THE BUSH-CHENEY DRUG EMPIRE (See Iraq, Halliburton, Vinnel, )

[Guest guest]

Halliburton Corporation's Brown and Root is one of the major components of

 

THE BUSH-CHENEY DRUG EMPIRE

 

[Lead story in the October 24, 2000 issue of " From The Wilderness " ]

 

by

Michael C. Ruppert

 

© Copyright 2000, Michael C. Ruppert and " From The Wilderness "

Publications, P.O. Box 6061-350, Sherman Oaks, CA 91413, 818-788-8791,

www.copvcia.com. . - Permission to reprint for

non-profit only is hereby granted as long as proper sourcing appears. For

all other permissions contact mruppert.

 

--

 

FTW October 24, 2000 - The success of Bush Vice Presidential running mate

Richard Cheney at leading Halliburton, Inc. to a five year $3.8 billion

" pig-out " on federal contracts and taxpayer-insured loans is only a partial

indicator of what may happen if the Bush ticket wins in two weeks. A closer

look at available research, including an August 2, 2000 report by the

Center for Public Integrity (CPI) at www.public-i.org, suggests that drug

money has played a role in the successes achieved by Halliburton under

Cheney's tenure as CEO from 1995 to 2000. This is especially true for

Halliburton's most famous subsidiary, heavy construction and oil giant,

Brown and Root. A deeper look into history reveals that Brown and Root's

past as well as the past of Dick Cheney himself, connect to the

international drug trade on more than one occasion and in more than one way.

This June the lead Washington, D.C. attorney for a major Russian oil

company connected in law enforcement reports to heroin smuggling and also a

beneficiary of US backed loans to pay for Brown and Root contracts in

Russia, held a $2.2 million fund raiser to fill the already bulging coffers

of presidential candidate George W. Bush. This is not the first time that

Brown and Root has been connected to drugs and the fact is that this

" poster child " of American industry may also be a key player in Wall

Street's efforts to maintain domination of the half trillion dollar a year

global drug trade and its profits. And Dick Cheney, who has also come

closer to drugs than most suspect, and who is also Halliburton's largest

individual shareholder ($45.5 million), has a vested interest in seeing to

it that Brown and Root's successes continue.

 

Of all American companies dealing directly with the U.S. military and

providing cover for CIA operations few firms can match the global presence

of this giant construction powerhouse which employs 20,000 people in more

than 100 countries. Through its sister companies or joint ventures, Brown

and Root can build offshore oil rigs, drill wells, construct and operate

everything from harbors to pipelines to highways to nuclear reactors. It

can train and arm security forces and it can now also feed, supply and

house armies. One key beacon of Brown and Root's overwhelming appeal to

agencies like the CIA is that, from its own corporate web page, it proudly

announces that it has received the contract to dismantle aging Russian

nuclear tipped ICBMs in their silos.

 

Furthermore, the relationships between key institutions, players and the

Bushes themselves suggest that under a George " W " administration the Bush

family and its allies may well be able, using Brown and Root as the

operational interface, to control the drug trade all the way from Medellin

to Moscow.

 

Originally formed as a heavy construction company to build dams, Brown and

Root grew its operations via shrewd political contributions to Senate

candidate Lyndon Johnson in 1948. Expanding into the building of oil

platforms, military bases, ports, nuclear facilities, harbors and tunnels,

Brown and Root virtually underwrote LBJ's political career. It prospered as

a result, making billions on U.S. Government contracts during the Vietnam

War. The " Austin Chronicle " in an August 28 Op-ed piece entitled " The

Candidate From Brown and Root " labels Republican Cheney as the political

dispenser of Brown and Root's largesse. According to political campaign

records, during Cheney's five year tenure at Halliburton the company's

political contributions more than doubled to $1.2 million. Not

surprisingly, most of that money went to Republican candidates.

 

Independent news service " newsmakingnews.com, " also describes how in 1998,

with Cheney as Chairman, Halliburton spent $8.1 billion to purchase oil

industry equipment and drilling supplier Dresser Industries. This made

Halliburton a corporation that will have a presence in almost any future

oil drilling operation anywhere in the world. And it also brought back into

the family fold the company that had once sent a plane - also in 1948 - to

fetch the new Yale Graduate George H.W. Bush, to begin his career in the

Texas oil business. Bush the elder's father, Prescott, served as a

Managing Director for the firm that once owned Dresser, Brown Bothers

Harriman.

 

It is clear that everywhere there is oil there is Brown and Root. But

increasingly, everywhere there is war or insurrection there is Brown and

Root also. From Bosnia and Kosovo, to Chechnya, to Rwanda, to Burma, to

Pakistan, to Laos, to Vietnam, to Indonesia, to Iran to Libya to Mexico to

Colombia, Brown and Root's traditional operations have expanded from heavy

construction to include the provision of logistical support for the U.S.

military. Now, instead of U.S. Army quartermasters, the world is likely to

see Brown and Root warehouses storing and managing everything from uniforms

to rations to vehicles.

 

Dramatic expansion of Brown and Root's operations in Colombia also suggest

Bush preparations for a war inspired feeding frenzy as a part of " Plan

Colombia. " This is consistent with moves by former Bush Treasury Secretary

Nicholas Brady to open a joint Colombian-American investment partnership

called Corfinsura for the financing of major construction projects with the

Colombian Antioquia Syndicate, headquartered in Medellin. (See FTW June,

00). And expectations of a ground war in Colombia may explain why, in a

2000 SEC filing, Brown and Root reported that in addition to owning more

than 800,000 square feet of warehouse space in Colombia, they also lease

another 122,000 square feet. According to the filing of the Brown and Root

Energy Services Group, the only other places where the company maintains

warehouse space are in Mexico (525,000 sq. feet), and the U.S. (38,000)

square feet.

 

According to the web site of Colombia's Foreign Investment Promotion Agency

Brown and Root had no presence in the country until 1997. What does Brown

and Root, which, according to the AP has made more than $2 billion

supporting and supplying U.S. troops, know about Colombia that the U.S.

public does not? Why the need for almost a million square feet of

warehouse space that can be transferred from one Brown and Root operation

(energy) to another (military support) with the stroke of a pen?

 

DRUGS

 

As described by the Associated Press, during " Iran-Contra " Congressman

Dick Cheney of the House Intelligence Committee was a rabid supporter of

Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North. This was in spite of the fact that North had

lied to Cheney in a private 1986 White House briefing. Oliver North's own

diaries and subsequent investigations by the CIA Inspector General have

irrevocably tied him directly to cocaine smuggling during the 1980s and the

opening of bank accounts for one firm moving four tons of cocaine a month.

This, however, did not stop Cheney from actively supporting North's 1994

unsuccessful run for the U.S. Senate from Virginia just a year before he

took over the reins at Brown and Root's parent company, Dallas based

Halliburton Inc. in 1995.

 

As the Bush Secretary of Defense during Desert Shield/Desert Storm

(1990-91), Cheney also directed special operations involving Kurdish rebels

in northern Iran. The Kurds' primary source of income for more than fifty

years has been heroin smuggling from Afghanistan and Pakistan through Iran,

Iraq and Turkey. Having had some personal experience with Brown and Root I

noted carefully when the Los Angeles Times observed that on March 22, 1991

that a group of gunmen burst into the Ankara, Turkey offices of the joint

venture, Vinnell, Brown and Root and assassinated retired Air Force Chief

Master Sergeant John Gandy.

 

In March of 1991, tens of thousands of Kurdish refugees, long-time assets

of the CIA, were being massacred by Saddam Hussein in the wake of the Gulf

War. Saddam, seeking to destroy any hopes of a successful Kurdish revolt,

found it easy to kill thousands of the unwanted Kurds who had fled to the

Turkish border seeking sanctuary. There, Turkish security forces, trained

in part by the Vinnell, Brown and Root partnership, turned thousands of

Kurds back into certain death. Today, the Vinnell Corporation (a TRW

Company) is, along with the firms MPRI and DynCorp (FTW June, 00) one of

the three pre-eminent private mercenary corporations in the world. It is

also the dominant entity for the training of security forces throughout the

Middle East. Not surprisingly the Turkish border regions in question were

the primary transhipment points for heroin, grown in Afghanistan and

Pakistan and destined for the markets of Europe.

 

A confidential source with intelligence experience in the region

subsequently told me that the Kurds " got some payback against the folks

that used to help them move their drugs. " He openly acknowledged that Brown

and Root and Vinnell both routinely provided NOC or non-official cover for

CIA officers. But I already knew that.

 

From 1994 to 1999, during US military intervention in the Balkans where,

according to " The Christian Science Monitor " and " Jane's Intelligence

Review, " the Kosovo Liberation Army controls 70 per cent of the heroin

entering Western Europe, Cheney's Brown and Root made billions of dollars

supplying U.S. troops from vast facilities in the region. Brown and Root

support operations continue in Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia to this day.

 

Dick Cheney's footprints have come closer to drugs than one might suspect.

The August Center for Public Integrity report brought them even closer. It

would be factually correct to say that there is a direct linkage of Brown

and Root facilities - often in remote and hazardous regions - between every

drug producing region and every drug consuming region in the world. These

coincidences, in and of themselves, do not prove complicity in the trade.

Other facts, however, lead inescapably in that direction.

 

A DIRECT DRUG LINK

 

The CPI report entitled " Cheney Led Halliburton To Feast at Federal Trough "

written by veteran journalists Knut Royce and Nathaniel Heller describes

how, under five years of Cheney's leadership, Halliburton, largely through

subsidiary Brown and Root, enjoyed $3.8 billion in federal contracts and

taxpayer insured loans. The loans had been granted by the Export-Import

Bank (EXIM) and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC).

According to Ralph McGehee's " CIA Base © " both institutions are heavily

infiltrated by the CIA and routinely provide NOC to its officers.

 

One of those loans to Russian financial/banking conglomerate The Alfa Group

of Companies contained $292 million to pay for Brown and Root's contract to

refurbish a Siberian oil field owned by the Russian Tyumen Oil Company. The

Alfa Group completed its 51% acquisition of Tyumen Oil in what was

allegedly a rigged bidding process in 1998. An official Russian government

report claimed that the Alfa Group's top executives, oligarchs Mikhail

Fridman and Pyotr Aven " allegedly participated in the transit of drugs from

Southeast Asia through Russia and into Europe. "

 

These same executives, Fridman and Aven, who reportedly smuggled the heroin

in connection with Russia's Solntsevo mob family were the same ones who

applied for the EXIM loans that Halliburton's lobbying later safely

secured. As a result Brown and Root's work in Alfa Tyumen oil fields could

continue - and expand.

 

After describing how organized criminal interests in the Alfa Group had

allegedly stolen the oil field by fraud, the CPI story, using official

reports from the FSB (the Russian equivalent of the FBI), oil companies

such as BP-Amoco, former CIA and KGB officers and press accounts then

established a solid link to Alfa Tyumen and the transportation of heroin.

 

In 1995 sacks of heroin disguised as sugar were stolen from a rail

container leased by Alfa Echo and sold in the Siberian town of Khabarovsk.

A problem arose when many residents of the town became " intoxicated " or

" poisoned. " The CPI story also stated, " The FSB report said that within

days of the incident, Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) agents conducted

raids of Alfa Eko buildings and found 'drugs and other compromising

documentation.'

 

" Both reports claim that Alfa Bank has laundered drug funds from Russian

and Colombian drug cartels.

 

" The FSB document claims that at the end of 1993, a top Alfa official met

with Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, the now imprisoned financial mastermind

of Colombia's notorious Cali cartel, 'to conclude an agreement about the

transfer of money into the Alfa Bank from offshore zones such as the

Bahamas, Gibraltar and others. The plan was to insert it back into the

Russian economy through the purchase of stock in Russian companies.

 

" É He [the former KGB agent] reported that there was evidence 'regarding

[Alfa Bank's] involvement with the money laundering ofÉ Latin American drug

cartels. "

 

It then becomes harder for Cheney and Halliburton to assert mere

coincidence in all of this as CPI reported that Tyumen's lead Washington

attorney James C, Langdon, Jr. at the firm of Aikin Gump " helped coordinate

a $2.2 million fund raiser for Bush this June. He then agreed to help

recruit 100 lawyers and lobbyists in the capital to raise $25,000 each for

W's campaign. "

 

The heroin mentioned in the CPI story, originated in Laos where longtime

Bush allies and covert warriors Richard Armitage and retired CIA ADDO

(Associate Deputy Director of Operations) Ted Shackley have been repeatedly

linked to the drug trade. It then made its way across Southeast Asia to

Vietnam, probably the port of Haiphong. Then the heroin sailed to Russia's

Pacific port of Valdivostok from whence it subsequently bounced across

Siberia by rail and thence by truck or rail to Europe, passing through the

hands of Russian Mafia leaders in Chechnya and Azerbaijan. Chechnya and

Azerbaijan are hotbeds of both armed conflict and oil exploration and Brown

and Root has operations all along this route.

 

This long, expensive and tortured path was hastily established, as

described by FTW in previous issues, after President George Bush's personal

envoy Richard Armitage, holding the rank of Ambassador, had traveled to the

former Soviet Union to assist it with its " economic development " in 1989.

The obstacle then to a more direct, profitable and efficient route from

Afghanistan and Pakistan through Turkey into Europe was a cohesive

Yugoslavian/Serbian government controlling the Balkans and continuing

instability in the Golden Crescent of Pakistan/Afghanistan. Also, there was

no other way, using heroin from the Golden Triangle (Burma, Laos and

Thailand), to deal with China and India but to go around them.

 

It is perhaps not by coincidence again that Cheney and Armitage share

membership in the prestigious Aspen Institute, an exclusive bi-partisan

research think tank, and also in the U.S. Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce.

Just last November, in what may be a portent of things to come, Armitage,

played the role of Secretary of Defense in an practical exercise at the

Council on Foreign Relations where he and Cheney are also both members.

Speculation that the scandal plagued Armitage, who resigned under a cloud

as Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan Administration, is W's

first choice for Secretary of Defense next year is widespread.

 

The Clinton Administration took care of all that wasted travel for heroin

with the 1998 destruction of Serbia and Kosovo and the installation of the

KLA as a regional power. That opened a direct line from Afghanistan to

Western Europe and Brown and Root was right in the middle of that too. The

Clinton skill at streamlining drug operations was described in detail in

the May issue of FTW in a story entitled " The Democratic Party's

Presidential Drug Money Pipeline. " That article has since been reprinted in

three countries. The essence of the drug economic lesson was that by

growing opium in Colombia and by smuggling both cocaine and heroin from

Colombia to New York City through the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico (a

virtual straight line), traditional smuggling routes could be shortened or

even eliminated. This reduced both risk and cost, increased profits and

eliminated competition.

 

FTW suspects the hand of Medellin co-founder Carlos Lehder in this process

and it is interesting to note that Lehder, released from prison under

Clinton in 1995, is now active in both the Bahamas and South America.

Lehder was known during the eighties as " The genius of transportation. " I

can well imagine a Dick Cheney, having witnessed the complete restructuring

of the global drug trade in the last eight years, going to George W and

saying, " Look, I know how we can make it even better. " One thing is for

certain. As quoted in the CPI article, one Halliburton Vice President noted

that if the Bush-Cheney ticket was elected, " the company's government

contracts would obviously go through the roof. "

 

THE DARK PAST

 

In July of 1977 this writer, then a Los Angeles Police officer struggled to

make sense of a world gone haywire. In a last ditch effort to salvage a

relationship with my fianc}e, Nordica Theodora D'Orsay (Teddy), a CIA

contract agent, I had traveled to find her in New Orleans. On a hastily

arranged vacation, secured with the blessing of my Commanding Officer,

Captain Jesse Brewer of LAPD, I had gone on my own, unofficially, to avoid

the scrutiny of LAPD's Organized Crime Intelligence Division (OCID).

 

Starting in the late spring of 1976 Teddy had wanted me to join her

operations from within the ranks of LAPD. I had refused to get involved

with drugs in any way and everything she mentioned seemed to involve either

heroin or cocaine along with guns that she was always moving out of the

country. The Director of the CIA then was George Herbert Walker Bush.

 

Although officially on staff at the LAPD Academy at the time, I had been

unofficially loaned to OCID since January when Teddy, announcing the start

of a new operation planned in the fall of 1976 had suddenly

disappeared. She left many people, including me, baffled and twisting in

the breeze. The OCID detectives had been pressuring me hard for information

about her and what I knew of her activities. It was information I could not

give them. Hoping against hope that I would find some way to understand her

involvement with CIA, LAPD, the royal family of Iran, the Mafia and drugs I

set out alone into eight days of Dantean revelations that have determined

the course of my life from that day to this.

 

Arriving in New Orleans in early July, 1977 I found her living in an

apartment across the river in Gretna. Equipped with scrambler phones, night

vision devices and working from sealed communiqu}s delivered by naval and

air force personnel from nearby Belle Chasse Naval Air Station, Teddy was

involved in something truly ugly. She was arranging for large quantities of

weapons to be loaded onto ships leaving for Iran. At the same time she was

working with Mafia associates of New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello to

coordinate the movement of service boats that were bringing large

quantities of heroin into the city. The boats arrived at Marcello

controlled docks, unmolested by even the New Orleans police she introduced

me to, along with divers, military men, former Green Berets and CIA

personnel.

 

The service boats were retrieving the heroin from oil rigs in the Gulf of

Mexico, oil rigs in international waters, oil rigs built and serviced by

Brown and Root. The guns that Teddy monitored, apparently Vietnam era

surplus AK 47s and M16s, were being loaded onto ships also owned or leased

by Brown and Root. And more than once during the eight days I spent in New

Orleans I met and ate at restaurants with Brown and Root employees who were

boarding those ships and leaving for Iran within days. Once, while leaving

a bar and apparently having asked the wrong question, I was shot at in an

attempt to scare me off.

 

Disgusted and heart broken at witnessing my fianc}e and my government

smuggling drugs, I ended the relationship. Returning home to LA I made a

clean breast and reported all the activity I had seen, including the

connections to Brown and Root, to LAPD intelligence officers. They promptly

told me that I was crazy. Forced out of LAPD under threat of death at the

end of 1978, I made complaints to LAPD's Internal Affairs Division and to

the LA office of the FBI under the command of FBI SAC Ted Gunderson. I and

my attorney wrote to the politicians, the Department of Justice, the CIA

and contacted the L.A. Times. The FBI and the LAPD said that I was crazy.

 

According to a 1981 two-part news story in the " Los Angeles Herald

Examiner " it was revealed that The FBI had taken Teddy into custody and

then released her before classifying their investigation without further

action. Former New Orleans Crime Commissioner Aaron Cohen told reporter

Randall Sullivan that he found my description of events perfectly plausible

after his thirty years of studying Louisiana's organized crime operations.

 

To this day a CIA report prepared as a result of my complaint remains

classified and exempt from release pursuant to Executive Order of the

President in the interests of national security and because it would reveal

the identities of CIA agents.

 

On October 26, 1981, in the basement of the West Wing of the White House, I

reported on what I had seen in New Orleans to my friend and UCLA classmate

Craig Fuller. Craig Fuller went on to become Chief of Staff to Vice

President Bush from 1981 to 1985.

 

In 1982, then UCLA political science professor Paul Jabber, filled in many

of the pieces in my quest to understand what I had seen in New Orleans. He

was qualified to do so because he had served as a CIA and State Department

consultant to the Carter administration. Paul explained that, after a 1975

treaty between the Shah of Iran and Saddam Hussein the Shah had cut off all

overt military support for Kurdish rebels fighting Saddam from the north of

Iraq. In exchange the Shah had gained access to the Shat al-Arab waterway

so that he could multiply his oil exports and income. Not wanting to lose a

long-term valuable asset in the Kurds, the CIA had then used Brown and

Root, which operated in both countries and maintained port facilities in

the Persian Gulf and near Shat al-Arab to rearm the Kurds. The whole

operation had been financed with heroin. Paul was matter-of-fact about it.

 

In 1983 Paul Jabber left UCLA to become a Vice President of Banker's Trust

and Chairman of the Middle East Department of the Council on Foreign

Relations.

 

----------

 

If one is courageous enough to seek an " operating system " that

theoretically explains what FTW has just described for you, one need look

no further than a fabulous two-part article in " Le Monde Diplomatique " in

April of this year. The brilliant stories, focusing heavily on drug capital

are titled " Crime, The World's Biggest Free Enterprise. " The brilliant and

penetrating words of authors Christian de Brie and Jean de Maillard do a

better job of explaining the actual world economic and political situation

than anything that I have ever read.

 

De Brie writes, " By allowing capital to flow unchecked from one end of the

world to the other, globalization and abandon of sovereignty have together

fostered the explosive growth of an outlaw financial marketÉ

 

" It is a coherent system closely linked to the expansion of modern

capitalism and based on an association of three partners: governments,

transnational corporations and mafias. Business is business: financial

crime is first and foremost a market, thriving and structured, ruled by

supply and demand.

 

" Big business complicity and political laisser faire is the only way that

large-scale organized crime can launder and recycle the fabulous proceeds

of its activities. And the transnationals need the support of governments

and the neutrality of regulatory authorities in order to consolidate their

positions, increase their profits, withstand and crush the competition,

pull off the " deal of the century " and finance their illicit operations.

Politicians are directly involved and their ability to intervene depends on

the backing and the funding that keep them in power. This collusion of

interests is an essential part of the world economy, the oil that keeps the

wheels of capitalism turning. "

 

After confronting CIA Director John Deutch on world television on November

15, 1996 I was interviewed by the staffs of both the Senate and House

Intelligence Committees. I prepared written testimony for Senate

Intelligence which I submitted although I was never called to testify. In

every one of those interviews and in my written testimony and in every

lecture since that time I have told the story of Brown and Root. I will

tell it again at the USC School of International Relations on December the

8th, 2000 - regardless of who wins the election.

 

Michael C. Ruppert

www.copvcia.com

 

Sources:

 

- The Center for Public Integrity, " Cheney Led Halliburton to Feast at

Federal Trough " , Knut Royce & Nathaniel Heller,

<http://www.public-i.org/story_01_080200.html>http://www.public-i.org/story_

01_080200.htm

 

 

- " Le Monde - Diplomatique " , April 2000.

 

- The U.S. Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce

 

-The Aspen Institute, <http://www.aspeninst.org>www.aspeninst.org

 

- " The Austin Chronicle " , August 28, 2000

 

-The Associated Press, " Study: US Could Save Cost in Balkans " - 10/10/00

 

-The Associated Press, " Cheney, North Relationship Probed " - 8/11/00

 

- " The New York Times " Index

 

-The Council on Foreign Relations

 

- " The Unauthorized Biography of George Bush " - Webster Tarpley and Anton

Chaitkin

 

- " CIA Base " © 1992, Ralph McGehee

 

-CIA Inspector General Report of Investigation: Allegations of Connections

Between CIA and the Contras in Cocaine Trafficking to the United States.

Volume II: The Contra Story - Report 96-0143-IG.

 

-newsmakingnews.com, 27 August 2000, " The Dick Cheney Data Dump "

 

- Securities and Exchange Commission - " Edgar " Data base.

 

-Halliburton/Brown and Root -

<http://www.Halliburton.com/brs>www.Halliburton.com/brs

 

-The Vinnell Corporation - <http://www.Vinnell.com>www.Vinnell.com

 

- " The New York Press, " 8/1/00

 

- " The Los Angeles Times, " March 23, 1991.

 

- " The Los Angeles Herald Examiner:, Oct. 11 & 18, 1981

 

- " The Christian Science Monitor " - Oct. 20, 1994

 

- " Jane's Intelligence Review " - February 1, 1995.

 

-Written testimony of Michael C. Ruppert for the Senate Select Committee on

Intelligence dated 10/1/97 -

http://www.fromthewilderness.com//free/ciadrugs/ssci.html

 

- " From The Wilderness " (4/99, 4/00, 6/00)

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ciadrugs/bush-cheney-drugs.html