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Norway’s Terror as Systemic Destabilization: Breivik, the Arms-for-Drugs Milieu, and Global Shadow Elites. Part IV

Peter Dale Scott - Breivik, Destabilization, Far West, and Global Shadow Elites
Far West is not to be thought of as a localized drug mafia like the Zemun gang, but as a multinational linchpin between organized crime, including drug trafficking, and the global intelligence and corporate establishment. From its origins as a Soviet military intelligence (GRU) group in Afghanistan, with responsibility for narcotics matters, it has expanded globally, and now enjoys connections to the intelligence networks of Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Great Britain, and the United States.”57

In particular, as I wrote six years ago : The group's business front, Far West Ltd [now Far West LLC]. is said to have CIA-approved contractual dealings with Halliburton for geopolitical purposes in the Caucasus, as well as dealings in Iraq with Diligence LLC, a group with connections to Joe Allbaugh (the FEMA chief in 2001) and to the President's younger brother Neil Bush. The head of Far West recently told a Russian outlet that "a well-known American corporation... is a co-founder of our agency."

Because of all these connections transcending normal political and ideological differences, I described it as a “meta-group,” like the drug bank BCCI which was in some significant ways its predecessor.58

Today I would say of my essay that I did not distinguish clearly enough between the Far West meta-group itself and its “roof” or protection, the men it dealt with at a still higher level, like Boris Berezovsky’s man Alexander Voloshin in the Kremlin, or the multi-billionaires Roman Abramovich and Adnan Khashoggi. Far West consisted of a multinational connection of structures and networks in particular locations. Those using and protecting it did not constitute a structure, but a paranational milieu without any single location or organization.

These protectors qualify as part of what David Rothkopf has called the illicit “shadow elites, those whose influence stems from illicit or unconventional means.”59 Such illicit elites are not marginal: Khashoggi, for example, was once called by his American biographer “the richest man in the world.”60 The Russian arms merchant Viktor Bout, who conducted arms deals both with Charles Taylor of Liberia and with Far West in the Ukraine, has been called “the Bill Gates or Donald Trump of modern gun running.”61

In an era when the combined wealth of the 225 richest people nearly equals the annual income of the poorer half of the earth’s population,62 it can be assumed that the power and influence of the illicit wealthy is a major force to be reckoned with in world affairs. And it is clear that some in these shadow elites stand to benefit from the crimes Breivik has been charged with: specifically “destabilizing or destroying basic functions of society,” and “creating serious fear in the population.”63

In American War Machine a year ago I characterized Far West as a component of a larger war machine, and specifically as an “ongoing destabilization machine” whose principal aim in destabilization is not ideological, but “to promote conditions that facilitate its own business prospects…and specifically the chaos that makes for future contracts.”64

This brings us back to Ulemek and Filin, whose connection must have been a matter of business rather than of ideology. Ulemek had been involved in killing Muslim minorities, whereas members of Far West (who included Muslims) were allegedly involved in backing ethnic Muslim jihads inside Russia. But Ulemek and Filin, along with Greger and indeed Breivik, had a common interest in one goal: the destabilization of existing society. Obviously, for their activities, whether paramilitary violence, arms trafficking, or drugs, destabilization is beneficial, even necessary.

Of course destabilization is not profitable to drug traffickers alone. It also generates business for the power bureaucracies and private military corporations whose practice it is to intervene in destabilized countries. And finally it is a source of income to those illicit elites who are themselves safely above drug trafficking, but have become rich through banking the proceeds.
Thus Breivik, who must be condemned both as a psychopathic mass murderer and as a threat to world order, can be seen as someone useful to those whose business it is to profit from the destabilization of that world order.

Behind Systemic Destabilization: A Deep State or a Paranational Dark Force?
The Breivik manifesto and video constitute a veritable cherry orchard of planted clues, from which it is possible to cherry-pick a number of alternative explanatory scenarios. In my own case I have been guided by the need to test a double hypothesis I put forward tentatively in the American War Machine:

1) There exists an on-going milieu that is repeatedly a source for the systemic destabilization in many of the world’s major deep events, and
2) there is a congruence between this dark quadrant of systemic destabilization (or what I once called “managed violence”) and the milieu of the international drug traffic.65

I have tried to show in this essay that the events of 7/22, studied in the context of the Breivik-Ulemek-Filin connection, provide an initial corroboration, at this stage admittedly less than definitive, of this double hypothesis.

There was a time when, citing the facts disclosed about the Piazza Fontana bombing in Italy or the Semdinli bombing in Turkey, I tended to identify the source of all such deep events with the parastatal or “deep state” structures in these countries, including the CIA in America. But in American War Machine I give reasons, not easily summarized, for suspecting that for the ultimate source of such deep events we should look beyond the parastatal structures of nations (including the CIA) to a more unstructured and paranational deep force or dark force, or forces, colluding with, and sometimes perhaps manipulating, these parastatal structures.66

In Moscow in 2010 I was invited to attend an International Forum on Afghan Drug Production. There a senior Russian counternarcotics official, in the course of a long and intense conversation, said to me, “For many years I have been trying to fight the drug traffic, and up till now I don’t really know what I’m fighting.” I replied, “You know, on page 5 of my next book, I say almost the same thing.” (In American War Machine, p. 5, I write that in choosing to refer to the CIA’s global drug connection, I was not trying to define the force precisely, but “attempting to denote and describe a deep force, or forces, that I do not fully understand.”)

The events of 7/22 do not by themselves resolve the mystery of this dark force. But they do help to underline its on-going significance.

I would like to thank those researchers who helped me with this essay, in particular Magda Hassan and Jan Klimkowski of Deep Politics Forum, and Ola Tunander.

Notes
1 Peter Dale Scott. “Korea (1950), the Tonkin Gulf Incident, and 9/11: Deep Events in Recent American History,” Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, June 22, 2008.
2 The unsolved mystery of Aum Shinrikyo’s motive for the mass attack is discussed by James William Jones, Blood That Cries Out from the Earth: the Psychology of Religious Terrorism, 77-79. Cf. Robert Jay Lifton, Destroying the World to Save It: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence and the New Global Terrorism, 68.
3 Peter Dale Scott, American War Machine (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010), 19-21; Christopher Deliso, The coming Balkan caliphate: the threat of radical Islam to Europe and the West, 100: “Military coups in 1971 and 1980, bookended by chronic massacres of civilian demonstrators throughout the 1970s, were all led by Counter-Guerrilla/Grey Wolves elements. Immediately after the 1980 military coup that brought the Counter-Guerrillas leader, General Kenan Evren to power, American CIA station chief Paul Henze reportedly cabled Washington exulting, ‘our boys have done it.’”
4 Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 180-84; Anna Cento Bull, Italian neofascism: the strategy of tension and the politics of non-reconciliation, 112-20.
5 Italian Senate, Parliamentary Committee Investigating Terrorism, 2000; quoted in Daniel Ganser, Nato’s Secret Armies (London: Frank Cass, 2005), 14; cf. Guardian, June 24, 2000.
6 Ganser, Nato’s Secret Armies, 138-47, 228-30.
7 Ganser, Nato’s Secret Armies, 14; cf. 17.
8 Bjoern H. Amland and Malin Rising, “Anders Behring Breivik, Norway Attacker, Returns To Crime Scene For Reconstruction ,” Huffington Post, August 14, 2011.
9 Scott, American War Machine, 187-92; Peter Dale Scott, “A Ballad of Drugs and 9/11,” Flashpoint Magazine.
10 David Rothkopf, Superclass: the Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009), 289; cf. xx.
11 The lethal bomb attack of November 2005 on a bookshop in the Turkish district of Şemdinli, “initially attributed to the Kurdish separatist PKK, turned out to have been committed by members of Turkey's paramilitary police intelligence service, together with a former PKK member turned informer” (Scott. “Korea [1950], the Tonkin Gulf Incident, and 9/11,” citing Nicholas Birch, Irish Times, November 26, 2005). Cf. Gareth Jones, “Bombing throws spotlight on Turkey,” Hürriyet, November 20, 2005.
12 James Petras, “The Norwegian Massacre, the State, the Media and Israel,” My Catbird Seat, July 2011.
13 Michael Schwartz, “Suspect in Norway Reconstructs Killings for Police,” New York Times, August 14, 2011.
14 Ola Tunander, personal communication, August 4, 2011.
15 Ganser, Nato’s Secret Armies, 176, 181, 183, 289.
16 The term “legend” was popularized by author Edward Jay Epstein with respect to Oswald, in a book with that title. Epstein was suggesting that Oswald’s legend had been created by the KGB for a non-assassination purpose. A CIA monograph by former CIA officer Cleveland C. Cram, “Of Moles and Molehunters: A Review of Counterintelligence Literature,” criticized Epstein’s book for creating what was in effect another legend: “Epstein, working with James Angleton, was part of a disinformation campaign. Cram writes: ‘Legend… gave Angleton and his supporters an advantage by putting their argument adroitly – if dishonestly – before the public first’” (John Simkin, “Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald.”).
16 Olivier Roy, Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004).
17 Olivier Roy, Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004).
18 Gore Vidal, "The Art and Arts of E. Howard Hunt," New York Review of Books, December 13, 1973, (full disclosure: I wrote most of the brief footnotes for this essay): ”Although H.H. is a self-admitted forger of state papers I do not think that he actually had a hand in writing Bremer’s diary on the ground that the journal is a brilliant if flawed job of work, and beyond H.H.’s known literary competence.”
19 Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 80-92, 262-66.
20 The CIA also made plans to have the Oswald tape translated into Spanish and distributed through Latin America via one of its radio assets. See “AMCOUP-1 Possible Use of DRE Tape,” CIA Dispatch of December 13, 1963, NARA #104-10018-10074, available from Mary Ferrell Foundation website, “The President’s assassination, of course, gave this radio debate newsworthiness of the highest category.” Cf. Peter Dale Scott, "New Documents." Open Secrets, I.6/II.1 (Dec.-Jan. 1995/Feb.-Apr. 1996), 20.
21 It can still be seen on Youtube, but on condition that you first sign up and then certify that you are over 18.
22 The video refers to the manifesto, and both are said to be produced by (in the video version) De laude novae militae Productions. De laude novae militae is faulty Latin copied from an amateurish website description of “In Praise of the New Knighthood,” a letter Bernard of Clairvaux sent to Hugues de Payens in support of the Templar order (TemplarHistory.com: A History and Mythos of the Knights Templar, March 2010, link). The same words, corrected to De laude novae militiae, open the manifesto.
23 Andrew Gumbel, “Seeds of Terror in Norway,” Los Angeles Times, July 28, 2011.
24 Dana Rohrabacher, “Chairman's Report: The Oklahoma City Bombing: Was There A Foreign Connection?“ December 26, 2006.
25 “Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – Yousef’s uncle, then located in Qatar – was a fellow plotter of Yousef in the Manila air plot and had also wired him some money prior, to the Trade Center bombing (9/11 Commission Report, 73).
26 J.M. Berger, “Did Nichols and Yousef Meet?” Intelwire.com, 2004. Peter Lance cites a sworn affidavit from a former leader of Abu Sayyaf (a Philippine group being trained by al Qaeda), claiming that at a meeting he had met Yousef together with “a man named Terry Nichols, who was introduced …as ‘a farmer’” (Peter Lance, 1000 Days, 313; cf. 317). Berger argues that this claim “comes up short.”
27 Peter Dale Scott, Road to 9/11, 146-60; Peter Dale Scott, "Bosnia, Kosovo, and Now Libya: The Human Costs of Washington's On-Going Collusion with Terrorists," Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, July 29, 2011, http://japanfocus.org/-Peter_Dale-Scott/3578.
28 Peter Dale Scott, American War Machine, 193-207; quoting from Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Courses of Action Related to Cuba (Case II),” Report of the J-5 to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, May 1, 1963, NARA #20-10002-10018, 21.
29 Scott, American War Machine, 167-68, 241-43; discussing 9/11 Commission Report, 171.
30 Justin Raimondo, “Anders Behring Breivik, Mystery Man: Following the money trail,” Antiwar.com, July 29, 2011; citing Independent (London), July 28, 2001, link: “Exactly what he lived on in the run- up to the massacre remains a mystery. But his bank details reveal that in 2007, a sum equivalent to €80,000 (£70,000) was added to his account, which would have enabled him to live without having to work.”
31 Raimondo, “Anders Behring Breivik, Mystery Man,” citing Sydney Morning Herald, July 25, 2011.
32 Aftenposten, August 3, 2011, link. Cf. Hegnar Online, 03 August 2011, link. In addition the language of the Breivik manifesto hints over and over at a larger entity behind 7/22 – e.g. "It has been decided that the operation will be effectuated in Autumn, 2011. However, I cannot go into factors concerning why, at this point. My current funds are running low, and I have less than 15 000 Euro left with a 30 000 credit backup from my 10 different credit cards. My primary funds should cover all planned expenses without spending any of the credit.
33 Stavanger Aftenblad, August 3, 2011.
34 “Personal facts about Andrew Berwick (Anders Behring Breivik),” Aufgeweckt, July 25, 2011, link.
35 Scott, American War Machine, 163. This arms supply operation is suspected to have been the work of a network headed by a former Mossad agent in Panama, Mike Harari, who was remembered by some Norwegians. In 1973 Harari, when Chief of the Operations Branch of Mossad, had overseen the botched murder of an innocent Moroccan in Lillehammer, Norway.
36 Barry Rubin, "The Region: The Oslo Syndrome,” Jerusalem Post, July 31 2011.
37 Wayne Madsen, “Israeli Co-option of Europe's Far-right Political Parties” Rense.com, August 3, 2011: “Although various media outlets, known to bend and succumb to the pressure applied by Israel and its global sympathizers, tried to downplay the connections between Breivik and his allies in Zionist circles in Israel and Europe, no less than the Jerusalem Post, an echo chamber for Zionist and neo-conservative interests, reported that Breivik was ‘motivated by Zionism’ in carrying out his deadly attack in Norway.
In fact, Breivik had a keen interest in one such stay-behind network in Turkey, a network that transformed itself into the Israeli Mossad-linked Ergenekon network, which may still be active against the Justice and Development (AK) Party of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The German magazine Spiegel has highlighted the growing relationship between heretofore anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi far-right European political parties and Israel's right-wing parties. Spiegel's report focused on particularly close ties between Israelis and the Freedom Party of Austria, the National Front of France, the Flemish Vlaams Belang, the National Democratic Party of Germany, the German Freedom Party, True Finns Party of Finland, and the Northern League of Italy.”
38 Quoted in Paul Woodward, “Did Anders Behring Breivik Act Alone? “ Eurasia Review, July 25, 2011.
39 “An illustration of several successful and decisive campaigns: - Serb Volunteer Guard - SDG[1] - Type: Paramilitary organisation - Size: 10 000+ - Garrison HQ: Belgrade - Nickname: Arkan's Tigers, The Tigers - Commander: Zeljko Raznatovic - Second in command: Colonel Nebojsa Djordjevic Suca and Milorad Ulemek Legija….. The Albanian Muslims in Serbia refused deportation and convertion from Islam (and instead started armed resistance) and as such were targeted for annihilation.” Of those named by Breivik, Ulemek is the sole survivor; Raznatovic (“Arkan”), and Suca were both murdered.
40 Duncan Gardham, “Violent Videos of Oslo Killer’s ‘Mentor,’” Daily Telegraph (London), July 29, 2011.
41 The only exceptions to this style are the stills of Breivik himself at the end of the video.
42 Richard Bartholomew, “Paul Ray Identifies with Northern Ireland Loyalist Groups,” Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion, October 23, 2009. Discussed at Richard Bartholomew, “ London Times Highlights Paul Ray,” Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion, July 29, 2011.
43 “Tribute to President Charles Taylor The Order 777,” link.
44 Colbert I. King, “Pat Robertson's Gold,” Washington Post, September 22, 2001. Similarly Laurent Nkunda, another of the video’s heroes, is characterized by Leana Wen in the New York Times (June 21, 2007) as “an actual ‘warlord’ who is accused of raping and massacring thousands.” Wen heard from a pastor that “Nkunda’s faith at one point seemed real;” but “local churches … were finally convinced that he was the one leading the crimes and atrocities, and his own church ended up excommunicating him.” Wen describes Nkunda as sporting a pin, “Rebels for Christ” – a phrase displayed also in Greger’s video.
45 In addition a video posted by “madnick77” says that Greger himself used “drugs and prostitution” in pursuit of his political goals (“Commander Nick Greger A.k.a Mad Nick / The Order 777,” link).
46 Charles Taylor was less known for drug trafficking than for the illicit traffic in blood-diamonds. Nevertheless when Taylor, a fugitive, was finally detained in a Range Rover with Nigerian diplomatic plates, significant amounts of cash and heroin were found in the vehicle (Sunday Times [London], August 8, 2010). Cf. Mail Guardian [South Africa], December 3. 2010, link: “A leading Dutch newspaper, Parool, carried a prominent news story last Friday linking … Liberia’s current leader, Charles Taylor, to a notorious drug syndicate. “
47 For Geagea’s drug trafficking see Jonathan Marshall, Descent into Chaos: Drug Trafficking and the Failure of Lebanon’s State, 1950-1990 (Stanford: Stanford UP, forthcoming), 131; citing Le Monde, May 19, 1990; Labrousse, La droga, 136-137.
48 For Johnny Adair’s drug trafficking see “Johnny Adair: Notorious Loyalist,” BBC News, January 10, 2003, link; cf. Daily Record, February 5, 2011, link.
49 ”UDA hitman muscles in on Scots drugs racket; Adair lieutenant seeks new patch after failed deal leaves him broke,” link.
50 “Billy Wright and INLA carved up drugs market,” NewsLetter.co, link. A seventh man celebrated in the Greger video, Wright’s LTV adjutant, Mark Fulton, has not been personally accused of drug trafficking. But Fulton’s brother, Jim Fulton, was arrested in California with terrorist materials and drugs for sale, and the whole LTV militia has been accused collectively of becoming drug dealers (BBC News, January 16, 2000, link).
51 “Ulemek Made Industry Out of Criminal Gang,” B92-News, December 17, 2997, link: “Ulemek and Spasojević had some 200 men under their direct control, the state said, and established a drug trafficking monopoly in the capital, as well as in Vojvodina and the town of Požarevac. This monopoly came as a result of a series of murders, starting in 2000.”
52 “Killers of Serbia's first elected PM jailed for 40 years,” Independent (London), May 24, 2007.
53 Cecilia Ferrara, “Against the Mafia,” Balcanicaucaso.org, February 26, 2010.
54 My interest in Breivik and Far West began after reading the claim from Belarus that Breivik “underwent militant-terrorist training under the guidance of 51-year-old Valery Lunev, a former colonel of Belarusian special forces, who now lives in the Netherlands but regularly visits Belarus” (Yuri Mamchur, “Norwegian Terrorist Anders Breivik Trained in Belarus Militant Camps,” Russia Blog, July 28, 2011.) Lunev was a senior officer of Far West, responsible in particular for Far West’s “strong arm operations,” including the violent coup d’etat of 1991 against Georgian Premier Zviad Gamsahurdia, in which at least 113 people died (Peter Dale Scott, “The Global Drug Meta-Group: Drugs, Managed Violence, and the Russian 9/11”; cf. Link.) The Breivik manifesto does mention travel to Belarus. But unfortunately there is no independent corroboration for the claim of a Breivik-Lunev connection, alleged by a Belarusian politician, Mikhail Reshetnikov, with an obvious motive to implicate the Belarus Government of Alexander Lukashenko. (Cf. “Filin – “El Buho” Is Getting Nervous,” Left.ru, June 24, 2006, link: Lunev “serves in the counter-terrorist department of his [Lukashenko’s] KGB.”)
55 “Filin – “El Buho” Is Getting Nervous,” Left.ru, June 24, 2006.
56 Mats R. Berdal and Mónica Serrano, Transnational organized crime and international security: business as usual? (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers 2002).
57 Scott, American War Machine, 188; Peter Dale Scott, “The Real Grand Chessboard and the Profiteers of War (Part Two),” Foreign Policy Journal, January 10, 2010; Scott, “The Global Drug Meta-Group.”
58 Scott, “The Global Drug Meta-Group.”
59 Rothkopf, Superclass, 289; cf. xx.
60 Ronald Kessler, The Richest Man in the World: The Story of Adnan Khashoggi (New York: Warner Books, 1988). Khashoggi was also listed in the 1992 Senate BCCI Report as one of the “principal foreign agents of the U.S.” (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; Scott, American War Machine, 160-62).
61 Moisés Naím, Illicit: how smugglers, traffickers, and copycats are hijacking the global economy (New York: Doubleday, 2005), 49; quoted in Rothkopf, Superclass, 218. An associate of Viktor Bout, Oleg Orlov of EMM Arab Systems in Cyprus, collaborated both in Bout’s arms sales to Africa and in Bout’s shipping of Ukrainian X-55 cruise missiles, illegally exported by Far West, to Iran and China (UN Final report of the Monitoring Mechanism on Angola Sanctions, paragraphs 111 – 144, link (Bout/Orlov/Africa); cf. “Filin-‘El Buho’ is getting nervous:” “[Viktor] Bout-Aminov, [Richard] Chichakli, and Oleg Orlov were ‘outed’ in Angola and later in the rest of Africa in 2002-2005. Then Orlov was ‘outed’ in the X-55 affair, China and Iran in the beginning of 2005. As the result, Orlov is in the Ukrainian jail, Chichakli hides somewhere in the Emirates, and Bout-Aminov keeps a low profile and shuttles between Moscow suburbs and Minsk. As to Bout’s and Chichakli’s friend Mr. [Charles] Taylor, he has been apprehended by the Hague Tribunal.“ It is widely accepted that Bout’s arms shipments to Liberia served the purposes of Taylor. But it can also be assumed that Taylor’s coup and arms purchases served the financial interests of Bout, a much more powerful and well-connected figure
62 Scott, Road to 9/11, 254; citing Daniel Singer, Whose Millennium: Theirs or Ours
(New York: Monthly Review Press, 1999).
63 Reuters, July 26, 2011, link.
64 Scott, American War Machine, 191-92.
65 Peter Dale Scott, “The Global Drug Meta-Group: Drugs, Managed Violence, and the Russian 9/11”; cf. Link.
66 American War Machine, 2-5, 43; cf. 20-22, 134-40, 239-41.