Smirk and Sneer serve their masters well, evidenced by what they did to Valerie Plame...
AMERICAN JUDAS
Selling the Security of America and the World for 30 Pieces of SilverBy
Robert Paulsen
Compiled From the Research by Posters on “The Plame Indictment Threads”
At democraticunderground.com
1st Edition
A. Introduction
This paper is intended as a supplement to The Waterman Paper and an exploration into Goal #3: Why Cheney Exposed Plame. It involves researching possible connections between businesses connected to Vice President Dick Cheney that may be associated with the sale of WMD components to countries in the Middle East and Asia.
In addition to reviewing known information regarding the “leaking” of CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity and the nature of her work, there will be an overview of A.Q. Khan’s network of nuclear proliferation, a listing of compromising positions involving financial ties in Cheney’s past and finally an exploration into possible links connecting Cheney to nuclear proliferation markets for profit.
All evidence shall be cited in a source guide available upon request.
B. Valerie Plame’s “Sting Operation”
On July 14,2003, Robert Novak exposed Valerie Plame’s identity as a CIA agent in his syndicated column. He sourced his story to two senior White House officials.(
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0602/p08s02-comv.html ) It is important to understand that, as Plame’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson says, “Compromising the officer means compromising a career, a network, and every person with who the officer might have ever worked. Slips of the tongue cost people their lives.”(The Politics of Truth by Joseph Wilson, p. 13.)
What was the nature of this career, this network that was compromised? Joe Klein hints at the broad outlines of this nature. “Furthermore, there is intense anger over the White House’s revealing the identity of Plame, who may have been active in a sting operation involving the trafficking of WMD components.”(
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,1101040705-658343,00.html )
According to Wayne Madsen, the cover company that Plame was connected with was a CIA firm called Brewster, Jennings & Associates. “Active since 1994, Brewster-Jennings was instrumental in tracking the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and had agents or correspondents in a number of countries…Sensitive CIA operations that were compromised by the leak included companies, government officials, and individuals associated with the nuclear smuggling network of Pakistan’s chief nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.”(
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/062504_grand_jury.shtml )
Yet in spite of, or perhaps as a result of, the compromises resulting from the leak, the CIA helped expose Khan’s network, according to Newsweek.. It involves a CIA investigation into a company in Malaysia called Scomi connected with an A.Q. Khan “middleman” named Bukhari Sayed Abu Tahir. Last August, the company's name was found stamped in bold letters on five crates of centrifuge parts seized en route to Libya. Since then Scomi has been at the center of an international detective story that has uncovered an astonishing global nuclear-weapons "black market." All of it leads back to Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who fathered the underground network. In pursuit of both profits and a kind of Islamic nuclear parity, Khan passed on equipment and know-how to Iran and Libya, and made offers to Iraq and most recently Syria, officials say. Khan also helped North Korea's covert program.(
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4270904 )
Is it possible that Plame’s “sting operation” directly tracked and helped expose the nuclear proliferation network of A.Q. Khan? If so, why was Plame’s operation exposed from the White House? Joe Klein says, “’Only a very high-ranking official could have had access to the knowledge that Plame was on the payroll’ of the CIA, an intelligence source told me.”(
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,1101040705-658343,00.html ) And Mohamed El Baradei says A.Q. Khan is just the tip of the nuclear iceberg. “Dr. Khan was not working alone,” International Atomic Energy Association chief Mohamed El Baradei told reporters, adding he had help from people in many countries.(
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_7-2-2004_pg3_2 )
Could Cheney have had a financial relationship with the Nuclear Walmart, which would have provided a motive for exposing Plame’s operation? We shall explore this in sections D and E of this paper. First it is important to understand what is currently known about A.Q. Khan’s network before we uncover Cheney’s connection with it. The purpose of this examination is not intended as a comprehensive index of the network, but as an exploration into some of the more sinister elements of the network that led to relationships not only among state sponsors of terrorism, but to relationships with terrorist organizations themselves.
C. A.Q. Khan’s Nuclear Walmart
Nuclear experts are aghast at the size of the network, which extends from Switzerland to Japan to Dubai. Over 30 years, Khan put together what Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, called "a veritable Wal-Mart" for nuclear-weapons buyers, a not-so-secret netherworld where proliferation meshed with globalization. Khan even held nuclear-related symposiums. "The horse is out of the barn. At this point, we can't stop the technology from spreading," says former Clinton official Gary Samore. One senior U.S. official told NEWSWEEK that Khan's role in destabilizing the 21st century will "loom up there" with Hitler's and Stalin's impact in the 20th. Even so, most of the A.Q. Khan network's key operatives will likely escape punishment, officials concede.(
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4270904 )
Who were some of the people and organizations connected with A.Q. Khan?
1. B.S.A. Tahir - The recent investigations into the clandestine nuclear proliferation activities of A.Q.Khan, the so-called father of the Pakistan atom bomb, have revealed that Bukhary Seyed Abu Tahir, a Sri Lankan Tamil Muslim of Indian origin, married in Malysia and with business interests in Kuala Lumpur and Dubai, was one of the external kingpins of Pakistan's clandestine nuclear procurement network. In a speech at the National Defence University of Washington DC in February last, President Bush had described this Sri Lankan Tamil-speaking Muslim as the "chief financial officer and money-launderer" of A.Q.Khan's clandestine operations.(
http://www.saag.org/papers11/paper1026.html ) As chief financial officer, B.S.A. Tahir played an important role in his connection with a Malaysian company called Scomi that will be explored in greater detail in section E of this paper.
2. Lashkar-e-Toiba - or LET is a terrorist group of Pakistan, consisting of Pakistani, Afghan and Arab cadres, headed by Pakistani office-bearers, with its headquarters at Muridke near Lahore. Its annual conventions at Muridke are attended, amongst others, by serving and retired officers of the Pakistani military and intelligence establishment, by serving and retired scientists of the Pakistani nuclear and missile establishment and by political leaders.
Amongst those, who regularly attend its annual conventions, are Lt. Gen. (retd) Hamid Gul and Lt.Gen.(retd) Javed Nasir, both former Directors-General of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI),Dr. Abdul Qadir Khan, the self-styled father of the Pakistani atom bomb, Dr.Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, the former scientist of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission who was recently detained by the Pakistani authorities under US pressure for being in contact with bin Laden and Mohd.Rafique Tarar, former President of Pakistan.(
http://www.saag.org/papers4/paper381.html )
To finance its day-to-day activities, the LeT leverages its contacts in Saudi Arabia as well as launches donation campaigns with overseas Pakistanis, especially middle class and wealthy Punjabis in Britain, Australia and the Middle East. According to Jane's Terrorism & Insurgency Centre, Osama bin Laden has also financed LeT activities until recently. The LeT, under its new name JuD, uses its outreach networks including schools, social service groups and religious publications to attract and brainwash recruits for jihad in Kashmir and other places.(
http://www.crikey.com.au/politics/2004/05/18-0003.html )
Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) has been showing increasing interest in taking jihad to the Muslims of the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka. The LET is very close to the ISI and it would not have taken its initial moves to explore the possibility of using Sri Lanka as a clandestine base for its activties and for creating sleeper cells there without the knowledge and prior clearance of the ISI.(
http://www.saag.org/papers11/paper1026.html ) Since there is such a close relationship between ISI and this terrorist organization whose conventions ISI officials and A.Q. Khan attended, it is important to take a closer look at ISI, as well as another cited convention attendant, Dr. S.B. Mahmood, to uncover the relationship they share with al Qaeda and expose how their actions aided them.
a. Inter Services Intelligence Agency (ISI) The ISI plays a much more significant role in the Pakistani government than do its counterparts in other countries. Time Magazine has noted, "Even by the shadowy standards of spy agencies, the ISI is notorious. It is commonly branded 'a state within the state,' or Pakistan's 'invisible government.'"
The ISI grew into its present form during the war between the Soviet Union and mujaheddin guerrillas in Afghanistan in the 1980s. The CIA thought the Afghan war could be Russia's own costly Vietnam War, and they funneled billions to the mujaheddin resistance to keep them a thorn in Russia's side. The strategy worked: Soviet soldiers withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, and the Soviet Union collapsed two years later, partly due to the costs of the war.
But the costs to keep the mujaheddin fighting were staggering, with estimates ranging between $6 billion and $40 billion. While a substantial portion of this amount came from the CIA and the Saudi Arabian government, who were both funneling the money through the ISI, much of the cost was deferred by Afghanistan's opium trade. Although the Afghan war has ended, the ISI has continued to profit from opium. In 1999, the United Nations Drug Control Programme estimated that the ISI was making around $2.5 billion annually from the sale of illegal drugs. The drug trade helped unite the ISI and Osama bin Laden, who was said to have taken a 15% cut of the Afghan drug trade money in exchange for protecting smugglers and laundering their profits. By 1994, the Taliban, a group of Muslim radicals studying in Pakistan, began conquering Afghanistan. The Taliban had been recruited by the ISI and molded into a fanatical force that conquered Afghanistan's capital by 1996. CNN reported, "The Taliban are widely alleged to be the creation of Pakistan's military intelligence . Experts say that explains the Taliban's swift military successes." The ISI didn't create the Taliban simply for strategic reasons; they shared the Taliban's extreme radical vision. As the Wall Street Journal remarked in November 2001, "Despite their clean chins and pressed uniforms, the ISI men are as deeply fundamentalist as any bearded fanatic; the ISI created the Taliban as their own instrument and still supports it."
The relationship between the US and the ISI is hard to fathom. On September 4, 2001, ISI Director Mahmood Ahmed arrived in Washington, D.C. On September 10, a Pakistani newspaper reported on the visit, saying that it had "triggered speculation about the agenda of his mysterious meetings at the Pentagon and National Security Council" as well as meetings with CIA Director George Tenet, unspecified officials at the White House and the Pentagon, and his "most important meeting" with Mark Grossman, US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. In May 2001, both CIA Director George Tenet and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage had visited South Asia. It's not known if they met with Mahmood or anyone else in the ISI, but according to credible news reports, Tenet had "unusually long" consultations with President Musharraf. It is also worth noting that Armitage is known for his "large circle of friends in the Pakistani military and ISI" as well as his connections to the Iran-Contra affair. On the morning of September 11, Lt. Gen. Mahmood was at a breakfast meeting at the Capitol with the chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, Senator Bob Graham (D) and Representative Porter Goss (R). The meeting was said to have lasted at least until the second plane hit the World Trade Center. Goss is a self-admitted 10-year veteran of the CIA's clandestine operations wing. Goss and Graham were later the heads of the joint House-Senate investigation into the September 11 attacks, and Goss in particular made headlines for saying there was no "smoking gun" indicating that the government had sufficient foreknowledge to prevent the September 11 attacks. (
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/main/essaysaeed.html )
1) Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed - On October 7, 2001, Pakistani President Musharraf fired Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed, the head of the ISI. The next day, some newspapers, mostly in India but also in Pakistan, shockingly said he was fired for his role in the 9/11 attacks. For instance, a Pakistani newspaper stated, "Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed has been replaced after the FBI investigators established credible links between him and Umar Sheikh, one of the three militants released in exchange for passengers of the hijacked Indian Airlines plane in 1999... Informed sources said there were enough indications with the US intelligence agencies that it was at Gen. Mahmood's instruction that Sheikh had transferred 100,000 US dollars into the account of Mohammed Atta..." In the US, surprisingly, the only mention was in a one short piece in the Wall Street Journal, mentioning that, "The US authorities ... confirm the fact that $100,000 wired to WTC hijacker Mohammed Atta from Pakistan by Ahmad Umar Sheikh at the insistence of General Mahmood." (
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/main/essaysaeed.html )
2) Saeed Sheikh - He was born in Britain with the name Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh. In 1993 he emerged in Pakistan as a member of a militant group fighting for the liberation of Kashmir from India. Pakistan has been fighting India for years over control of Kashmir, and it appears Saeed was put on the ISI payroll around this time, to help the Pakistani cause in Kashmir. In 1994, Saeed began training at a training camp in Afghanistan. He soon was teaching the classes. He developed close ties with al-Qaeda while training there. By the end of the year he was known as Osama bin Laden’s "favored son" or "my special son." Even more curiously, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review suggested in March 2002, "There are many in Musharraf's government who believe that Saeed Sheikh's power comes not from the ISI, but from his connections with our own CIA. The theory is that ... Saeed Sheikh was bought and paid for." (
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/main/essaysaeed.html )
While this exploration may seem like a diversion from finding the answer to why Valerie Plame had her cover blown as a CIA agent, it is intended to illustrate that the network was so vast that many relationships overlapped, and the CIA was no stranger to the network. Now, getting back to the focus of Plame’s operation, WMD trafficking, here is a seemingly altruistic organization created by a Lashkar-e-Toiba convention attendant whose actions are worth noting.
b.Ummah Tameer-e-Nau (UTN) - Reconstruction of the Muslim Ummah, a non-governmental organization whose stated mission was to conduct relief work and investment in Afghanistan. It was established by two well-respected Pakistani nuclear scientists, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood and Chaudiri Abdul Majeed. Not much is known about Majeed. But Mahmood had a long career in Pakistan's nuclear program and held a variety of senior positions. The Associated Press reported on October 24, 2001 that officials in the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) said Mahmood had been a director for the nation's nuclear program and remained in key positions until his retirement. In publications, he is credited with playing a pioneering role in establishing the uranium enrichment project in Pakistan. Subsequently, Abdul Qadeer Khan took over and is known as the father of Pakistan's uranium enrichment program. He ended his career as Director for Nuclear Power at the PAEC. For his outstanding contributions to Pakistan's nuclear program, he was awarded the prestigious Sitara-e-Imtiaz award by the President of Pakistan in March 1999.
Mahmood is reported to have resigned from the PAEC in the spring of 1999 in protest of the government's willingness to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) after Pakistan conducted a series of underground tests in May 1998. There was also pressure put on Mahmood to resign. The New York Times reported that the United States wanted Mahmood removed after it learned that he had sympathies for Islamic militant groups, including the Taliban. Mahmood was often publicly supportive of the Taliban in Pakistan and in speeches at universities said that the Taliban was a model for Pakistan. Even after September 11th, Mahmood remained supportive of the Taliban, addressing a gathering of intellectuals in mid-October 2001 where he proposed a three-month cease-fire to resolve the situation in Afghanistan. Senior Pakistani officials reportedly were concerned because Mahmood had been vocally advocating extensive production of weapon-grade plutonium and uranium to help equip other Islamic nations with these materials.
According to the Washington Post, however, Mahmood and Majeed admitted that they had long discussions with al Qaeda officials in August 2001 about nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. Pakistani intelligence officials told the Washington Post that they believe that the scientists used UTN partially as a cover to conduct secret talks with bin Laden. During repeated UTN visits to Afghanistan, UTN directors and members met with bin Laden, al Qaeda leaders, and Mullah Omar and discussed the development of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons; UTN has been linked to WAFA Humanitarian Organization and Al Rashid Trust, two other NGOs with ties to al Qaeda that have been designated as supporters of terrorism under Executive Order 13224.
During 2001, Mahmood met with Mullah Omar and bin Laden. During a follow-up meeting where bin Laden's associate indicated he had nuclear material and wanted to know how to use it to make a weapon, Mahmood provided information about the infrastructure needed for a nuclear weapon program and the effects of nuclear weapons; and after the fall of the Taliban regime, searches of UTN locations in Kabul yielded documents setting out a plan to kidnap a U.S. attaché and outlining basic nuclear physics related to nuclear weapons.
In the August 2001 meeting, Mahmood and his colleagues appear to have provided al Qaeda a road map to building nuclear weapons. This information is typically very helpful in understanding the steps that must be accomplished in making a nuclear weapon, identifying the necessary equipment and technology, and locating suppliers of key equipment. In addition, Mahmood and his colleagues appear to have recruited other scientists with more direct knowledge of making nuclear weapons.
Transfer of sensitive nuclear weapons information could have happened in many ways. The scientists could have provided direct assistance to al Qaeda's nuclear weapons program, including nuclear weapons and RDD information. They may have obtained secret documents during the course of their career that they passed to the Taliban or al Qaeda. They also could have been a "funnel" through which Pakistani nuclear weapons experts provided sensitive assistance, including documents or technical advice. The transfer of sensitive information by UTN officials or their colleagues may have occurred either in Pakistan or Afghanistan.
UTN officials may have had another advantage. The success of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program depended on extensive illicit foreign procurement. Mahmood headed a large reactor project that also needed to import illicitly or secretly many items, including sensitive technology, materials, components, and manufacturing equipment. He and his colleagues must have had extensive information about procuring sensitive items for a nuclear weapons program.
Several UTN projects were aimed at reestablishing Afghanistan's manufacturing, scientific, and engineering capabilities in universities and industries. Projects focused on such reconstruction could have provided a convenient cover for importing sensitive items for WMD programs. Even if the procurement was illicit, a procurement effort is more likely to succeed if the exporting company believes it is sending items to a civil institution. Because many UTN projects were medical or humanitarian in nature, imports to these projects may have been exempt from the UN embargo on Afghanistan.
Some nuclear dual-use equipment, such as vacuum furnaces, would have been hard to procure, especially for al Qaeda. The involvement of the Pakistani scientists may significantly eased the task of obtaining such equipment.
In late January 2002, Pakistan officials said that Pakistan decided not to press criminal charges against Mahmood and Majeed, despite concluding that the scientists violated a secrecy oath during trips to Afghanistan. The main reasons reported in the media were Pakistan's concern that a trial would cause further international embarrassment and risk disclosure of nuclear secrets. (
http://www.exportcontrols.org/pakscientists.html )
3. B.C.C.I. - BCCI was the largest criminal corporate enterprise ever, the biggest Ponzi scheme, the most pervasive money-laundering operation in history, the only bank - so far as anyone knows - that ran a brisk sideline business in both conventional and nuclear weapons, gold, drugs, turnkey mercenary armies, intelligence and counterintelligence, shipping, and commodities from cement in the Middle East to Honduran coffee to Vietnamese beans.
Though it was fundamentally a financial fraud, BCCI itself was not a bank in any conventional sense. Or, more precisely, banking was only a part of the global organism, the ingeniously constructed platform from which its other lines of business were launched....
This "bank" possessed its very own diplomatic corps, intelligence network, and private army, its own shipping and commodities trading companies. And BCCI itself was so thoroughly enmeshed in the official affairs of Pakistan that it was often impossible to separate the two.
BCCI was bigger even than that: It was the unsettling next-stage evolution of the multinational corporation, the one the theorists had been predicting for years but which never seemed to be able to shed its sovereign boundaries. (General Motors and Mitsubishi are both good examples of this - huge companies with holdings and operations all over the world that nonetheless persist in being fundamentally American and Japanese entities.) In taking that step, BCCI became truly stateless and very nearly invisible to the authorities in each country where it did business.
{BCCI founder} Abedi had money to spare to underwrite the protocol department: In 1981 Ghulam Ishaq Khan granted BCCI a special tax-free status allowing Abedi to avoid tens of millions of dollars in taxes and to pour his huge Pakistan profits into one of his front companies and into Pakistan's atomic bomb project. Most of the millions that flowed through the foundation went to two uses: first, to investments - patently noncharitable - in a company called Attock Cement, owned by Abedi's associate and U.S. front man Ghaith Pharaon. The second beneficiary was something called the Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology. According to its brochures, the Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute trains young scientists and engineers. The reality is a little more ominous . . .
The director of the institute is Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the man most closely linked with Pakistan's efforts to develop nuclear weapons. Khan, a German-trained metallurgist, once worked as a classified enrichment plant in the Netherlands, where he gained access to key plans. So important is he to the Pakistani national interest that even his whereabouts are considered a national secret.(
http://www.the-catbird-seat.net/BCCI.htm )
Right from its inception, the clandestine nuclear and missile projects in Pakistan were treated as a top secret intel op of the ISI to ensure deniability. All payments to the foreign suppliers were made not from the accounts of the Govt of Pakistan, but from private accounts in the BCCI, which collapsed in 1991, and other Dubai and Geneva based banks. These accounts were opened by the Gokul brothers of Geneva, one of whom was jailed for cheating in the UK after the collapse of the BCCI; Shaukat Aziz, Pakistan’s present Finance Minister, who was working in the Gulf for the Citibank in the 1990s; Dawood Ibrahim, the mafia leader who was designated by the US as an intl terrorist in Oct; Dubai-based Pakistani smugglers, and AQ Khan and other trusted Pakistani scientists.(
http://www.kashmirherald.com/featuredarticle/nuclearjihad.html ) Given that A.Q. Khan began his network from such sinister and corrupt beginnings, this next relationship should come as no surprise.
4. Osama bin Laden – The following is an excerpt from an investigation by the Kashmir Herald into several of A.Q. Khan’s travels to Africa.
He had kept the Pakistani Foreign Office informed of his travels. The Foreign Office had instructed the Pakistani diplomatic missions in the countries visited by him to accord the due honours of protocol to him.
In all the countries, he was received by officers of the Pakistani diplomatic missions and entertained by the heads of missions.
In Sudan, he was accorded the honours of protocol generally given to a member of the Cabinet and called on the President of the country.
He was accompanied by senior serving scientists of Pakistan's nuclear establishment, who were among those responsible for Pakistan's military nuclear development. They could not have gone abroad and remained absent for days without the knowledge and clearance of the Government.
At least one Lt.Gen. belonging to the Pakistan Army's Medical Corps, who had headed it, and two Brigadiers had accompanied him. They could not have gone and remained away from the country without the knowledge and clearance of the Military Headquarters.
The uranium enriched at KRL, Kahuta, used to come from Africa, mainly Niger. This partly explains the frequent travels of A.Q.Khan to Africa. From the accounts given by the Pakistani author, two intriguing questions arise:
Why did Khan consider it necessary to visit the site of a factory in Sudan, which became the target of US Cruise missile attacks after the explosions outside the US Embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam by Al Qaeda in August 1998? The Americans had alleged at that time that this factory belonged to Osama bin Laden and was producing chemicals for weaponisation purposes. Denying this, the Sudanese authorities had claimed that it was producing anti-malaria drugs.
Why was he visiting frequently Timbuktu, which has apparently no importance from the nuclear point of view? Pakistani officials have alleged that he had illegally constructed a hotel there ( Hotel La Colombe?) in the name of his wife. If he was going there to supervise the construction of the hotel, he should have been accompanied by experts in building construction and the hotel industry. No such person accompanied him. He was always accompanied by scientists and Army officers associated with KRL and Tahir Mian, who was helping him in the procurement of centrifuges.
It is reliably learnt from well-placed observers that it also came out during the recent interrogation of the associates of Khan in Pakistan's nuclear establishment that after Osama bin Laden shifted from Khartoum to Afghanistan in 1996, Dr.Khan was also looking after bin Laden's extensive investments in the mining industry in many African countries and that the money invested in the Timbuktu hotel had come from these investments of bin Laden. The Pakistani authorities have reportedly suppressed this information and not shared it with the US.(
http://www.kashmirherald.com/featuredarticle/khanandbinladen.html )
This investigation has yielded some amazing information. In addition to widespread government cooperation with the network that has not been reported to the US, A.Q. Khan obtained uranium from Africa, mainly from Niger, where Valerie Plame’s husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, discovered the evidence that Iraq was trying to obtain uranium there was a forgery. Most frightening is the extent of Khan’s relationship with bin Laden, apparently trusted enough to look after bin Laden’s investments in Africa. Only time will tell how much bin Laden profited, both in monetary terms and in expanding al Qaeda’s WMD potential, from the generosity of Khan’s nuclear Walmart.
5. Unnamed U.S. Firm - More than 20 firms - including at least one American company - have supplied rogue nations seeking nuclear arms, marking the first time a U.S. company has been linked to the black market network.
International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, who is heading a probe into the illicit sales, avoided specifics on the locations of the companies in an interview with The Associated Press Friday.
But a senior diplomat said at least one was in the United States - the first time in five months of investigations by the U.N. nuclear agency that an American company has been implicated in the black market network headed by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Kahn.(
http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?id=1&display=rednews/2004/07/10/build/world/80-firm-arms.inc )
What American company would possibly have had the means and the motive to risk potentially treasonous activity by profiting off black market nuclear proliferation to terrorist organizations and their state sponsors? In the next two sections, an examination into the motives of why Dick Cheney, through his association with Halliburton, would have wanted a sting operation focused on A.Q. Khan’s nuclear Walmart terminated will be conducted, as well as an exploration into how the profits from such a treacherous enterprise could possibly have been laundered.
D. Compromising Positions in Cheney's Past
1. Cheney helped cover-up Pakistani nuclear proliferation in 1989 so US could sell country fighter jets. - When Pakistan's clandestine program involving its top nuclear scientist selling rogue nations, such as Iran and North Korea, blueprints for building an atomic bomb was uncovered last month, the world's leaders waited, with baited breath to see what type of punishment George W. Bush would inflict upon Pakistan's President Pervez Musharaff. Bush has, after all, spent his entire term in office talking tough about countries and dictators that conceal weapons of mass destruction and even tougher on individuals who supply rogue nations and terrorists with the means to build WMD. For all intents and purposes, Pakistan and Musharraf fit that description.
Remember, Bush accused Iraq of harboring a cache of WMD, which was the primary reason he gave for the United States launching a preemptive strike on that country a year ago, and also claimed that Iraq may have given its WMD to al-Qaeda terrorists and/or Syria, weapons that, Bush said, could be used to attack the U.S. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and top members of the administration reacted with shock when they found out that Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistan's top nuclear scientist, spent the past 15 years selling outlaw nations nuclear technology and equipment. So it was sort of a surprise when Bush, upon finding out about Khan's proliferation of nuclear technology, let Pakistan off with a slap on the wrist. But it was all an act. In fact, it was actually a coverup designed to shield Cheney because he knew about the proliferation for more than a decade and did nothing to stop it.(emphasis added)
Like the terrorist attacks on 9-11, the Bush administration had mountains of evidence on Pakistan's sales of nuclear technology and equipment to nations vilified by the U.S. nations that are considered much more of a threat than Iraq but turned a blind eye to the threat and allowed it to happen. In 1989, the year Khan first started selling nuclear secrets on the black-market; Richard Barlow, a young intelligence analyst working for the Pentagon prepared a shocking report for Cheney, who was then secretary of defense under the Bush I administration: Pakistan built an atomic bomb and was selling its nuclear equipment to countries the U.S. said was sponsoring terrorism. But Barlow's findings, as reported in a January 2002 story in Mother Jones magazine, were "politically inconvenient."
"A finding that Pakistan possessed a nuclear bomb would have triggered a congressionally mandated cutoff of aid to the country, a key ally in the CIA's efforts to support Afghan rebels fighting a pro-Soviet government. It also would have killed a $1.4-billion sale of F-16 fighter jets to Islamabad," Mother Jones reported. Ironically, Pakistan, critics say, was let off the hook last month so the U.S. could use its borders to hunt for al-Qaeda leader and alleged 9-11 mastermind Osama bin Laden. Cheney dismissed Barlow's report because he desperately wanted to sell Pakistan the F-16 fighter planes. Several months later, a Pentagon official was told by Cheney to downplay Pakistan's nuclear capabilities when he testified on the threat before Congress. Barlow complained to his bosses at the Pentagon and was fired. (
http://www.pakistan-facts.com/article.php/2004031621042158 )
During the time that Barlow prepared his report on Pakistan, Bryan Siebert an Energy Department analyst, was looking into Saddam Hussein's nuclear program in Iraq. Siebert concluded that "Iraq has a major effort under way to produce nuclear weapons," and said that the National Security Council should investigate his findings. But the Bush administration—which had been supporting Iraq as a counterweight to the Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran—ignored the report, the magazine reported.
"This was not a failure of intelligence," Barlow told Mother Jones. "The intelligence was in the system."(
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/031004Leopold/031004leopold.html )
Cheney went to great lengths to cover-up Pakistan's nuclear weaponry. In a New Yorker article published on March 29, 1993, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh quoted Barlow as saying that some high-ranking members inside the CIA and the Pentagon lied to Congress about Pakistan's nuclear arsenal so as not to sacrifice the sale of the F-16 fighter planes to Islamabad, which was secretly equipped to deliver nuclear weapons. Pakistan's nuclear capabilities and had become so grave by the
spring of 1990 that then CIA deputy director Richard Kerr said the Pakistani nuclear threat was worse than the Cuban Missile crisis in the 1960s.
"It was the most dangerous nuclear situation we have ever faced since I've been in the U.S. government," Kerr said in an interview with Hersh. "It may be as close as we've come to a nuclear exchange. It was far more frightening than the Cuban missile crisis."
Still, in 1989 Cheney and others in the Pentagon and the CIA continued to hide the reality of Pakistan's nuclear threat from members of Congress. Hersh explained in his lengthy New Yorker article that reasons behind the cover-up "revolves around the fact . . . that the Reagan Administration had dramatically aided Pakistan in its pursuit of the bomb."(
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/content/?040119fr_archive02 )
In addition to these three sources that corroborate the fact that Cheney knew about A.Q. Khan’s network and rather than report it, chose to profit through sales to Pakistan of fighter jets that could deliver nuclear weapons, Cheney was caught on another case of nuclear proliferation.
2. Halliburton fined $1.2 million in 1995 for selling dual-use nuclear equipment to Libya. - Halliburton came under fire in the early '90s for supplying Libya and Iraq with oil drilling equipment which could be used to detonate nuclear weapons. Halliburton Logging Services, a former subsidiary, was charged with shipping six pulse neutron generators through Italy to Libya. In 1995, the company pled guilty to criminal charges that it violated the U.S. ban on exports to Libya. Halliburton was fined $1.2 million and will pay $2.61 million in civil penalties.
During his chairmanship of Halliburton, Cheney criticized U.S. sanctions against "rogue" nations such as Iran and Libya in a 1998 speech. According to a July 26, 2000, Washington Post story, Cheney complained the sanctions "are nearly always motivated by domestic political pressure, the need for Congress to appeal to some domestic constituency." (
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/articles/halliburtonprimer.html )
3. Current criminal probe - - A grand jury issued a subpoena to oil field services company Halliburton Co. seeking information about its Cayman Islands unit's work in Iran, where it is illegal for U.S. companies to operate, Halliburton said on Monday.
The company, formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, said it understood the investigation of its subsidiary's work in Iran had been transferred to the U.S. Department of Justice from the Treasury Department, which first initiated an inquiry in 2001.(
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=5709973 )
4. Existing Halliburton ties to Vice President Dick Cheney – Rather than crack down on Halliburton, however, the Bush administration’s Energy Task Force, which was headed by Cheney, presented a draft report in April 2001 saying the United States should reevaluate the sanctions against Iran, Iraq, and Libya that prohibited U.S. oil companies from “some of the most important existing and ‘prospective’ petroleum-producing countries in the world.” Cheney asserted there was no conflict on his part because “Since I left Halliburton to become George Bush’s vice president, I’ve severed all my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interest.” Cheney neglected to mention that he was still due approximately $500,000 in deferred compensation from Halliburton and could potentially profit from his 433,333 shares of unexercised Halliburton stock options.
A Congressional Research Service report requested by Senate Democrats concluded that unexercised stock options in a private corporation, as well as deferred salary received from a private corporation, were “retained ties” or “linkages” to a former employer and should be reported as “financial interests.”(House of Bush House of Saud by Craig Unger, p. 225.)
Since Halliburton continues to engage in business practices with state sponsors of terrorism and Cheney continues to profit from it, all that is left to do is, in the words of Deep Throat, “Follow the money.” The proceeding section uses circumstantial evidence to show a relationship between several individuals and companies through which the unnamed US firm in Khan’s nuclear Walmart, presumably Halliburton, profited from nuclear proliferation.
E. Links in the Chain Connecting Cheney with Nuclear Proliferation
1. B.S.A. Tahir – Remember this man from Section C? This associate of A.Q. Khan who was identified by President Bush in a speech as the nuclear Walmart’s "chief financial officer and money launderer."(
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4270904 ) BSA TAHIR, a SRI LANKAN businessman based in DUBAI was a trusted and close confidante of A. Q. Khan and was actively involved in supplying centrifuge components for Libya's uranium-enrichment program. BSA TAHIR, who was involved in the business of SCOMI PRECISION ENGINEERING SDN BHD (SCOPE). He used the company to produce components for the centrifuge unit for the uranium enrichment program. However, investigations have revealed that the components, on their own, cannot form a complete centrifuge unit. In this context, it has to be noted that SCOPE is a subsidiary of SCOMI GROUP BHD, i.e. a company involved in the petroleum services industry. As a subsidiary, SCOPE is also involved in precision engineering services, which involves the production of components for a variety of equipments including parts for
cars, petroleum and gas. This makes evident that SCOPE could not be labeled
as a company directly involved in nuclear proliferation.
Furthermore, the supply of components by middlemen was carried out in a
discreet manner and involved suppliers from other countries to blur the
sources of the components. Some of the suppliers were believed to be aware
that these components could be for uranium enrichment centrifuges. Generally
these suppliers mostly from Europe were those who had dealings with the
nuclear expert since the 1980s, at a time when PAKISTAN was developing its
nuclear technology. There were a number of individuals and companies which
supplied the components but were unaware of the implications because some of
the components were similar to components used in oil drilling, water
treatment and equipment for several other general use.(
http://icssa.org/Nuclear_Malaysia.htm )
Which companies could possibly have been connected with the suppliers that helped blur the source of the components? Amazingly, a connection between Scomi and Halliburton can be established with only one other company serving as a buffer between the two: Cognis.
a. Cognis – Service specialist Scomi Group Bhd, is offering multinational oil and gas companies a special fluid to make offshore drilling friendlier to the sea and its inhabitants. Scomi, together with German chemicals specialist, Cognis Gmbh, offers ester-based drilling fluid derived from palm kernel oil. The agreement is between Scomi’s wholly-owned Kota Minerals & Chemicals Sdn Bhd (KMC) and Cognis’ 50%-owned unit, Cognis Oleochemicals (M) Sdn Bhd.(
http://www.mida.gov.my/beta/news/view_news.php?id=398 )
Sounds like a perfectly benign, perhaps even altruistic enterprise. How is this company connected with Halliburton? It’s through collaboration with one of Halliburton’s subsidiary companies.
b. Baroid – The drilling fluids containing esters based on renewable natural resources are developed by Cognis in collaboration with Baroid, the drilling fluids service company within the Halliburton Energy Services Group.(
http://bbriefings.com/cdps/cditem.cfm?NID=252&CID=10&CFID=2672003&CFTOKEN=45285354 )
To reiterate the serpentine link:
A.Q. Khan's financial officer (money launderer) was B.S.A. Tahir. (
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4270904 )
Tahir used Scomi to produce components for the centrifuge unit for the uranium enrichment program. (
http://icssa.org/Nuclear_Malaysia.htm )
Scomi, through its company KMC, worked with Cognis Oleochemicals. (
http://www.mida.gov.my/beta/news/view_news.php?id=398 )
Cognis is connected with Baroid (part of the Halliburton Group). (
http://bbriefings.com/cdps/cditem.cfm?NID=252&CID=10&CFID=2672003&CFTOKEN=45285354 )
But the extent of Halliburton/Cheney profiting from nuclear proliferation does not stop there. And Cheney is not the only member of the Bush administration to profit from it.
2. Donald Rumsfeld - Rumsfeld was on ABB board during deal with North Korea.
The Swiss-based ABB on Friday told swissinfo that Rumsfeld was involved with the company in early 2000, when it netted a $200 million (SFr270million) contract with Pyongyang. The ABB contract was to deliver equipment and services for two nuclear power stations at Kumho, on North Korea’s east coast. Rumsfeld – who is one of the Bush administration’s most strident “hardliners” on North Korea – was a member of ABB’s board between 1990 and February 2001, when he left to take up his current post. Wolfram Eberhardt, a spokesman for ABB, told swissinfo that Rumsfeld “was at nearly all the board meetings” during his decade-long involvement with the company.(
http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=105&sid=1648385 )
It's a well-known fact--oft detailed in this column--that the boys in the Bush Regime swing both ways. We speak, of course, of their proclivity--their apparently uncontrollable craving--for stuffing their trousers with loot from both sides of whatever war or military crisis is going at the moment.
That's why it came as no surprise to read last week that just before he joined the Regime's crusade against evildoers everywhere (especially rogue states that pursue the development of terrorist-ready weapons of mass destruction), Pentagon warlord Donald Rumsfeld was trousering the proceeds from a $200 million deal to send the latest nuclear technology--including plenty of terrorist-ready "dirty bomb" material--to the rogue state of North Korea, Neue Zurcher Zeitung reports.
In 1998, Rumsfeld was citizen chairman of the Congressional Ballistic Missile Threat Commission, charged with reducing nuclear proliferation. Rumsfeld and the Republican-heavy commission came down hard on the deal Bill Clinton had brokered with North Korea to avert a war in 1994: Pyongyang would give up its nuclear weapons program in exchange for normalized relations with the United States, plus the construction of two non-weaponized nuclear plants to generate electricity. The plants were to be built by an international consortium of government-backed business interests called KEDO.
Whatever happened to Bush's much-trumpeted "era of responsibility?" These guys are not only chiselers, hustlers, hypocrites and war profiteers--they're a bunch of gutless wonders as well. So you'll pardon us if we are just the tiniest bit cynical about the "moral arguments for war" and other such buckets of warm spit this gang is now forcing down the world's throat.(
http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd03042003.html ) It’s bad enough for Rumsfeld to profit off selling nuclear equipment to North Korea. But it doesn’t end there, the organizations involved in this transaction link back to Halliburton once again.
a. KEDO - ABB, which was already building eight nuclear reactors in South Korea, had an inside track on the $4 billion U.S.-sponsored North Korea project. The firm was told "our participation is essential," recalls Frank Murray, project manager for the reactors. (He plays the same role now at Westinghouse, which was acquired by Britain's BNFL in 1999, a year before it also bought ABB's nuclear power business.) The North Korean reactors are being primarily funded by South Korean and Japanese export-import banks and supervised by KEDO, a consortium based in New York. "It was not a matter of favoritism," says Desaix Anderson, who ran KEDO from 1997 to 2001. "It was just a practical matter."(www.worldmessenger.20m.com/news4.html )
b. KNOC - The KEDO (Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization) is the official Korean government energy corporation. By reading their 2001 energy development summary one can make out all the myriad countries that contribute to KEDO. North Korea lacks necessary production facilities to drill and test for its oil. It is reaching out to many firms and countries to help them while the government attempts to develop some oil fields with as much capital as it can muster. A Singapore firm recently announced (August 29, 2002) significant oil and gas reserves in North Korea. Additionally, Halliburton has partnered with KNOC to develop offshore drilling platforms in South Korea.(www.rmfdevelopment.com/political/NorthKoreaOil.htm )
Yet another serpentine link through which money could be laundered into the willing hands of Halliburton.
Rumsfeld-ABB (
http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=105&sid=1648385 )
ABB-KEDO (www.worldmessenger.20m.com/news4.html )
KEDO-KNOC-Halliburton (www.rmfdevelopment.com/political/NorthKoreaOil.htm )
But were these links completely separate, or is it possible that there were any other companies besides Halliburton involved with both links of possible proliferation profits? One company not previously mentioned has relationships with companies on both links.
3. Goldman Sachs – a lucrative investment firm that is listed quite prominently as one of the main investors in Cognis on their website.(
http://www.cognis.com/framescout.html?/company/company.html ) Also there is a link with Donald Rumsfeld to two organizations, Bilderberg and ABB through the chairman of Goldman Sachs, General Peter Sutherland from Ireland. Some of the Western world's leading financiers and foreign policy strategists attend Bilderberg. Rumsfeld is an active Bilderberger. So is General Peter Sutherland from Ireland, a former European Union commissioner and chairman of Goldman Sachs and of BP. Rumsfeld and Sutherland served together in 2000 on the board of the Swedish/Swiss energy company ABB. (
http://www.fact-index.com/b/bi/bilderberg_group.html )
These links are not in and of themselves direct proof of the laundering of nuclear proliferation profits. But they are proof of a relationship between these companies sharing common goals, through which individuals involved in nuclear proliferation, and there were many in these companies, could operate their network covertly.
F. Conclusions and Recommendations – To conclude, this paper asserts that Dick Cheney is directly responsible for the leaking of Valerie Plame’s name that resulted in sabotaging her CIA career and her cover company, Brewster, Jennings & Associates. CIA operations that were compromised by the leak were associated with A.Q. Khan’s network of nuclear smuggling. Khan’s network, vast enough to be dubbed by IAEA chief Mohamed El Baradei a “nuclear Walmart”, was examined here for the connections it has with terrorist organizations and state sponsors, as well as areas in which the CIA could have been following their activities.
It proves conclusively that Dick Cheney knew about A.Q. Khan’s nuclear Walmart as early as 1989, and chose not to expose the network but to profit from it, which gives him the strongest motive to blow Valerie Plame’s cover. State sponsors of terror that were proven recipients of Cheney’s nuclear proliferation include Pakistan, Libya and possibly Iran. The links between Khan and Cheney involved suppliers from other countries designed to blur the source of the components, but research concludes individuals affiliated with collaborative companies such as Cognis and their investor Goldman Sachs would be the most obvious links in the chain. Such links also exist in the case of Donald Rumsfeld profiting through ABB’s $200 million sale of nuclear equipment to North Korea, which would prove that Halliburton profited from this example of nuclear proliferation as well.
The main recommendation to all who read this is to spread the word. Anyone who reads this who is in a position to investigate this matter further, whether as an activist, investigative reporter or government official, should do so with care and thoroughness. The names and organizations listed in the paper should, with a proper investigation, lead to more damaging evidence that will help solve the crime and establish justice. That is perhaps the most important aspect of this case to remember, that regardless of the prestige and power connected with the parties involved, this is a criminal investigation. It is hoped that no matter what your political persuasion is, that as a law abiding citizen, you stand with us in condemnation of the exposure of Valerie Plame’s identity as a CIA agent as a highly criminal act, and join us in the pursuit of justice for the perpetrators.
______________________________________________________________________
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=66773&mesg_id=66773Hey, Bush! DU's on to your treasonous gangster ass!
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