Did they knew?

Looking inside the big game, reading Joe TRENTO.

By: Ahmed ELNAHAS – Montopoli, November 12^th 2012.

The Iran/Iraq war in which both CIA-installed dictators (Hussein and Khomeini) were able to kill off each other's insurgents and maintain stability of their dictatorial regimes under the watchful eye of U.S. AWAC squadrons. The Bush (Sr) regime decided to kill two birds with one stone - Iraq was instructed to squash Kuwait and in turn the U.S. would destroy the Iraqi insurgents inducted into the Republican Guard. For 130 consecutive months after the Gulf War, U.S. and/or British bombs continued to fall monthly on the heads of Iraqi insurgents to the benefit of Saddam Hussein's regime.

Although it does not discuss the October Surprise engineered by the Reagan-Bush-Casey campaign and CIA elements to force President Jimmy Carter from office over the U.S. hostages in Iran, Joseph Trento's book, "Prelude to Terror: The Rogue CIA and the Legacy of America's Private Intelligence Network," published in 2005, does provide more details of the operation that engineered the secret arms shipments to Iran by George H. W. Bush, William Casey, and their loyalists inside the CIA and Carter's National Security Council.

According to Trento, the private CIA weapons smuggling operation, which had been centered at a number of Washington locations, was factionalized between Arabists like Wilson, and pro-Israelis like his erstwhile colleagues Ted Shackley and Thomas Clines.

There were some reports that Wilson was aligned with the more pro-Arab factions of the CIA. However, according to Trento, Wilson shared many secrets about the Arab nations, particularly Libya, with the Mossad. The Israelis also received a cut on aircraft sales Wilson made to Libya. The planes, which flew Libyan leaders, including Muammar Qaddafi, around the Middle East, came complete with Israeli bugging devices. Israeli agents were also present at explosives training facilities in Libya. Wilson apparently knew that if he ever tried to conduct any operations in the Arab Middle East without the knowledge of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency would have him killed immediately.

Israel maintained two lines of communications to Saudi Arabia. One was through Kamal Adham, the head of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) and the former chief of Saudi intelligence, one of the benefactors of the Adham-Israeli alliance was the intensely secular President of Iraq, Saddam Hussein.

Trento also reveals how Wilson continued to establish his network of secret CIA weapons smuggling entities. One was set up under the name of the former CIA station chief in Tripoli, Brigadier General J. J. Cappucci. Cappucci was able to smuggle out to Egypt Idris' top financial adviser, Egyptian General Kamal Hassan Ali. General Ali would soon end up as President Anwar Sadat's Defense Minister.

The 1978 Camp David peace accords between Egypt and Israel provided a potential windfall for the CIA's private weapons smuggling network. Wilson planned on having his Houston-based Around the World Shipping Company act as the main supplier of weapons to Egypt. To launder the proceeds from the weapons sales, Wilson established a network of entities.

However, Shackley, Clines, and another Wilson colleague, Douglas Schlachter, had other ideas. In addition to taking over Cappucci and Associates, Clines and Shackley knew that Schlachter has his own good connections in Libya and could easily replace Wilson. A new company, Delex International was set up by the three to handle the weapons business with Egypt.

Anticipating the arms business with Egypt, Shackley and Clines established under Clines, the Egyptian American Transport and Services Company (EATSCO). Trento also writes: "Through Israeli intelligence sources in Libya, the CIA had the memo Ed Wilson had written to Qaddafi's military security on May 12, 1981, detailing his activities in Egypt through EATSCO."

With Cappucci and Associates firmly under the control of Shackley and Clines, the firm managed to get the contract to train President Sadat's personal bodyguard. It would be a fateful decision. The Israeli circumvention of the CIA's private network would soon put the Middle East in flames.

Trento also reveals that at NSA, Inman had all the transactions between EATSCO that proved that Wilson remained on the CIA's payroll. NSA also had intercepts showing that EATSCO's chief, Hussein Salem, had gone directly from Egyptian intelligence to the EATSCO/TERSAM operation. TERSAM, a Panamanian company, was designated in 1987 as the sole shipping agent for Egypt in a sweetheart deal.

After Reagan's election, Casey took over as CIA director. One of Casey's first acts was to make Israel's influence within Langley official. Casey named Max Hugel, described by Trento as a "short, smart, foul-mouthed Brooklyn-born Jew," a racetrack owner who dressed like one, his director of operation (DO).

Hugel helped hammer out a deal whereby the CIA would help Israel destroy the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak. Casey sold the store to the Israelis, delivering to Israeli Major General Yitzhak "Haka" Hoffi, highly-classified SR-71 reconnaissance imagery of Osirak. WMR has previously reported how Casey also hammered out deals whereby Israel would receive highly-classified U.S. signals intelligence (SIGINT) and space-based imagery intelligence (IMINT) technology from the United States.

EATSCO was, meanwhile, shipping arms to the Afghan mujahidin through the cover of its Egyptian business deals. One of the expediters was R. G. Hobelman Shipping Company of Baltimore. With enough baksheesh to go around in Egypt, old Soviet-supplied Egyptian military equipment was being sent to the Afghan mujahidin via Saudi Arabia and Iraq and being replaced with new American military hardware. All of this ultimately implicated, according to Trento, Egyptian Vice President Hosni Mubarak, whose cronies were very involved in the weapons smuggling operation. Mubarak and other top Sadat ministers were CIA assets. The man who managed the CIA's assets in Cairo was William Buckley.

Sadat was growing suspicious of the weapons deals between his vice president and top ministers, and the CIA front companies. Sadat may also have had knowledge of the deal between the Reagan campaign and the Iranians. Sadat's people had conducted an audit of the EATSCO/TERSAM contracts and found serious problems with overcharging and unaccounted-for sums of money. Sadat's investigation became worrying to Mubarak, Casey, and the entire covert aid network to the Afghans.

On October 6, 1981, while at a military parade, Sadat's CIA-trained security force seemed to step aside as armed military members shot Sadat in his reviewing stand. Mubarak never complained about the CIA-trained security force taking no action to prevent Sadat's assassination!!!..

Trento quotes old General Cappucci as saying that he feared that the Israelis had bugged Wilson's Washington offices for Cappucci and Associates:

"It is true. Look . . . Wilson's friends at the CIA were up to their necks with the Israelis -- especially Shackley . . . I had the lace swept repeatedly, and repeatedly bugs would turn up . . My fear was that the Israelis would get someone in the personal body guard and recruit them to spy on Sadat . . . I never thought they would want to kill him."

Trento's book goes a long way in filling in the various holes in the complete picture of how the Reagan- Bush-Casey team conspired with Egypt. Israel, and Iran in an operation that resulted in the sinking of the SS Poet and the deaths of 34 U.S. merchant mariners. For many of the families of those crewmen, time is, quite literally, running out for justice.

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Now to what extent could we trust the veracity of Trento’s accounts? I wouldn’t worry about that, since we can serenely define his documentations reliable, knowing that Joseph Trento has worked for CNN's Special Assignment Unit, the Wilmington News Journal for many years and was closely connected to CIA and National Security circles.

My worry in a first place is our Intelligence Agencies.. Were they infiltrated by MOSSAD?  

In a second place, my worry embraces a Juridical System crippled inside a dense spider web of contradicting laws, presidential laws, decrees, regulations; also a Legislative Authority in constant conflict with an Executive Authority’s doubtful power and will to clear the past to clean for the future.. And to those I demand answers to these questions:

Will Mubarak ever be held responsible for trafficking and laundering? Shouldn’t he, Hussein Salem and their partners in such businesses, be tried for crimes like Office Abuse, Self Recycling, Inside Trading, Money Laundering, Arms Smuggling, and Communicating Secretly with foreign Secret Services?

Yet remains a question that according to my own personal understanding is the most important:

Having served as an Air Force Commander, then as a Vice President and later on became the President; and while assuming the responsibilities of all these jobs have been willingly involved in ongoing illegal actions, defined as such according to the law, but most of all illegal by the definition of our constitution; the very one HE swore (more than once) to obey, abide by and protect every time he took office; couldn’t such deliberate breach of trust be qualified TREASON?

A Capital Crime, punishable by a Capital Sentence.. DEATH.

Pass On The Word.