The Raid On Iraq
This Is How It Happened
In Iraq
And How It'll Happen In Iran
by Douglas Valentine,
January 14, 2006
American
military forces have cut a swath of righteous savagery through Iraq,
and guided by MOSSAD agents (the most efficient terrorists in the
world), CIA agents have kidnapped, detained, tortured and murdered
every Iraqi associated with "the resistance." Thanks to
the overwhelming support of the American public, which prefers SUVs
over peace, they have done so with impunity.
The illegal
conquest and occupation of Iraq, and the forthcoming attack on Iran's
nuclear facilities, should remind us of a similar situation 24 years
earlier when Saddam and Iraq were thought to pose an imminent threat
to world peace.
It was
1981 and Saddam was building a nuclear reactor outside Baghdad in
a town named Osirak. The reactor was the type that was able to spin
off nuclear weapons. Few nations were anxious to see Saddam lobbing
A-bombs at Israel, so no one blinked an eye when the Israelis bombed
the reactor. What very few people know, however, is that the CIA organized
the Israeli raid on the Osirak nuclear reactor.
Through
the perfidy of history, Iraq (like Usama bin Laden) was our ally at
the time, and it's nuclear capability was not a palpable enough pretext
for America, all by its lonesome, to start dropping bombs. So, at
the time, the preemptive raid was portrayed as having been launched
by Israel for its own security, in defiance of American interests.
But that isn't true. The raid on the Osirak nuclear reactor was a
textbook case of sub-contracting a dirty job to a beholden proxy for
reasons of plausible deniability.
A CIA agent
named Larry Paulson told the details of the operation to me. I present
it to you now because Our Lord High Executioner has wrapped his reasons
for invading Iraq in crowdpleasing lies not unlike those presented
22 years ago. But there is a lot more at stake now: As Bush stands
on the brink of world dominance, with only His amoral compulsions
- I mean, moral compunctions - restraining Him from unleashing A-bombs
around the world, this lesson in how the CIA operates is more relevant
than ever before. It is a picture of things to come.
Cover Central
Larry Paulson's
story began in South Vietnam in 1966, where as a gung-ho Marine he
earned a number of medals for valor, and was noticed by a CIA "talent
scout". The interested CIA officer ran a background check, which
revealed that Paulson was the child of a broken marriage. Paulson
was what you might call an emotional orphan. He was looking for something
to latch onto, and he chose the ultraconservative route. In high school
his favorite activities were tending the local Lutheran church and
participating in the Rotary Club's debate team. His dream was to become
a "crusader" and follow in the footsteps of his hero, John
Wayne.
Paulson
unabashedly describes himself as being "for freedom, the American
way of life, and free enterprise". Having faced the Viet Cong
in mortal combat, he was also avidly anti-Communist. All of which
made him even more attractive to the CIA.
Strange
things happened to Paulson in South Vietnam. He was selected for special
training in scuba diving, skydiving, demolition, and martial arts.
No one told him why he was being groomed and, being a good soldier,
he didn't ask. It was not until he was wounded and sent to Okinawa
to recover that his questions were answered. It was there, on Okinawa,
that he was inducted into the CIA.
This is
where we learn how the CIA works. Based on Paulson's psychological
profile, the CIA decided to turn him into a "deep cover"
agent. An elaborate cover story was concocted by the CIA's Central
Cover staff, which manages a worldwide network of deep cover agents
and freestanding proprietary companies. Existing outside the regular
CIA bureaucracy, the Central Cover staff has been used by every President
since Truman to sidestep Congress, so the president can do the sorts
of things the public would normally disapprove of - such as making
secret deals with America's enemies. The Central Cover staff is the
guts of the CIA.
Only a
few Central Cover staff officers, and his case officer, knew Paulson's
cover story. The story went like this: His father was an Australian
soldier who, during a tour in the Philippines in the Second World
War, had an affair with a woman whose maiden name was Velesco. She
was half Spanish, half Filipino, and from the upper class. The necessary
documents were forged to prove that his mother had been a lawyer working
in Samboaga. But she and the Aussie were never legally married, so
Larry Paulson - now Larry Velesco - automatically became a Philippine
citizen.
Abandoned
by the Aussie soldier, Larry's mother succumbed to remorse and depression,
and like a Southern belle in a Tennessee Williams play, never recovered.
Her son was put up for adoption, and at the age of three, Larry Velesco,
the specter, was taken to the United States, where he had the good
fortune to be adopted by a loving foster family. His affluent parents
raised him as their own son, never mentioning that he was not their
natural child. He blossomed. He was popular and smart, with an aptitude
for mechanics. Documents were forged by the CIA to show that he had
received a scholarship to the General Motors Institute for automotive
engineering, and had attended the Sloan School of Management at MIT.
Remember,
this is his cover story. According to his cover story, he enlisted
in the Marines and, based on his mechanical aptitude, was selected
during basic training for the helicopter pilot training. During the
standard security check, the military discovered that he was a Filipino
citizen, not an American! This came as a "shock" to him,
but it was also a pretext for a visit to the Philippines "to
discover his past," which he made immediately upon leaving the
Marines.
As outlined
in the Central Cover staff's script, and as actually happened, Larry
learned the Filipino language and decided to settle in the land of
his birth. By 1968, he had gotten a job as a manager and translator
with a Japanese mining company. He did well and rose through the ranks.
When the company folded, Shell Oil (which had supplied the mining
company with gasoline and related services) offered him a service
station franchise on the island of Leyte. In 1970, students who were
angry over gasoline price hikes burned the service station to the
ground. But Velesco had outstanding credentials, and there was always
another employer waiting to hire him.
Over the
next ten years, Velesco held management positions with BF Goodrich;
an American building and supply contractor to Clark Air Force Base;
General Motors; VISA Card; and Westinghouse - which, coincidentally,
built the first nuclear reactor in the Philippines.
As is true
of most American multinationals, Velesco's employers all knowingly
provided cover for CIA agents, as a way of maintaining their influence
and sxelf-interests overseas as well as in Washington.
By 1980,
Velesco had established himself as an upright Filipino citizen. His
cover was impeccable, and his time had come. One day in December 1980,
while employed as an executive with Reason Marketing, his case officer
contacted him in the usual way. An envelope was sent to his box at
the Manila Post Office; inside on a piece of paper were a date, a
time, and a telephone number. Velesco called the number from a pay
phone. The voice on the other end said, "Hello." Larry asked
to speak to "Mama san" about his date. "Which date?"
replied the woman. "Kelly," Velesco answered. When the voice
said, "Kelly is an Irish girl," he knew he was about to
receive instructions. Just to be sure, he used a confirmation code:
he asked for the number he had reached, and the woman responded by
repeating his military ID number.
Larry's
instructions were to meet "Sammi", a Palestinian lawyer
and private business-man, at the plush Manila Hotel. Sammi had an
interesting story to tell, too. Like so many of his downtrodden race,
Sammi was a refugee of the Palestinian Diaspora. He had lived in the
United States since 1948. He had two brothers, one in Saudi Arabia,
the other in Jordan. In 1980, both brothers were active in the Palestinian
Liberation Organization (PLO). The brother in Jordan was also a member
of the Palestinian Congress.
Sammi,
of course, was CIA. His college education had been paid for by the
CIA, and subsequently it had arranged "ghost" employment
for him with one of its proprietary companies. When he graduated law
school, Sammi was given the finances he needed to establish his own
law firm. Through its interlocking network of foreign and domestic
proprietary companies, the CIA assured Sammi of powerful clients and
financial success. In the process, the Agency also won his undying
(in the Mafia sense of the word) loyalty.
Financed
by the CIA, Sammi was set up as a business partner and advisor to
the Kuwaiti Royal Family. Within a few short years he was a trusted
confidant. But all the time he was secretly funneling information
to the CIA from his contacts in Kuwait and from his brothers in Saudi
Arabia and Jordan. The information was invaluable, and Sammi was well
rewarded. But he was tormented by a guilty conscience - and remember
this well, dear readers - that torment was the button the CIA used
to turn him on and off.
"He
had turned on his brothers and he had sold his soul to the CIA,"
Larry explains. "And no matter how good a lawyer he was, that
was one contract he could not undo."
Eventually,
the CIA decided that Sammi should enlarge his personal holdings. It
was arranged for one of his companies to receive the exclusive franchise
for trucks that General Motors manufactured in South Korea and sold
in the Middle East. Sammi gradually built a transportation empire
in the Middle East, and that transportation empire is what served
as a launching pad for the Israeli raid on the Osirak nuclear reactor
in Iraq.
Confluence
As a result
of its invasion of Iran in 1981, Iraq was a landlocked nation. Iran
had shut down the port of Basara (which America, Great Britain and
Israel now own), which until then had serviced the entire country
of Iraq. As an alternative, the governments of Jordan and Iraq formed
a joint trucking company, the Iraqi-Jordanian Land Transportation
Company (IJLTC), to transport goods from the Jordanian port of Aqaba
to Bagdad. Sammi was retained by IJLTC as its legal counsel and management
consultant. Then he traveled to the Philippines to hire the right
management and labor consultant.
Just like
George Bush lost the vote but won the election, and just like the
terror attacks of September 11, Sammi's movemenets were preordained:
and while Sammi was staying at the Manila Hotel, he crossed paths
with Larry Velesco, our deep cover CIA officer.
Acoording
to Velesco recalls, "Sammi arranged for me to be employed as
a managing consultant of the Filipino company providing labor and
management for the project. Steyr Daimler-Puch and Mercedes were to
provide the trucks; Freuhaf of France the trailers; and our Filipino
company the labor and management."
Plans were
finalized at the meeting in the Manila Hotel and Velesco was prepared
for his assignment. CIA transportation experts were flown in from
Langley headquarters and joined him at a special training camp; as
Larry describes it, "a nice beach property in northern Luzon.
My physical trainer had a daily regimen to put me into top physical
condition, and my tutors turned me into an expert on transportation,
Jordan, Iraq and the characters who would be involved in the plot.
"When
I arrived in Jordan:' Velesco said, "I was appointed as project
manager by the consortium. My job was simple. I was to computerize
all bills of lading for incoming goods. This information was to be
passed on to the U.S. Embassy in Amman, Jordan. In this way the CIA
could effectively keep track of all goods, war and non-war, entering
Iraq, as well as those being transported to Osirak, to build the nuclear
reactor."
The project
was going smoothly and Larry's cover was fully developed. He was contacted
by his case officer and told to meet with a State Department Consul,
call her Jo An Powell, from a nearby "third country". A
veteran Foreign Service officer, Powell's father had been a diplomat
in the Middle East. She spoke fluent Arabic and, not surprisingly,
as Larry says, "She was CIA, too.
"I
was to go to Austria for a special meeting, the purpose of which I
didn't know at the time. The State Department Consul issued me a diplomatic
passport on May 27, 1981, good for six months. The meeting took place
in August, and three things came out of it. First, my case officer
asked me to stay in the Middle East. Second, because IJLTC was too
time-consuming, he decided that I would start a VISA franchise in
Jordan for another Agency man, a fellow who owned Petra Bank.
"Third,
I was told to return to Jordan, where I was contacted again by the
same State Department Consul. She gave me my instructions, which were
to meet with CIA and Israeli agents in Petra, which is an Israeli
tourist spot in Jordan. It was at that meeting that I learned of the
CIA's plans to bomb the Osirak nuclear reactor. It was also at that
meeting that I was handed a diplomatic pouch filled with electronic
transmitters. The Israeli F-16s were to take off from Elat and follow
our IJLTC truck route to Bagdad. To assure their navigation, I was
to place the transmitters on my trucks, so their jets could follow
my trucks to the target."
Velesco
returned to his IJLTC office in Aqaba and, when the moment was right,
attached the transmitters underneath trucks heading to Osirak with
building supplies. The mission was successful. When the trucks returned,
Velesco removed the transmitters and tossed them into the Gulf of
Aqaba.
It's that
simple, if simple is the word. In any event, no one ever knew.
Post Script
Two years
prior to the raid, Iranian revolutionaries had deposed the Shah of
Iran and seized the U.S. Embassy in Teheran. The American public was
subjected to the humiliating ordeal of watching Foreign Service officers
being bound, gagged, blindfolded, beaten, and put on public display.
President Jimmy Carter tried to rescue the hostages but the Special
Forces commando raid turned into a disaster: the helicopters crashed
in the desert, soldiers died, and the Republicans stifled a laugh.
President Carter tried desperately to negotiate a settlement, but
the hostage crisis dragged on through the 1980 campaign, costing him
the election. It was not until ebullient Ronald Reagan took the oath
of office that the hostages were released.
Some people
believe there had been an "October Surprise;" that Reagan's
campaign manager, William J. Casey, and Reagan's vice presidential
candidate George H. W. Bush, had made a deal with Ayatollah Khomeini
and his Fundamentalist regime, that in return for holding the hostages
through the election, and making Carter lose face, the forthcoming
(illegitimate) Reagan régime promised to support Iran in its
war with Iraq.
As it is
now, it was a convoluted situation: CIA and Israeli spies were operating
throughout the region, working with the Kurds and recruiting fundamentalist
Muslims like Usama bin Laden to fight the Russians in Afghanistan,
while Reagan was dropping bombs on Khadafi's children in Libya, and
Ariel Sharon was plotting the bloody invasion of Lebanon. America
and Israel were doing everything possible to pit Iran against Iraq,
in hopes that they would destroy one another, destabilize the region,
and ensure Israel security.
Twenty-four
years later, Iraq continues to dominate US foreign policy. And while
seizing Iraq's oilfields, and protecting Israel, seem to be major
objectives of the Occupation, these issues are not discussed by the
media for patriotic purposes, while the resistance is being exterminated.
Many Americans still believe the invasion of Iraq was designed to
eliminate Saddam Hussein's non-existent weapons of mass destruction.
Or that Hussein (rather than the CIA or MOSSAD) was responsible for
9/11- terror attacks that freed the unPresident from the ball and
chain of having stolen the 2000 presidential election. Under the ageis
of waging "war on terror", these myths have allowed him
to gut our Civil Liberties, impose de facto martial law, and entirely
reorganize American society in a way that will guarantee his clique
political dominance well into the future.
At a tremendous
cost to American taxpayer, His Lord High Executioner has struck Iraq
with only a fraction of America's overwhelming military might. He
could obliterate any nation with preemptive atomic strikes. Many nations
are repulsed at that prospect, but like the American public, they
remain silent. To this day, much of the American public supports Bush.
Why?
Everyone
wants to know what will happen next? Obviously, Israel and America
have turned their sights on Iran and Syria - in the short term - and,
in the long term, any Muslim state that remotely poses a threat to
Israel, or sits on vast oil reserves, or other precious natural resources.
Larry Paulson's crusade is forever.
When God
is President, it is preordained.
Douglas Valentine
redspruce@comcast.net
http://www.DouglasValentine.com
http://members.authorsguild.net/valentine
