The Meta-Group, BCCI, and Adnan Khashoggi / Part III

Peter Dale Scott - A drug meta-group with such broad connections is not unprecedented. As I argue in my other paper to this conference, I see a historical succession of meta-groups influencing US governmental relations to the international drug traffic. This succession reaches back, through the CIA-sponsored activities of BCCI, to what I call the first post-war meta-group -- the overlapping global operations of William Donovan, E. Howard Hunt, Paul Helliwell, and Meyer Lansky. (1) If there is a historical pattern of evolution in this succession, it is that successive meta-groups have become more powerful, more highly organized, and more independent of their government (as opposed to business) connections.


Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina, explores the underlying factors that have engendered a U.S. strategy of indirect intervention in Third World countries through alliances with drug-trafficking proxies.

A clear predecessor for the Far West meta-group was the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), a drug-laundering bank which was of use to CIA Director William Casey precisely because of its corrupt global reach, which included the USSR. (2) As a Washington insider said to two Time reporters covering BCCI,

They were the only way we could talk to certain folks, and they were the only vehicle available for some transactions. Who else could wire something together to Saudi Arabia, China, Israel, and the U.S.? (3)

BCCI inherited its ability to broker Arab-Israeli-China arms deals, as well its contacts to western intelligence and politicians, from Adnan Khashoggi, whom it partly displaced as an agent of influence in the Middle East, after the United States, in 1977, outlawed direct payments by U.S. corporations to foreign officials. (4)

Khashoggi was listed in the 1992 Senate BCCI Report as one of the “principal foreign agents of the U.S.” (5) He had long-term relations with former CIA officers and also undercover assets, such as BCCI and the banker Guillermo Hernandez-Cartaya (who inter alia financed a botched kidnapping in Mexico, defrauded an Arabian bank, and allegedly oversaw arms-for-drugs deals). (6) Khashoggi himself became notorious for flying into Las Vegas from abroad and then rapidly losing vast sums of cash at the casino tables – a traditional form of money-laundering. (7)

Khashoggi’s name has surfaced in connection with a number of other scandals, from Imelda Marcos’ illicit real estate ventures in New York to major securities fraud in Thailand. (8) He was also involved in murky Savings and Loan deals in Texas along with his sometime partner Mario Renda, “a Long Island man whose office was staffed by …a muscular gunman from - police said - the Lucchese Mafia family.” (9) Some of Khashoggi’s American operations, like Hernandez-Cartaya’s, involved associates of the Bush family. (10)

Khashoggi had had a financial interest in Chechnya, and connections with its leaders, since 1996, from his participation in a consortium called Caucasian Common Market AO. (11) A principal organizer was former Chechen First Deputy Premier Khozh-Akhmed Nukhaev, in conjunction with Lord McAlpine of the Goldsmith family interests in London. (12) According to the late Paul Klebnikov, Nukhaev had a background in Chechen organized crime, before developing "a radical ideology in line with the one espoused by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.” (13)

Despite this background, Nukhaev found support and financing in Washington for his Caucasian-American Chamber of Commerce. According to one source, in 1997 Khashoggi introduced Nukhaev to former US Secretary of State James Baker. (14)

When I first wrote about the Beaulieu, I passed over Khashoggi’s other links to drug-traffickers. But a 1991 DIA report, obtained by the National Security Archives, lists numerous Colombian traffickers and their associates, and includes: “69. Adnan ((Khashoggi)) -- An international arms trafficker who allegedly has sold arms to the Colombian drug traffickers, especially to the Medellin Cartel.” (15)

This gibes neatly with reports that Davidovich, who at the time of the Beaulieu meeting was residing in Khashoggi’s villa, had dealings in Colombia with both the FARC and the Ochoa brothers of the Medellin cartel. (16) BCCI and an Israeli intelligence agent were also involved in Medellin arms sales, via a “melon farm” in Antigua partly financed by William Casey’s friend Bruce Rappaport. (17) Khashoggi’s ally Hernandez-Cartaya was also accused of financing arms deals through Cuba with Colombian revolutionaries. (18)

Footnotes:
1: Peter Dale Scott, “Drugs, Parapolitics, and Mexico: The DFS and the First Post-War Meta-Group,” 14.

2. Jonathan Beaty and S.C. Gwynne, The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI (New York: Random House, 1993), 250.

3: Beaty and. Gwynne, The Outlaw Bank, 347.

4: Ronald Kessler, The Richest Man in the World (New York: Warner Books, 1986), 162, 300; Jonathan Beaty and S.C. Gwynne, The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI (New York: Random House, 1993), 54, 80, 263-64.

4: U.S. Congress. Senate, 102nd Cong., 2nd Sess. The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations from Senator John Kerry, Chairman, and from Senator Hank Brown, Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations, 299. Henceforth Kerry-Brown Report.

5: Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics: The CIA, Drugs, and Armies in Central America (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998), 31-32; Pete Brewton, The Mafia, CIA, and George Bush (New York: S.P.I. Books, 1992), 184-85; Penny Lernoux, In Banks We Trust (Garden City, NY: Anchor/Doubleday, 1984), 146-53.

6: Ron Kessler, The Richest Man in the World , 181-83.

7: New York Times, 6/28/90 (Marcos); Wall Street Journal, 5/7/99 (Thailand)

8: Brewton, Mafia, 53-59, 189 (S&L); Jonathan Kwitny, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 9/12/90 (Mafia).

9: Brewton, Mafia, 58-59, 185.

10: "Separatism, Islam and Oil," Cf. "The tendencies of interregional and international integration in North Caucasia," Caucasian Knot, eng.kavkaz.memo.ru/reginfotext/ engreginfo/id/560578.html.

11: Jamestown Foundation, Monitor, Vol. 3, Issue 206, 11/4/97. Another interested party before his tragic death with Princess Diana was Dodi al-Fayad, the owner of Harrod's and Khashoggi's nephew.

12: AFP, "From criminal to Islamist: US journalist traces the life of a Chechen rebel," JRL 7252, 7/16/03, Paul Klebnikov, Razgovor S Varvarom Besedy S Chechenskim Polevym Komandirom Khozhakhmedom Nukhaevym O Banditizme I Islame (Talks with a Barbarian).

13: "Caucasian diamond traffic" (Moscow, 2005), "In spring 1997 Adnan Khashoggi introduced Hozh-Ahmed Nukhaev to James Baker."

14: DIA Report of 9/23/91, “Subj: (U) IIR [DELETED]/Narcotics – Colombian Narco-Trafficker Profiles,”. Cf. New York Times, 8/2/04.

15: Personal communication.

16: Kerry-Brown Report, 69.

17: Lernoux, Banks, 149.

Peter Dale Scott, a former Canadian diplomat and English Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, is a poet, writer, and researcher.

Part I: History and the Political Requirements of the Global Drug Traffic
Part II: The Meta-Group, West, and East
Part III: The Meta-Group, BCCI, and Adnan Khashoggi
Part IV: Dunlop’s Account of the Beaulieu Meeting’s Purpose: The “Russian 9/11” in 1999
Part V: Dunlop’s Redactions of His Source Yasenev
Part VI: The Khashoggi Villa Meeting, Kosovo, and the “Pristina Dash”
Part VII: The Role of Anton Surikov: The Dunlop and Yasenev Versions
Part VIII: Saidov, Surikov, Muslim Insurrectionism, and Drug Trafficking
Part IX: Allegations of Drug-Trafficking and Far West Ltd.
Part X: Far West Ltd, Halliburton, Diligence LLC, New Bridge, and Neil Bush
Part XI: The U.S. Contribution to the Afghan-Kosovo Drug Traffic.
Last Part XII: Concluding Remarks: Meta-Groups and Transpolitics.

Further reading on that topic
The Crimes of Mena
Ollie North and the C-123 Story
Raul Castro’s fidele Kokain Connection
Gasmasken, Giftgas und Milliardenbetrug - auf den Spuren des Moshe Regev
Der Wonga Coup
Prostituierte, Parties, Pferderennen, Penny Stocks, Deutsche Bank in Toronto und Khashoggi
Gletscher, Safari und Zyanid - Barricks-Gold
Massenvernichtungswaffen für den Iran
Söldner, Gauner, Waffen und Rohstoffe
Geheimer Waffendeal mit MEK Terroristen?
Koks in Mexiko - Heisse Kartoffeln in Clearwater
Bermudadreieck: Koks, Gambling & Politik
Mit Nebelgespenstern, Koks & Poker rund um die Welt
Skyway und die Räuberpistolen
Der seltsame Weg einer DC-9
Hasenfus Kokain? Oder kein Hasenfus Kokain?
Swissair DC-9 „Graubünden“ steckt mit in der Kokain Affäre
Special Operation Samurais & die 5.5 Tonnen Koks
Kokain nicht nur Straffrei sondern bald Pflicht?
Wer war denn Mr. Bramble?
In Coca Mekka Schnee bis in die Niederungen
Die Old Boys Dirigenten von Genf
Das Old Boys Netzwerk
CIA-Flieger in Mexiko mit 128 Koffern voll Kokain erwischt
Verbindung von US-Politiker zu 5,5 Tonnen Kokain
Fallout an Heroin
Mit dem Flugzeugbomber, Oli North & Felix Rodriguez auf der Pista Coca
Pizza aus dem Hindukusch gefällig?
Islamische Mullahs & kalte Krieger in der Liebkosung
Krausköpfe mit Stinger-Raketen