ISI. According to our sources in Central Asia, last April Saidov brought to Tashkent Pakistani army chiefs, generals Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and Ahmad Shuja Pasha, for an unannounced half day long visit. Kayani is the current Chief of Army Staff of the Pakistan Army and the former director of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Pasha is the current Director of the ISI. In Tashkent they met with defense minister Mirzaev and President Karimov. The meetings were highly confidential, with Saidov acting as interpreter. Soon after that visit, the ISI controlled gang of Mullо Abdullo (Abdullah Rakhimov) crossed from Afghanistan into eastern Tajikistan. viii About 200 fighters slipped into the mountainous Tavildara district where it is difficult for the government troops to catch up with them. We have information that Rasheed, Saidov, and Lunev stayed in Abdullo's base in Afghanistan right before the raid and that Lunev has been pretty much sitting on the Afghan-Tajik border since then. This can mean only one thing Lunev supervises Abdullo's raid on behalf of the FarWest partners who had financed and prepared it. They know Abdullo since the civil war of 1992-3, when Filin, Saidov, and Lunev were on assignment in Tajikistan.

NB. Allow me to clarify that Lunev is Major-General Valery Lunev of Belorussian KGB. He was born in 1960 in the Kulyab Region of Tajikistan, fluent in Pushtu and Farsi. Served together with Filin, Saidov, and Surikov in the GRU special unit N (for narcotics) in Afghanistan. Later in the 80s Lunev was involved in the anti-COCOM network and stationed in the Netherlands. Has Dutch citizenship. Executive director of Far West LLC's central office in Dubai. Is this a fair introduction?

General-Major Valery Lunev (cover name) of Belorussian KGB.
General-Major Valery Lunev (cover name) of Belorussian KGB.

From our dossier: Born 1960 in Kulyab, Tajik SSR. Experience: Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff, Defense Ministry of the USSR. Prepared for work in the Middle East. Fluent in Russian, Belorussian, Farsi, Pushtu, Arabic (Iraqi dialect), English, Dutch. Service in Afghanistan (1982-84), Western Europe, Central Asia, the Caucasus, Iraq (1990-91, 2003). Since 1995 KGB, Republic of Belarus. Resided in the Netherlands in 1995-2006. Dutch passport. Has Chechen wife, Dudaev's relative, who served as a sniper with Basaev and Surikov during the Abkhaz-Georgian war and worked with Lunev for the GRU in Central Asia. Converted Muslim. Militant Russophobe. Said to be the leader of the pro-Nato lobby in Lukashenko's close circle of military and intelligence advisers. Since 2007 operates under the cover of the Executive Director of Far West LLC. We date this photo by the late 80s.

VS. Perhaps, a few other things can be added for those readers who have not been following our journalistic investigation. Lunev is the "funny name," as they say in Britain, of this ethnic Belorussian. We don't know his real one. He has been much less visible than his attention-hungry partners -- Filin, Saidov, and Surikov -- and was "outed" the latest. His name was not mentioned in the "conspiracy in Nice" fake of 1999-2000, either in Surikov's or Kagarlitsky's texts. Sergei Petrov had "introduced" Lunev to the public in his interview of Janury 2004, several days before he was blown apart by a bomb in South Africa. ix

NB. Do I recall it correctly that prior to their falling out Sergei Petrov was the second in command in Far West Ltd, wasn't he?

VS. This is correct. He used to be Filin's deputy. Then something happened between them and Petrov left the gang. Later, when he had learned that they were going to kill him--he tape-recorded their conversation--Petrov told the Germans and French about the criminal activities of his former company. x He also began to cooperate with Russian military counter-intelligence, apparently, hoping to nail his former partners before they got to him. Hence there was a number of "leaks" published in the fall-winter of 2003-04. This is how FarWest as organized criminal society was outed and had to withdraw from big-time narcotrafficking.

NB. They were outed but not prosecuted. Why?

VS. They were not prosecuted because they were and remain a part of the System. The Intelligence Cabal was behind them in the West as were some people in the Kremlin close to Putin. They were also protected by their own secret services-- Ukrainian, Uzbek, Belorussian, Chechen, Lithuanian. Generally, people do not realize that these relatively marginal countries have inherited powerful intelligence apparatuses of the Soviet Union. Ukrainian military intelligence is not a joke at all. It's a powerful force led by old Soviet GRU cadres of highest qualification. Besides, they have at their disposal the well-organized and politically active Ukrainian diaspora around the world. Anyway, when the Germans had gotten the goods on FarWest from Petrov (including the information on the Ukraine-to-Iran KH-55 cruise missiles deal ) they realized it was way too much for them to handle and could make the relations of the SD government with Washington even worse. I suspect that something similar happened with the French.

NB. Yet, Filin had to evacuate FarWest from Europe to Dubai and himself move to Brazil when they had that problem with Goss and Foggo. Doesn't this suggest that they are not that big, after all?

VS. That's a very different situation. There was never real threat of legal persecution in that episode. The problem was that Foggo's thugs could simply whack Filin and his associates. Actually, I tend to believe Filin that they planted a bomb under Davidovich's car in Bogota. The threat was physical, not legal. xi

Military intelligence officer Sergei Petrov (born Savchenko) aka French citizen Serge Rodin (? - 2004).
Military intelligence officer Sergei Petrov (born Savchenko) aka French citizen Serge Rodin (? - 2004).

From our dossier: Sergei Petrov (born Savchenko, ? - 2004). Former GRU officer, after 1993 served in Ukrainian military intelligence. Served in Afghanistan together with Filin, Likhvintsev, Saidov, Surikov, and Lunev. In the fall of 2003 Petrov gave German and French authorities information about the criminal activities of the "consulting firm" Far West LTD that included the sale of Ukrainian WMD to Iran and China and portable SAMs to FARC. In January 2004, he was blown up in his car while staying in Cape Town, SA. Several days later, in Cyprus, there died, allegedly in a strange accident, the international arms dealer Sarfraz Haider--key figure in the sale of the Ukrainian KH-55 (Kent) cruise missiles to Iran. That sale might have included several nuclear warheads.

NB. Let's go back to General Lunev.

VS. It is relevant in the context of FarWest's anti-Obama active measures that Petrov described Lunev as a specialist on "radical solutions." His long list of "achievements" included the assassination of Sangak Safarov and Faizullah Saidov -- socialist leaders of the People's Front of Tajikistan. Lunev masterminded this political crime in the spring of 1993 on the orders of defense minister Grachev and the personal request of Boris Yeltsin. However, Lunev is not only a specialist on Central Asia and "radical solutions." He is also a high-class military-political analyst and consummate organization man. From what we know, his activities in the FarWest Dubai office have the blessings of President Lukashenko, who apparently values Lunev and FarWest as his back channel for a dialog and deal-making with the right-wing Republicans and neocons in the United States, not to mention "gray" and "black" arms trafficking which is another of Lunev's specialties. Just as Filin and Saidov, Lunev is very dangerous and his presence on the Afghan-Tajik border--clearly sanctioned by the Saudis, Pakistanis, and the rogue CIA partners of FarWest--should be a cause for grave concern to all peace-loving people around the world and, especially, in Asia.

NB. Going back to Mullo Abdullo. Why did FarWest and the ISI people send him to Tajikistan?

VS. They wanted to demonstrate their ability to destabilize Central Asia.

NB. But why in the world do they want to destabilize whatever? And to whom did they "demonstrate" this?
The Intelligence Cabal

VS. To answer these questions, we need to place FarWest within a bigger picture. The Russian-speaking part of this organization are senior military intelligence officers and agents, who began their service in the last decade of the Soviet Union. Their professional carriers, power and personal wealth have come from the confluence of two factors: 1) the special place of intelligence in the military-industrial complex and its covert networks abroad, and 2) the destruction of the Soviet Union that had allowed them to capitalize on their position.

Their senior partners in the US, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Israel can be described as right-wing and post-Nazi elements from the national security state (NSS) establishments that have grown tremendously during the Cold War and whose power and wealth depend on war and international tension. In the core of this loosely-knit cabal is a group of ideologically committed people, often with the family histories of struggle against Russia and the Soviet Union, who ache to settle with us some old scores and take their revanche for our victory in 1945. The NSS establishments have behind them privileged groups and sections of their national ruling classes, which has been long established economically and politically and who traditionally have been in control of the state or its big chunks. They are right-wing Republicans, Democrats, and neocons in the U.S., Conservatives and part of New Labor in Britain, the Likud in Israel and the Saud family in SA, Turkish military and pan-Turkist underground, Pakistani military and the ISI, Sufi networks... In other words, the intelligence groups, both state and private, who are directly involved or indirectly interact with FarWest have a much broader social, economic, and political base than the Russian-speaking FarWest. To give one example, the board of Diligence LLC includes or included figures like Richard Burt, Michael Howard, Lord Charles Powell, William Webster, Edward Mathias, Thomas F. McLarty, Arnaud de Borchgrave. These guys are high level operatives of powerful Atlantic elites; they run the show while the professional intelligence hacks manage it on a day to day basis. It's different with Filin, Saidov, Lunev, Surikov and others on the former SU side. They are upstarts who do not represent any old interests. Their strongest power base is Ukraine where secret services and the military are their own masters and form a state within the state just like the military and ISI in Pakistan or the military and the Grey Wolves in Turkey. Indeed, Ukraine is referred to in Europe as the "European Pakistan." But they are pretty much helpless on their own, without their senior partners, especially, the United States, Britain, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. If the power of Turkish military diminishes, its bad news for Saidov, Nukhaev, and their organization, because they cannot feel safe in and operate from Turkey without the protection of the general staff and police. If Saidov looses the confidence of Saudi sheiks his construction and real estate companies in the Middle East will go belly up the next day. Same will happen to Filin's assets around the world if their relations with the US and British "partners" go sour as they did under Goss and Foggo in the CIA. These guys can have some leeway and power of decision only as long as they remain in good standing with their senior partners. Their leash may be long, but it's still a leash and no less strong for that. So, to stay in action, they have to prove again and again their worth, their ability to stir things up, especially in the areas where the US have little leverage as in Central Asia. However, these "unequal" relations are not fixed and can change. The Russian-speaking partners of FarWest play their own or partly their own games as well. Filin coordinates the anti-German activities of Ukrainian and Polish intelligence. Saidov's death squads in Bagram, sheltered and paid by the US military, roam Afghanistan, Waziristan and the Sunni Triangle in Iraq, but Saidov's killers also have been wiping out any real or potential opposition to Kadyrov, while his Sufi activities in the Middle East and elsewhere may remain impenetrable even for US and British intelligence. Also they can influence US internal politics through their agents of influence in the Ukrainian and other East European diaspora in Northern America.

NB. And how does Abdullo's last raid in Tajikistan fit into the bigger plans of this international Intelligence Cabal?

We hear from our German friends that the Republicans who are close to the military-industrial complex, the Pentagon and intelligence have conspired with the Likud to subvert Obama's foreign policy and eventually force him out of the White House. It appears they plan to attack Obama from several directions.

1. Likud will strike in the Near East, probably, at Gaza or Lebanon, with a massive "collateral damage." This will derail Obama's peace making in that region.

2. Even more important will be the proliferation of nuclear arms, with several new countries going nuclear, either officially or de facto, after the Israeli model. FarWest have played important role in the Nuclear Consortium between Ukraine, Pakistan, Iran, China, Saudi Arabia, and North Korea. The unknown quantities of Soviet nuclear materials and weapons were hidden in Ukraine around the breakup of the Soviet Union and later loaned to Iran or stored in Pakistan. This allows Ukrainian military to provide technical maintenance for their nuclear devices and perhaps even develop new ones while formally not violating the denuclearized status of Ukraine.

One well-publicized case was the sale of 12 cruise missiles KH-55 from Ukraine to China and Iran in 2000-2001. It was recently claimed that the deal also included four 200-kiloton nuclear war heads. xii According to Ukrainian national security figures around Yulia Timoshenko, the sales were handled by Far West LLC, with the U.S. private intelligence company Diligence LLC "supervising" it from a distance. Victor Bout's planes were used in this operation. xiii A less known case was the theft by FarWest of two kilograms of uranium-235 from the Sukhumi Physics and Technology Institute in the early 90s. The uranium went to Iran. And this might be just the tip of the iceberg. Filin and Saidov boast that Iran already has nuclear arms and that Ukraine with Saudi Arabia will soon follow it. At the same time, they accuse Obama of "weakening America and leaving the rest of the world in chaos." This tactics subverts Obama's commitment to the non-proliferation of nuclear arms and missile technology, while providing the military-industrial complex with arguments in favor of expanding the anti-missile defense R&D and deployment.

3. Afghanistan and Pakistan will be turned into examples of Obama's failure to fight "international terrorism." At the same time, Afghanistan territory will be used to destabilize Central Asia and increase pressure against Russia and China. Mullo Abdullo's raid into Tajikistan is a test of this mechanism. xiv Since the fall of 2008 at the latest, Saidov and Prince Rasheed concentrate on Afghanistan. They have been going back and forth between Kabul, Islamabad, Quetta, and El-Riyadh, meeting with Turki al-Faisal, Karzai, Nawaz Sharif and Mullah Omar. Their goal is to have an agreement between the United States and the Taliban through the mediation of the Saudis and Pakistanis. The Intelligence Cabal no longer needs Karzai. He has become a liability and has to go. But if Karzai makes a deal with the old anti-Taliban and anti-US warlords like Ismail Khan, Rashid Dostum, and Karim Khalili this can create a lot of problems for the Nato forces and the Cabal, making it impossible to use Afghanistan for de-stabilizing the Central Asia, China, and Russia.

Ruslan Saidov: Obama will suffer a humiliating defeat in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Ruslan Saidov: Obama will suffer a humiliating defeat in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

4. Those behind FarWest do not want Obama to have a new treaty with Russia on slashing nuclear stockpiles. They want a new arms race and they also see such a treaty as the important part of Obama's strategy to normalize relations with Russia. The U.S. militarists want Russia to remain the bogey man of Western propaganda.

5. They want to make permanent the simmering conflict between Russia and her neighbors Ukraine and Georgia -- so that their propaganda apparatus could continue picturing Russia as aggressor and poison our relations with Europe and the United States.

6. If they "remove" Obama, they will try to crash the oil prices and keep them below $30 for a long time, speed up the development and deployment of anti-missile defense systems against Russia and China under the pretext of the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs. Using Afghanistan as their forward base and proxies like Abdullo's gang, they will provoke military conflicts in Central Asia to make Russia and China busy. In other words, the Intelligence Cabal behind FarWest wants to copycat the strategies of the Reagan-Daddy Bush period. This is what we may get instead of a "reset" if they topple Obama.

All these directions for subverting international peace and Obama's presidency are discussed by Surikov and his buddies in the FarWest blog which serves as a semi-public transmitter of their positions to their partners and supporters.

NB. Can we then conclude that this program, as you have outlined it, puts the "neo-Trotskyism" Surikov style on the back burner, at least for the time being?

VS. For the time being, yes. The resignation of Korabelnikov (head of the GRU) and the rise of oil prices make the probability of a general unrest in Russia and its exploitation for a coup d'etat less likely. This is why Surikov has replaced the theme of a "neo-Trotskyist revolution" with the "national-liberation struggle against the evil empire." But this is simply a temporary tactical shift in focus. In their thinking, the fifth column of all colors--"ethnic," "liberal," "patriotic,"and "left"--remains central to the "final solution of Russian question."
The Oberländer Connection

"The Jewish proletarian is the real source of Bolshevism in Poland."

Theodore Oberländer

NB. Don't they also use their blog to "announce" what forces have come together behind this anti-Obama program and also to coordinate and rally behind it the Russian fifth columnists like Latynina, Albats, Piontkovsky and the rest of them?

VS. Absolutely! To give the latest example, their recent celebration of Theodore Oberländer and the World Anti-Communist League is meant to be a message that FarWest had behind them the right-wing and post-Nazi elements in the U.S. foreign policy establishment. It is also the way to amplify and say openly what their partners in the West cannot. They are also yearning for the Reagan-Bush "Bitburg" years-- when the Republican "ethnic outreach" program gave much visibility to Ukrainian, Belorussian, Baltic and other fascists. This is their model for the post-Obama America. Also, the rehabilitation of "moderate" Nazis like Oberländer and Canaris is important for their base support in Ukraine, Belorussia, the Caucasus, the Baltics and elsewhere in the former Soviet Union where Hitler had found ethnic collaborators. Again, they mimic the strategy of the Reagan -Bush administration and its Republican "ethnic outreach" to mobilize the old Nazi collaborators and their heirs against the Soviet Union under the slogan of national liberation. Hence the importance of Oberländer and Canaris who in 1943 advocated more reliance on anti-Soviet and anti-Russian ethnic elements after it had become clear that Germany could not win the war in the East.

Our dossier on Theodore Oberländer (1905-1998) - Professor of Ostforschung, political agent and officer of German military intelligence, WWII commander of "ethnic units" of Nazi collaborators in the Eastern Front, West German minister and ultra-right politician. War criminal.
Three SS men: from the left: Karl Frank, Rudolf Heydrich (sitting) and Theodore Oberländer (standing)

Three SS men: from the left: Karl Frank, Rudolf Heydrich (sitting) and Theodore Oberländer (standing)

Born in Meiningen. Lutheran. Education: Universities of Munich, Berlin, Hamburg. Diplom in Agronomy. Doctorate from the University of Konigsberg. Member of Freikorps Baden and Schwarzen Reichswehr. Boasted participation in the Beer Hall Putsch. Member of NSDAP since 1933. Member of the mystic-agrarian Artamanen-Gesellschaft (Darré, Himmler, Hoess, Kammler...). Member of the SA (Obersturmführer). Member of Karl and Albrecht Haushofers' "geopolitical" circle. 1928-34: Economic and political intelligence work in the Soviet Union under the cover of Krupp's agricultural company DRUSAG (Northern Causasus). Participation in the Soviet-German military cooperation (The Reichswehr's panzer school in Kazan), contacts with Soviet military intelligence and Comintern agents. Recipient of the Ford Foundation stipend (1932). World travel (1931-32). After 1933: Leader "Bund Deutscher Osten" (BDO - "League for a German East"), which advocated radical Germanization of the eastern provinces. Organizes the fifth column in the Klaipeda (Memel) Region. Accused by Lithuanian government in subversive activities and banned from entering the country. Professor at the University of Greifswald, struggle for the "judenfrei" (free of Jews) university and the Province of Pomerania. Assistant to Gauleiter Erich Koch ( East Prussia). 1939 - Officer of Abwehr II (Sabotage and Subversion), organizes special units of ethnic Germans against Poland. Begins to specialize on Ukrainian issues. Endorses ethnic cleansing of the Polish population. 1940: Head of the German Repatriation Mission in Eastern (Soviet) Galicia, frequents Lemberg (Lwow), intelligence contacts with Ukrainian nationalists, especially with OUN-B (Stepan Bandera's faction -- Yaroslav Stesko, Mykola Lebed, Roman Shukhevich); 1941 participates in the preparation for the invasion of the Soviet Union in the Abwehr main HQ, plans agricultural policy of Germany in the future occupation of the USSR. June 1941: Overall command of an Abwehr group of military-political units that march on Lwow where Ukrainian Batallion Nachtigall and Geheime Feldpolizei units from Oberländer's group participate in the murders and pogroms of Jewish and Polish population. 1942-summer 43: Commander of the mixed German and Caucasian unit "Sonderverband Bergmann" (Abweht II), deployed in the Northern Causasus and the Crimea. Subversions, propaganda, anti-partisan activities. Fall 1943-winter 1944: Released from the Wehrmacht, based in Prague, involved in a broad range of political, intelligence, and scholarly activities under the control and on the behalf of SS and NSDAP. Contacts with Fritz Kammler, Wernher von Braun, and Walter Dornberger in the Peenemunde Rocket Center. Was involved in the SS operations to transfer German military high-tech (V-2) and know-how to the Americans. March-April 1945: Assigned a liaison officer with Vlasov's Russian Liberation Army in Prague. In the end of April makes contact with the US military intelligence and negotiates the surrender of Maltsev's air corp to General Patton. Sent to England for intelligence debriefing. Released in 1946. After a short period of"denazification" and ideological retouching returns to politics as the ultra- right Christian-Democrat, pan-Western anti-communist, and champion of the United Europe. Member of Abendländische Aktionfounded by group of the Old Order elements and leaders of the extreme Christian-Democrat Right from several countries. 1948: Memorandum "On Psychological Warfare" -- a detailed political and social program of "a crusade against communism." Presents himself as "oppositionist" and victim of Himmler. Leader of West German resettlers movement for the return of "Eastern territories" and their BHE party. Federal Minister in Adenauer's cabinet. 1960: A court in German Democratic Republic sentences O. in absentia to life imprisonment for his involvement in the Lwow massacre in 1941. Under public pressure resigns from Adenauer's government. Leader of the World Anti-Communist Leaguean international extreme right and fascist network of intelligence and military groups. Had close relations with U.S. military intelligence General Charles Willoughby (Adolf C. Weidenbach), U.S. Army Colonel John Singlaub (Operation Phoenix), Fritz Ermarth and Robert Gates of the CIA and Wernher von Braun.

NB. Let me pick up the thread on the "national-liberation struggle against the evil empire" and "the final solution of Russian question." What are the origins of this juxtaposition of the leftish sounding slogan of "the "national-liberation struggle" with the Reaganism of "evil empire" and the genocidal Nazi phraseology of "final solution"? How does this unholy amalgam reflect on the political ideology or ideologies and histories behind the FarWest cabal? Let's talk about this and the concrete personalities who represent this trajectory.

VS. This "unholy amalgam," as you aptly call it, indeed reflects both the Russian and Western faces of FarWest, as well as their opportunistic tactics. Consider the political masks of Surikov, who is responsible for ideology in Far West LLC.

The director of "Trotsky Institute" is aggressive homophobe and racist who calls Obama "that Nigger," implores the Likudniks to bomb Iran, and would like to see Venezuela subverted by U.S. militarists as Nicaragua was by Reagan -- Surikov's model hero. In Turkey, Surikov has established relations with pan-Turkist circles in the military and intelligence. He was seen in the Kurdistan Front wearing Turkish military uniform. Together with Saidov and Nukhaev, Surikov have links to the Grey Wolves, the terrorist underground of Turkish fascists. At the same time, Surikov sits on the Council of the "Left Front" a fake Moscow organization, known for its street provocation tactics. Surikov is also a leader of the "left" Party of Social Justicea front organization of Russian secret services and army veteransand his own fictional "neo-Trotskyist party." In other words, Surikov presents himself as a right-winger and a leftist with equal ease, no questions asked. It may seem impossible but, as a matter of fact, Surikov takes cue from ideological amalgam of his neocon partners in Washington, like Joshua Muravchik and Zeyno Baran. Recall also that, historically, the CIA and British intelligence preferred the left masquerade for right-wing politics and anti-communism as most effective.

NB. Can you be more specific and give examples of what you call the Intelligence Cabal and its operations?

Historically, intelligence in the West has been a specialized apparatus of conservative elites, led and staffed by their own "good ol' boys." The first leaders of the OSS and CIA, Bill Donovan and Allen Dulles, came from the Wall Street, William Casey too, and so on. They had close links with private capitalists like Prescott Bush. After the war, Donovan even tried to create a private CIA financed by capitalists and corporations. There is nothing particularly new in the privatization of intelligence and the military that we have seen in the last 10-20 years. The Intelligence Cabal arose from the murky zone between the showcase democracy and the section of the ruling class that owns the military-industrial complex. It is its secret fighting organization, free from the legal restraints, democratic controls, and moral norms of the public facade. It is not a formal organization, of course, but a a self-reproducing network of informal and semi-official relations, sufficiently open and flexible to react to the changing world.

A good example of how this network works in its mature and "globalized" stage was the creation of the Safari Club in 1976 by the ad hoc group of the intelligence chiefs of France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Iran. They wanted to help their right-wing allies in US secret services to circumvent Carter's reforms and create a kind of the private CIA. As to the historical trajectory of the Intelligence Cabal, I would highlight the dialog between the US and British agencies with the Abwehr on the possibility of a separate peace and common front against the Soviet Union, the transfer of German military and scientific know-how to the US (Operation Paperclip and others), and the "ratlines." The Wernher von Braun-Dornberger group played a big role in the post-Nazi ideological influence on the US military-industrial complex, especially, its strategic nuclear forces component. Another important post-war development was the integration of Nazi intelligence apparatus (Gehlen.Org) into the US-British system of intelligence.

After FDR's death, the US became the heir of Nazi Germany in a number of ways. Truman undid every progressive achievement of Roosevelt's presidency; they imported thousands of Nazi criminals and tens if not hundreds of thousands of Nazi collaborators from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe who turned their old ethnic diasporas in the U.S. and Britain into rabidly anti-Soviet and Russophobic constituencies; they had their Kristallnacht American style in McCarthyism, and they had reduced the United States to the anticommunist ober crusader and the beacon of the world reaction, supporting every single reactionary force in the world, from Latin American and African dictators to Saudi feudals and jihadist mullahs to South-African and Israeli racists, Asian fascists, and so on. It was this historical transformation of the United States into the leading reactionary force, suppressing and subverting popular democratic movements and socialist countries that gave rise to the Intelligence Cabal and empowered it.

NB. I guess we can call it a kind of "Fascism Light"--democratic on surface, with a shadow government by Wall Street and the military-industrial complex.

VS. Yes, the post-war United States were all about anti-communism plus the amalgamation of corporate power with the state plus the great power chauvinism and messianism. These are classical ingredients of Fascism. Hitler and Mussolini would die of envy. But internal repressions have been comparatively mild, even in the 1950s. They were simply not needed in the absence of strong class organization by US workers. Due to its economic and military-political dominance in the post-war world, American capitalism was able to share out of its profits the proverbial "crumbles" with US workers and keep them loyal to its rule. As the result, the fascist nature of the post-war US has been reflected mostly in its international projection. Their "spheres of national interests" or "vital national security interests" is a neoimperialist equivalent of Nazi's Lebensraum. But Hitler was more modest and did not claim the entire globe for the Third Reich.

NB. What were the major manifestations of the Intelligence Cabal after the McCarthy years?

VS. The World Anti-Communist League (WACL) and its member--the Anti-Bolshevik Block of Nations run by the Banderites--was a major post-Nazi development. Essentially, it was a remake of the Hitler-Goebbels Anti-Comintern of 1939-40. WACL brought together the veterans of the Third Reich, Japanese war criminals, Nazi collaborators from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, Latin American death-squads types, Pan-Turkish and East Asian fascists. All this zoo came under the umbrella of the US, Taiwanese, and South Korean intelligence services. The WACL chapter in the US, headed by Singlaub, used the organization for all kind of frauds and as money channel for Iran-Contra activities and similar operations.

The Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), established in 1972, was the biggest criminal network of the Intelligence Cabal that we know of. The Bank preceded the Safari Club and financed it. The question now is what has replaced the BCCI after its debacle. Could it be that FarWest LLC is a visible part of this new structure? It's purely hypothetical, but it must exist. Just as the BCCI served to wed the Anglo-American intelligence with Saudi and other Arab intelligence networks, so in the 90s this new structure must have brought into the fold the nomadic groups of former Soviet intelligence cadres and chunks of their networks abroad. There is some circumstantial evidence that rogue elements in Soviet intelligence began to link with their Western counterparts as early as in the 1970s, especially in drugs and arms trafficking. The BCCI and the Eastern Block anti-COCOM networks could serve as umbrellas for their cooperation.
The Intelligence Cabal and Ukraine: Lebed Kupchinsky -- Skipalsky- Filin

NB. Speaking of the World Anti-Communist League, the Anti-Bolshevik Block of Nations and the broader Republican "ethnic outreach" program. How important these political-intelligence projects of the 1970s-80s have been for the post-Soviet developments? Is it worth piecing this information together today rather than leaving it in peace for future historians?

VS. The WACL and ABN provided vital historical continuity between the Old Conservative, Nazi and Post-Nazi projects of aggression against the Soviet Union and, after its destruction, against Russia. Besides their obvious propagandist, political, and financial value for Republicans and neocons--these organizations were used by the BCCI and Iran-Contra networks for tax and insurance fraud--these were the training grounds for the younger generation of the ultra-right candidates for a place in the foreign policy establishment and the Intelligence Cabal. For this reason alone, research of the WACL network and its activities is a necessary part of any resistance to these reactionary forces that has a chance for success. And there is more.

We believe that WACL, ABN and their national affiliates served as public fronts for clandestine networks engaged in political intelligence, special operations, and even terrorist activities against the Soviet Union, other socialist countries, and progressive regimes around the world. We also believe that--while the public faces of these two-tier organizations were engaged in the war of words with official Soviet propagandatheir clandestine layers served for an uninterrupted dialog with pro-capitalist and pro-nationalists elements in the Soviet political, military, and intelligence leadership. In other words, we simply cannot understand how the Soviet Union was destroyed without considering the role of these transnational networks of ethnic struggle against socialism and the Soviet Union.

NB. Can you describe how these networks had influenced the political trajectory of post-Soviet Ukraine and give an example of their dialog with the Soviets?

VS. To begin with, we need to keep in mind the existence of two currents of Ukrainian nationalismthe old nationalism of the Diaspora based UNO and the nationalism of the Soviet Ukrainian origin. The latter has always existed on all levels of Ukrainian party and state bureaucracy and this nationalism had been getting stronger as the Soviet bureaucracy evolved ideologically and politically towards open capitalist restoration.

The contacts between these two nationalist formations never stopped and were specially intensive, to the degree of partial osmosis, in the 1940s and 1970s-80s. In the former period, for instance, a number of UPA commanders went over to the Soviet side and were protected by the MGB-KGB. To give some concrete examples, the grandfather of Filin's wife was a UPA commander in the Volhynia Region and took part in the mass murders of Jews and Poles there. In the end of the 1940s, he was arrested and sentenced to 25 years in labor camps but was set free already in the 50s. His son, Filin's father-in-law, became the chairman of a collective farm in Ukraine. Filin's own father carried out forced Ukrainization of the Russian-speaking Eastern Ukraine under Khrushchev.

The CPSU leadership after Stalin was dominated by cadres from the Ukrainian CP, especially under Brezhnev and his Dnepropetrovsk retinue.

The Ukrainian "dissident" movement provided a back channel for discussions and deal-making between Soviet Ukrainian elites and the West.

Ukrainian nationalists are very skilled in penetrating the decision-making political and intelligence groups of U.S. Ultra-Right. So when the Soviet Union was dismantled, the Ukrainian nationalists in the United States moved in full force into Ukraine and, as we now know, were able to shape the political process into the direction of a radically anti-Russian and pro-US orientation. The same story happened in the Baltics and Moldova. But in Ukraine the old radical nationalists, Banderites, from the Diaspora were in a more difficult position because they were associated with the Nazis and U.S. imperialism and people remembered their horrible crimes committed in the 1940s. The majority of Ukrainians were pro-Russian, spoke Russian, had Russian relatives and friends, lived in the common economic space with Russia. Ethnic Russians constituted about 30 percent of Ukraine's population. Heavily pro-Russian was the population of the industrially developed east of the country while the popular base of anti-Russian nationalism was in the rural and backward formerly Polish provinces in the west. The post-communist ruling elite in Ukraineformer communist bosses, industrial and military-industrial management--were not eager to surrender their commanding positions to some crazy Banderites from Chicago and Ontario and to the papists of the Ukrainian Greco-Roman Church. The post-Soviet Ukrainian elites were anti-communist and nationalist, but they were not Russophobic and not ready to turn Ukraine into a front-line Nato state against Russia. So in the early 1990s the Diaspora Banderites found themselves in Ukraine somewhat isolated and with little hope to capture the commanding heights of the Ukrainian state. And here, I think, they were helped by the intelligence networks for which WACL and ABN served as fronts. This photo (below) with the luminaries of the anticommunist international provides some some interesting hints about these networks.

On the left from the top: Slava Stetsko, Roman Zvarych, and Katherine Chumachenko (bottom).

Slava Muzyka-Stetsko was the wife of Yaroslav Stetsko, the head of the self-proclaimed national government in Lwow, that existed for a day or so in July 1941. Slava was a Ukrainian fascist who could teach a few things a hardened Nazi with a pure Arian lineage of 600 years. She served as editor of the ABN and OUN-B publications. In this capacity she wrote a glowing forward to a book, "Captive Nations," with a glossary of political terms, including these entries:

-- Anti-Semitism: A smear word used by Communists against those who effectively oppose and expose them.

-- Fascist: An anti-Communist.

-- Nazi or Hitlerite: An active anti-Communist.

Actually, I agree with Slava on the last two. Reagan was an active Nazi by her definition and objectively speaking.

Roman Zwarycz (in Ukraine -- Zvarych) in the 1980s served as Yaroslav Stesko's personal secretary.

Roman Zwarycz, born in the United States into a Banderite family, personal secretary of the Nazi collaborator Yaroslav Stetsko, WACL operative, Ukrainian minister of justice (2006), personal representative of Yuschenko in the Ukrainian parliament. Falsified his educational record.
Roman Zwarycz, born in the United States into a Banderite family, personal secretary of the Nazi collaborator Yaroslav Stetsko, WACL operative, Ukrainian minister of justice (2006), personal representative of Yuschenko in the Ukrainian parliament. Falsified his educational record.

As to Katherine Chumachenko, President Yushchenko's future wife, she was born and raised in Chicago, where she became a member of a Banderite youth organization and was indoctrinated in the "social-nationalist" ideology of UNO-B. In the 1980s, the nationalists planted Chumachenko in Reagan's White House as Deputy Director for Public Liaison while she was a key official with the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA), the umbrella organization for OUN-B front groups in the U.S.

In the right column from the top yo

[Dawn Meredith]

Interesting and scary articles. But I don't see who Obama is threatening. Saying he is for a more peaceful world is wishful thinking. God how evil this planet is.
Dawn

[Magda Hassan]

It's all relative Dawn. Obama is no radical or peacemonger. He just represents other interests than these guys. He is an obstacle to them.

[Ed Jewett]

Wow!

It's stuff like this that keeps me humble, prevents me from getting smug, reminds me of why I come by this place.

Is there a section, thread or link here that allows one to download more reading time? :coffeescreen:

[Peter Lemkin]

Quite a lot of info there...and lots of work to do on it all. Busy and charming little bunch, with some interesting connections and friends - past and present. Feel like I need to take a shower after reading that thread! Next stop the PDS article on this sewing bee. Interesting, here in Prague when I was teaching at University I had some students from some of the countries named and they were fairly skeptical that anything positive would come of their old/new intelligence agencies or agents....I guess they had a gut feeling of how things are in that part of the world - but the tentacles seem to connect to here, there and everywhere, and through time, as well.