The Safari Club

A little deep dive into some intelligence history...

The Safari Club -

The Safari Club was a regional alliance put together under Henry Kissinger. It came to light in documents revealed after the 1979 Iranian revolution. It was formally created Sept. 1, 1976, and signed by heads of intelligence agencies of France, Egypt, Iran, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia. The focus of the Safari Club was Africa.
http://crossedcrocodiles.wordpress.com/2007/05/02/africom-us-intentions-does-anyone-remember-the-safari-club/

"Prelude to Terror" by Joseph J. Trento. In this book, the author sets forth information about the Safari Club, an “outsourced” intelligence network in which the Saudis financed a privatized espionage establishment that dominated American intelligence operations for the better part of a quarter of a century. Utilizing the Saudi GID and the Pakistani ISI as proxy agencies, this network ran the Iran-Contra, Iraqgate and Afghan mujahideen efforts. The most significant outgrowth of this network was the birth of al Qaeda, with all that has resulted from its conception. One of the points that Trento makes is the fact that outsourcing U.S. intelligence operations eliminated the necessary function of counterintelligence—monitoring one’s allies in order to verify their loyalty and competence. The failure to conform to this basic tenet of intelligence has haunted the U.S., and will continue to do so. It is important to note that the elder George Bush and the Reagan administrations were at the core of the Safari Club. The Safari Club was specifically created to circumvent Congressional and even Presidential oversight!

Adham understood that creating a single worldwide clandestine bank was not enough to assure the kind of resources necessary to stave off the coming Islamic revolutions that threatened Saudi Arabia and the entire region. The Safari Club needed a network of banks to finance its intelligence operations. With the official blessing of George Bush as the head of the CIA, Adham transformed a small Pakistani merchant bank, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), into a worldwide money-laundering machine, buying banks around the world in order to create the biggest clandestine money network in history. Bush had an account with BCCI established at the time he was at the CIA. The account was set up at the Paris branch of the bank. Subsequent senate and other investigations concluded that the CIA, beginning with Bush, had protected the bank while it took part in illicit activities. One source who investigated the bank and provided information about the Bush account in Paris was Jacques Bardu, who, as a French customs official, raided the BCCI Paris branch and discovered the account in Bush’s name.

There had never been anything like it. Paul Helliwell may have made the mold, but Adham and BCCI founder Sheikh Agha Hasan Abedi smashed it. They contrived, with Bush and other intelligence-service heads, a plan that seemed too good to be true. The bank would solicit the business of every major terrorist, rebel, and underground organization in the world. The invaluable intelligence thus gained would be discreetly distributed to ‘friends’ of BCCI.

Adham did not rely simply on money to carry out the plan. Adham and Abedi understood that they would also need muscle. They tapped into the CIA’s stockpile of misfits and malcontents to help man a 1,500-strong group of assassins and enforcers. Time magazine called this group a ‘black network.’ It combined intelligence with an effort to control a large portion of the world’s economy. . . .

Operating primarily out of the bank’s offices in Karachi, Pakistan, the 1,500-employee black network has used sophisticated spy equipment and techniques, along with bribery, extortion, kidnapping and even, by some accounts, murder. The black network—so named by its own members—stops at almost nothing to further the bank’s aims the world over.

Bin Laden’s army was one of seven major mujaheddin armies supported by the CIA’s $500-million-a-year program. After the victory over the Soviets, many of the Islamic warriors went home. They took with them the kind of confidence that can be gained only by helping to take out a greatly superior force. Bin Laden recognized that their experience and radicalism could change the face of the Islamic world. He kept the mujahideen training camps in Afghanistan in operation and expanded his efforts by spreading the holy war to Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, the Philippines, and Chechnya. The network was spreading, and, despite subsequent denials, there is incontrovertible evidence that the CIA’s knowledge was far deeper than it has been willing to admit.
http://ftrsummary.blogspot.com/2005/08/ftr-522-safari-club.html

The CIA funded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1977, and trained Mujahadin to support Hekmatyar of the Brotherhood in Afghanistan. The Koran-happy Muslim Brothers have served the CIA operationally for some 40 years, an arrangement rubber-stamped by Allen Dulles, Frank Wisner and Kermit Roosevelt.


Side note: For more on Kermit Roosevelt read "Confessions of an Economic Hitman".

Airline hijacker Mohammed Atta was ID'd as a Muslim Brother in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times shortly after the jet attacks on the World Trade Center. So were Khalid Shaik Mohammed and Ramzi Yousef, reportedly guided to a sacrificial pyre in the sky by Aman Zawahiri, Al Qeada's second-in-command, also a co-conspirator, while operating under the aegis of the CIA, in the murder of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, and the 1993 WTC bomb plot.

The Pakistan ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) played middle man for the CIA to funnel money and weapons into the mujaheddin to fight the Soviets.

ISI is one of the best and very well organized intelligence agency in the world. It was founded in 1948. In 1950 it was officially given the task to safe guard Pakistani interests and national security inside and outside the country.Its primary objectives are not only to safeguard Pakistani interests, but also, reinforcing Pakistan's power base in the region.

The ISI is tasked with collection of of foreign and domestic intelligence; co-ordination of intelligence functions of the three military services; surveillance over its cadre, foreigners, the media, politically active segments of Pakistani society, diplomats of other countries accredited to Pakistan and Pakistani diplomats serving outside the country; the interception and monitoring of communications; and the conduct of covert offensive and wartime operations. Functions of the ISI include gathering foreign and domestic intelligence and synchronizing the intelligence of the military services. The agency maintains surveillance of foreign diplomats in Pakistan, Pakistani diplomats abroad, and politically active members of Pakistani society. It monitors its own staff, the media and foreigners. It tracks and intercepts communications and engages in covert offensive operations.

ISI is headquartered in Islamabad and works under a Director General, a serving Lieutenant General of the Pakistan Army. There are three Deputy Director Generals-designated DDG (Political), DDG (External) and DDG (General). The ISI is staffed mainly by personnel deputed from the police, para-military forces and some specialized units of the Army. There are over 25,000 active men on its staff. This figure does not include informants and assets. It is organized into six to eight divisions.
http://www.defence.pk/forums/strategic-geopolitical-issues/551-isi-pakistan-inter-services-intelligence.html

India has been attacked again. The financial capital has proved to be our soft underbelly and terrorists, apart from holding Mumbai to ransom for more than 60 hours, have left behind a gory tale of blood and human suffering.

But the terror attacks in Mumbai on November 26 is unprecedented in nature and extent. It bears the mark of an officially trained and highly motivated team, who were under clear instructions to inflict maximum possible damage before they were killed or caught.

An operation of this magnitude may have arranged some local support as well. But the fact that the whole exercise was planned; directed and executed from across the border under the care of some professional organisation cannot be doubted.

The involvement of Pakistan's Intelligence agency ISI with terror outfits is now public knowledge. On July 12, 2008, CIA Deputy Director Stephen R Kappes made a visit to Pakistan to confront the top Pakistani civilian and military leaders with hard evidence to show the close involvement between ISI and the terror outfits.

The assessment report of the CIA held this nexus responsible for surge of violence in Afghanistan, including the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul. Further, ISI was suspected of leaking crucial information to the terror outfits with regard to planned attacks on their hideouts in border areas.

According to American press reports, the CIA officials welcomed this hard line on ISI and it was at this stage that their proposal to allow American forces to target terror hideouts inside Pakistan without informing the ISI received presidential clearance.

Since then, American forces have carried out a number of operations within Pakistani territory, which have been publicly protested against by the Pakistan leadership who have described them as intrusions and violation of Pakistani sovereignty.
http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/dec/01column-pakistan-government-cannot-rein-in-isi.htm

The Afghan war of the 1980s saw the enhancement of the covert action capabilities of the ISI by the CIA. A number of officers from the ISI's Covert Action Division received training in the US and many covert action experts of the CIA were attached to the ISI to guide it in its operations against the Soviet troops by using the Afghan Mujahideen, Islamic fundamentalists of Pakistan and Arab volunteers. Osama bin Laden, Mir Aimal Kansi, who assassinated two CIA officers outside their office in Langley, US, in 1993, Ramzi Yousef and his accomplices involved in the New York World Trade Centre explosion in February, 1993, the leaders of the Muslim separatist movement in the southern Philippines and even many of the narcotics smugglers of Pakistan were the products of the ISI-CIA collaboration in Afghanistan.

The encouragement of opium cultivation and heroin production and smuggling was also an offshoot of this co-operation. The CIA, through the ISI, promoted the smuggling of heroin into Afghanistan in order to make the Soviet troops heroin addicts. Once the Soviet troops were withdrawn in 1988, these heroin smugglers started smuggling the drugs to the West, with the complicity of the ISI. The heroin dollars have largely contributed to preventing the Pakistani economy from collapsing and enabling the ISI to divert the jehadi hordes from Afghanistan to J & K after 1989 and keeping them well motivated and well-equipped.

Even before India's Pokhran I nuclear test of 1974, the ISI had set up a division for the clandestine procurement of military nuclear technology from abroad and, subsequently, for the clandestine purchase and shipment of missiles and missile technology from China and North Korea. This division, which was funded partly by donations from Saudi Arabia and Libya, partly by concealed allocations in Pakistan's State budget and partly by heroin dollars, was instrumental in helping Pakistan achieve a military nuclear and delivery capability despite its lack of adequate human resources with the required expertise.

Thus, the ISI, which was originally started as essentially an agency for the collection of external intelligence, has developed into an agency adept in covert actions and clandestine procurement of denied technologies as well.
http://www.acsa2000.net/isi/index.html

Pakistan's chief spy Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad "was in the US when the attacks occurred." He arrived in the US on the 4th of September, a full week before the attacks. He had meetings at the State Department "after" the attacks on the WTC. But he also had "a regular visit of consultations" with his US counterparts at the CIA and the Pentagon during the week prior to September 11.

What was the nature of these routine "pre-September 11 consultations"? Were they in any way related to the subsequent "post-September 11 consultations" pertaining to Pakistan's decision to cooperate with Washington. Was the planning of war being discussed between Pakistani and US officials?

On the 9th of September while General Ahmad was in the US, the leader of the Northern Alliance Commander Ahmad Shah Masood was assassinated. The Northern Alliance had informed the Bush Administration that the ISI was allegedly implicated in the assassination.

The Bush Administration consciously took the decision in "the post September 11 consultations" with Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad to directly "cooperate" with Pakistan's military intelligence (ISI) despite its links to Osama bin Laden and the Taliban and its alleged role in the assassination of Commander Masood, which coincidentally occurred two days before the terrorist attacks.

Meanwhile, senior Pentagon and State Department officials had been rushed to Islamabad to put the finishing touches on America's war plans. And on the Sunday prior to the onslaught of the bombing of major cities in Afghanistan (October 7th), Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad was sacked from his position as head of the ISI in what was described as a routine "reshuffling."

In the days following General Ahmad's dismissal, a report published in the Times of India, revealed the links between Pakistan's Chief spy Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad and the presumed "ring leader" of the WTC attacks Mohamed Atta. The Times of India article was based on an official intelligence report of the Delhi government that had been transmitted through official channels to Washington. Quoting an Indian government source Agence France Press (AFP) confirms in this regard that: "The evidence we [the Government of India] have supplied to the US is of a much wider range and depth than just one piece of paper linking a rogue general to some misplaced act of terrorism."

The revelation of the Times of India article has several implications. The Indian intelligence report not only points to the links between ISI Chief General Ahmad and terrorist ringleader Mohamed Atta, it also indicates that other ISI officials might have had contacts with the terrorists. Moreover, it suggests that the September 11 attacks were not an act of "individual terrorism" organised by a separate Al Qaeda cell, but rather they were part of coordinated military-intelligence operation, emanating from Pakistan's ISI.

The Times of India report also sheds light on the nature of General Ahmad's "business activities" in the US during the week prior to September 11, raising the distinct possibility of ISI contacts with Mohamed Atta in the US "prior" to the attacks on the WTC, precisely at the time when General Mahmoud and his delegation were on a so-called "regular visit of consultations" with US officials.

In assessing the alleged links between the terrorists and the ISI, it should be understood that Lt. General Ahmad as head of the ISI was a "US approved appointee". As head of the ISI since 1999, he was in liaison with his US counterparts in the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the Pentagon. Also bear in mind that Pakistan's ISI remained throughout the entire post Cold War era until the present, the launch-pad for CIA covert operations in the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Balkans

The existence of an "ISI-Osama-Taliban axis" was a matter of public record. The links between the ISI and agencies of the US government including the CIA are also a matter of public record. The Bush Administration was fully cognizant of Lt. General Ahmad's role. In other words, rather than waging a campaign against international terrorism, the evidence would suggest that it is indirectly abetting international terrorism, using the Pakistani ISI as a "go-between".

The Bush Administration's links with Pakistan's ISI --including its "consultations" with General Ahmad in the week prior to September 11-- raise the issue of "complicity". While Ahmad was talking to US officials at the CIA and the Pentagon, ISI officials were allegedly also in contact with the September 11 terrorists.

In other words, according to the Indian government intelligence report, the perpetrators of the September 11 attacks had links to Pakistan's ISI, which in turn has links to agencies of the US government. What this suggests is that key individuals within the US military-intelligence establishment might have known about the ISI contacts with the September 11 terrorist "ring-leader" Mohamed Atta and failed to act.

Whether this amounts to the complicity of the Bush Administration remains to be firmly established. The least one can expect at this stage is an inquiry. What is crystal clear, however, is that this war is not a "campaign against international terrorism". It is a war of conquest with devastating consequences for the future of humanity. And the American people have been consciously and deliberately misled by their government. Whether this amounts to the complicity of the Bush Administration remains to be firmly established.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO111A.html

Even by the shadowy standards of spy agencies, the ISI is notorious. It is commonly branded "a state within the state," or Pakistan's "invisible government."
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,501020506-233999,00.html