Beyond the Secret Team
Hunter, Jane
IN FEBRUARY 1987 THE INVESTIGATION into the Iran-contra affair ran up against an enigma-a $20 million stockpile of East bloc weapons gathering dust in a warehouse in Honduras. It would be over a...
...Once this flow of technology was in place, they wrote, "The United States then has at its disposal a large and continuous supply of Soviet technology and weapons to channel to Freedom Fighters worldwide, mandating neither the consent or awareness of the Department of State or Congress...
...2 4 In 1981 and 1983 the Administration signed agreements with Israel...
...Instead of solicitations for the contras, some right-wing organizations are keeping themselves going by raising money for the defense of Oliver North...
...Stephen Emerson, Secret Warriors, (New York: G.P...
...Emil Sa'ada, who was linked to the Arms Supermarket, continues as Israel's cutout in Honduras and all Israeli imports to Honduras pass through him...
...Ibid...
...Bills calling for tough oversight mechanisms were introduced in Congress, yet the reformist tide ebbed before they could be shepherded through...
...3 Although the Arms Supermarket in Honduras was initiated jointly by Mossad operatives, Honduran military officers and CIA-connected arms dealers," 3 Brenneke maintains it was separate from Harari's operation-primarily due to personal enmity between the Supermarket's Mario del Amico and Ron Martin, and Israel's Pesakh Ben-Or...
...Other cutouts are much smaller, simpler operations-a public relations firm, a sales office, or even a simple shell, set up to launder funds...
...Had they contemplated the larger picture, the Congressmen might have concluded that U.S...
...The memorandum is reproduced in the report...
...Richard H. Muller called him, with abilities as a computer programmer and a pilot, knowledge of international banking, and access, by virtue of his ancestors' arms manufacturing business in Germany, to East Bloc arms merchants...
...See also NACLA Report on the Americas, Nov./Dec...
...Then when the Reagan Administration began trying to drive Noriega from office it asked again that Harari be recalled...
...Brenneke's motive for quitting the Harari network-a change of heart when he discovered his son was a drug addictseems believable, and his assumption of a post at the liberal Center for International Development Policy in Washington adds credence to his dissidence...
...Thus it was with the Nugan Hand Bank, an investment bank in Australia run by former CIA and military officers...
...This was the Harari network...
...al., "Prop for U.S...
...Instead, the Committee portrayed the Enterprise as an aberration, and endorsed wholeheartedly the continued use of covert action-the only caveat being that the funds for those activities must be authorized by Congress...
...EATSCO (Egyptian American Transport Services), set up to ship U.S...
...2 5 Israel delivered arms to the contras, provided them with advisers, and in late 1984 and early 1985 kicked back some of its U.S...
...Latin American Political Report, Oct...
...Barbara Studley, Gen...
...IN THE WAKE OF THE CIA SCANDALS OF THE 1970s, conservative activists in the United States, some with clear ties to the intelligence community, worked diligently to rebuild a political consensus in favor of removing restrictions on covert action...
...Pointing to "economic, political and psychological warfare" in particular, Marsh said: This is an enormous area in which private-sector resources can be used....We live in a nation that has been the global pioneer in industrial development, marketing, advertising and communication...
...Lehrman read a message from President Reagan and the gathering proclaimed itself a"democratic international ofanti-communist insurgents...
...The following year Brenneke became involved with the Harari network, buying arms in Czechoslovakia, and, on two occasions, co-piloting cocaine flights to the United States...
...XVI, No...
...But the rogues' gallery of reactionaries and smugglers, including several foreign governments, that thrived at the cutting edge of Reagan's foreign policy is Former national security advisers Robert McFarlane and Admiral John Poindexter: just two "bad apples" SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1988THE RIGHT AFTER REAGAN still in business...
...hostages in Iran in 1980...
...4, 1987...
...22 Although the S/LPD's propaganda efforts would continue until they were exposed in the Iran-contra scandal, the Reagan Administration did not wait for them to bear fruit in a relaxation of Congressional restrictions on aid to the contras...
...He also maintains that in 1981-82 he upgraded the system in Guatemala and installed in Costa Rica an entirely new database program, called INCEST, for Israel-and hooked up a transmitter in the system for the CIA...
...He said while he was discussing this with Bandar in Cannes in February 1984, Bandar sought to reassure him it was in line with U.S...
...DURING THE "ISOLATIONIST" CARTER years elements of the national security establishment sought a return to untrammeled interventionism by going "private," setting up arms dealerships, advocacy organizations and other fronts...
...Then, until well into 1988, he helped try to set up an arms sale to Iran as a sting.' Because of his charge that a top aide to Vice President Bush, Donald Gregg, was involved in a narcotics ring, Richard Brenneke's credibility has been vigorously challenged, both by Bush's supporters and by journalists...
...CBS "Sixty Minutes," Oct...
...2 Carl "Spitz" Channell, archetypal freebooter of "privatized" intervention and the first to be indicted for Iran-contra crimes, agreed...
...Interview in Hatzofe, Dec...
...authority-for such things as licenses, go-aheads and, perhaps most importantly, to impress foreign officials-they may not actually have that authority...
...James McCoy," 3 who had been U.S...
...merson, Secret Warriors, pp...
...The Iran-contra committee deliberately shielded the Harari network and other contra-linked narcotrafficking from public view, and it chose not to expose South Africa...
...39, 42-43, 89, Miguel Acoca, "South African mercenaries helping CIA in Nicaragua," San Antonio Light, March 13, 1987...
...We must harness those resources in a common security endeavor...
...3 THE PUBLIC FIRST BECAME AWARE OF BRENneke when his memos were filed by the defense for a number of Israeli and U.S...
...The constitutional functioning of certain elements of the government Entrepreneurial coordinator Oliver North could easily be thwarted or negated by autonomous operators wielding a tenuous connection to some government department...
...S/LPD was run by Walter Raymond, Jr., a former senior CIA covert operations specialist, who was placed at the NSC by Donald Gregg, Vice President Bush's national security adviser and formerly a high CIA official himself...
...Instead, covert CIA operations prohibited by Congress were run out of National Security Council and the Vice President's office...
...The Harari network reportedly went out of the contra supply business in late 1985, but Israel's network in Central America appears to remain intact...
...Author's interview with Brenneke, June 8, 1988...
...military aid...
...The national mood, which flagged less quickly than Congress's will, backed Jimmy Carter's moves to further restrict the national security establishment...
...Richard Brenneke explained why: "The money that came in was ostensibly for the Southern front...
...a few weeks later UPI reported that the CIA had assured the contras that the Supermarket would be open for business as soon as the ceasefire then in effect with Nicaragua was over.' Now that Oliver North, Richard Secord and Albert Hakim have been indicted and are likely to be tried, many would have us believe that the outrageous excesses of the Iran-contra affair have been curbed, and that U.S...
...Speaking in 1983 to an invitation-only conference in Washington on "Special Operations in U.S...
...58...
...Gary Sick, All Fall Down, (London: I.B...
...You're a millionaire-you and all the top leadership are millionaires...
...4 " According to Brenneke, the Harari network became preoccupied with marketing drugs rather than arms...
...Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operation with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Final Report: Foreign and Military Intelligence, Book 1, 94th Cong., 1976, p. 239, cited in Marshall et al, The IranContra Connection, p. 17...
...5, 1977...
...Ex-CIA officer Edwin Wilson recalls working with Clines and Shackley in Southeast Asia in the 1960s, where, he said, their "pattern of greed and theft of government property began...
...A ranking member of the State Security Council indicated the white regime's interest in counterinsurgency: "We have studied counterrevolutionary tactics in Malaya [sic], Chile, El Salvador [andl we're using the same hearts and-minds techniques here...
...They are still well placed to support a reprise of the contras, or whatever comes next, should the CIA be blocked by a recalcitrant Congress from doing the job itself...
...While their schemes ranged from political advocacy groups to profit-making entities like the Enterprise of North, Secord and Hakim, all offered ways to keep wars going after funds are cut off by Congress...
...Miami arms dealer David Duncan said that South Africa sent 15 to 20 trainers to the contras in Honduras and "financed a $72 million military-owned industrial complex, port facilities and a hospital in Honduras...
...It was later found in Oliver North's safe...
...Moreover, Congressional oversight of the CIA invited CIA counter-oversight of Congress, to ensure that key legislators remained on the Agency team...
...He seems to know quite a bit about some of the operations of the Iran-contra affair, and he possesses documents which appear to back up his claims to have participated in some of them...
...One frank memo from S/LPD to White House Communications Director Pat Buchanan called one of the public relations experts who escorted contra representatives a "cut-out" and referred to the pro-contra articles as "white propaganda...
...Saudi Arabia had begun financing anticommunist guerrillas and propping up rightist regimes on behalf of the United States during the Nixon Administration.3" Ultimately, the Saudis would donate $32 million to the contras during the time Congress refused to fund them...
...Several of the individuals whose ineptitude revealed the Iran-contra affair, also had a hand in both these operations, including Richard Secord, Theodore Shackley and Thomas Clines...
...David Marcus Katz and Emil Sa'ada were involved in the operation, as was retired Army Lt...
...9 mJHTHE RIGHT AFTER REAGAN pers.' 7 A member of Carter's National Security Council staff, former Iranian President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr and Carter himself all maintain that the Reagan team made a deal with Iran to delay freeing the hostages in the U.S...
...Stephen J. Hedges, "Talk show host traded callers for cause," Miami Herald, June 11, 1987...
...4. National Security Archive, Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Contras, A Chronology of Events and Individuals citing Los Angeles Times and New York Times, May 11, 1983, and Washington Post, April 24, 1983, pp...
...He claims his son's drug addiction drove him to quit the operation.1" He then identified Donald Gregg (Vice President George Bush's national security adviser) as the U.S...
...citizen interviewed by ABC News under the pseudonym Harry, said he had helped purchase and deliver the Harari network's arms and had also transported drugs from Colombia to Panama...
...and a 1986 check-kiting case which, according to The Oregonian, was settled without prosecution...
...USA Today, Oct...
...4 " The so-called "Southern Front" based in Costa Rica never really got off the ground despite the extensive arms traffic conducted by the Harari network through Panama and Costa Rica...
...The secret command centers at the NSC and the Vice President's office used "retired" CIA and Defense Department officers and enjoyed the covert participation of CIA Director Casey...
...On one of these, he says, Mike Harari, Israel's man in Panama, put him under a gun and photographed him loading the plane...
...And private operators of every description have involved themselves with the ideological and practical aspects of the war against Nicaragua...
...Israel refused, saying he was not there in any official capacity...
...If the Agency has a pro-Israel "tilt," it is less pronounced than that of the other executive branch departments or the Congress...
...6. New York Times, March 25, 1982, cited by William Blum, The CIA, A Forgotten History, (London: Zed Press, 1986), p. 288...
...3, (May/June 1982) and Vol...
...The Supermarket was funded by the cartel and the aircraft that hauled its arms were used to fly narcotics from Colombia to the United States via Panama...
...as well as the sale of oil to South Africa.' Bamieh said that the offshore company would buy the oil from Saudi Arabia-which nominally adheres to the UN oil embargo against the apartheid regime-and resell it to South Africa at a markup of 75 cents to one dollar a barrel...
...Indeed, it was the Saudi desire to provide a counterweight to the pro-Israel lobby in Congress, which opposed arms sales to the Kingdom, that prompted the offer to fund counterrevolutionary forces...
...My understanding was what they created was a bazaar...
...The Agency will be happy to benefit from "this great milk cow," as one former diplomat put it, if President-elect Bush is not...
...Putnam's Sons, 1988), pp...
...3. Neil Roland, "Army leaders sanctioned spy units' abuses," UPI, May 8, 1988...
...In its glory days the CIA even had a network of airlines...
...Throughout the 1980s, while professing to honor the embargo against the apartheid regime, the Saudis also sold oil to South Africa through private dealers, reportedly at Casey's bidding...
...At the same time, unemployed CIA agents wasted no time in putting their skills and contacts to profitable use, facilitating the flow of weapons from these countries and from private companies...
...It will remain so after this Administration leaves office, virtually unaffected by the Iran-contra scandal or the departure from the White House of its patron saint...
...Both these dynamics were actively encouraged by many within the intelligence and defense establishments...
...See Uri Dan, "Israeli is Power Behind Noriega," New York Post, July 11, 1988, for example...
...26, 1979, citing the Israeli papers Ma'ariv and Yediot Aharonot...
...and many of the CIA personnel responsible for official misdeeds were dismissed...
...Even if the Israelis wanted the Saudis shut out of future international efforts at counterrevolution, and it is not at all clear they do, the CIA is unlikely to be solicitous of their feelings...
...Martha Honey, report on WBAI-FM (New York), April 8, 1987., 42...
...7 Even the Saudis got into the act, with a proposal to establish offshore companies to serve a multiplicity of purposes...
...4 7 The turf wars came to an end in the summer of 1985, when Oliver North managed to arrange for all foreign operation...
...N FEBRUARY 1982, EVEN BEFORE CONgress began restricting the CIA's action against Nicaragua, then deputy national security adviser Robert McFarlane began working with David Kimche, the director-general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry at the time, on a "secret military cooperation program in Central America...
...7 ) In 1975, Brenneke says he was asked by an Israeli he knew in Beirut to install intelligence computers in Guatemala and Costa Rica...
...n ONCE REAGAN WAS INSTALLED IN THE White House and Casey in Langley, Virginia, they rapidly restored the CIA to its former strength...
...Che Captor 'plays U.S...
...intelligence establishment...
...But they also provided funds to Unita-the South African-backed insurgents fighting against Angola-and underwrote the training of Unita officers in Morocco to the tune of $50 million in 1982...
...Singlaub is now in the Philippines, where it is believed that he is giving counterinsurgency advice, although he denies it...
...These and many other excesses had gone largely unchecked by either Congress or the executive...
...Senate Report No...
...Kerry's hearings ended last May...
...12, 1979, citing Clarin (Buenos Aires), and Oct...
...Previously, one thousand DO officers were forced to retire in 1973, as the Vietnam war was wound down...
...4 RONICALLY, THE TREND TOWARD MULTInational and private covert warfare is a consequence of Congressional and executive attempts to rein in the CIA since 1975...
...Over the past 15 years each of these countries has developed a complex web of interests, deeply intertwined with those of the U.S...
...2 Brenneke says that IFMA was used to launder organized crime funds until late 1972 or early 1973, when Bob Kerritt asked if the CIA could use IFMA for its work in Central America...
...22, 1986, cited by Newsletter on the Oil Embargo Against South Africa (Amsterdam) Jan...
...Statement of Edwin P. Wilson, April 14, 1987...
...It brought together guerrillas fighting against the governments of Laos, Afghanistan and Nicaragua, as well as Angola...
...When he did, on November 3, 1983, Gregg assured him that he should "by all means cooperate...
...citizens charged in a $2.5 billion arms deal with Iran that turned out to be a sting who would sell arms to the contras...
...intelligence establishment and its foreign confederates emerged after having flowed around the restrictions placed on CIA covert operations in the 1970s...
...2 6 As the Administration turned to Israel, the Israelisand the U.S...
...And he mentioned to [sic] movements in Central America, in Angola, incremental assistance to Afghan mujaheddin...
...2 1 In 1983 the Administration got into the act directly, when "operatives in the National Security Council" established the State Department Office of Latin American Public Diplomacy (S/LPD) and appointed CIA and military intelligence officers to staff it...
...Singlaub, testimony before Iran-contra committee, May 19-21, 1987...
...REFERENCES Beyond the Secret Team 1. UPI, May 15, 1988...
...54...
...Harari had been head of Mossad (Israel's CIA) for Central America and Mexico before signing on with Panama's chief-of-state, Gen...
...4 After the passage Saudis were primarily interested in funding the Afghan mujaheddin...
...Congressional investigations in 1975, spearheaded by Sen...
...Don't question the decisions of your betters...
...5 The latter half of the 1970s thus saw a three-pronged effort to bring the government's secret foreign policy into line with the law, though the need for covert action per se was not questioned...
...Noriega's links to drug trafficking, Washington pleaded with Israel to recall Harari...
...2 Meanwhile, Israel took advantage of the Carter Administration's cutoff of military aid to Guatemala, El Salvador and Somoza's Nicaragua to become the principal weapons supplier to all three countries...
...2. Cited in Ben Bradlee, Jr., Guts and Glory (New York: Donald I. Fine, Inc., 1988), p. 158...
...After Torrijos' death in 1981, Harari took the same position with Manuel Antonio Noriega, with whom he also became a partner in a number of business enterprises...
...In the Jamba Declaration the groups vowed to give each other "specific help...
...Six months earlier the Mozambican government daily reported that Ed6n Pastora had met secretly in Portugal with leaders of Unita and Renamo, the South Africanbacked guerrillas fighting against Mozambique...
...al., The Iran-Contra Con- nection, p. 163: Alfonso Chardy, "Reagan aides and the 'secret' government," Miami Herald, July 5, 1987...
...4 The continual reappearance of these men's names has given rise to a "secret team" theory, a theory advanced by the Christic Institute in its lawsuit against a number of them...
...Deaver and Hannaford also represented the Argentine junta and Taiwan.' 6 Campaign chairman William Casey, CIA directorin-waiting, used former FBI and CIA agents to spy on President Carter, even stealing his debate briefing paREPORT ON THE AMERICAS 14TRICONTRANENTAL M ANY OF THOSE INVOLVED IN THE REAGAN Administration's war against Nicaragua shared a common desire to consolidate support for right-wing guerrillas...
...market, which the war against Nicaragua in some small way helped them build, they resemble "an emerging new government," in the words of Jack Blum, chief investigator for the Senate subcommittee which looked into links between the contras and narcotrafficking...
...What emerged was an operation that brought arms to Central America, fetched cocaine from Colombia and brought it, via Panama, to the United States...
...While the CIA remains the prime instrument of intervention-as it has been since its founding in 1947-and while the Agency continues to employ its traditional tactics of arming and training mercenary armies, bankrolling political movements and parties, and engaging in disinformation and blackmail, two new players have come to the fore, giving interventionism the new buccaneering look seen in the Iran-contra affair...
...6, 1980...
...During the eight years of the Reagan presidency, its budget, staff and morale have been restored...
...All but Secord were longtime CIA men...
...Although the entire intelligence budget is classi- fied, a staff member of the Senate Intelligence Committee said it increased every year but one during the Reagan Administration...
...Armstrong and Nason, "Company Men...
...UPI, May 15, 1988...
...The immensely profitable gun-running scheme set up by Secord and Hakim, and nurtured by Northknown as the "Enterprise"-has indeed been shut down...
...Roberts, "Prop for U.S...
...He was later convicted for selling arms to Libya...
...Contacts between South African officials, the CIA and contra leaders reportedly began in late 1983 and continued until 1986.4' Through a leasing agreement between Southern Air Transport and Safair Freighters (USA) Inc., a front established for the purpose, South Africa provided three Hercules aircraft and pilots to the contra resupply effort...
...7 Israel, which had begun in 1974 to build a multifaceted relationship with South Africa, was happy to comply, both to please the U.S...
...IN 1975, IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE CLARK Amendment blocked further CIA operations in Angola, the Agency began to funnel arms through other African countries to South Africa, which presumably passed them on to anti-government forces in Angola.' Secretary of State Henry Kissinger encouraged Israel to get involved in the effort...
...Once Reagan took office, William Casey worked to draw the Saudis, with their bottomless pockets and oil wells, into his circle of concern...
...Its collapse left a trail of defrauded investors, and revealed a story of extensive money laundering and links to South East Asian narcotics trafficking...
...Kampuchean factions led by Prince Sihanouk and Son Sann had been invited but were unable to attend...
...4 3 "61" F YOU CAN EVER GET A 'LIBERATION movement' going and get the United States to support it, then you're into the good money...
...Over the last twenty years South Africa has invested extensively in Latin America in order to ward off sanctions and diplomatic isolation and is eager to learn from and share in the experiences of other repressive regimes.56 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 20While Saudi Arabia's general impulse is to ingratiate itself with whatever administration is in the White House by funding its covert activities-a simple matter when the King has only to sign a check-the Saudis are particularly eager to stay on good terms with the CIA...
...Emerson, Secret Warriois, pp...
...Southern Air Transport, for example-the carrier used by Oliver North and his associates Richard Secord and Albert Hakim to deliver arms to both Iran and the contras-was a CIA proprietary until 1973, when it was sold to its president on the condition that it continue to serve the Agency...
...Ltd., 1986) pp...
...Author's interview with Brenneke, May 28, 1988...
...Sen...
...Compromise legislation ultimately established the present House and Senate intelligence oversight committees to which the CIA is required to report its activities, but whose authority is effectively limited to expressing opinions behind closed doors...
...John Singlaub had offered him weapons at lower prices than those offered by Secord and Hakim, while Singlaub's testimony was a litany of how his hard work to organize arms shipments to the contras had been frustrated by infighting among suppliers...
...Bucking the CIA, still the hub of covert foreign policy, is a task Congress has never had much stomach for...
...2 " That included the aircraft and even the pilots...
...A Renaissance man," his attorney and sometime government go-between retired Marine Col...
...Or, their authority might flow from only one faction of the government, as the Enterprise operated under the direction of the group of men in the National Security Council, the CIA and the Vice President's office...
...UPI, May 15, 1988...
...Others hired on with foreign governments...
...3 6 If the Senate testimony of former cartel employees can be believed, for the drug barons things could not have gotten much better...
...His curriculum vitae reads as much like an anatomy of the off-the-books world that produced the Irancontra affair, as the career history of a Portland, Oregon property manager and one-time philosophy professor with a taste for excitement...
...aid to provide them with funds...
...The Administration and the Congressional committees investigating the scandal contend that the problem was a few bad apples, a notion which has gained a certain credibility even on the Left through the use of the "secret team" theory as the basis (for technical reasons) of a racketeering lawsuit brought by the Christic Institute against Secord et al...
...After South Africa pledged to end support for the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo), aircraft from Saudi Arabia delivered weapons to the Mozambican contras...
...Frank Church of Idaho, exposed the CIA's dirty laundry from the 1961 assassination of Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, to numerous attempts on Fidel Castro's life, to the 1973 overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile...
...It would be over a year before Congressional investigators led by Sen...
...ABC World News Tonight," and FAA documents, cited in Chronology, pp...
...The following week Pastora issued a public call for a "revolutionary and democratic" alliance between Renamo, Unita, the Afghan mujaheddin and his own ARDE...
...Ronald Reagan's 1980 election campaign made use of the tactics and contacts of the private and international networks which had grown up during the Carter Administration...
...policy by telling him that CIA Director Casey and King Fahd were at that very moment discussing the same topic on a yacht in the Mediterranean...
...In 1985, after participating in two drug shipments into the United States, Brenneke says he called Gregg to warn him about the Medellin connection, only to be rebuked: "You do what you were assigned to do...
...In reality, I saw very little going there...
...Policy: Secret Saudi Funds," New York Times, June 21, 1987...
...This move for unity never came to fruition, except for Operation Condor-launched in 1976 by security officials of Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Brazil and Uruguay to coordinate the hunt for dissidents in each other's countries and abroad...
...Even more ominously out of control are the secret "off-the-books" military units established by the Department of Defense in the wake of the failed rescue of U.S...
...5 Representatives of these, including Adolfo Calero, were present at WACL's 1985 convention in Dallas...
...With Barbara Studley, his partner in the arms firm GeoMiliTech, Singlaub also drafted a memo outlining a contra international of sorts with its own arms company, financed by a series of technology transfers among Israel, South Africa and China...
...17, 1986...
...military attach in Somoza's Nicaragua...
...arms to Egypt, was exposed when it was found to have overbilled the Defense Department by $8 million...
...Brenneke's work over the years with the Customs Service further complicates the picture...
...Embassy in Tehran until after the election, a move that may well have produced Reagan's margin of victory and would certainly have led to the arms-forhostages deals of Reagan's second term...
...John Kerry discovered that those warehoused arms had a name-the "Arms Supermarket"-and were part of a much larger operation established in 1982 by the Reagan Administration and the Israeli government to evade Congressional restrictions on aid to the contras...
...Foreign governments, notably Israel, South Africa and Saudi Arabia, have taken the lead in pursuing operations the CIA was forbidden to carry out directly...
...1985, 57...
...2 A few names continually recur in these misbegotten operations: Richard Secord, Thomas Clines, Theodore Shackley, Rafael "Chi Chi" Quintero...
...85-100...
...A June 1985 gathering in Jamba, Angola-base camp of Jonas Savimbi's army, Unita-was meant to mirror the solidarity conferences of socialist organizations...
...5. John Ranelagh, The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986), p. 644...
...military aid unappealing-Tel Aviv also developed an extensive network of diplomats, intelligence operatives and advisers in Central America that later formed the basis for the Reagan Administration's illegal contra resupply operation.'3 The foundation of Israel's Central America operations were its "cutouts": ostensibly private businessmen who have a monopoly on Israeli arms sales to a given regime and who frequently arrange Israeli training for its military officers and Israeli bodyguards for its leaders...
...Bolstering such a prospect is the failure of the Congressional select committee which investigated the Iran-contra affair to look beyond the deeds of the NorthSecord-Hakim Enterprise to the context in which it operated...
...Two of these units, Yellow Fruit and Intelligence Support Activity-like the Enterprise, their names known because they were involved in scandals-have seen action in the war against Nicaragua...
...23-24...
...The picture is further skewed because the few private operations which do come to light are usually exposed when operatives blow their own cover because of greed, duplicity or ineptitude...
...Louis Freedberg, "Irangate's South Africa Connection," Pacific News Service, March 21, 1987...
...This serves the double purpose of making them "deniable" if things go wrong, and-because they don't use public fundskeeping them out of range of Congressional scrutiny...
...Other countries, notably Israel and South Africa, moved to fill the gap opened by restrictions on U.S...
...Author's interview...
...6 (In 1983 he set up a company in Oregon called Air America Inc...
...Robert Parry, "From Pretoria to the Contras...
...He said cocaine shipments accounted for about 10% of the Harari network's business in 1983, but had increased to 60-70% of the business by autumn 1985.5" Even for those who did not dabble in narcotics, it seems, the profits to be made were considerable...
...Israel will just as happily join in a Republican campaign to bring down progressive governments and buttress compliant, rightist regimes...
...John Singlaub of the World Anticommunist League and the Secord-Hakim Enterprise over have installed computer systems in Guatemala and El Salvador which were used by those governments to identify opponents, and, in the case of Guatemala, to compile death squad lists...
...The meeting was sponsored by Citizens for America, headed by millionaire Lewis Lehrman, member of the Heritage Foundation Board of Directors and 1984 candidate for governor of New York...
...The office's activities included planting pro-contra articles in the nation's leading newspapers and arranging public appearances for contra representatives...
...But the mushrooming of privatized covert operations was more than the work of a few men in a particular operation or front...
...Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson, Inside the League, (New York: Dodd Mead, 1986), pp...
...It is Mike Harari, however, who best exemplifies Israel's tenacity when it finds itself in an advantageous position...
...Even before the pursestrings were taken out of the contras' hands, however, any dealer "who offered to undercut Secord's prices seems to have been virtually blacklisted...
...Palestinian-American businessman Sam Bamieh says he was approached by Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States, and, at a separate time, by a member of the embassy's staff, and asked to set up a company, an offshore company, whereby we will supply goods and services to different anticommunist movements in different parts of the world...
...and Theodore Shackley, The Third Option, (New York: Reader's Digest Press/McGraw Hill, 1981), p. ix, cited in Jonathan Marshall, Peter Dale Scott, and Jane Hunter, The Iran-Contra Connection, (Boston: South End Press, 1987), p. 25...
...Time, Sept...
...Such a career makes a man eminently deniable-and that is exactly what the CIA has tried to do...
...Following the purges of the 1970s, many former operatives carried forth their work in the private sector, so to speak...
...In 1985 Studley presented her idea to William Casey...
...7. The Economist, Nov...
...Financed by "blackbudget" funds, these "dozens of spy units with thousands of operatives,"' eminently suited for the emerging doctrine of low-intensity conflict, indicate once again that covert action is no longer the exclusive province of the CIA...
...8 5 - 97, 151 and passim...
...In one of a series of memos to the Department of Defense, Brenneke asked that he and his partner, John de la Rocque, a U.S...
...manager of the narcotics-linked contra resupply network...
...foreign policy is back on the straight and narrow...
...8, 1980, cited in Marshall et al, The Iran-Contra Connection, p. 56...
...This was later confirmed...
...Not only did Israel effectively undermine the Carter human rights policy by offering arms without human rights considerations-thus making the "carrot" of a resumption of U.S...
...4 " A half-hearted invitation would have been enough to bring the isolated South Africans running to the war in Central America...
...1-91...
...Jonathan Kwitny, The Crimes of Patriots, (New York: Norton, 1987...
...Warren Hoge, "Bolivia Regime Looks to its Friends to Help Foil U.S.,"New York Times, Aug...
...SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1988 17THE RIGHT AFTER REAGAN IN 1980, IN A SIMILAR EFFORT TO OBTAIN leverage on Washington, Crown Prince (now King) Fahd of Saudi Arabia wrote to the as-yet-uninaugurated Reagan offering to fund whatever counterinsurgency war the President preferred...
...Secretary of State George Shultz offered eloquent testimony to the Iran-contra committee of how he had been bypassed and undermined...
...Ibid., p. 122...
...329, 340 and passim...
...Policy...
...They are hardly out of business, however, and will certainly return should the Bush Administration revive the war against Nicaragua...
...He is still in Panama, as is Noriega, an outcome that some attribute to Harari's canny advice to the General, the cadre of Israeli bodyguards with which Harari surrounded him and the bunker Harari built for him, featuring the latest in Israeli technology...
...Israel was previously known to Richard Brenneke C,, r C, -4 8 z m REPORT ON THE AMERICASavailable to the CIA detailed a South African shipment of 200,000 pounds of weapons to the Costa Rica-based Eden Pastora...
...100-216), Nov...
...It is not certain when Emil Sa'ada was dispatched to Honduras, but in 1987 Honduran officers identified him as the main conduit for Israeli arms to the contras...
...Turf wars erupted between elements of the Harari network, Gen...
...House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Africa of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Possible Violation or Circumv ention of the Clark Amendment, July 1, 1987 (Document 80-011), Testimony of Sam Bamieh, pp...
...25, 1988...
...Israel's cutout in Panama, Mike Harari, arrived on the scene in the late 1970s...
...it was your basic weapons sales program....I am convinced that Iran was buying arms [supposedly destined for the contras] from Noriega...
...However, the truth is far different...
...Feeding on the growing U.S...
...It is certainly a great irony that these important steps-the victorious result of popular outrage at the revelations of CIA skullduggery-bore the seeds of both the Iran-contra scandal and its rapid "resolution" in hearings calculated to reassure rather than inform the public...
...UPI, May 15, 1988...
...4 Leaders of the "Anticommunist International": Adolfo Calero and Jonas Savimbi Gen...
...142-147...
...In addition, with the passage of the Clark Amendment, the Agency was prohibited from carrying forth its covert war in Angola...
...security establishment and to demonstrate to the South Africans the value of Israeli military technology and advice.' During the Carter Administration, Israel and South Africa each expanded their activities in this hemisphere, assiduously courting the military dictatorships of Latin America.' From 1976-1979 officials from Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina, Chile, South Africa and Israel met several times in various combinations in an effort to form a bloc to confront international pressure regarding their human rights practices...
...7, 1988...
...Because their policy was framed in terms of the struggle of Islam against godless communism, the A RENAISSANCE MAN RICHARD BRENNEKE SAYS HE WORKED AS A contract agent for Mossad and the CIA for two decades...
...Congress established an oversight mechanism...
...but no one was giving political discounts...
...In the wake of Watergate and the Vietnam War, when the popular mood strongly favored probity in government, a series of astonishing revelations about the Agency shook the nation...
...covert policy has become a vehicle for an international assortment of reactionaries, thugs and narcotraffickers...
...Some would argue that the limited nature of these measures made their failure inevitable...
...Jim Redden, "Burning Bush," Willamette Week (Portland, Oregon), July 14-20, 1988...
...Omar Torrijos, as an "adviser...
...Tauris & Co...
...Vice President Bush's assistant, Donald Gregg, with his 20 years of experience in the CIA and his two years on the NSC staff (19791981) was one of the key officials involved...
...While the men who ran the Enterprise were pilloried as the Iran-contra villains and lost their stake, there is nothing to indicate that the other international actors and private fronts will not thrive under a less encouraging administration...
...From 1984-1986, he used his companies-the National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty and International Business Communications (IBC)-to run media campaigns against incumbent members of Congress opposed to the Administration's contra policy, as well as to raise and launder millions of dollars for the contras...
...3 Brenneke concurred...
...That's guaranteed and that's kind of understood...
...8. Jane Hunter, Israeli Foreign Policy, South Africa and Central America (Boston: South End Press, 1987), pp...
...Richard Brenneke and Felix Rodriguez, who ran the resupply operation out of El Salvador, each spoke scathingly of Secord and Hakim-Rodriguez called them "inept and nonprofessional and corrupt"-and preferred to quit the whole operation, rather than continue working with them.45 Contra boss Adolfo Calero testified to the Iran-contra committee that Gen...
...For details about Safair see "Responses From Department of Defense, (Dated July 2, 19871) to Questions Submitted by Representative Howard Wolpe," Possible Violation or Circumvention ojf the Clark Amendment, p. 155...
...link' in contra war," Guardian (London), Oct...
...Congress did move to close down the Office of Public Safety, a CIA spin-off which trained foreign police officers in Washington and in 40 client countries, and which had become notorious for the torture and brutality practiced by its students...
...It was the Enterprise--a finite group-which Congress hauled on the carpet...
...To make matters worse, the CIA has become quite adept at overseeing its overseers...
...2, 1984...
...foreign policy has changed significantly...
...International Center for Development Policy, The Brenneke Report: An Assessment of the International Center s Investigation (Washington), Aug...
...Having refused a job as a computer analyst with the CIA, Brenneke's entry into covert life came through his work, between 1968 and 1971, for United Financial Group, an overseas investment fund comprising 126 companies working from Oregon and British Columbia.' Bob Kerritt of the CIA and various Mossad officers paid Brenneke to report on his dealings for the company in Beirut, one of its off-shore banking centers...
...Special Forces, June 1988...
...Godwin Matatu, "Secret airlift to Machel's foes...
...Strategy," Deputy Air Force Secretary John Michael Kelly made no bones about it: I think the most critical special operations mission we have in the United States today is to persuade the American people that the communists are out to get us, and that we have to help other countries to do the things that have to be done in order to keep the communists away from our doorsteps...
...In 1983, almost certainly reflecting Administration thinking, Secretary of the Army John Marsh proposed that many special operations be transferred to the private sector...
...John Singlaub of the World Anticommunist League: sponsor of private wars Yugoslavia, he asked if the venture was authorized by Washington and was told to call Gregg in the Vice President's office...
...Admiral Stansfield Turner, Carter's director of central intelligence, eliminated 2800 CIA positions, 820 of them in the Agency's Directorate of Operations (DO), reportedly bringing the staff of the covert action bureau down REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 12to 400 officers...
...Time, July 25, 1983, cited in Marshall et...
...If the shipments were extremely sensitive, you'd see Israeli pilots and aircraft...
...Emerson, Secret Warriors, p. 24, quoting "still-classified CIA documents...
...Emerson cites still-classified NSC documents, but this time frame is consistent with the establishment of the Harari network...
...13...
...125-126, 128-129...
...Saudi Arabia had been a force in the World AntiCommunist League, but it lay outside the circle of pariah nations which banded together to circumvent Carter's aid restrictions, mainly because Israel was so much a part of that circle...
...The network was first identified by name by former'Panama official, Jose Bland6n, during hearings before the Subcommittee on Narcotics, Ter- rorism and International Opercitions of the Senate Foreign Relations Com- mittee, April 4, 1988...
...1988...
...In what he still insists was a government-sanctioned operation, Wilson went to work for Moamar Qadhafi...
...By going private and international, covert action has burrowed deeper into blankets of secrecy, making that task infinitely more difficult...
...citizen living in France, be made exclusive agents for such sales...
...both had language calling for "strategic cooperation," which then Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir defined as "a dialogue on coordinating activity in the Third World...
...T HE CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY seems to have survived the Iran-contra scandal well...
...citizens that worked with them--turned to the Medellin cartel...
...6-11...
...NACLA, March/April, 1987...
...In February 1987, the Agency departed from its standard "no comment" on personnel, to state its claim that Brenneke never worked for the CIA.' " 16 H SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1988 19THE RIGHT AFTER REAGAN and private contributions to the contras to go to bank accounts controlled by Secord and Hakim...
...Since Pretoria is ustifiably worried that a future administration will cut the intelligence links that have persisted over the years, its overriding concern is to forge as many bonds with the CIA as possible, both institutional and personal...
...9 The Administration soon discovered, however, that Congress and the public were not prepared to return to the pre-Vietnam, pre-Watergate world where anything the U.S...
...John Kerry, who chairs the Senate Subcommittee on Narcotics, Terrorism and International Operations, noted an "interlocking web of bank accounts, airstrips, planes, pilots and contra bases which have been used in common by weapons smugglers, narcotics smugglers, the contras and organizations assisting the contras...
...Saudi oil and aid to the guerrilla groups it backed was the icing on the cake...
...Scott Armstrong & Jeff Nason, "Company Men," Mother Jones, Oct...
...Albert Hakim had either worked for the CIA or repeatedly offered his services to the Agency...
...2 In their efforts to avoid detection by Congress and the people of the United States, these officials made full use of the Agency's vast network of proprietaries, and the foreign and "private" networks which had arisen over the previous decade...
...Quoted in David Coetzee, "Angola and Irangate," A/icAsia (Paris), March 1987...
...2 The audacious plan for the Enterprise to become a permanent "off-the-shelf" foreign policy agency that would generate its own funds (thus avoiding Congressional oversight) may well be duplicated in a smaller way for the other covert entrepreneurs...
...9 Nonetheless, in May 1988 Brenneke went public...
...Bamieh said he refused the request, even though Bandar told him such a company could make $50 to $100 million in annual profits...
...Newsweek, May 23, 1988...
...The drug lords firmly anchored the Administration's most ideological covert program to the very big-time crime that other branches of the government (and Nancy Reagan) were fighting with millions of dollars of appropriated funds...
...market...
...3 2 One pilot, a U.S...
...9. NACLA, Report on the Americas, Vol...
...The memos were intended as proof that the defendants had knowledge that Administration policy favored arms sales to Iran...
...Perhaps the best known is Edwin Wilson, who claims his specialty was setting up such private operations for the CIA...
...Recalling the Harari network, and the prompt offers by Israel and South Africa to aid the "cocaine coup" government of Luis Garcia Meza that took over Bolivia in 1980," it is not difficult to predict the integration of this "govemment" into the international Right that has come into its own during the Reagan years...
...Steven V. Roberts, et...
...To further its own parochial interests, South Africa will be equally eager to join in any activity at hand...
...Because their very raison d'etre is secrecy, it is difficult to get a sense of how numerous these private fronts might be, much less how many unemployed intelligence officers gravitated to them in the 1970s...
...He claims to have worked in a 19801981 operation which flew Jews out of Iran...
...These were separate from CIA operations only insofar as the personnel involved were not officially CIA employees...
...Transcript, ABC News, April 7, 1988...
...The registered agent in the United States for Amigos del Pais was the firm of Deaver and Hannaford, Reagan's campaign organization...
...Abbie Hoffman and Jonathan Silvers, "An Election Held Hostage," Playhoy, Aug...
...House of Representatives, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Staff Report, State Department and Intelligence Community Involvement in Do- mestic Activities Related to the Iran/Contra Affifir, 100th Cong., 2nd Sess., Sept...
...NACLA (March/April, 1987...
...The current that pulled these people and organizations was not simply the venality cum ideology of the so-called secret team, but the inexorable impulse of the United States to intervene...
...Sometime during the 1970s, Pesakh Ben-or arrived in Guatemala, where he set up Eagle Military Gear Overseas and funneled Israeli weapons to the military command...
...Lynda Schuster, "Pretoria's bid for 'hearts and minds,'" Christian Science Monitori...
...John Singlaub set up committees within the World Anti-Communist League for eight different guerrilla groups...
...While these entrepreneurial spooks use their government connections to invoke U.S...
...Like the private operatives, the involvement of South Africa, Saudi Arabia and especially Israel in making war on the perceived enemies of the United States is no fly-by-night affair...
...The pilots were in most cases working for the cartel...
...Now that the Nicaraguan "freedom fighters" are in retreat, the numerous right-wing organizations that supported the contra cause are less in evidence...
...According to the Iran-contra committee, the two men and their silent partner Thomas Clines took commissions amounting to a 38% markup on the arms they sold the contras-almost twice the 20% Secord claimed he drew from the operation...
...According to Brenneke: Typically, the drugs were run through Panama and into the United States...
...It has long been standard practice for intelligence agencies to establish money-making front operations ("proprietaries") and to privatize ("off-load") potentially controversial intelligence operations...
...After weathering three media exposes of his activities (in late 1985, early 1987 and in April of 1988, when the Harari network was uncovered), Pesakh Ben-Or is believed to still be the Mossad station chief in Guatemala...
...Should the Democrats in Congress prevail in denying support for rightist regimes and movements, Israel will certainly subvert that policy by selling arms, providing advisers and perhaps by using its political influence...
...Brenneke has had his own brushes with the law: a 1984 lawsuit over the fabrication of an aircraft title for the purpose of concealing a lien, so the plane could be used as collateral for a loan...
...4 2 A February 1985 intelligence report of the Boland Amendment, Mossad took over the company, Brenneke says.: During the period he was engaged in international finance, Brenneke says he also flew occasional missions for the CIA's Air America in Southeast Asia and for the Agency in South America...
...That network is thought to be responsible for the 1976 assassination of Chile's former foreign minister Orlando Letelier in Washington, an act apparently facilitated by the policies Taiwan's T-65 rifle is popular with Salvadoran police SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 988 3 c C' 1 j 13 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1988THE RIGHT AFTER REAGAN of then CIA Director George Bush, who maintained an open door for "friendly" foreign intelligence agencies...
...hran-contra Report, p. 331...
...4 6 In their Congressional testimony, Hakim and Secord made no bones about their desire to profit from their "patriotic" activity...
...16, 1983, reproduced in FBIS Middle East and Africa...
...When Brenneke was recruited by Pesakh Ben-Or (Israel's man in Guatemala) to buy arms in 16 REPORT ON THE AMERICASGen...
...John Singlaub's partner in the arms firm GeoMiliTech, claims that the one arms deal they were allowed to make with the contras was the only "honest" contra arms sale...
...In Central America during the Reagan years, the agendas of those involved varied, but the contras would never be higher than number two on anyone's priority list...
...SINCE THE LAST TIME THE VEIL WAS LIFTED in the mid-1970s, secret U.S...
...Bob Woodward, Veil, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), p. 384...
...1987 (hereafter "Iran-contra Report"), pp...
...What is distinctive about the covert operations of the Reagan years is their multiplicity, their transnational character and their aura of private enterprise, a witch's brew of ideology and the profit motive...
...and author's interviews with Brenneke, May 28 and June 8, 1988...
...President Carter placed restrictions on military aid...
...The first to arrive was David Marcus Katz, who by 1979 was representing 17 Israeli companies, selling arms throughout Latin America...
...While every government and group that joined in the effort had its own parochial reason for doing so, be it prestige, power or profit, there is no question that their involvement was deliberate Administration policy...
...government did to fight "communism" was accepted as legitimate...
...Congress, Congressional Committee Investigating the Iran- Contra Affair 100th Congress, Ist Session, (House Report No...
...4 4 John Stockwell, who ran the CIA's operation in Angola in the 1970s, speaks from first-hand knowledge...
...After Brenneke provided documentary information to the Securities and Exchange Commission that resulted in a civil fraud suit and the firm's subsequent collapse in 1972, he set up an offshore operation in Panama, the International Fund for Mergers and Acquisitions (IFMA), for Ramon D'Onofrio, a Las Vegas financier...
...These men, who believe so strongly in the existence of an international communist conspiracy and the mission of the United States to defeat it, see domestic political discourse and the electoral arena as yet another battlefield, one eminently suited for the same tactics the CIA employs abroad...
...this was part of an Israeli agreement to sell arms to the Islamic Republic.' Brenneke also tried his hand at selling arms to Iran: in 1985 and 1986 he repeatedly tried to broker an armsfor-hostages deal, but failed to enlist the Administration's cooperation...
...Richard Brenneke was also involved in the Iran leg of the Iran-contra affair...
...In exchange for some aircraft, a few pilots, a little front money and occasional cash donations to the contras, the cartel's drug deliveries flowed into the U.S...
...15, 1988...
...According to Bob Woodward, whose book Veil relied on interviews with CIA Director Casey, during Reagan's first term the budget increased 50...
...As to the linkage of the Medellin cartel to the contra resupply operation, even before the Iran-contra scandal broke, Sen...
...2 9 Running things in Washington, maintains Brenneke, was Vice President Bush's national security adviser Donald Gregg...
...2 (March/April, 1987...
...He said he regarded Israel as his primary employer and the United States as his secondary employer...
...Observer (London), Dec...
...When word began to circulate about Gen...
...As a more secretive bureaucracy, the CIA is less susceptible to public pressure and more inclined to pursue its own interests, such as its excellent relations with the Saudi Royal Family, which afford it a privileged observation point on Saudi society...
...100-433...
...Since Brenneke has only telephone bills and his memoranda of conversations with Gregg to support his claim, it has failed thus far to register as "truth...
...5 IF THE ENTERPRISE WAS OVERLY ACQUISItive and bloated with hubris because of its link to the highest echelons of government, it was nonetheless emblematic of the dangerous phenomenon of "private" covert operations...
...May 1, 1988...
...First, in the mid1970s, he collaborated in efforts to expose customs agents with knowledge of narcotrafficking...
...It was at this meeting that Jonas Savimbi reportedly "agreed" to send Unita advisers to help the contras.' The previous March, according to journalist Martha Honey, someone "associated with the contras" but "not a contra" was taken to South Africa and from there into Angola to meet with Unita about bringing arms from South Africa to the contras.2 According to one report, the U.S...
...1988...
...XXI, No...
...Author's interview with Brenneke, May 28, 1988...
...Newsweek, May 23, 1988...
...Newsweek, Feb...
...Contributions flowed in from Guatemala's Amigos del Pais and other allies of the Right anxious to put the Carter human rights era behind them...
...David Hoffman, "North Drew Rodriguez Into Contra Operation," Washington Post, April 26, 1987...
...Sam Cummings, one of the world's leading (or at least most visible) private arms dealers, said he had never been approached by the contras "even though they pay two and three times more than they'd pay from us...
...2 7 Richard Brenneke, who procured weapons for Harari's operation, described it as "an overlay on an existing network of operatives, banks, protection...[T]he people involved were the same people and the same facilities and equipment" used by the cartel...
...Cited in Bradlee, Guts and Glory, p. 157...
...As part of its drive to expand its arms exports during that period, Israel also sold Honduras great quantities of weapons and did considerable business with Panama...
...The indictment of a few individuals and the disciplining of a few others barely scratched the surface of the vast hidden realm of covert foreign policy that was glimpsed while the scandal lasted...
...By 1978 the Carter Administration had ended the overt flow of free or subsidized weapons to such bloodthirsty dictatorships as those in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala and Somoza's Nicaragua...
...5 7 The drug cartels are certain to be a factor in whatever war is to come...
...Israel maintains its presence in El Salvador, Guatemala and Costa Rica, and, as it has demonstrated over the past decade, will prosper in Central America under both Democratic and Republican administrations...
...It was the form in which the U.S...
...These operators run the gamut from right-wing political organizations such as the World Anti-Communist League-made up of ex-Nazis, Asian fascists, and Latin American death squads-to mercenary outfits, the Medellin cocaine cartel, Protestant fundamentalists and the Unification Church of Sun Myung Moon, many of whom remain active in the field despite the waning of the contra war...
...Brenneke's career is a snapshot of the nether world of the covert operative...
...Channell's IBC was among the firms which received sole-source, nobid contracts from S/LPD...
...government paid contra leader Adolfo Calero's fare to the Jamba meeting and gave him "a liberal expense allowance...
Vol. 22 • August 1988 • No. 5
