Cargill, Kissinger & The Arming Of Iraq
Left Hook Archives 2014 8-22
Excerpted from my book, Big Oil & Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf, Chapter 14: Saddam's Banker in Atlanta.
The US and their Western allies weren’t concerned with dual use items being shipped to Iraq during the 1980’s.
From 1985-1990, 771 licenses for dual-use exports from the US to Iraq were approved, as US defense contractors, not content with the Ayatollah’s money, armed Iraq, while the CIA passed intelligence to Saddam. When Hussein gassed the Mossad-backed PUK Kurds in 1987, President Reagan opposed sanctioning Iraq. Instead, Mossad agent Gerald Bull and his Space Research Corporation helped the Iraqis develop three “super guns” code-named Babylon.
Space Research was controlled by the Canadian Bronfman family, the Pure Drug Company “whiskey men” whose Eagle Star Insurance interlocks with Silver Triangle Canadian banks. The Bronfmans married into the Rothschild family and launched the careers of Detroit mob boss/United Brands insider Max Fischer and the Buffalo Jacobs mob, which conveniently owns concessions on Gulf of Mexico oil drilling platforms. Montreal police have identified Mitchell Bronfman as a kingpin of organized crime. [1]
Gerald Bull peddled arms for the CIA in South Africa, where Space Research supplied guns and advisers to UNITA terrorists in Angola and RENAMO thugs in Mozambique under direction of CIA Angola Chief of Station James Potts. [2] Bull was introduced to the Iraqis by Armenian-born arms dealer Sarkis Soghanalian, a CIA asset who supplied the Iraqis with Bell Helicopters. [3] When Belgian Deputy Prime Minister Andre Cools uncovered a memo exposing Bull’s program and its links to the CIA and Mossad, both Cools and Bull were assassinated.
BCCI helped Bull smuggle propellant for his super guns from Belgium to Iraq and loaned $72 million through Bank of America to Space Research financier Banca Nacionale de Lavaro (BNL). BNL had its US offices at the posh Peachtree Center in Atlanta. From 1983-1989 BNL busied itself financing Saddam Hussein’s arms procurement efforts in tandem with the Iraqi Central Bank and Rafidain Bank of Iraq, which had numbered accounts at Bank of America, Bank of New York, Chase Manhattan and Manufacturers Hanover Trust. BNL’s clearing agent on all transactions was Morgan Guaranty Trust. When Saddam defaulted on the loans, the US multinationals which benefited were paid in full, while US taxpayers were charged $347 million. [4]
BNL is Italy’s largest bank. Its headquarters is across from the US Embassy in Rome. BCCI-founder Bank of America was first known as Bank of Italy and is controlled by the Rothschild family. A report by the Italian Senate stated that BNL Rome ran the Iraqi weapons procurement program and that BNL Atlanta was launched by “some circles in the American political-military-industrial complex”. BNL was 96%-owned by the Italian government. It often transferred funds to Iraq using BCCI, where Saudi intelligence officers laundered drug money for the Medellin Cartel.
Kissinger Associates
BNL’s Consulting Board for International Policy included Henry Kissinger and his boss David Rockefeller, now chairman of Rockefeller Group. [5] Kissinger received $10,000 per meeting, serving on the board from 1985-1991. In 1984 the US/Iraq Business Forum was established in Houston with a push from Kissinger Associates, a private consulting firm co-founded by CFR/TC insider Henry Kissinger, who in 1989 was named in to the Bush Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board; and former British Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington, former secretary general of NATO and president of both the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA) and Bilderberger Group. Carrington is on the board of Hollinger Corporation, chaired by Jerusalem Post and London Daily Telegraph Zionist owner Conrad Black. Black- one of Canada’s wealthiest citizens- runs his financial empire from Toronto. He owns the Toronto Globe & Mail and frequents the Bronfman family’s Toronto Jockey Club. [6] Black, a CIIA member and Bilderberger insider, was convicted in 2007 for fraud and obstruction of justice.
BNL was a Kissinger Associates client from 1986-1988, as was National Bank of Georgia, which BCCI agent Ghaith Pharaon helped Bert Lance slide out from under. Kissinger is a good friend of Pharoan and an even better friend of his father, who was adviser to the House of Saud. Several Kissinger Associates clients got BNL financing for Iraqi projects including Midland Bank (now HSBC), Chase Manhattan, Fiat, Asea Braun Boveri, Lummis Crest, Volvo and Hewlett Packard. President Bush Sr. included two directors of Kissinger Associates in his cabinet- Undersecretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger and NSA Brent Scowcroft. Both had worked on the BNL account, which was funneling taxpayer-guaranteed money to Saddam so that he could dole out contracts to US/Iraqi Business Forum members. [7]
The rotund Eagleburger, a long-time Kissinger deputy, was US Ambassador to Yugoslavia from 1977-1981. He was president of Kissinger Associates from 1984-89. He was on the board at Nazi/Pinochet backer ITT, Alcatel, Bethlehem Rebar, Mutual of New York, Josephson International and Best Mart. In 1993 he joined the board of Dresser Industries, a subsidiary of Halliburton where Dick Cheney ran the show. Prescott S. Bush Jr. (George Sr’s. brother) was an executive at Dresser. [8]
Scowcroft joined Kissinger Associates as vice-chairman in 1982. He owned stock in many of the multinationals who were members of the US/Iraqi Business Forum including ITT, Westinghouse, GM, AT&T and Hewlett Packard. These five companies were granted 100 of the 800 export licenses which the US government approved for sales to Iraq. [9] Scowcroft was consultant to Lockheed, now the world’s largest defense contractor after its merger with Martin Marietta produced Lockheed Martin.
Scowcroft and Eagleburger led the charge in the Bush White House to sell arms to Iraq and any other country that would buy them. Under pressure from the Aerospace Industries Association and the CEOs of Lockheed Martin, United Technologies, LTV, Raytheon, Grumman and ITT Defense, they lobbied to change the name of the State Department’s Office of Munitions Control to Center for Defense Trade. US Embassies worldwide were now advised to play salesmen for US defense contractors. United Technologies, LTV and Raytheon soon announced a $10 billion military modernization in Turkey compliments of the Istanbul embassy staff.
Chief economist and director of Kissinger Associates was Allen Stoga, also chief economist at the CIA favorite First Chicago Bank. First Chicago’s Chairman was Robert Abboud, now at First City Bank of Houston and chairman of the US/Iraqi Business Forum. The port of Houston, where the Texas oil mafia had just satisfied their S&L looting cravings, was now supplying the brunt of Saddam Hussein’s needs, including 20% of the US rice harvest. Abboud was also president of Kuwaiti-owned Occidental Petroleum. In the fall of 1989 Stoga met several times with BCCI officials, who had a year earlier been indicted in Tampa on money laundering charges.
In 1984 Abboud and fellow First Chicago cronies John Drick and Gaylord Freeman signed a letter to authors/investigators of the Priory of Sion- Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln. The letter bore the Prieure de Sion logo and a crest containing the letters ‘R’ and ‘C.’, possibly a Rosicrucian insignia. The letter was also signed by Pierre Plantard, self-proclaimed Merovingan dynasty descendent and Priory Grand Master. It warned legal action against anyone who would take or fake Priory documents. Gaylord Freeman sat on the board of ARCO with contra ranch hand Robert O. Anderson and was an insider at the Shah-friendly Aspen Institute and the MacArthur Foundation.
Henry Kissinger was rewarded for his efforts in 1995 when Queen Elizabeth II bestowed upon him the title of Honorary Knight Commander of the Most Distinguished Order of St. Michael & St. George, the highest honor granted by the British House of Windsor to non-British citizens. [10]
Jolly Grain Giants
In October 1988 Kissinger joined the board of Continental Grain, the French Fribourg family-controlled private firm that was the second largest grain company in the world until its 1999 merger with Cargill. Cargill is the grain trade’s biggest fish and is privately held by the Minneapolis-based Cargill and MacMillan families. Cargill Continental now controls over 50% of the world’s grain trade. It is one of four giant privately held companies that have quietly monopolized the world’s grain business since the mid 1800’s. Cargill Continental, the French Louis Dreyfus, the Brazilian Bunge and the Swiss Andre constitute the Four Horsemen of grain. Dan Morgan’s book Merchants of Grain is an excellent expose of these grain dynasties.
In 1989 Bush Secretary of State James Baker ordered Secretary of Agriculture Clayton Yeuter to increase credits to Iraq via the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) after Eagleburger, Robert Kimmitt and Iraq’s CCC lobbyist and CIA agent Kevin Kattke lobbied for a $1 billion CCC loan. Kattke got help from Oliver North and TGS International, an Arlington, Virginia firm named for CIA old hand Ted Shackley. [11]
Gerald Bull was paid by Saddam for his super gun efforts with money from these CCC loans, for which BNL served as conduit. BNL worked through one of three banks who handle all CCC business in the Middle East- National Bank for Cooperatives of Denver, Morgan Guaranty and First City Bank of Houston, whose Priory of Sion chair Robert Abboud now chaired the US/Iraq Business Forum. Morgan Guaranty was the US clearing agent for both Iraq’s Central Bank and BNL. [12]
Cargill Continental and the other grain giants were the main beneficiaries of the taxpayer-guaranteed CCC loans through grain sales to Iraq. Continental, with Kissinger on its board, also used BNL to finance Yugoslavian grain shipments. In 1988-89 BNL financed Russian Exportkhleb purchases of grain from Cargill, Continental, Louis Dreyfus and Conagra. A favorite middleman for Cargill deals with Iraq was the Turkish Entrade, a subsidiary of Enka Holdings, Bechtel partner on Iraqi construction projects and LTV partner on NATO missile programs in Turkey.
Another grain giant middleman favorite was Amman Resources, owned by Jordanian shipping merchant and CIA contact Wafai Dajani. Dajani worked with Norwegian shipping giant Gearbulk through their jointly held Araba Holdings to ship Iraqi goods into the Jordanian port of Aqaba. Dajani was close to the American Wheat Association, the Rice Council, USDA and the French Louis Dreyfus grain giant. Dreyfus also received BNL financing to ship CCC grain to Iraq. Some was delivered on their own substantial fleet of cargo ships. Other times the shipper was Araba Holdings.
Dajani is the straw man for US agribusiness interests in the Middle East. He runs joint ventures with Comet Rice of Houston and the British sugar giant Tate & Lyle. Eighty percent of all BNL CCC shipments went through Amman Resources or another of Dajani’s companies, which include Wafai Dajani & Sons, Araba Holdings and Aqaba Packing. Dajani was a close friend of Jordan’s late King Hussein. His brother was the country’s Minister of Interior. His family had long been the agent for Mobil in Jordan.
Dajani also worked with Carlos Rosa’s Armiberica of Portugal and A & L Management Services of Cyprus in shipping Howitzers, ammunition and small arms to Saddam Hussein. Later when BNL-Atlanta fired manager Christopher Drougul, who served as the fall guy for the BNL ordeal, Dajani hired him as a $50,000/year consultant. Drougal maintained that BNL was part of an Italian-American covert operation to arm Iraq. When the BNL case came to trial a number of small-time Cargill employees were singled out as un-indicted co-conspirators, while the Big Grain fish swam under the net.
[1] Dope Inc.: The Book that Drove Kissinger Crazy. The Editors of Executive Intelligence Review. Washington, DC. 1992. p.417
[2] “Naming Names”. Louis Wolf. Covert Action Information Bulletin. Summer 1989. p.14
[3] Shell Game: A True Story of Banking, Spies, Lies, Politics and the Arming of Saddam Hussein. Peter Mantius. St. Martin’s Press. New York. 1995. p.55
[4] “Bankrolling the War”. Jim Donahue. Multinational Monitor. March 1991. p.6
[5] “Gonzalez’s Discovery”. David Corn. The Nation. 5-13-91. p.620
[6] The Robot’s Rebellion: The Story of the Spiritual Renaissance. David Icke. Gateway Books. Bath, UK. p.195
[7] “Kissinger Associates, Scowcroft, Eagleburger, Stoga, Iraq and BNL”. Chair Henry Gonzalez. H2694. Senate House Banking Committee. 4-28-92
[8] Ibid
[9] “Arms and the Man”. Doug Ireland. Village Voice. 5-5-92. p.8
[10] “Bow for Kissinger”. AP. Missoulian. 6-14-95
[11] Mantius. p.34
[12] Ibid. p.30
Dean Henderson is the author of seven books, including, Big Oil & Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf, Illuminati Agenda 21, Nephilim Crown 5G Apocalypse and Royal Bloodline Wetiko & The Great Remembering. Subscribe free to his Left Hook column at deanhenderson.substack.com