Posted by Andreas from dtm2-t8-1.mcbone.net (62.104.210.78) on Tuesday, June 24, 2003 at 4:53PM :
In Reply to: Iraq Was Rich... posted by farid from customer-148-233-78-77.uninet.net.mx (148.233.78.77) on Tuesday, June 24, 2003 at 1:33PM :
: ...it had surpluses...it had free education...hospitals, universities...it still has wealth locked up by these bastards...the only appeal should be that Bush and his pals pay a fair price for the oil they want to steal.
+++ Yes, yes, we know. Here's s'thing NEW fer ye
----------------
Behind the Scenes in the Beltway
http://www.almartinraw.com/
Pentagon Whistleblower Exposes Dark Secrets of Iraqi War
by Al Martin
June 9, 2003
[excerpts]
[AL MARTIN is America's foremost expert on corporate and
government fraud. A relentless whistleblower, he has written a book
called, "The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran Contra Insider," which
chronicles his adventures with the Bush Cabal (National Liberty
Press, Order Line: 866-317-1390).]
In a World News Exclusive, Al Martin Raw.Com confirms asset
seizures from US-Occupied Iraq by Bushonian minions in the CIA
and the US Defense Department. The Pentagon whistleblower,
concerned for her safety, has decided to tell her story about the
latest CIA/ DoD fiasco. This is her story. Be warned - it sounds
like a 21st Century version of Treasure Island meets Ali Baba
and the Bushonian Thieves. And it's all true.
The whistleblower's name is Nelda Rogers. She is number two in
the chain of command within this DoD special intelligence office. The
unit of this office is a debriefing unit within the central debriefing
for the Department of Defense.
Nelda Rogers is evidently a 28-year employee of the Department of
Defense. It is a ten-person debriefing unit. The information they are
leaking out is information that was obtained while she was in Germany
heading up the debriefing of returning service personnel who were
involved in intelligence work in Iraq for the Department of
Defense and/or the Central Intelligence Agency
This actually appears to be a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)
operation. In fact some of the information appears to be similar to the
DIA document report from September 2002. Ms. Rogers spent much
of 2002 in Germany, so this was from the time frame before the Iraqi
engagement actually started, when they were making all the decisions
and planning all the covert operations before the formal beginning
of the conflict.
This woman also has an office at the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville
Alabama and shuttles regularly between her office in Washington and
Huntsville.
According to Ms. Rogers, there was a covert military operation that took
place both preceding and during the hostilities in Iraq. The unit involved
was manned by ex-military guys, black-ops guys who were brought
back, which is very commonly done. The unit was paid through the
Department of Agriculture in order to hide it, and this is also
very commonplace.
The Department of Agriculture has been consistently used to hide
payments for covert operations. In fact, the so-called Iraq Gate/ Banca
Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL) scandal used "credits" through the Agriculture
Department. The Ag Department has traditionally been used as a paymaster
on behalf of the CIA, DIA, and NSA and others because nobody ever
scrutinizes them.
The Ag Department doesn't even go through the same type of auditing
process. It has a special exemption wherein the General Accounting
Office does not put it through as rigorous an audit every year. It was a
rather staid agency, which didn't conduct a huge volume of transactions.
Nothing about Ag was supposedly covert, and that's why the Department
of Defense has use the Agriculture Department as paymasters.
At any rate, the operation in Iraq involved 100 people all of whom
apparently are now dead, having succumbed to so-called "friendly fire."
The scope of this operation included the penetration of the Central Bank
of Iraq, other large commercial banks in Baghdad, the Iraqi National
Museum and certain presidential palaces where monies and bullion
were secreted.
The initial phase of the operation was to first identify where all of the
physical cash, bullion, diamonds and rare and valuable antiquities were
stored. It was a combination of Saddam Hussein's and his family's money.
There is no real distinction in Iraq. When you say Saddam Hussein, or
his family, or the ruling elite's personal cash bullion, etc and those
assets
belonging to the Central Bank of Iraq, they are literally one and same.
This is a dictatorship in which Saddam Hussein and his family essentially
owned and or controlled all other organs of financial state power. In
other words, the Central Bank of Iraq was the personal bank
for the Hussein Family.
They did know that the Central Bank of Iraq had claimed assets mostly
in US dollars and some euros and other currencies, and gold bullion of
about $4 billion. The Department of Defense, through information they
received from the Treasury Department believed that this number
was rather accurate.
And that's what they were looking for. They identified about $2 billion
of cash in US dollars, where it was and another $150 million in Euros, in
physical banknotes, and about another $100 million in sundry foreign
currencies ranging from Yen to British Pounds.
When these people died, mostly in the same place in Baghdadi,
supposedly from a stray cruise missile or a combination of missiles and
bombs that went astray. There were supposedly 76 who died there and
the other 24 died through a variety of "friendly fire," "mistaken identity,"
and some of them - their whereabouts are simply unknown.
This unit concluded that the deaths appear to be an "accident," unless,
as the whistleblower pointed out, there was "an operation within an
operation." That is, unless there was an operation to get all the
information they had while another group within the group
then liquidated the original group.
But as she points out, if that were the case, the seizure of these
assets would have gone much more smoothly because it would have
been handled by a group of people who knew what they were doing.
These seizures, however, were handled in a clumsy manner. First
there was the $1.6 billion hidden behind the wall in the palace, which
had already been identified. She already knew about it personally -
exactly where it was. But because these people all died before they
could pass along all of their information, it left some confusion as to
where exactly some of these assets were, and more importantly, it
left a gap in the chain of command, when these people were taken
out. Consequently there was not a central and cohesive operation
to seize these monies and bullions.
In other words, the follow-up operation was evidently using incomplete
information. Therefore it was done very sloppily. People were breaking
down walls with sledge hammers looking for money and then having US
troops which were not authorized to be there making off with some of
the "treasure."
In a 21st century update of "Treasure Island," it wasn't as if they lost
the "treasure map." It was as if they had the treasure map, but they
didn't have all the clues in place because the people who had the clues
had already died. Since they didn't have all the clues, they had to keep
looking for clues and because of that (when these people were taken out)
whoever was controlling this operation could not get substitute forces in
theater quickly enough to seize these assets because regular US troops
were already in Baghdad.
This was a contingent of CIA/ DoD operatives, but it was really the CIA
that bungled it, she said. They were relying on the CIA's ability to
organize
an effort to seize these assets and to be able to extract these assets
because the CIA claimed it had resources on the ground within the Iraqi
army and the Iraqi government who had been paid. That turned out
to be completely bogus. As usual.
The CIA essentially screwed it all up. As she pointed out, the guys who
were supposed to be there to pick up this $1.6 billion, when they were
loading it up into trucks, the CIA people were supposed to be handling it.
They had a special "black" (unmarked) aircraft to fly it out. But none of it
happened because the regular US Army showed up and stumbled onto
it and everyone who was involved had to scramble.
The big bloc of cash, the $1.6 billion was found in the Hussein Presidential
Palace in Western Baghdad. This was also where Saddam kept his collection
of rare objets d'art. It was also where all the Louis XVI furniture and
Napoleon-era (First Period) furniture was kept. Saddam was a
great collector.
Will this furniture end up in the Bush Ranch in Crawford, Texas? It's
too early to say, but a lot of it is already in Paul Bremer's new office.
And
General Jay Garner also got a lot of it. They are now in charge of
the "Spoils of War" Department.
It should be noted that Iraqi "asset seizures" go directly to the New
US Ruling Junta.
....
But to get back to the story. Of the original 100 operatives, 22 were
trained at the Redstone Arsenal. (See previous columns from 2001 and
2002). At the Department of Defense Special Covert Operations Training
Center, which is still there by the way. General Tommy Franks had been
informed of the operation and also he had been apprised of the situation
that people had been killed. No doubt he decided to keep his mouth shut
for what will be a $3 million advance on his book now that has retiring.
To recap: there was about $2 billion in US currency, approximately $350
million in Euros and assorted other currencies, an indeterminate amount
of gold bullion, an indeterminate amount of fine quality cut diamonds and
other precious stones , indeterminate amount of rare antiquities including
early Mesopotamian gold artifacts etc..
The current disposition of over $2 billon in currency is unknown . What
is going to happen to it is unknown. The current whereabouts of the gold
bullion is unknown other than it's in the possession of the American
Government (not to be confused with the American People) It appears
that there was an effort to sell some of the antiquities through back
channels in London. Someone at Sotheby's however knew what this
stuff was and leaked it out the BBC. Several weeks ago there was a
story on BBC about someone attempting to sell antiquities looted
from the Iraqi National Museum, in London
The US government tried to portray this situation that these were
some soldiers or reporters, but the truth is that this was an official
covert
action. of the government ton try to peddle some of this stuff.
Evidently one of the guys who got killed had a "want list" from the Saudi
princes who were prepared to buy these artifacts for cash - quietly . The
problem is that the "want list" got lost.
Then the CIA goes to London to Sotheby's to a department that handles
discreet purchases for the Saudi Royal Family and they were trying to
make contact. Unfortunately somebody there had a big mouth when
they saw the stuff.
Apparently this operation was not cleared with the British Government,
which had no idea this was happening. Had they cleared it with MI6 and
the Blair Government then it could have been handled quietly.
But it was sheer incompetence. The problem was that when the original
cast of characters got taken out of the picture, they had an incomplete
picture and some of the envisioned operations had been screwed up. It
was after all these people who had planned the transportation, the
discrete storage, and its subsequent movement of the loot -- all
the operational procedures after the stuff was seized.
Consequently it left the CIA and the Department of Defense bumbling
around. It's like the seizure of the 3 trucks loaded with gold bullion. We
still don't know the real story. First the government said it was $500
million then that got discredited. At current prices that would be 40
metric tons and CNN showed a picture of 2-1/2 ton Iraqi army
trucks, so how do you fit 40 tons on three 2-1/2 ton
capacity trucks?
Then the story got changed again. And they said it was 2000 gold bars.
Then they said we don't know how much it is. Even the leaks -- the way
the information was let out publicly -- you could tell that the whole thing
was bungled. They couldn't even get the lies straight for the media.
It was a typical Department of Defense/ CIA operation. When the two
have tried to collaborate on any covert operation in the past, it has been
bungled. They never had a successful operation in which they were
able to collaborate.
Historically, for instance, in 1989 when the Bush regime was selling
turnkey non-conventional weapons systems to Iraq . Then there was
the problem of how do we get the weapons systems there since Iraq
was an "embargoed" country. In other words, it was against the law
to ship weapons to Iraq.
The Department of Defense was handling it in conjunction with the
CIA. The CIA operated through its own people within the Commerce
Department to mislabel three stuff. Then what happened is that after
they mislabeled it they bungled it. They shipped it to the wrong
place. - because it was mislabeled.
That's the problem when you have ringers. The CIA had a couple of its
own ringers within the Department of Commerce who were mislabeling
the shipments and doctoring the invoices. The problem is when the stuff
got put a pallet and a truck to go someplace.
For instance Crate A which was supposed to go to this cutout company
in London wound up getting shipped to South Africa and nobody knew
where it was. And that's how the South Africans got involved. They
thought it was wonderful - being shipped all these valuable biological
and biochemical weapons. They in turn went to the Israelis because they
just wanted to sell it for whatever they could get. The South Africans had
a long relationship with the Israelis, but the Israelis then wanted to
know how the South African government got US equipment
like this .
....
During this entire operation, there were extensive tape recordings of
interviews made with the Iraqi returnees, the covert operatives (as well
as their affidavits). These were men who were hired by the CIA and who
were involved with this operation. They were retired military guys who
were involved in black ops all their lives and who keep getting hired
back from time to time from the pool, as it were.
And that's the first part of the story of the CIA/ DoD Iraqi "Plant the
WMDs" Fiasco.
(Postscript: Most recently on June 7 CNN announced that supposedly
3000 of the most valuable artifacts owned by the Iraqi State Museum,
including the great Treasure of Nimrud, which is considered to be one of
the greatest treasures on earth has been found in the vault's of
the Iraqi Central Bank.
It was a laughable report because the CIA has been in control of the
Iraqi Central Bank for about 6 weeks. It's not that big of a place. There
are only 4 main vaults in the building. Then they had the audacity to say
in the release from Civilian Administrator Paul Bremer's office apparently
these 3000 items found in the vault were "overlooked". But how can you
overlook 3,000 items ranging from individual pieces of jewelry to
gold statuary that is 9 feet tall?
It looks like they know that a lot of this bungling is going to come
tumbling out. They have then just busted out this operation on the
antiquities side of it.
When they found out that there were leaks, they were probably
frightened to peddle these items to the Saudis because they probably
feel that there is too much information about the illegal covert
operation involved in securing this stuff.
It must be remembered that the Great Treasure of Nimrod, considered
to be some of the most valuable artifacts ever produced, is that which
the late King Faisal of Saudi Arabia once offered $3 billion dollars for.
There are only a few buyers for such a collection in the world
and those buyers are in Saudi Arabia.
Isn't it intriguing how the media isn't being allowed any access in the
recovery of the war booty? The media is now being purposely excluded.
Bremer's office will not be making any accounting to Congress concerning
these treasures. Nor will any accounting be made to the GAO or the
OMB concerning the exact amount of bullion and monies recovered.
In the Iraqi Asset Seizure Caper, "recovery" means how much of
wit will be skimmed off the top.
First you deny the media access. Then you purposely make yourself
look foolish and confuse everyone with incorrect numbers, which are
then changed and changed again.
After more than two days of flip flops and lies, no independent oversight
of inventory or control, no report to the Treasury, OMB or GAO, who is to
say how much is actually there and how much is going to actually go
back to the US Treasury?
You could call it Operation Skim Iraq.
Remember -- the Bushonian Cabal is working while you sleep.
-- Andreas
-- signature .