Aftermath News

Former Dircetor of the Council on Foreign Relations, US Vice President Dick Cheney, gives the secret sign (Photo and caption courtesy of We Are Change)

allAfrica.com | Jan 10, 2008

Zimbabwe: How Secret Societies Shape Western Politics

by Mabasa Sasa

IN the foreword to his book, Captains and Kings, Taylor Caldwell dedicates his work to those young men and women disillusioned by the way the world is being run but do not know why or how.

Caldwell’s book tries to outline — through fictional characters — how shadowy societies that purport to be concerned with following economic, political and social trends are actually the prime creators of these trends and that they manipulate these for their own benefit.

Of course, it all sounds like a conspiracy theory, but then again the Taylor Caldwells of this world will tell you that it is a manifestation of the power of secret societies that many people dismiss their existence and influence as the stuff of overworked Hollywood imaginations.

Interestingly though, most — if not all — research into the workings of secret societies has tended to focus on these bodies, that have evolved into veritable institutions in their own right, within the context of occidental civilisation with very little explorations into their linkages — historical and contemporary — with Africa.

A Zimbabwean writer using the pseudonym Kufara Gwenzi has, however, tackled this academic and practical deficiency in the study of secret societies by penning his own research into these bodies and unlike Caldwell’s book, Gwenzi’s work is based on a reality buttressed by meticulous research.

The soon to be published manuscript, titled “Seeing Beyond the Cotton Wool: Understanding the Form and Structure of Caucasian Power” is a breathtaking exploration of secret societies, where they came from, their role in today’s politics and the implications of their existence for countries like Zimbabwe.

But the book goes further and makes a daring suggestion; that it is time Africa started creating such power structures designed to protect our national and continental interests in much the same way institutions like the American Council for Foreign Relations do.

For Gwenzi, this is not a staggering idea considering that secret societies have part of their origins in the works of Pythagoras (582-507 BCE) who was himself a student of African Mystery Society teachings in Egypt for over two decades.

The African Mystery Schools in Ancient Egypt, explains Gwenzi, were aimed at educating and passing on esoteric knowledge from one generation to the next.

Gwenzi writes: “Pharaoh Thutmosis III, who ruled ancient Egypt from 1500-1447 BCE, organised the first esoteric brotherhood of initiates founded upon principles and methods familiar to those perpetuated by the Rosicrucian Order today.

“Moses, a son of the tribe of Levi, educated in Egypt and initiated at Heliopolis, became a High Priest of the Brotherhood under the reign of the Pharaoh Amenhotep. He was elected by the Hebrews as their chief and he adapted to the ideas of his people the science and philosophy which he had obtained in the Egyptian mysteries; proofs of this are to be found in the symbols, in the Initiations, and in his precepts and commandments.

“The wonders which Moses narrates as having taken place upon the Mountain of Sinai, are, in part, a veiled account of the Egyptian initiation which he transmitted to his people when he established a branch of the Egyptian Brotherhood in his country, from which descended the Essenes.”

The narrative gets rather interesting here and it is highly unlikely that it will endear Gwenzi to dogmatists and fundamentalists at all.

The author quotes Manetho, a High Priest at Heliopolis in his work, The History of Egypt, saying the “dogma” of an only God was passed onto Moses by the Egyptian Brotherhood as founded by the Pharaoh who established the first monotheistic religion known to man.

Moses himself admits to this training in Exodus 2:10 (also referred to in Acts 7:22) and Gwenzi contends that he then transmitted this esoteric knowledge to 70 elders as outlined in Numbers 11:24.

Enough of that.

Pythagoras, on being equipped with this knowledge subsequently created his Pythagorean Brotherhood and formulated the principles that were later to influence the thoughts and works of Plato and Aristotle, who are in turn credited with being the ideological fathers of occidental civilisation.

Gwenzi contends that all major civilisations have grown on the back of the activities of secret societies as evidenced by Egypt’s own greatness and the power and influence that Greece had following Pythagoras’ education in Africa.

In Japan, the author contends that “the social, political and economic fabric is premised on the Bushido (Way of the Warrior) Code of the Japanese Samurai. It originates from the Samurai moral code and stresses frugality, loyalty, martial arts mastery and honour till death”.

Chinese civilisation is oft-credited to Confucius and Confucianism in which the principles of order and filial piety are emphasised.

However, it is the manner in which secret societies have evolved and are currently deployed in America and Britain that is of prime concern for Africa and necessitates the creation — or re-creation — of our own similarly unique structures of power and policy control.

In Britain, the emergence of these societies as serious power brokers is tied closely to the monarchy regardless of whether a man or a woman sits on the throne at any given time and presently Queen Elizabeth II serves as the Grand Patroness of the Freemasons.

The British Freemasonic Order functions with a strong brotherhood and “old boys” basis in the fields of law, security and government.

“According to a BBC report,” writes Gwenzi, “more than 200 judges and over 1 000 magistrates in Britain owned up to being Freemasons,” indicating how far-reaching the tentacles of secret societies are.

Gwenzi further contends that America’s founding fathers sought to “recreate in America the same energies which guided the Africans of the Nile Valley by using African science, architecture and symbols (with no credit to them)”.

Hence, eight signatories to the US Declaration of Independence were Freemasons and nine of those who appended their signatures to the founding constitution came from the same secret society.

Masonic orders and other secret societies such as the Rosicrucians and the Illuminati have been patterned after Egypt’s Ancient Mystery Systems and today they form the crux of Western political, economic and social governance.

Various brotherhoods, and now sororities as well, are the recruiting grounds from which secret societies earmark potential future leaders in diverse fields.

They are consequently mentored and moulded from college age to become the type of political, economic and social leaders they are today and that is why no matter which of America’s two large parties is in power the country’s foreign policy objectives remain largely the same.

These fraternities include Skulls and Bones, Scroll and Key, Wolf’s Head, Elihu and Berzelius.

In recent history, William Taft, Prescott Bush, both George Bushes and John Kerry are among leading American politicians who were nurtured by Skull and Bones.

Those who are “educated” through Skull and Bones are well versed in 12 particular areas that include education, use of media as a tool, control of wealth/banking, foreign policy, psychology, religion and even philanthropy among others.

The idea is to ensure continuity and a development projection that suits the needs of their civilisation and those who control it from behind the scenes, which is essentially what the Ancient Egyptians were doing millennia ago.

Gwenzi says: “The Bilderberg Group is reputed to be the most secretive organisation in the world, comprising presidents, royal families, ministers, top industrialists and financial leaders.

“The Bilderberg strictly consists of ‘Western’ elite, i.e. of the United States of America and Europe. It resolutely excludes Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa.”

There is also the insidious Council for Foreign Relations which is a “branch of an international group of a secret group of elite Anglo-Americans that has shaped world events for over 100 years”.

“It operates on the basis that people’s actions are strongly influenced by their knowledge base. People act on their beliefs. You can manipulate a person’s actions by corrupting their knowledge base, warping historical truth, or ignoring it completely.”

Gwenzi says the CFR is the American arm of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, commonly referred to as Chatham House.

Chatham House was created in 1920 by the Rhodes group then known as the Cliveden Set, which was renamed the Round Table Group RTG, named after the British King Arthur, who had a group of political advisors called the Knights of the Round Table.

The eponymous Rothschilds Family — creators of the American Federal Reserve — funded the Round Table Group and its early purpose was to train young political activists and business leaders to be loyal to the British government and do the bidding for the British policy.

They have the monarch as their patron and their “chief financial supporters of Chatham House have been the wealth of South African mining tycoon, Sir Abe Bailey a British (of Jewish origin), and the Astor family (owners of the British Times newspapers). Sir Abe Bailey’s son, James Richard Bailey, was the founder of South African Drum magazine and was married to former British prime minister Winston Churchill’s daughter.”

Apart from the CFR in the US, Chatham House has branches in Canada, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, India and Holland and in these countries they are often called Institutes of Pacific Relations.

It is the people behind these societies-cum-institutions that determine policy and then come up with all the studies and reasons why such policies should be pursued.

They then deploy their awesome artillery through the media and other means to convince people that the chosen path is the best way forward.

This perhaps could explain why the developing world accepted structural adjustment when the best development brains in the world, including World Bank and IMF staff, knew these proscriptions could only lead to disaster for poor countries.

Gwenzi also details how the organisations like the IMF and World Bank function. Ultimately his conclusion is simple: either we come up with our own robust and well-defined structures of power or we will forever be vassal states.

This man says he makes up to £6,000 a week selling babies and children abroad

Telegraph | Jan 27, 2008

By David Harrison

Hundreds of young children are being sold and “trafficked” to Britain from Africa to be exploited as modern-day slaves, it can be revealed.

The illicit trade in children - sold by their parents, some while still babies, to criminal gangs and people traffickers - has been uncovered by a Sunday Telegraph investigation.

An undercover reporter was offered several children for sale by their parents in Nigeria: two boys aged three and five for £5,000, or £2,500 for one, and a 10-month-old baby for £2,000. Teenage girls - including some still pregnant - were willing to sell their babies for less than £1,000.

One international trafficker, tracked down in Lagos, claimed to be buying up to 500 children a year.

Impoverished African parents are being lured by the traffickers’ promises of “a better life” for their children, thousands of miles away in cities including London, Birmingham and Manchester.

But, once brought to Britain, the children are used as a fraudulent means to obtain illicit housing and other welfare benefits, totalling tens of thousands of pounds each a year.

From the age of seven, rather than being sent to school, they are exploited as domestic slaves, forced to work for up to 18 hours a day, cleaning, cooking and looking after other younger children, or put to work in restaurants and shops.

Some of the children are also subjected to physical and sexual abuse, while others even find themselves accused of being witches and become victims of exorcism rites in “traditional” African churches in Britain.

Campaigners called last night for the Government and the police to take “urgent action” to end this “21st century child slavery”.

“These children are being abused under our noses in our own country,” said Chris Beddoe, the director of End Child Prostitution and Trafficking, a British-based coalition of international charities.

“It is totally unacceptable. We need urgent action to identify these children as they enter the UK, find those who are being abused and offer proper protection to those who escape or are freed from their abusers.”

Vernon Coaker, the Home Office minister responsible for the prevention of trafficking, described child traffickers as “evil” and said anybody who could buy and sell babies was “sick”.

But David Davis, the Conservative shadow home secretary, said: “The Government has utterly failed to take decisive action to tackle human trafficking.

“A Conservative government would take a range of practical measures - developed in detail over the last two years - to curb all aspects of this evil trade, which threatens Britain and the most vulnerable in our society.”

A recent survey by the Government’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre claimed that 330 children, including 14 aged under 12, many of them from Africa, had been trafficked to Britain over the past year.

The police and campaigners believe, however, that this is just the “tip of the iceberg” and that the true figure is likely to be in the thousands.

The Sunday Telegraph can reveal how the trade starts more than three thousand miles away in Africa where babies are sold to predatory traffickers, able to persuade desperately poor and often illiterate parents to hand over their children. The children are then sold, at high profit, as “home helps” to African families in Britain and in other European and North American cities.

The traffickers use a network of corrupt officials and co-traffickers to obtain passports and visas, often giving the children new names.

Many of the young victims are flown directly from Lagos in Nigeria to London’s airports. Others are taken, via other west African states such as Ghana and Benin, to “transit” cities, including Paris.

A growing number of the African slave children arrives in Britain unaccompanied, as asylum-seekers, or with “private foster parents”.

Debbie Ariyo, the executive director of the London-based charity Africans Unite Against Child Abuse, said: “This trade is a disgrace. These children are not going to loving homes.

“They are being cynically used by adults as slave labour and to defraud the state and then when they get older and have served their purpose and no longer attract entitled to benefits they are thrown out on to the streets with no papers even to prove who they are. These are damaged, traumatised children and we have to end this misery.”

Campaigners said that many of the slave children - psychologically and often physically damaged at 18 - were thrown out of the houses of their “owners”.

They are left to fend for themselves, usually with no papers or documents to prove who they are. With nowhere to turn, many fall into crime and the sex trade. Those that come to the attention of the authorities when they commit a crime or go to social services for help are usually brusquely deported as illegal immigrants.

The Government will unveil new measures next month aimed at giving more protection to victims of child trafficking.

Mr Coaker said: “We have tightened our visa requirements and our ports of entry and we are gathering intelligence to help us stop this horrific trade.”

A senior Scotland Yard officer said: “The traffickers and the people who buy the children and use them as domestic slaves have no regard for their wellbeing and we are determined to catch those involved in this vile business.

“But this is a hidden crime, going on largely in Britain’s African communities and we would urge people in those communities to contact us if they suspect that any child in their area is being abused. We need their co-operation. They must not turn a blind eye.”

Godwin Morka, the executive director of Lagos’s anti-trafficking unit, Nathip, admitted that child trafficking was “rampant” in many Nigerian states. “We know these children are not going to happy homes and we are doing what we can on limited resources.”

‘Secret billionaire’: Vladimir Putin

Daily Mail | Dec 21, 2007

Russian president Vladimir Putin has amassed a £20billion personal fortune during his time in the Kremlin, it was claimed today.

The money, held in banks in Switzerland and Liechtenstein, is enough to make him Europe’s richest man.

The revelations about his fortune have emerged as Mr Putin prepares to hand over the reins to his chosen successor Dmitry Medvedev.

Mr Putin has said he is willing to serve as prime minister under Mr Medvedev’s presidency.

But the handover has provoked a scramble by Russia’s political elite for control of state assets.

Political expert Stanislav Belkovsky says Mr Putin has holds in three Russian oil and gas companies hidden behind a “non-transparent network of offshore trusts”.

He is alleged to have a 37 per cent stake in Surgutneftegaz, Russia’s third largest oil producer, worth an estimated £10billion, plus 4.5 per cent of Gazprom, and “at least” 75 per cent of Gunvor, a Swiss-based oil trading company.

Gunvor recently posted profits of $8billion (£4billion) on a turnover of $43billion (£21.5billion).

Mr Belkovsky says Mr Putin is worth at least $40billion (£20billion). “Maximum we cannot know.

I suspect there are some businesses I know nothing about,” he told the Guardian.

“It may be more, it may be much more. Putin’s name doesn’t appear on any shareholders’ register, of course.”

The power struggle has led to the emergence of two camps in the Kremlin — the “liberals”, said to include Mr Medvedev, Alisher Usmanov and Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich, and the hardline “siloviki” group who have rallied around Igor Sechin, Mr Putin’s chief of staff.

Insiders say the infighting is not about ideology but who gets control of oil and gas assets.

According to Transparency International, the Putin era has been characterised by “systemic” corruption.

One Russian MP said the “crown jewels” of the country’s wealth has ended up in the hands of Mr Putin’s inner circle.

Mr Medvedev is chairman of Gazprom, while Mr Sechin runs Rosneft.

Other ministers are chairmen of Aerof lot, Russian railways and a nuclear fuel company.

Mr Abramovich has an estimated fortune of £10 billion, making him Europe’s seventh richest man.

Europe’s richest man — if Putin is excluded — is Lakshmi Mittal, the UK-based steel magnate, worth an estimated £19.2billion.

Exclusive testimony from witnesses and victims provides the most in-depth, harrowing account to date of the U.S. security firm’s deadly rampage in Iraq.

Salon.com | Dec. 14, 2007

By Jennifer Daskal

For Khalaf, a 38-year-old Iraqi, Sept. 16 started like many other sunny summer workdays. He donned his police uniform — a white shirt, navy trousers and hat — and headed to Baghdad’s busy Nissour Square. By 7 a.m. he was out in the street, directing the flow of traffic coming from the multi-laned Yarmouk access road into the square. When he spotted four large all-terrain vehicles with guns mounted on top, he did what he always did. He stopped traffic and cleared the area for what he knew, from the tell-tale sign of the two accompanying helicopters, to be a security firm’s convoy.

At first, this seemed completely normal for the totally abnormal world of Baghdad in September 2007. “Convoys are common,” explained Khalaf. But this convoy made an unexpected U-turn, drove the wrong way around the one-way square, stopped in the middle of it and started shooting. Fifteen minutes later, 17 Iraqi civilians were dead, dozens more wounded, and a white sedan that had been engulfed in flames contained two bodies charred beyond recognition.

“It was a horror movie,” said Khalaf, describing the aftermath of the now notorious Blackwater shootings.

I interviewed Khalaf on Nov. 30, in a small conference room inside a hotel in Istanbul, Turkey. In one of the most in-depth collection of testimonials to date regarding Blackwater, Khalaf was among five witnesses and victims flown from Baghdad to meet with Susan Burke, William O’Neil and their team of lawyers and investigators. The team is suing Blackwater on behalf of the victims of the Sept. 16 shooting.

That lethal incident was a watershed moment that brought intense scrutiny to the problems caused by private contractors, which have effectively operated with impunity as they’ve brought violence and widespread ill will to U.S. operations in Iraq.

With experience learned from a similar lawsuit filed two years ago against U.S. contractors implicated in the infamous Abu Ghraib prison scandal, Burke O’Neil is perhaps the only law firm in the nation that could so quickly gather eyewitness and victim accounts, make the right legal arguments and begin the process of holding Blackwater to account.

Sadly, this lawsuit may be the only way that the victims and their families receive remotely adequate compensation for their losses.

Khalaf recounted the events of that day to a hushed room of lawyers with laptops. He watched, he said, as the Blackwater convoy made the U-turn toward the street where he stood directing traffic. As the convoy stopped, Khalaf watched as a large man with a mustache standing atop the third car fired several shots in the air. Khalaf turned back toward the Yarmouk road to see what might have spurred the shooting and heard a woman yell, “My son! My son!” He ran three cars back to a white sedan to find a woman holding a young man slumped over and covered with blood.

The man was Ahmed, a 20-year-old medical student at the top of his class, and the woman his mother, Mohasin, a successful dermatologist and mother of three.

“I tried to help the young man, but his mother was holding him so tight,” said Khalaf. “I raised my left arm high in the air to try to signal to the convoy to stop the shooting,” he said, thinking that it would respond to such a gesture by a police officer. He described how he crouched by the car, his right arm reaching inside, his head out and left arm up in the air, signaling to the convoy, his gun secure in its holster. Then the mother was shot dead before his eyes.

The shooting then turned heavier, Khalaf said, his eyes red-brimmed and serious. He hid behind the police traffic booth, but shots came directly at him, hitting the adjacent traffic light and booth’s door, and he fled back across Yarmouk road to safety behind a hill. Along with a few hundred others, he stayed there as the chaos unfolded, watching as the helicopters circling above the street started shooting at those below.

Fifteen minutes later, the four-car convoy continued around the square and drove away. Amid the wreckage, colorful clouds billowed into the air from the convoy’s parting gift — multicolored smoke bombs.

In remarks prepared for delivery before a congressional hearing in October, Blackwater chairman Erik Prince claimed company guards “returned fire at threatening targets,” including “men with AK-47s firing on the convoy” and “approaching vehicles that appeared to be suicide car bombers.” Prince’s prepared testimony also asserted that one of the vehicles had been disabled by the “enemy fire” and had to be towed. And he contended that the helicopters never fired on those below. (These remarks were never actually delivered; the Department of Justice launched an investigation the day before the hearing and asked the committee not to discuss the details of the Sept. 16 incident. Prince’s remarks were subsequently reported in the Washington Post.)

But the accounts of Khalaf and others contradict each of Prince’s assertions. Khalaf, who was there before the shooting began, said he never saw anyone fire on or approach the convoy. He watched as all four cars drove away as the 15-minute shooting spree ended, and huddled in fear as the helicopters began firing. He thought the helicopters would start spraying those who were hiding behind the hill for safety from the street-level threat.

Khalaf’s observations are backed up by official accounts, including leaked FBI findings, which concluded that at least 14 of the 17 shooting deaths were unjustified, and statements by military officials disputing Blackwater’s claim that its guards had been fired upon or under any sort of attack. The Iraq government’s own investigation found no evidence that the guards had been provoked or attacked, and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s spokesperson called the shootings “deliberate murder.”

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Communist youths in Nepal wave the Hammer and Sickle

Earth Times | Nov 29, 2007

by Sudeshna Sarkar

Kathmandu, Nov 29 - As a historic battle over the fate of embattled King Gyanendra resumes in Nepal’s parliament Thursday, Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala now faces a cut-throat contest with the Communists, the second largest party in his ruling coalition, eyeing the top executive post in the country.

The Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (UML), the traditional rival of Koirala’s Nepali Congress party, is now ready to quit the marriage of convenience it had entered into two years ago in a bid to oppose the king after he seized power with an army-backed coup.

After days of speculation over a secret pact between the Communists and Maoists to sack the king and the prime minister, Madhav Kumar Nepal, chief of the UML and a former deputy prime minister, has now come out in the open about his desire to step into Koirala’s shoes.

‘If I am made prime minister by mid-December, I can hold elections by April and bring lasting peace,’ Nepal said late Wednesday during a popular BBC programme.

Flaying Koirala and his aide home minister Krishna Prasad Sitaula for the deteriorating law and order situation in the country, Nepal said a government led by his party would be able to restore security in the turbulent Terai plains, curb criminal activities and control the Maoists.

Warning of a crisis if the twice-deferred election was not held by April, the Communist leader said during the ‘Sajha Sawal’ programme recorded in Kavre district in central Nepal that a government headed by his party would be able to transform the country in five years.

The no-holds barred Communist attack came on the eve of the resumption of parliament.

On Thursday, the ruling parties and the Maoists will begin anew their battle over Nepal’s two-centuries-old monarchy.

The Maoists, who quit the government in September and blocked the November election, are demanding the immediate abolition of the throne and the adoption of a fully proportional election system.

The demands, which at first seemed doomed to fail, received unexpected backing from UML, and won a simple majority in parliament.

The alliance fuelled reports that the Maoists had in exchange offered to topple Koirala and hand over the premiership to Nepal and created a rift in UML.

The Communist chief’s statements bode a stormy winter session and cast a cloud over the efficacy of the meeting of the top parties to be held Thursday, before parliament convenes, in a last-ditch attempt to thrash out an agreement.

After rising to the helm of Alex. Brown & Sons, the venerable Baltimore investment banking firm, Buzzy Krongard oversaw its acquisition by Bankers Trust in 1997 and left the next year for the C.I.A., as a counselor to George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence. He became executive director, the No. 3 post, in 2001 and helped design the agency’s secret detention program after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Alvin “Buzzy” Krongard, top, and his brother Howard Krongard

NY Times | Nov 17, 2007

By SCOTT SHANE

BALTIMORE, Nov. 16 — They were smart, scrappy brothers who rose from modest circumstances in Baltimore to become lacrosse stars at Princeton, succeed in business and land big government jobs.

Now the Krongard brothers — who have carried childhood nicknames, Buzzy and Cookie, through long careers — are tied up in the tangled story of Blackwater, the security contractor accused in the deaths of at least 17 Iraqis while guarding a State Department convoy in Baghdad.

The shorthand version boils their involvement down to that Washington catchall conflict of interest. The full story appears more complicated, less about cozy nepotism than about family estrangement.

But the concern about a conflict resulted Friday in the resignation of Alvin B. Krongard — Buzzy — from the Blackwater advisory board he had just joined. The company said he hoped to defuse accusations that his ties to the company were causing Howard J. Krongard — Cookie — the State Department inspector general, to go easy on Blackwater.

Alvin Krongard, 71, who left a $4 million-a-year job in investment banking to serve in top posts at the Central Intelligence Agency from 1998 to 2004, played what he describes as a routine role as an intermediary in helping Blackwater get its first big security contract from the agency for guards in Afghanistan in 2002.

A martial arts enthusiast and former Marine who has regaled friends with tales of punching a great white shark while scuba diving, Mr. Krongard said he later became friendly with the company’s founder, Erik D. Prince. They have hunted near Blackwater’s North Carolina training ground and at Mr. Krongard’s hunting club in Maryland.

Meanwhile, Howard Krongard, 66, a former general counsel at the accounting firm of Deloitte & Touche who took the State Department job in 2005, was grilled this week by House Democrats. They accused Mr. Krongard (who does not use his nickname professionally, as his brother does) of alienating his staff and improperly interfering in investigations, including a Justice Department inquiry into allegations of weapons smuggling by Blackwater employees.

Hence Representative Henry A. Waxman’s disclosure at a hearing Wednesday, the latest in a string of revelations the California Democrat has used to torment the Bush administration.

“We have now learned that Mr. Krongard’s brother, Buzzy Krongard, serves on Blackwater’s advisory board,” Mr. Waxman declared, saying the inspector general had “concealed this apparent conflict of interest.”

Howard Krongard grew indignant, saying his brother had no ties to Blackwater.

“When these ugly rumors started recently, I specifically asked him,” he said. “I do not believe it is true that he is a member of the advisory board.”

Then came a break, and Howard phoned his older brother. Buzzy told Howard he had just returned from his first Blackwater advisory board meeting in Williamsburg, Va.

A chagrined Howard Krongard returned to the witness stand. “I want to state on the record right now that I hereby recuse myself from any matters having to do with Blackwater,” he said.

Howard Krongard has also disqualified himself from an inquiry into the construction of the American Embassy in Baghdad, and subordinates have lambasted him for what they called abusive and erratic conduct. John A. DeDona, Howard’s assistant for investigations until August, said in an interview that he believed top State Department officials had influenced the inspector general to back away from tough investigations, including that of Blackwater, which diplomats depend on for protection in Iraq under a $1.2 billion contract.

At the hearing, Howard Krongard, who did not respond to a request for an interview for this article, described himself as an apolitical auditing lawyer whose reforms have met resistance from subordinates who resent supervision. “I want to say in the strongest terms that I have never impeded any investigation,” he told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

From a distance, events might suggest that Mr. Prince chose to recruit Buzzy Krongard to curry favor with Howard Krongard and blunt any inquiry into Blackwater. But if that was Mr. Prince’s strategy, his intelligence was gravely flawed, according to people who know the family.

The Krongard brothers barely speak, friends say. In fact, Howard appears to be estranged from several family members, including his son Kenneth, whom he sued last year over a home loan. And Buzzy Krongard has said that when Howard called him a few weeks ago as he prepared his testimony, it was their first conversation in months.

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Related

FBI finds Blackwater Iraq shootings unjustified
FBI agents investigating the Sept. 16 episode in which Blackwater security guards shot and killed 17 Iraqi civilians have found that at least 14 of the shootings were unjustified, The New York Times reported on Tuesday. The FBI investigation into the shootings in Baghdad is still under way, but the findings, which indicate that the company’s employees violated deadly force rules in effect for security contractors in Iraq, are already under review by the Justice Department, the newspaper said.

Blackwater’s Owner Has Spies for Hire
Ex-U.S. Intelligence Operatives Dot Firm’s Roster
Total Intelligence Solutions, has assembled a roster of former spooks — high-ranking figures from agencies such as the CIA and defense intelligence — that mirrors the slate of former military officials who run Blackwater. Its chairman is Cofer Black, the former head of counterterrorism at CIA known for his leading role in many of the agency’s more controversial programs, including the rendition and interrogation of al-Qaeda suspects and the detention of some of them in secret prisons overseas.

September 6-10, 2001: Suspicious Trading of Put Option Contracts on American and United Airlines Occur
“To the embarrassment of investigators, it has also [learned] that the firm used to buy many of the ‘put’ options… on United Airlines stock was headed until 1998 by ‘Buzzy’ Krongard, now executive director of the CIA.” Krongard was chairman of Alex Brown Inc., which was bought by Deutsche Bank. “His last post before resigning to take his senior role in the CIA was to head Bankers Trust—Alex Brown’s private client business, dealing with the accounts and investments of wealthy customers around the world.”

The CIA
The founding fathers of the CIA William “Wild Bill” Donovan and Allen Dulles, were both prominent Roman Catholics, and members of the secret society the “Knights of Malta”. A.B.”Buzzy” Krongard’s appointment to the top of the CIA pyramid by George Bush Jnr., after a long career in investment banking, once again illustrates who’s interests the CIA is serving. The 68 year old Krongard recently boasted to the Washington Post “the whole OSS was nothing but Wall St. bankers and lawyers”. He fails to mention that many of these bankers and lawyers were ardent political and financial supporters of the Nazis - who were perceived as an ally against the ideology of communism - regardless of their methods and beliefs.

PROJECT HAMMER RELOADED
Vanguard appear to change their banking relationships from time to time. At the time Serras was in contact with van Rooyen, their relationship was with Morgan Stanley & Co. Today it is with the Bank of New York, Inc – itself no stranger to front-page scandals involving money-laundering activities for Russian crime syndicates and political figures.[50] Of interest is the fact that Vanguard was earlier affiliated with Buzzy Krongard’s old firm, Alex Brown - which had changed its name following the take over of Bankers Trust by Germany’s Deutsche Bank - to Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown Inc. It is now Deutsche Bank Securities Inc.

Britain Accused Over CIA’s Secret Torture Flights
No one really knows what happens in the rendition process or in the gulag of secret CIA hellholes

Alvin “Buzzy” Krongard, was a Blackwater board member

State Dept. IG Recuses Himself From Blackwater Case After Family Link Revealed

ABC NEWS | Nov 14, 2007

By MATTHEW JAFFE
In a dramatic turn of events on Capitol Hill today, the State Department inspector general recused himself from all Blackwater-related issues after admitting to Congress that his brother served on the private security contractor’s advisory board.

After initially rejecting allegations that his brother, Alvin “Buzzy” Krongard, was a Blackwater board member, Howard Krongard later told lawmakers that his brother was in fact on the board.

The State Department has come under fire in recent months for its oversight of the embattled private security firm, which protects U.S. diplomats in Iraq. Blackwater was involved in a Sept. 16 shooting in Baghdad that left 17 Iraqis dead, an incident the FBI is currently investigating.

Chairman Henry Waxman of California began the House Oversight Committee hearing by stating that “we have now learned that Mr. Krongard’s brother, Buzzy Krongard, serves on Blackwater’s advisory board.”

Inspector General Refutes Allegations

The Inspector General immediately refuted the allegations.

“I can tell you, very frankly, I am not aware of any financial interest or position he has with respect to Blackwater,” Howard Krongard said. “When these ugly rumors started recently, I specifically asked him. I do not believe it is true that he is a member of the advisory board that you stated. And that’s something I think I need to say.”

However, Democrats then produced a July 26 letter in which Erik Prince, Blackwater’s founder and CEO, invited Buzzy Krongard, a former top CIA official, to join Blackwater’s advisory board, followed by a Sept. 5 letter in which Prince welcomed Krongard to the board. Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., told the inspector general that Buzz Krongard was even scheduled to attend a Blackwater board meeting earlier this week in Williamsburg, Va.. Howard Krongard then promised to recuse himself from Blackwater-related issues if his brother was a board member.

A Surprising Turn of Events

An hour later, after a brief recess, the inspector general did just that.

“During the break, I did contact my brother,” Krongard said. “I learned that he had been at the advisory board meeting yesterday. I had not been aware of that. And I want to state on the record right now that I hereby recuse myself from any matters having to do with Blackwater.”

Krongard testified that he had spoken to his brother about Blackwater approximately five or six weeks ago, and that their conversation focused on allegations that Buzzy Krongard had a “significant financial interest in Blackwater.”

“I’m not my brother’s keeper, and we do not discuss our business with each other,” Howard Krongard said, adding that “we have gone to great lengths to keep our professional experiences separate because of his position and because of my position.”

Rep. Stephen Lynch, D.-Mass., then suggested that “we ought to subpoena Buzzy and get him in here and testify as to his conduct and his conversation with his brother.”

Krongard’s Republican Defenders Taken Aback

One of Krongard’s most vocal supporters, Rep. Chris Shays, R-Conn., who called him “an honorable man” and apologized to him for being “trashed by this committee,” said that he would be “one pretty unhappy guy” if he were in Krongard’s position.

“To have been in contact with your brother and to have your brother tell you that he was not involved in Blackwater and then to find out at a hearing that he actually attended and then left, and to find out he’s connected, is a pretty outrageous thing. He has done you tremendous damage by that,” Shays said.

“Wouldn’t it make sense, given your position, to have been upfront with your brother, to say, ‘Since I investigate everything the State Department does, I need to know any contact that you have, because I need to recuse myself,’” Shays said. “Now, the other argument could be, ‘Don’t tell me anything you have, because then I’m not in conflict.’ But the problem is nobody’s going to believe you, frankly.”

Krongard was also grilled by lawmakers about other allegations made by seven current and former officials in the IG’s office during the course of Waxman’s two-month investigation, such as “inadequate oversight of the construction of the Baghdad embassy,” “refusal to pursue charges of procurement fraud implicating Dyncorp,” and “failure to assist a Justice Department investigation of Blackwater for arms smuggling.”

Waxman called Krongard’s reign as inspector general is one of “reckless incompetence,” but Republicans defended him against what Shays called “salacious allegations,” “personal attacks,” and “shallow, drive-by assaults.” The harshest criticisms that Republicans directed at Krongard were in a staff report that denounced his “extraordinarily abusive management style.”

Krongard admitted that he “sometimes clashed with a minority of people in [his office] that were resistant to change” but was adamant that he “never had any political ties whatsoever,” has “never met or spoken with the president or any other person in the White House” and has “never impeded any investigation.”

…

Related

Suppressed Details of Criminal Insider Trading Lead Directly into the CIA’s Highest Ranks

CIA Executive Director “Buzzy” Krongard managed firm that handled “PUT” options on United Airline Stock

Hollywood recently released the first behind-the-curtain account of the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency and its relationship with a secret society at Yale University known as Skull and Bones. HIGH TIMES asked the world’s leading authority on the group to help us separate truth from fiction.

High Times | Nov 2007

By Kris Millegan

I hope you are lucky enough to meet someone you trust. I regret to say. I haven’t.

-Dr, Fredricks [Michael Gambon] in The Good Shepherd

The Good Shepherd is Robert De Niro’s effort to mine the dramatic materials at the very real-life nexus of secret societies, intelligence agencies and recorded history, apparently in an attempt to forge a Godfather-style franchise.

But one is left wincing at the thought of The Good Shepherd.  Part II, given that the film begins and ends with the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and its aftermath, with the assassination of JFK and its attendant wilderness of conspiracy lurking just over the horizon, Will the “right people” end up washing the blood off their hands in a sequel, laying the action off on some mob operation gone rogue, which then had to be covered up for “the good of the country”? All just an honest mistake….

But I seem to be getting ahead of myself. I have often been asked. ‘What do you think of the movie The Good Shepherd? And the best response I could usually offer was: “Well. I haven’t seen it yet.” I’d been aware of the film for several years, and followed its progress to the silver screen, but I don’t get out much. Then, finally, the DVD version of the film wound its way to our local store, and I picked up a copy to see what I could find.  My first viewing brought up a host of indignant furies, all riled at the historical hubris of the tale and the simple fact that most of the characters in it and even the film’s central story of betrayal are amalgamations at best, and total confabulations at worst. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that you shouldn’t watch this movie, As a matter of fact. I recommend it highly — but with caveats, as will soon become clear.

Similar emotions were probably experienced by the relatives of Mafia members when The Godfather came out: contempt for its errors, but still a satisfaction at seeing a film with some semblance of reality, accurately portraying the Mafia’s attitudes, atmosphere and activities while, at the same time, exposing a very tragic and very real group that plays by its own rules and affects us all … immensely. Being an intelligence brat. I can only speak about The Good Shepherd, but if you’re interested in the views of Mafia whelps. I suggest reading Mafia Princess by Antoinette Giancana, or maybe watching some Growing Up Gotti on A&E.

But then, my own dad wasn’t a big boss; he was just a lesser boss, someone who had been in some very interesting places at some very interesting times, which had given him an overview of the agency beyond the standard compartmentalization. The last overt job that my father, Lloyd S. Millegan, had with the CIA was serving as a branch chief, the head of the East Asia Research Analysis Office. Before that, he’d been in the Office of Strategic Services (0SS) and a few of the other alpha-named agencies that eventually morphed into the CIA. After his initial contact with the intelligence community in 1936. as an 18-year-old exchange student at the University of Shanghai. He joined the OSS before World War II. In 1943, he entered the world of deep politics, “monitoring” Gen, Douglas MacArthur and his staff for the OSS and its boss, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Dad had many interesting adventures in those days, including running guerrillas and (ironically) getting sued by the Japanese government for his actions in sequestering the Japanese-puppet Filipino government’s library during the Battle of Manila, before the US troops arrived there in 1945.

My father quit the CIA in 1959. He’d already started toward the exit after a trip to South Vietnam in 1956, where he’d met an interesting real-life character named Edwin Lansdale, who could conceivably play a big part in The Good Shepard. Part II [assuming there is one], and who had recently taken control of the opium trade in the Golden Triangle, Dad started talking to me about all this in 1969, which led me to begin exploring a phenomenon that officially doesn’t exist: CIA involvement in narco-trafficking.

Which leads to my biggest beef with the film: Instead of touching on the CIA’s illicit drug-trade connections, now well documented as going back to the early postwar era, the story offers up the standard Hollywood-cliche mole maze, set against the disingenuous dialectic of the Cold War. Thus, the first major sin of The Good Shepherd is one of omission: no mention of the long-standing role that drug trafficking has played in the agency’s arsenal of “dirty tricks.”

Nonetheless, it is through the routine spy story that the movie interjects one of its greatest truths, albeit through the lips of a tortured Russian defector stoned on LSD:

Soviet power is a myth, a great joke. There are no spare parts; nothing is working — nothing. It’s nothing but painted rust. But you, you need to keep the Russian myth alive to maintain your military-industrial complex. Your system depends on Russia being perceived as a mortal threat. It’s not a threat. It was never a threat. It will never be a threat. It is a rotted, bloated cow.

How might this sobering fact be received by the audience, coming as it does from the mouth of an enemy agent tripped out on acid, appearing in a fictional film based upon an unreliable chronicle? Might it just covertly confirm the reality that many know to be true — but without causing the uproar that such a significant revelation should engender?

Around this real-life charade revolve some other themes of the movie, leaving us with an insight into Napoleon’s famous dictum: History is a set of lies agreed upon. For when even “honorable” men lie, who is trustworthy? What is real? Are our secrets safe? Do secrets give us safety? And at what cost?

My good friend Antony Sutton was ostracized from academia for uncovering the truth that forces in the West had been propping up the USSR since its inception, there even having been surreptitious Western help in producing the war materiel that was used to kill American soldiers in the Vietnam War. Tony demanded that the evidence he’d gathered be published. He was instead warned, “not to break his rice bowl.”            .

Finally, to force the issue, Tony released his own book. He was unceremoniously tossed out of the Hoover Institute at Stanford for this act of courage. His career was ruined, his family became estranged and his integrity was betrayed — but because of Sutton’s act of righteous defiance in 1973, there is cold, hard proof of what the psychedelicized Soviet agent sagaciously spouts in this 21st-century morality play.

Will the film’s revelation of this manipulation of public opinion — this strategy of tension, this “playing” of a false Soviet threat — be trumpeted, trumped or simply filed away among the many other “facts” of the day? For this speaks deeply to our common perceived reality and shared experiences — especially of boomers, who as young children were being shoved under desks for “protection,” in a world about to be blown to smithereens … over ideology.

Antony Sutton paid the disgraceful price of being ridiculed by many, then ignored for the rest of his life. Deftly pigeonholed, his effort at speaking truth to power was sullied, entering the common discourse as per the Big Lie axiom:  The truth must be available, but only in a way that makes it easily discarded.

Soon, the only place that a person could find Tony’s books was in a John Birch Society bookstore, which for most people immediately tainted what he had to say. Tony was never a member and abhorred the group. Interestingly, when researching the JBS, a person finds a very, convoluted history — one with spook fingerprints all over it. (Was part of the JBS’s operational capability to associate conspiracy research with the domain of wacky old white men concerned about precious bodily fluids, Commie boogiemen and such?)

Which leads us to another grim reality disclosed within this Hollywood fantasy: the very real manipulation of the Fourth Estate, and thus our collective civic understandings and abilities, by intelligence agencies, political hacks, corporate flacks and bureaucrats using propaganda techniques to spin “truth out of lies.”

In The Good Shepherd, the following is spoken by Phillip Allen (William Hurt] as he hands off the film’s protagonist, Edward Wilson (Matt Damon], to Wilson’s English handler in wartime 1941 London:

You are going to have to learn, and as quickly and thoroughly as possible, the English system of intelligence, the black arts, particularly counterintelligence — the uses of information, disinformation, and how their use is ultimately … power. They have agreed to open up their operations to us — they can’t win the war without us — but they don’t really want us here…. Intelligence is their mother’s milk, and they don’t like sharing the royal tit with people that don’t have titles.

Phillip Allen is clearly patterned, at least in part, after longtime CIA chief Allen Dulles, especially since, in the movie, Allen resigns — as Dulles did in real life — after the failed Bay of Pigs operation in 1961.

Philip Allen is also supposed to be a member of Skull and Bones’ class of 1912, and the top three guys at the agency in the movie are Bonesmen, which is historically inaccurate. This is not to say that Yale and its secret-society system — especially Bones — haven’t played a huge part in the structure and execution of our country’s intelligence operations, for they have, and of course Allen Dulles was part of this power establishment. So, even by Hollywood’s historical standards, this is in the right ballpark.

But for me, many features of Phillip Allen also evoke Bonesman Prescott Bush, the grandfather of the current Bonesman in the White House, and the father of another member of Skull and Bones: the former head of the CIA and ex-president, George HW. Bush.

For Prescott Bush was more than an investment banker for the Nazis (read: the creation of an enemy) who later became a US senator, partly through the suppression of the news that the companies he’d run had been seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act. Prescott had begun working with the intelligence community during World War I, and he maintained those contacts until his death. Also, Prescott Bush raised money for — and was on the board of directors of — the CBS television network, which was founded by William Paley, the former deputy chief for psychological-warfare operations on the staff of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower.

And, probably most telling, Prescott — along with his son, Prescott Jr.; future CIA director William Casey; and corporate economist and intelligence gadfly Leo Cherne — founded the National Strategy Information Center (NSIC) in 1962. Some of NSIC’s early funding went to the London-based World Forum Features, which in turn circulated CIA-authored disinformation and manipulative news articles worldwide. They hoped that the “news” from these articles would subsequently be picked up and reported as fact by the US media, a process that spooks call “blowback.”

Other material discrepancies in the film abound, such as putting the wrong dates on several scenes of historical fact; books appearing in the movie before their print date; and city buses full of people going to work on Sundays. And, as students of deep politics know, the real story of the Bay of Pigs is this: JFK went to bed the night before having given the okay for the necessary air support for the invasion. That directive was then “bungled” by presidential advisor and Skull and Bones member McGeorge Bundy, because the Bay of Pigs “invasion” was a planned debacle, leaving in place a convenient “enemy” to rattle fear in American souls and dollars out of the US treasury. It also gave operational cover for other adventures and tied an albatross around the new president’s neck.

The reality is much stranger than the fiction. In fact, the essence of this might be suggested by some words spoken by De Niro’s character, Gen. William ‘Wild Bill” Sullivan, the first director of the OSS: “I am concerned that too much power will end up in the hands of too few…. It’s always in somebody’s best interest to promote enemies — real or imagined.” The reality has surpassed the cine-fiction. How far? Well….

“[M]en linked to the structures of United States intelligence” was how an Italian Senate investigation described the perpetrators of the 1980 Bologna train bombing, an act of terrorism that killed 85 people and injured over 200. The bombing was part of a series of actions carried out over many years in Italy, targeting the political left by essentially blaming and demonizing it for acts done covertly by agents of the right. The plan, part of Operation Gladio, sought to terrorize the populace into voting for strong right-wing governments in order to suppress the left.

“You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from the political game. The reason was quite simple: to force … the public to turn to the state to ask for greater security” was how Operation Gladio participant Vincenzo Vinciguerra put it later during his testimony to Italian authorities.

Operation Gladio, which was initially sold as a “stay-behind force” in case of the Communist takeover of Western Europe, was instead used for psychological warfare and political manipulation. Terrorism, assassination and subverting the electoral process were just a few of the deeds carried out using fascist elements, cult members, secret government agents, gangsters and covert military units.

Similarly, in Belgium, after large public protests over the nuclear-tipped missiles being based in their country, a “state security destabilization operation” was undertaken — as one participant called the series of mass killings in the mid-1980s dubbed the “Supermarket Massacres.” Investigations by the Belgian parliament determined that the goal was to instill fear and discord, trigger repressive measures, and create the pretext for stricter state control. The killers were later linked to state security, neo-Nazi groups and even to Wackenhut, a firm with US intelligence ties.

Operation Northwood was another “false flag” terrorist operation, this time emanating from the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the US Department of Defense via a study-group report entitled “Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba,” The scheme was backed by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer, with the Joint Chiefs specifically supporting a proposal to down an aircraft supposedly carrying” college students off on a holiday,”

James Bamford, in his 2001 book Body of Secrets, wrote: “Operation Northwoods had the written approval of the Chairman and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for innocent people to be shot on American streets; for boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami, and elsewhere. People would be framed for bombings they did not commit; planes would be hijacked. Using phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus giving Lemnitzer and his cabal the excuse, as well as the public and international backing, they needed to launch their war,”

How much of our history is simply psychological warfare, including the traumatizing of the masses through fear, the creation of false enemies, media manipulation, electoral theft and other terrorist acts, all done as a means to an end?

“[A] mind-set that thrives on secrecy and deception … encourages professional amorality — the belief that righteous goals can be achieved through the use of unprincipled and normally unacceptable means,” wrote ex-CIA officer Victor Marchetti in his book The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. And my ex-CIA father, in a 1979 newspaper interview, stated: “When you work for the CIA, the ends justify the means.”

Is that the brutal reality behind the horrific acts of Sept. 11, 2001? Was this watershed event a managed tragedy, an occult means to invoke repression and war? Are Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda the strategic invention of yet another enemy in a long series of created malefactors? Is it possible for us to learn and then change the way of world from the enlightened dialogue of the silver screen?

Everything that seems clear is bent and everything that seems bent is clear. Trapped in reflections, you must learn to recognize when a lie masquerades as a truth….

—Dr. Fredricks, in The Good Shepherd

So, as the Romans used to say, caveat lector! Let the reader beware —or, in other words, pay attention, and don’t believe everything you read (or see, or hear). Please hearken to those words of wisdom, but do not attempt to pass a history exam having watched The Good Shepherd … at least in my class.

* Mafia turns over 7 per cent of Italy’s economy

* Fees close 165,000 businesses in three years

news.com.au | Oct 25, 2007

The Mafia in Italy is now a $140 billion industry

By Michael Day in Milan

Extortion, loan-sharking, drugs and prostitution have a total annual turnover of $140 billion, a report reveals.

The report by Confesercenti, Italy’s leading retail association, says mafia influence is spreading further into industry and commerce.

“Italy’s leading businesses, particularly those involved in civic construction, would rather make pacts with the mafia than denounce blackmail,” a spokesman said.

“And it’s clear why - it’s easier this way.”

The mob’s grip is strongest in the south, in areas such as Sicily, the Bay of Naples, Calabria and Puglia.

In these areas up to eight out of 10 businesses pay extortion money under threat of violence or arson.

But observers believe it is impossible to gain accurate figures as so little extortion is reported to police.

Last month, a group of business leaders threatened to expel members known to have paid the extortion money.

But few believe such threats will make inroads into protection rackets.

Extortion fees closing businesses

The report said extortion had caused 165,000 businesses and 50,000 hotels to close in three years.

Mobile phone operator 3 has said it often preferred not to open stores rather than pay protection money.

Deputy interior minister Marco Minniti said the growth of mafia business crime was alarming.

In recent years, small numbers of merchants, factory owners and industrialists who have denounced extortion attempts by mobsters have seen their businesses torched or company vehicles damaged.

A couple of businessmen in the past decade have been killed for having defied the mafia about paying the money.

Many businessmen in Italy’s underdeveloped south have long considered the “pizzo” a kind of unavoidable “tax” to pay.

The report said the mafia was particularly active in public works, where gangs control many of the workmen on construction sites.

The report alleged that Impregilo, Italy’s biggest engineering company, Condotte SpA, a water pipeline company and Italcementi, Europe’s largest cement group, all pay off the mafia.

Spokesmen for all three companies denied the charges.

The omnipresence of the mafia was underlined yesterday in Rome by a police raid on the headquarters of Made in Italy, a company charged with illegally laundering $685 million.

Its office was discovered to be directly in front of Palazzo Chigi, where government Cabinet meetings take place.

Conspiracy Archive | Oct 6th, 2007

by Paul & Phillip D. Collins

When it was discovered that money from Saudi Princess Haifa bint Faisal had found its way, into the hands of Al Qaeda operative and advance man for the 9/11 hijackers Omar al-Bayoumi, the Saudi Princess put forward one of the worst alibis ever concocted. Princess Haifa claimed that she was giving the money to a woman named Majeda Ibrahin Dweikat so she could treat her thyroid condition (”The Saudi Money Trail,” no pagination). The good Princess claimed she had no idea that Majeda and her husband, Omar Basnan, were passing the money to Omar al-Bayoumi (no pagination).

The problem is that Majeda’s husband, Osama Basnan, was known to be a “vocal Al-Qaeda sympathizer” (no pagination). According to a law enforcement official, shortly after the 9/11 attacks, Basnan “celebrated the heroes of September 11″ and referred to September 11 as a “wonderful, glorious day” (no pagination). Basnan is also known to have “met with a high Saudi prince who has responsibilities for intelligence matters and is known to bring suitcases full of cash into the United States” (no pagination). Princess Haifa also connected to Omar al-Bayoumi through her husband, Prince Bandar bin Sultan. Omar al-Bayoumi had worked for Dallah Avco, the aviation services company owned by Prince Bandar’s father, Prince Sultan (no pagination). All of this seemed to suggest that more connected Princess Haifa to Omar al-Bayoumi than just unintended charity.

However, the 9/11 Commission accepted Princess Faisal’s alibi at face value. Why did the Commission give thumbs-up to such a flimsy explanation? The Commission never intended to find the truth behind 9/11. Its job was to cover up the fact that the United States government and the American aristocracy were intimately tied to the amalgam of terrorist financiers and criminals collectively referred to as the Saudi elite or Saudi Royals. This alliance goes back to the birth of the modern state of Saudi Arabia. This genesis story doesn’t begin with a charismatic Arab leader, but with a member of British intelligence: St. John Philby, known also as Jack Philby.

Jack Philby: Saudi Arabia’s Founding Father

Many people are more acquainted with Jack Philby’s son, the notorious Communist double agent, Harold Adrian Russell Philby, also known as Kim Philby. However, Jack’s story is no less important. Jack could be considered the founding father of Saudi Arabia. Jack Philby was a British Civil Servant who was dismissed for sexual misconduct (Loftus and Aarons 25). From there Jack was picked up by British secret service MI6 in 1915 (25). The British secret service was known for its anti-Jewish ranks that viewed all Jews as secret communists (31-2). The anti-Jewish sentiments found in the British secret service had trickled down from the British power elite.

The British saw the Balfour Declaration as merely a foreign propaganda tool meant to get American military support during World War 1 (29). The British actually favored more of an Arab presence in the Palestine territory with a small Jewish minority to placate America (29). This is why the Balfour Declaration of 1917 promised that Palestine would be “a national home” as opposed to “the national home” for the Jews (29). The Balfour Declaration’s language would allow for a situation where the Jews would be insignificant in the Middle East.

Jack’s involvement in British secret service probably helped shape his anti-Jewish mindset. John Loftus and Mark Aarons elaborates:

During the early 1920s, Philby and his secret service colleagues did everything they could to undercut Zionist immigration. Philby’s secret service station organized anti-Jewish propaganda in Palestine. To be fair, he was merely carrying out a policy organized by his predecessors to stir up the Arabs against the Jews. According to several of our sources, Great Britain was the first modern country to use its intelligence service to organize terrorist acts against the Jews. (33)

However, Jack was more than just a Jew-hater. Philby’s fanaticism went much further than the fanaticism of his colleagues in MI6 or the British power elite. While the British power elite and MI6 were anti-Jewish, they were still not supportive of Arab self-determination and political independence. From the perspective of the British oligarchs and MI6, the Arab world was to be divided into French and British spheres of influence.

The secret Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 was concocted for just this purpose (28-9). Jack Philby was fanatically pro-Arab. In 1917, Jack met with the chieftain of the Wahhabi sect, Ibn Saud (30). This was supposed to be just a minor political mission, but what came out of it was an alliance between Jack and Ibn Saud as well as Philby’s adoption of Wahhabism (30-1). Philby passed intelligence information to Ibn Saud that allowed the House of Saud to defeat Sharif Hussein and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was born (35).

Did Jack Philby help found Saudi Arabia on behalf of the British power elite and MI6? In all likelihood, the answer is no. Philby’s support of Ibn Saud was motivated by his hatred for Britain. When Philby realized that British promises of Arab independence were not genuine, he broke politically with England (28). Still, Philby’s pro-Arab fanaticism buttressed the British power elite’s anti-Jewish agenda. While he may have been a renegade, Jack Philby’s work seemed to always help one or more faction of the power elite. This included the American elite. With the aid of Allen Dulles, Jack Philby would connect the Saudi elite to American elite.
Dulles, Big Oil, and ARAMCO

In the 1930s, Philby was able to convince Ibn Saud to allow foreign investment in the Kingdom in the name of discovering oil. Philby convinced Ibn Saud to allow Charles Crane to facilitate exploration of Saudi Arabia’s subsoil assets (42). In 1933, Standard Oil of California (SOCAL) negotiated with Philby for a 60-year contract that allowed SOCAL to have exclusive rights to explore and extract oil (42-3). This was the beginning of what would become the Arabian-American Oil Company (ARAMCO). The U.S. State Department classifies ARAMCO as the richest commercial prize in the history of the planet (”St. John Philby,” no pagination).

A key player in the creation of ARAMCO was Dulles ally James Forrestal. Forrestal brought SOCAL and Texaco together in an agreement that formed Caltex, the parent company of ARAMCO (Loftus and Aarons 63). James Forrestal’s ties to the Dulles brothers were extremely important. Not only was the Dulles brothers agents of the power elite, but Allen Dulles had also been in a criminal relationship with Jack Philby since 1921 (39). In that year, Philby, who was then the secret service head of intelligence for Transjordan, met Allen, who was then stationed in Istanbul (39). Allen helped Jack guarantee the economic and political survival of Ibn Saud through his connections to American oil companies (38). Together, Philby and Dulles helped build the modern state of Saudi Arabia and connect the American elite to the Saudi elite.
The 9/11 Cover-Up

A real inquiry into the September 11th attacks would have proven disastrous for the American power elite. A genuine investigation would have revealed that the Saudi elite had their hands all over the attacks. This would have led to a deeper examination of the Saudi elite, which would have revealed that the American power elite has been connected to the Saudi criminal and conspiratorial infrastructure since Philby and Dulles created it.

A bogus investigation had to be concocted. The first indication of a cover-up came when President Bush attempted to appoint Henry Kissinger to head the 9/11 Commission. Kissinger’s consulting firm, Kissinger Associates, has had dealings with Saudi Arabia in the past (Scheer, no pagination). When the public and activists raised the roof over this move, Henry was replaced with Thomas Kean. Kean is the director of oil giant Amerada Hess (Hicks 76). At the time of the 9/11 hearings Amerada Hess was conducting a joint venture with the Saudi Arabian oil company Delta Oil (76). The idea that Kean would follow the Saudi money trail of 9/11 was laughable.
Conclusion

The political landscape is filled with many discomforting truths that the common man must wrap his head around. One of those truths is that those who claim to be defending us are in bed with the very forces they claim to be defending us from. The connection between the American elite and the Saudi elite illustrates this point. It is time to take responsibility for our own protection, instead of leaving it in the hands of those who see us as cattle to be harvested.

References