[…] begins to dominate. He writes (p 167): ‘The essential idea behind U.S. foreign policy in the 1950s was the defence of democracy. But in order to “save” Iran and Guatemala from the tendentious threat of communism, the CIA conspired to over-throw the democratic government in those two countries, condemning local people to decades of […]
[…] by the United States and CIA in the past. The usual CIA mode of undermining foreign governments it does not like — from Russia to Cuba to Iran — has been to organize and train their opponents in criminal activities, including sabotage and smuggling. But time and again this strategy backfires. The problem is […]
‘You don’t investigate people for why they think but for what they do.’ – former Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti (1) Introduction If nothing else, the Iran-Contra scandal temporarily illuminated the extent to which ostensibly private organizations have been helping secretive elements within the American government — in this case the core of the executive branch’s […]
[…] U.S. foreign policy, to the detriment of the latter. An important example was the ill-fated so-called Ghorbanifar initiative during Iran-Contra, to sell arms to the mullahs in Iran in exchange for the release of American hostages: Ghorbanifar was not acting alone. Although he led us to believe he was using Iranian money, his forward […]
[…] mention lawyer Michael Palmer who, and in a different context, hit the headlines eighteen months ago. There are, of course, gaps. For example, Dorril writes copiously about Iran – allowing Norman Darbyshire his entrance into the history books – without touching on the rest of the Middle East from the mid-sixties through to the […]
[…] were imposed because of ethnic cleansing; in Indonesia, where ‘Kellogg Brown and Root (Halliburton’s engineering division) collusive, corruptive and nepotistic practices with former president Suharto’s family’; in Iran Cheney lobbied against the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, which even when it was in place didn’t stop Halliburton contracts there; Iraq since the war, Halliburton […]
[…] some 40 in the Soviet Union itself. The conference predicted also the rise of terrorist states, emphasising the importance of the then newly established Islamic republic of Iran.’ ‘Many observers,” writes Netanyahu, ‘believed the Jerusalem conference was a turning point in the understanding point in the understanding of international terrorism….But what was still lacking […]
[…] tipping off the police as to his whereabouts. (151) Sometime around the beginning of 1980, Celik organised Agca’s escape route across Turkey and his border crossing into Iran, which occurred on 1 February. (152) There are contradictory reports about Agca’s exact itinerary, (153) but the feature that stands out in each of them is […]
[PDF file]: Armed and Dangerous: the corporate origins of war with Iran Dr. Roger Cottrell Preamble In November 2011 claims emerged of an unlikely assassination plot against the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the US.1 According to the FBI, an alcoholic car salesman in Texas, Manssor Arbasier, with a spurious family connection to a member of Iran’s […]
The CIA and Drugs One of the biggest stories in the six months since the last Lobster has been the CIA-deals-crack story. The Web site at has an enormous amount of information, including an important piece by Robert Parry, ‘Lost History: Contras, Dirty Money and the CIA.’ Another important background piece is Jack Blum’s […]
