Osman Kaldirim

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May 24, 1998: New Breed of Roughnecks Battles Over Caspian Oil Fields Commerce: Unocal finds deal-making, not technical expertise, is key to securing overseas contracts. Corporate brawls are part of game.

HOUSTON — To the former Soviet republic of Turkmenistan, the deal with Unocal Corp. to develop its huge natural-gas reserves was about more than energy. It was about statecraft.

So for a stage, President Saparmurad A. Niyazov chose the United Nations during its 50th anniversary celebration in New York in 1995 to announce that Unocal had agreed to build a $2-billion, 1,000-mile pipeline from Turkmenistan's gas fields through war-ravaged Afghanistan to Pakistan.

And to the United States, Turkmenistan's deal with Unocal provided an opportunity to befriend another potential energy supplier. So former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger was brought to the U.N. to lay hands on the deal, and a clutch of senior Clinton administration officials also put in high-profile appearances.

But to Unocal, the deal was strictly business: a vital component of its new strategy of chasing opportunities wherever the trail leads.

It's a rough-and-tumble world outside U.S. borders, and El Segundo-based Unocal has leaped enthusiastically into the scrum. Doing business where many other U.S. oil companies fear to tread, it has worked with some of the most questionable regimes in the world, most notably that of Myanmar (formerly Burma).

Unocal has learned that succeeding overseas demands as much political and diplomatic aplomb as technical oil expertise. In Afghanistan, for example, it has tried to win friends by providing social programs to the populace.

And it has built some highly unusual strategic alliances, some with companies that know less about how to drill an oil well than about how to win favor with foreign leaders.

The Turkmenistan contract stands as a conspicuous case in point. To help it land Niyazov's signature on the pipeline deal, Unocal enlisted the support of Saudi Arabian and Russian partners who knew the territory.
In this back alley of the global economy, Unocal's approach could be considered hard-eyed pragmatism. Its competitors follow a similar strategy: The Argentine company that Unocal shouldered aside in Turkmenistan had the head of the Saudi Arabian intelligence service working on its side.

But the company's tactics have made some fierce enemies and prompted complaints that Unocal is playing dirty even by the standards of this rough region.

Indeed, even as Niyazov was preparing to sign on the dotted line with Unocal at the 1995 U.N. ceremony, Carlos Bulgheroni, the chairman of the Argentine firm, Bridas Corp., was holed up on the other side of Manhattan, earnestly trying to undo the deal.

When Bulgheroni failed to win Niyazov back to his side, Bridas sued Unocal and its Saudi partner, seeking $15 billion in damages.

With a November trial date looming, Bridas and Unocal are still exchanging ugly charges of bribery and corruption, of sub-rosa connections to Afghan rebel factions, of Turkmen officials bought and sold.

Caspian Oil Reserves Valued at $4 Trillion

Most of the court records of the Bridas lawsuit remain sealed. But dozens of interviews with sources close to the case and others familiar with the Turkmen pipeline project provide a window on the brutal race to dominate the world's hottest oil and natural-gas field, the Caspian Sea basin, which is estimated to hold reserves worth $4 trillion at today's prices.

These reserves are locked behind fire walls of ancient ethnic and religious hatreds, in nations whose governments are as corrupt as any in the world. Niyazov is so ruthlessly autocratic that only 17 of his citizens dared vote against him in the last election--and one of those was rewarded by being locked up in a mental hospital.

Five major ethnic groups dominate Turkmenistan, and, as one U.S. intelligence official noted, Niyazov seems to keep their leaders happy by allowing them to "come into government, enrich themselves and their families and then leave the government and go home."

When Unocal joined the international scramble to get a piece of the Caspian's action, it enlisted as partners two foreign companies that promised to help guide it through the treacherous political landscape of Central Asia. These were a small and mysterious Saudi company called Delta Oil Co. Ltd. and a Russian company called Itera International Energy Corp.

Bridas now charges that Unocal and its partners crossed legal lines to buy influence and gain access to Turkmenistan's energy wealth. "Upon information and belief, Unocal or Delta used Itera to gain entry into and curry favor with the highest officials of Turkmenistan," Bridas alleges in court documents.

Unocal President John Imle, who works out of the company's other headquarters, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, dismissed those charges as "rubbish." Delta and Itera officials also denied the charges. "We cannot be connected to this battle between Unocal and Bridas in any way," said Igor Makarov, the president of Itera.

Bridas had its own colorful partners in its operations in Turkmenistan. In his last pitch to Niyazov on behalf of his company, Bulgheroni told him that Bridas had the support of none other than Saudi Prince Turki al Faisal, according to sources close to the negotiations. Turki is the Saudi chief of intelligence and an influential figure with the fundamentalist Islamic leaders of Afghanistan, which the pipeline would have to cross.
Nevertheless, Bulgheroni still managed to trigger concerns about Unocal's associates, and Niyazov asked Unocal officials penetrating questions about Delta's identity and purpose.

The answers he received convinced Niyazov that Delta's role in the project was far more political than commercial. So he demanded that Delta be removed as a signatory to the contract. Instead, Delta became merely a "witness," a change that placed much more of the responsibility for the project's completion on Unocal itself.

Unocal Partner Lacks Oil, Gas Background

Despite Delta Oil's name, even Unocal officials acknowledge that the company had no experience in the oil and gas business when it joined Unocal.

Delta was recruited because of Saudi Arabia's shared cultural background with the Muslims in Central Asia. Delta was promised an equity position in whatever deals Unocal won in the Caspian.
"Delta has no oil and gas background at all," said one source familiar with Unocal. "It is not an oil company.

"And many people in Unocal have never entirely understood why Unocal joined forces with Delta," the source said. "It was never explained except to say that we are in a Muslim area, and we need a high-level Saudi company that understands the culture, understands how to make things happen. But for me, that answer was not very convincing. The region is Muslim in name only; the Saudis can't understand the former Soviet Union."

Despite its Saudi ownership, Delta's key player in Turkmenistan has been a controversial Turkish businessman, Osman Kaldirim. Delta officials acknowledge that he has been responsible for cultivating Delta's--and Unocal's--most important personal and political connections in the region.

Sources close to Unocal say Kaldirim displayed an uncanny ability to arrange meetings for Unocal executives with hard-to-reach government officials in the region. Once, he set up Unocal executives with the deputy chief of intelligence in Uzbekistan, a former Soviet republic bordering Turkmenistan. Unocal later opened an office in the country, according to a source familiar with Unocal's operations.

A Delta vice president, Nabil al Khowaiter, angrily denied the allegations of influence-buying circulating against Delta and Kaldirim. He said Delta had been the target of ugly rumors because its rivals refuse to accept its success.

"A lot of people are mystified by the success of Delta, how this small company has been so successful in working with the big boys, and so some on the outside make up stories," Khowaiter said. "If these allegations weren't so dangerous to our reputation, I would say they are funny."

Moscow Firm Has Ties to Natural-Gas Giant

Unocal's other partner in the Turkmenistan deal, the Moscow-based Itera, became a key player in Turkmenistan by maintaining an intimate relationship with Gazprom, the giant Russian natural-gas monopoly.
Itera has acted in Gazprom's slipstream, marketing and brokering natural-gas deals in several former Soviet republics. U.S. intelligence officials strongly suspect that Gazprom has close connections to Russian organized crime.

Itera President Igor Makarov said Itera was only a shareholder in the gas monopoly. But a European banker said Itera recently sought financing based on its close financial relationship with the company.
"Where there is a lack of transparency in gas markets, there is a potential for corrupt practices," a U.S. official said. "And there is a lack of transparency in the gas markets in the former Soviet Union."

Makarov denied allegations that Itera had ever engaged in influence-buying, bribery or any other criminal activities on behalf of Unocal in Turkmenistan, saying: "It is ridiculous. How can you bribe Niyazov when the whole country belongs to him? He can do anything in his country."

Itera is now out of favor with Niyazov, and Makarov suggested that Turkmen government officials had fabricated allegations about the company.

While allegations have surfaced concerning Unocal's ties to Delta and Itera, countercharges of corruption in Turkmenistan and Afghanistan have also been raised against Unocal's rival Bridas.

Niyazov's government has recently dropped broad hints that Bridas bribed the country's former oil and gas minister, Nazar Suyunov, who fled to Moscow after Niyazov fired him in 1994.

Bridas also faces allegations that it tried to buy influence in Afghanistan almost as soon as it lost out to Unocal in Turkmenistan in an attempt to block Unocal's pipeline farther down the route. In February 1996, Bridas announced that it was giving $1 million to the Afghan government of President Burhanuddin Rabbani, just as the Afghan government announced its support for a Bridas-backed pipeline project. Unfortunately for Bridas, the Rabbani regime soon fell to the radical Taliban militia.

Company officials stress that the $1 million represented a legitimate donation to the Afghan people to help buy fuel for the winter.

Bridas also has brought in its own Saudi partner, a small company called Ningharco Ltd., which the Wall Street Journal has described as a closely held corporation backed by Turki, the Saudi prince. A Bridas spokeswoman refused to identify the owners of Ningharco, which is based in the Channel Islands off France.

Meanwhile, Unocal, working through the CARE aid agency and an Afghan center at the University of Nebraska, has sponsored job training and educational projects in Afghanistan and has even paid for Taliban representatives to visit the United States. But it also is trying to develop training programs in areas of the country controlled by the Taliban's opponents.

Tom Gouttierre, dean of the international studies program at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, is running the training programs in Afghanistan with Unocal's sponsorship. He said that Unocal is paying to train plumbers, carpenters and welders in Kandahar, an area under Taliban control, while a second Unocal-funded program for women to learn to be teachers is underway in Bamiyan, a town under the control of the northern alliance.

Imle said in an interview that Unocal will not go ahead in Afghanistan unless the project can gain the support of international lending institutions such as the World Bank.

But analysts don't expect any peace settlement in Afghanistan in the foreseeable future. And that leads many observers to wonder why Unocal and Bridas are fighting each other so viciously for the rights to a pipeline that may never be built.

"I'm amazed at the level of energy these two companies are pouring into Afghanistan," marveled one U.S. official who has been watching from the sidelines.

Even Unocal executives now concede that the pipeline through Afghanistan may never be built.

So why do Unocal and Bridas keep fighting?

"Because," said Marty Miller, chief of Unocal's Central Asian operations, "it might get built."

[Admin]

11 January 2010: Document Says Bin Laden Visited Yugoslavia to Buy Weapons

The world's most wanted man, Osama bin Laden, unsuccessfully tried to buy weapons from the Yugoslav People's Army, JNA, in Belgrade in 1986, Croatian daily newspaper Vecernji List reports.

According to the daily, a secret document from the former Yugoslavia labelled with "Military Secret" and "Top Secret" reveals that the then 29-year-old Bin Laden was in Zagreb and Belgrade in 1986.

The leader of Al Qaeda arrived in Yugoslavia, because he “showed interest in buying a wide range of modern weapons, which would make it easier to resist the powerful Soviet force in Afghanistan,” the document reads.

Bin Laden reportedly offered one hundred million dollars in cash, but the proposal was denied due to the Yugoslav position of selling certain weapons only to states, not to organisations or movements.



11 January 2010: Osama bin Laden stayed in Croatia for days in the 1980s says Croatian daily newspaper Vecernji.hr.

The then 29-year old Osama was part of a 3-men delegation that came to Zagreb, Croatia, seeking to purchase weapons for the Afghan fighters.

Vecernji.hr cites a document by the Yugoslav Federal Department of Commerce from 1986 that was a classified document marked as a “military secret”.

The document’s Notes section describes that Osama bin Laden arrived in Croatia on October 25, 1986 along with Fathi Muhammed Ali, Afghan mujahedeen representative, Osman Kaldirim, an ethnic Turk from the US. The men were accompanied by Yugoslav-born Zorica Ridjesic and Milica Karadzoglu. Karadzoglu was married to a Turkish national. Aleksandar Markovic, representative of the Yugoslav export company Genex, was also part of the crowd.

Yugoslav military Colonel Stankovic ordered that the men be first debriefed. Lieutenant Colonel’s Jovanovic and Jurisic interrogated the three visitors.

Vecernji.hr says that Osama and the men said that they had $100 million to spend and that besides conventional weapons they also wanted to buy poison.

The report says that Osama had talks with bankers at the Zagreb-office of Beobanka. It is unclear how much money he deposited there but the report says that the negotiations after the deposit quickened up.

Vecernji.hr says that Osama then flew to Belgrade where he asked the Yugoslav communist politicians for help in the fight against the Russians; that Osama visited the weapons factory in Capljina and wanted to buy poison that was produced in the Potoci factory near Mostar.

After reviewing his requests, the communists decided not to sell him the poison because Yugoslavia had a policy that poison is sold only to governments.

Vecernji reminds that in 1992 bin Laden created a “humanitarian” organization in Croatia, Al-Kifah, located in the street Krizni Put 105 and that the organization was ran by the Algerian national Kamr Ad Din Khirbani who lived in Vila Velebit 5, Zagreb.

Khirbani then moved to Bosnia, then Albania and became the chief suspect in the attack on the US assets in Rome.

[Admin]

Generalexport (Genex) was founded in 1952 in the former communist Yugoslavia. The state-owned company for re-export and other foreign trade began with only 19 employees; two years later, Genex was trading in the most developed markets of Europe.

At the time, Yugoslavia enjoyed its unique niche in the space between East and West in the Cold War. It was the Western friendly communist country and Genex had the world open to it. Its first company abroad was the BSE Company Ltd. London, which was founded in 1954. In subsequent years Genex started companies in Frankfurt, Milan, New York, Stockholm, Beirut, Moscow, Prague and Berlin. In the 1970s Genex was trading in commodities and products including oil, metals, wood, glass products, textiles, leather and footwear.

Genex grew more powerful and profitable as it expanded into financial transactions, hotels and hospitality and air transport, founding Aviogenex, the first charter air company in Yugoslavia.

By 1991, Genex was an economic giant with more than 60 foreign branches, accounting for more than 10 percent of Yugoslavia’s foreign trade. More than 5,000 people were employed in its subsidiaries and branches.

But the 1990s were not kind. Civil war and sanctions roiled Yugoslavia and the socialist regime and later the country itself fell apart. International trade ground to a halt and Genex and other companies that relied on foreign trade fell on hard times.

Carrying a heavy debt burden, Genex reorganized as International CG in 1999, which still operates with at least four subsidiaries in the fields of air transport, trade and hospitality. They are still owned by the state, which has tried unsuccessfully to privatize what is left of the Communist giant. Two auction attempts have failed and two others have been underway since February 2011.

Over the years the company has had a large number of directors some of whom have been accused of mismanagement and corruption. The company has been slowly looted.

All that is left of Genex is the Communist-era Western Gate of Belgrade, the third-largest office tower in Eastern Europe, a sad come-down for the company once the base of the Yugoslavian economy.

[Admin]

Friday, September 25, 2009: Did Osama Bin Laden visit Nevada?

Afghans in Nevada.

While researching a completely separate matter, I stumbled across a fascinating 2005 piece by writer Nick Schou. The article focuses on a mercenary named Scott Weekly -- a.k.a. Dr. Death -- who may have worked for the CIA, the DIA, or the Navy, or all of the above. The CIA has officially denied employing Weekly. Even so, he makes a living billing himself as One Tough Hombre, and he has compiled a very colorful resume -- a resume which is way beyond the scope of this post. For our present purposes, the following must suffice:

A 1998 CIA Inspector General report found "no evidence" linking Weekly, a Vietnam War veteran and right-wing mercenary, to the agency. But in a just-aired Canal Plus documentary on the French television show 90 Minutes, Milton Bearden, who supervised the CIA's covert war in Afghanistan, says otherwise. While not mentioning Weekly by name, Bearden confirmed that the CIA was behind a bizarre training operation for Afghan mujahedin fighters in the Nevada desert in early 1986.

What do these Nevada hijinx have to do with Weekly? I shall explain.

Weekly earned a five-year prison stretch in 1986 for smuggling C4 explosives aboard a civilian airliner. He kept his mouth shut, never revealing his motives or accomplices. After 14 months, he was allowed to walk out of prison because the court had received testimony indicating that the C4 was part of that aforementioned Afghan mujahadeen training mission in the Nevada desert. In other words, he did what he did with the covert blessing of Uncle Sam -- or so his witnesses told the court. They must have been persuasive, because Weekly walked.

At the retrial of Scott Weekly his witnesses said that the effort to train the mujahadeen in Nevada in 1986 was paid for by Stanford Technologies. You might recall that name from Richard Secord's testimony at the Iran-contra hearings. The paymaster was a man named Osman Kalderim.

Osman Kalderim -- or Kaldirim -- appears to be a real person. I think it is fair to presume that the man mentioned in this story is same fellow mentioned in the Weekly trial. He is described as a "controversial Turkish businessman," and he seems spookier than the Jersey devil.

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October 21, 1996

In 1986, when federal and local anti-drug agents raided his Mission Viejo home, cocaine trafficking suspect Ronald J. Lister met officers in his bathrobe and warned that they were making a mistake, that he "worked with the CIA, and . . . his friends in Washington weren't going to like what was going on."

According to a Los Angeles County sheriff's report on the incident, when deputies dismissed Lister's claim, he threatened to report them to his contact at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., an otherwise unidentified "Mr. Weekly."

The 1991 DEA report identifies a Scott Weekly as one of Lister's associates and quotes Lister as saying the man is a former Navy SEAL.

An attorney for David Scott Weekly said his client "probably" knew Lister. Others who "travel in their same circle" have linked the pair, he said. "I've heard other people mention them together, but Scott has never told me he knew this guy," said attorney Thorpe Nolan. The lawyer also confirmed that his client is a former SEAL.

David Scott Weekly is an explosives expert--whose nom de guerre in the soldier of fortune circles he frequents is "Doctor Death." In 1986, he was arrested on suspicion of illegally transporting 100 pounds of C-4 plastic explosives on a commercial airliner. Attempts to reach Weekly have been unsuccessful.

A federal judge who sentenced Weekly to five years in prison on explosives charges cited him as a member of a "band of paramilitarists." Weekly also was part of an ill-fated private commando mission in 1983 to find American prisoners of war in Laos, led by former Green Beret Lt. Col. James "Bo" Gritz.

Nolan, who has been Weekly's attorney for 15 years, scoffed at the notion of a CIA link. "There has never been any documentation that Weekly has been hired by the CIA for anything," Nolan said. He also said he would be "dumbfounded" if his client were involved in money laundering or drug trafficking.

[Admin]

Thursday, Jul 12 2001

The CIA has always denied it used drug traffickers to raise cash for Ronald Reagan's 1980s war against the Nicaraguan Sandinista government. But FBI documents recently released to the OC Weekly show that a former top agency official met throughout that period with Ronald J. Lister, an ex-Laguna Beach cop who claimed to be the CIA's link between the South American cocaine trade, the Nicaraguan contras and LA's most notorious drug trafficker.

The FBI documents, five heavily censored pages released in response to the Weekly's 1997 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the CIA, concern Lister and William Earl Nelson, a vice president for security with the Irvine-based construction giant Fluor Corp. Nelson's previous job: deputy director of operations for the CIA. Nelson retired from the CIA in 1976 amid heated controversy over its ill-fated forays into Chile and Angola—clandestine operations that Nelson supervised from his office at the CIA's Langley, Virginia, headquarters.

Lister's relationship with the Fluor executive began in 1978. How they met isn't clear, thanks to government censors. But the documents do show that Nelson told FBI agents he met with Lister three to four times per year until 1985 and discussed various business ventures, including one in Central America.

It's unclear from the documents what became of that project—FBI censors blocked out the details, arguing that revealing them might compromise U.S. national security. But independent sources suggest the deal probably involved Lister's mysteriously well-connected security company, Newport Beach-based Pyramid International Security Consultants Inc.

'A BIG CIA CONTACT'

Lister's jump from police work in Laguna Beach—the Mayberry of Orange County—to life as a security advisor in war-torn Central America is just as strange as it sounds. In 1969, he served as a military policeman, interrogating captured North Vietnamese soldiers. Then, after a few years with the Maywood Police Department, Lister joined the Laguna Beach PD, where he worked as a burglary detective.

In 1979, a year before Lister quit the Laguna Beach force and just months after he first met Nelson, he launched Pyramid to carry out private security work.

There's no question that Pyramid was involved in some highly unusual business in Central America. According to a 1998 U.S. Justice Department Inspector General report, the company was investigated by the FBI at least five times between 1983 and 1986. "In September 1983, Lister's company, Pyramid International Security Consultants, was listed as the subject of a neutrality violation investigation involving the sale of weapons to El Salvador and the loan of money from Saudi Arabia to the Salvadoran government," the report states. "Lister was also alleged to be attempting to sell arms to several other countries."

El Salvador circa the early 1980s was not open for business to just anybody. The entire region was wracked by civil wars and coups d'etat; El Salvador's military-led government was engaged in a systematic campaign of torture and murder against anyone branded a communist or subversive. But in a 1996 interview with San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Webb, former Pyramid employee Christopher Moore (another ex-Laguna Beach cop) claimed Lister shrugged off the dangers of doing business there. Lister reportedly told Moore he had "a big CIA contact" at an Orange County company and both Pyramid and its employees would be protected while in El Salvador.

"I can't remember his name, but Ron was always running off to meetings with him, supposedly," Moore told Webb. "Ron said the guy was the former deputy director of operations or something, real high up there. All I know is that this supposed contact of his was working at the Fluor Corp. because I had to call Ron out there a couple of times."

Moore said he traveled to El Salvador on Lister's behalf, accompanied by a Spanish-speaking man who said he worked at the Salvadoran consulate in Los Angeles. Once in the capital city of San Salvador, Moore says, he met face to face with Roberto D'Aubuisson, a former Salvadoran army intelligence officer, drug and weapons dealer, and leader of the right-wing ARENA party. But D'Aubuisson's legacy is darker still: he was the architect of El Salvador's paramilitary death squads, a Hitler admirer, and a sociopath reputed to have personally authorized the 1980 murder of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero.

"That was probably the highlight of my life at that point," Moore told Webb. "There I was, a reserve police officer who'd only been in the country for a couple of days, and I was sitting in this office in downtown San Salvador across the desk from the man who ran the death squads. He had a gun lying on top of his desk and had these filing cabinets pushed up against the windows of the office so nobody could shoot through them."

The timing of Moore's trip to El Salvador coincides with a 1982 Pyramid contract proposal to provide security to the Salvadoran Ministry of Defense; narcotics detectives found the paperwork in a 1986 raid on Lister's home. The contract, written in Spanish and running more than 30 pages, shows Pyramid boasted the services of numerous (but unnamed) former CIA physical security officers and surveillance experts.

Intriguingly, the document suggests that Lister was negotiating directly with Defense Minister General José Guillermo García, linked by El Salvador's Truth Commission to the 1981 massacre of more than 800 villagers in El Mozote. A close ally of D'Aubuisson, García was one of the most powerful members of the right-wing military junta that took control of El Salvador in 1979.

One of Lister's partners in the venture, San Diego SWAT team weapons maker and government supplier Tim Lafrance, told the Weekly in 1997 that Pyramid was a "favored corporation" used by the CIA to help smuggle weapons to the Nicaraguan contras. Lafrance said he traveled to El Salvador with "two giant boxes full of machine guns and ammunition"—goods Lafrance said returned with him at the end of the trip.

"The whole idea was to set up an operation in El Salvador that would allow us to get around U.S. laws and supply the contras with guns," he explained. "The smart way to do this was to find a military base. It's much easier to just build the weapons down there."

While in El Salvador, Lafrance claimed, he manufactured weapons for Nicaragua's CIA-backed rebels known as the contras inside a mass-transit center run by the military. The weapons were airlifted by helicopter to contra training bases in Honduras, on Nicaragua's northern border. Lafrance also asserted that Pyramid's employees were guests at the well-appointed barracks of the elite, U.S.-trained Atlcatl battalion, the unit that carried out the massacre in El Mozote.

The Pyramid security contract offers further evidence of Lister's CIA connections. On its cover page, the contract lists Richard E. Wilker as the firm's "technical director." Wilker is identified in corporate papers as an employee of another Newport Beach company, Intersect Inc. Wilker's current whereabouts are unknown, but two founding members of Intersect—both former CIA agents—told the Weekly they knew Lister.

Although both nervously denied the CIA ever employed Wilker or Lister, the firm's vice president, John Vandewerker, said Wilker once traveled to El Salvador on business and mysteriously had to flee the country. "It was kind of touchy . . . as far as getting out of the country and all that kind of stuff," he said. Vandewerker also said that either Lister or Wilker had once helped him apply for a job with Nelson at Fluor Corp. "For a while, I tried to get a job at Fluor when I stopped working, and I know Rich [Wilker] was trying to sell something to Fluor," he said.

Nelson seemed to be a potential source of employment for many former CIA agents—an irony, given that one of his final acts as a deputy director at the CIA was to recommend the agency terminate full-time jobs for CIA agents who were "marginal performers."

"We owe these people a lot," Nelson wrote then-CIA director George Bush in a 1976 memo. "But not a lifetime job."

Hundreds of CIA agents left the agency's payroll that year, including Vandewerker and Nelson himself, who said he was retiring for personal reasons.

During his FBI interrogation, Nelson claimed Lister had applied for a job with Fluor. "He was never offered a job," states the FBI memo. The next sentence was censored by the FBI, but the memo continues, "Nelson thought Fluor might be able to use his [Lister's] company"—an apparent reference to Pyramid. "Nelson said [Lister] started traveling overseas, Lebanon and Central America, and he always had some scheme that never materialized."

'A DUMB THING'

The Lister-Nelson-D'Aubuisson connection is only one strand of Lister's life story. But the FBI documents also appear to allude to another: Lister's claim that he was simultaneously running cocaine with the support of the CIA.

Nelson told his FBI interrogators that during a March 1985 meeting with Lister, the former Laguna cop begged Nelson for help. "I did a dumb thing because of greed," Lister reportedly told Nelson. What Lister meant is unclear—the next seven lines of the FBI memo are blacked out. But Nelson's response is intact: he told the FBI he informed Lister there was no way the Agency could help him.

Perhaps Lister was talking about the activity that earned him the most money—and ultimately the most trouble—in the 1980s.

In 1982—the same year Lister first traveled to El Salvador for Pyramid—and while meeting regularly with Nelson, Lister hit upon a lucrative business scheme: running cocaine to raise cash to support rebels in neighboring Nicaragua. Despite their close ties to the CIA, the rebels had a problem: their reputation on Capitol Hill. Among many U.S. lawmakers, they were known as terrorists, more likely to murder Nicaraguans than liberate them. The U.S. Congress fought the Reagan administration's requests to fund the contras and then, in 1984, banned any U.S. military aid for the rebels. Two years later, a federal investigation known as Iran-contra revealed that the Reagan administration had illegally sneaked around the ban, selling weapons to Iran for cash it transferred to the Nicaraguan contras.

There was also evidence the contras were selling drugs in the U.S. to finance their operations. Among others, Lister would later claim that he helped in the fund-raising. He hooked up with Danilo Blandon, a drug-dealing Nicaraguan exile then living in Los Angeles. According to voluminous law-enforcement documents, Blandon and Lister established a vast cocaine network throughout California. The network was especially strong in South Central. Blandon would later testify that Lister's job was money laundering and security. Lister kept Blandon well-stocked with surveillance gear and high-tech weapons: Mack 10s, police scanners, Uzis, even grenade launchers. Blandon said he passed the equipment on to his South-Central LA connection, "Freeway" Ricky Ross. Using Lister's gear to avoid police detection, Ross emerged as the region's most notorious cocaine trafficker. He would later recall that one of his favorite entertainments was to use his police scanners to eavesdrop on cops raiding rival drug rings—while he and his buddies counted the cash from their latest deal.

Even as the FBI investigated Lister on weapons export charges, narcotics agents were zeroing in on the Blandon-Lister-Ross network. A separate FBI report from the same period shows that while its agents were interviewing Nelson, they were also investigating Lister's purchase of a Mission Viejo home for $374,000 in cash.

The FBI memo also shows that while the bureau was investigating Lister, Nelson had been coaching him on his upcoming grand-jury testimony. "He [Lister] then told of his meeting with the FBI and that he had been subpoenaed before the grand jury in San Francisco," the FBI memo states. "He told Nelson he was terrified. Nelson said go. . . . [Lister] admitted being stupid and that he had done a dumb thing. Nelson said [Lister] left and then called back after his grand-jury appearance and said he really did well."

Whatever else Lister told Nelson about his testimony is a mystery because the FBI censored the next three lines, again citing national security considerations.

The FBI memo reveals that, seeking to help Lister in his trouble with the FBI, Nelson made telephone calls to at least one other former CIA agent, a strange action assuming the CIA never had any relationship to Lister. "Nelson told [Lister] no one could help him, including the CIA," the memo states. "Nelson told [Lister] he had discussed his problem with another retired CIA agent and that no one could help him until he cleared himself with the FBI. Nelson said he told [Lister] he no longer cared to continue their relationship and he has not heard from him since."

Nelson described Lister as a "blowhard" and a "name dropper who always had a get-rich scheme." He added that Lister "did have some good ideas, such as a laser-sighting device, but could never get it off the ground. [Nelson] knew of no intelligence activities by [Lister]."

That last claim was—and is—clearly disingenuous. First, the source of the claim is a retired CIA official who admitted he spoke with other former agents on Lister's behalf while the latter was being investigated by the FBI. Second, whatever Lister and Nelson were up to in the 1980s, it is important enough to remain classified as "vital to U.S. national security" today, nearly two decades later.

'A MAJOR CENTRAL AMERICAN CARTEL'

Nelson retired from Fluor in 1985. Within a year, Lister was in deep trouble. Although the FBI never prosecuted him for his international arms sales, his drug dealing finally caught up with him in October 1986. After spending months on the case, a multi-agency narcotics unit led by LA County sheriff's detectives raided dozens of houses and apartments belonging to various members of the Blandon-Lister-Ross drug ring—including Lister's mountain retreat in Crestline, which police suspected was a drug warehouse.

Police also raided Lister's Mission Viejo home. They found him there, unshaven, still drinking his morning coffee. Because both of Lister's properties were clean, police suspected he had been tipped off about the raid. Clad only in a bathrobe and looking wild-eyed, Lister boasted that he knew he was being watched by police and claimed that he did business in South America and worked for the CIA.

Inside his house, detectives found what might have seemed evidence to support that assertion: military training films, photos of Lister posing with Nicaraguan contras, an array of sophisticated surveillance gear, a copy of the 1982 Pyramid contract—even his notes listing Nelson and D'Aubuisson as business contacts. All that, but no drugs. Lister wasn't arrested. Just days later, most of the paperwork seized from Lister's home mysteriously disappeared from the LA Sheriff's Department evidence room.

Unperturbed, Lister continued to deal drugs. In 1988, he tried to sell two kilos of cocaine to a prostitute he met at a Newport Beach boat party. The woman turned out to be a Costa Mesa police informant, and Lister ended up behind bars for the first time since he began dealing drugs with the contras. Two kilos was enough to land Lister in prison for years; instead, he walked out of jail after only two days. Having signed a deal with the Orange County district attorney's office, Lister had become a narc.

But his new career as an informant was short-lived. The following year, DEA agents arrested Lister again, this time in connection with a San Diego-area cocaine distribution ring. Two years later, a jury convicted Lister on drug-trafficking charges; he was sentenced to 97 months in prison and 60 months of probation. Lister appealed, asserting that while an informant, he had testified before two federal grand juries about a "major Central American cartel" and his "activities in Central America concerning certain key figures from Nicaragua alleged to have been involved in the Iran-contra scandal."

In establishing grounds for a softer sentence, Lister told the court he had certainly run drugs, but he had also cooperated with the government. He claimed he gave prosecutors thousands of pages of documents and notes regarding his work for the CIA "from 1982 to 1986 and beyond, and I did it in detail, location, activity," he said. "I gave them physical evidence, phone bills, travel tickets, everything possible back from those days—which most people don't keep, but I do keep good records—to assist them in this investigation. They were excited about it."

It's not clear what happened to the notes Lister says he gave investigators or to his testimony about his work with a "major Central American cartel." What is clear is that he put on quite a show. In 1998, the U.S. Justice Department noted, "An FBI special agent was convinced that Lister [and] Blandon . . . were connected to the CIA."

Lister's appeal was successful in erasing a conviction on tax evasion charges. After completing a drug-treatment program, he walked out of prison in 1996, three years early. His whereabouts are unknown, and he has refused repeated offers to share his story with the press. Nelson, Lister's "big CIA contact" at Fluor Corp. in Irvine, died six years ago in Corona del Mar.

Fluor officials refused to comment for this story but have previously told the Weekly the company had no business in El Salvador in the 1980s. That would suggest that Nelson's "Central America" meetings with Lister had nothing to do with Fluor and everything to do with Pyramid—and perhaps Nelson's former employer, the CIA.

Tom Crispell of the CIA's public-affairs office said the agency has already denied any involvement with Lister. "This individual [Nelson] had been retired from the agency for a number of years, and we're not in a position to comment on his private life or conversations he had in his private life," Crispell remarked.

But Crispell's claim runs headfirst into the facts, chief among them: the CIA refused for years to release any documents on Lister and, when it finally did so, released them in heavily redacted form citing national security concerns.

"Now we know that Lister was meeting with Nelson and that the grand-jury investigation was somehow tied into this," responded Gary Webb, who left the Mercury News shortly after his editors backed away from his Dark Alliance series focusing on the CIA-contra-crack connection in May 1997. "What we don't know is how Lister even knew Nelson, why Nelson would continue to meet with a man dismissed as a bullshit artist, and why anyone would even consider helping Lister once he cleared himself with the FBI."

The documents are mute on one other, particularly chilling mystery: What kind of top-secret "business"relationship could Nelson, a retired CIA deputy director, possibly have with Lister, a drug-dealing, gun-running "security consultant" and D'Aubuisson, the leader of El Salvador's death squads?

[Admin]

Thursday, Apr 28 2005

In August 1996, the San Jose Mercury Newspublished a three-part series in which reporter Gary Webb—who committed suicide last December—connected the CIA to California's crack-cocaine epidemic of the 1980s. One of the key players in Webb's "Dark Alliance" was ex-Laguna Beach cop Ron Lister, whose Mission Viejo home was raided by police in October 1986 as part of a massive operation targeting Southern California crack-cocaine sales. Lister, who besides smuggling cocaine pitched security contracts to the military in El Salvador and sold weapons to the Nicaraguan contras, famously told police that the CIA wouldn't be happy about the raid. Then he threatened to contact his agency handler, Scott Weekly.

The CIA swore in court it had no tie to Lister and has always denied ever employing Scott Weekly. A 1998 CIA Inspector General report found "no evidence" linking Weekly, a Vietnam War veteran and right-wing mercenary, to the agency. But in a just-aired Canal Plus documentary on the French television show 90Minutes,Milton Bearden, who supervised the CIA's covert war in Afghanistan, says otherwise. While not mentioning Weekly by name, Bearden confirmed that the CIA was behind a bizarre training operation for Afghan mujahedin fighters in the Nevada desert in early 1986. Besides violating the U.S. Arms Export Control Act, the top-secret training resulted in Weekly's later conviction for smuggling plastic explosives onto commercial jetliners.

As the Weeklyfirst reported in December 1996, the San Diego resident was a three-year Naval Academy classmate of a more well-known Iran-Contra figure: Oliver North. Although various newspaper articles attacking "Dark Alliance" refer to Weekly not as a CIA operative but as a former Navy SEAL, an organization that monitors such claims, Veri-SEAL, says that can't be verified.

After serving in Vietnam, where he reportedly won two Bronze Stars, Weekly became a soldier of fortune who accompanied Bo Gritz, an illustrious highly determined ex-Green Beret, to Laos on the latter's ill-fated 1982 hunt for U.S. prisoners of war. When the pair returned from Laos empty-handed, both men were briefly jailed by Thai authorities for illegally possessing high-tech radio equipment. A United Press International story from that time described Weekly as "a steely-eyed weapons wizard who goes by the nickname 'Dr. Death.'"

During their search of Lister's home, police found Weekly's name at the bottom of a list that included Bill Nelson, the CIA's ex-deputy director of operations, and Roberto D'Aubuisson, the founder of El Salvador's right-wing death squads. In his notes, Lister identified Weekly as a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) "subcontractor" and scribbled, "Scott had worked in El Salvador for us."

After Webb wrote about the raid on Lister's home in his "Dark Alliance" series—highlighting Lister's claim of a CIA connection—the LA County Sheriff's Department interviewed Weekly about Lister's notes. Weekly refused to elaborate. "Let me put it this way," he told investigators. "There is not one ounce of love lost between the DIA and me. It is even more aggressive than that . . . It's a non-subject—that's as much as I'm going to say about it. As far as I'm concerned, I wouldn't piss on them if their face was on fire."

Weekly's anger may stem from his 1986 conviction in an Oklahoma City federal courthouse for smuggling C-4 explosives aboard two civilian airliners bound to Las Vegas. After turning himself in to federal agents, he pleaded guilty but refused to give authorities the names of anyone else involved. But after Weekly served 14 months of a five-year prison sentence, the court granted him a new hearing that focused on new evidence about the explosives.

As the Weeklyfirst reported in December 1996, courtroom records show the explosives were used in a covert operation aimed at uniting the leaders of various Afghan rebel factions by providing them with lessons in explosives. At Weekly's re-sentencing hearing, he and Gritz testified they carried out the operation in the Nevada desert and had the permission of a U.S. Army colonel named Nestor Piño, a Bay of Pigs veteran who then worked with Oliver North's National Security Council. Gritz and Weekly also said they were paid by Osman Kalderim, who worked for Stanford Technology, a private company established by two of North's Iran-Contra associates, Richard Secord and Albert Hakim, to help arm the contras.

Following that testimony, a federal judge released Weekly from custody and sentenced him to time served. "The CIA could have been involved in that Bo Gritz thing," Bearden says in the French documentary that aired April 25. He was apparently unaware that he was acknowledging agency involvement in an illegal covert operation. "If we did some romantic training in the Nevada desert with a few Afghans . . . I'm aware of that. I know about that. There's something like that. But it doesn't matter."

Bearden's statement was the first confirmation that Weekly was an agency operative. And it runs contrary to the CIA's oft-repeated assertion that it had no ties whatsoever to Weekly.

According to the show's producer, French reporter Paul Moreira, Bearden made those comments during a late 2001 interview, shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. "He was very surprised that I even knew about the existence of Bo Gritz," Moreira said. "In France, we call people like Gritz and Weekly 'barbouzes' or fake beards because they are a bunch of illegal guys who get used from time to time by government agencies when some action is not strictly legal. You cannot wage a war without these type of guys."

[Admin]

August 12, 2013: Narco-jet in Costa Rica scandal tied to Iran Contra figure

A key employee in Bogotá of the Canadian oil company owners of the drug plane flown by Costa Rica’s President Laura Chinchilla was at the heart of the Contra Cocaine pipeline profiled by the late author Gary Webb in his 1996 best-seller “Dark Alliance.”

David Scott Weekly was both a CIA agent and drug trafficker, according to Webb’s book. His nickname was "Dr. Death."

Today that same man is in Bogotá, reports Colombian newspaper “El Tiempo," lobbying the Colombian government for oil leases for an oil company exploring in the jungles of the Amazon Basin, with ties to drug trafficker Gabriel Morales, whose drug plane took Laura Chinchilla for a ride.

In Colombia today, there is a a brand new type of oil venture: the narco-energy play.

El Tiempo reported, "Nobody has explained how a man with a past as singular ends litigation on behalf of a company whose promoters have ties to the oil Ricardo Morales, star of judicial scandals in Colombia."

“Why does a Vietnam veteran, an expert on weapons and the training of mercenaries, so frequently visit the offices of the National Hydrocarbons Agency (ANH) in Bogota?” asked El Tiempo..

The question may have been rhetorical. The answer is anything but.

According to Gary Webb’s Dark Alliance, David Scott Weekly was a crucial component in the major cocaine-trafficking ring headed up by Danilo Blandon in Southern California to support the Contras.

When federal and local law enforcement officials executed warrants on a dozen locations in October of 1986, a major focus was the home to a former Laguna Beach police officer named Ron Lister.

In an official report, a detective on the raid wrote: “Lister … told me he had dealings in South America and worked with the CIA and added that his friends in Washington weren't going to like what was going on. I told Mr. Lister that we were not interested in his business in South America. Mr. Lister replied that he would call Mr. Weekly of the CIA and report me.''

After the controversy erupted, the CIA conducted an internal investigation, which cleared itself of wrongdoing, an act so audacious as to render satire useless.

In seeming contradiction to its own report, however, the OIG’s report also stated that Weekly was heard on tape saying that he was "tied into the CIA and (Eugene) Hasenfus" and reported to the "people reporting to Bush."

“Hasenfus” of course, is Eugene Hasenfus, who was wearing a parachute and survived—he wasn’t supposed to—when his military cargo plane (Barry Seal’s old C123) was shot down over Nicaragua. His capture, as well as documents found on the plane, set off the Iran Contra Scandal.

Today the Contras are nothing more than a long-forgotten nightmare. But David Scott Weekly is very much alive, and working in Bogotá, for an outfit called Montco Energy.

Even though the drug plane was controlled by Gabriel Morales Fallan, a man of many aliases, none of them truly convincing, the Citation 3 is leased in the name of Thorneoloe, the predecessor to THX Energy.

So David Scott Weekly's Montco Energy and THX Energy would be competitors, seeking the same prize: oil leases granted by the government of Colombia.

In theory, perhaps. In real life, not so much. The reason: Montco Energy and THX Energy are owned by the same people, or perhaps even the same person: Andy Defrancesco.

How did that happen? Let’s take a look.

In Panama in 1995 Fallan incorporated a company called Thorneloe, which is the name the plane is listed under in official FAA documents.

Thorneloe, a Panamanian-registered company, has since changed its names three times. It has been listed variously as Thorneloe Corp, Thorneloe Energy, THX Energy, and, currently, THX Oil & Gas SA.

In turn, THX is owned by a Canadian equity firm called Birch Island Capital.

Birch Island, itself, in turn, is owned by Delavaco Capital, a US firm located in—of all places—Fort Lauderdale, Florida, America’s long-standing drug smuggling capital.

Finally, Delavaco Capital is owned by Andy DeFrancesco.

Several years ago the government of Colombia launched an ambitious program to bring foreign investment into the country’s oil sector. Called Round Colombia 2010, the government let exploration and exploitation contracts on 76 blocks. For whatever reasons—and surely they were plenty and various—CIA Contra Cocaine veteran Scott Weekly’s Montco Energy, the darkest of dark horses, won big.

Hearing whispers from the wings of Mob involvement, the Colombian government experienced a relatively rare phenomenon called seller's remorse, got cold feet, and nixed the Montco contract, citing several reasons: Montco’s records weren't in order. Montco's offices in Texas and Canada were just post office boxes. And an oil well Montco claimed to own in the west African nation of Gabon doesn’t exist.

A Colombian business magazine published a story about it under the headline: “Mob attempt to penetrate the oil sector?”

Riding to the rescue to attempt to salvage the situation for Montco came Andy DeFrancesco (who owns Delavaco Capital, and THX Energy, remember?)

In the strangest of coincidences, Andy DeFrancesco is reported to be on the board of Montco energy, along with two shady lawyers linked to Gabriel Morales through another company.

Given his colorful history, if Scott Weekly is today working for an oil company which owns a drug plane, then things all seem to fit, do they not? David Scott Weekly’s presence in Bogotá now becomes understandable.

And once again, and unsurprisingly, Gary Webb's reporting is verified.

Talk about shades of Iran Contra..

One big question remains: Authorities said the Gabriel Morales-THX Energy-David Scott Weekly drug plane flown by Laura Chinchilla was being watched and suspected of moving drugs for more than three years… Why, then, was it allowed to continue flying? And also… is it still flying?

[Admin]

Dr. Osman Kaldirim is currently the CEO and President of Delta Oil Company and also the president of Delta Oil Central Asia Company. He is Experienced in new project developments, negotiation and implementation of several on-shore and off-shore po; and gas projects. He was also a member of a team for UNOCAL Company for new project development and contracts negotiation in the Central Asia. His work in Azerbaijan contributed towards the negotiation of the first production-sharing contract (PSC) for the Caspian Sea oil field development. The contract intends that over $13 billion US Dollars are to be invested by twelve major oil companies from seven different countries. Dr. Kaldirim has also made an important contribution to oil and gas pipeline projects in Central Asia including Baku-Tiflis-Ceyhan Oil pipeline.

Dr. Kaldirim became chairman of the gas pipeline project development (from Turkmenistan to Pakistan) named CentGas Company. This project, currently on hold pending resolution of Afghanistan issues, requires an investment of approximately $4 billion US Dollars. Dr. Kaldirim is one of the founders of one the major oil pipeline project named CentOil pipeline Company (from Kazakistan, Uzbakistan, Turkmensitan, to Arabian Sea port in Pakistan) expected to establish pipelines that will open a market to these Central Asian countries for their products and will create additional alternative sources for oil and gas for the rest of the world. He has been involved in providing his consulting, contracting and representation services to engineering and construction and energy related companies for development and infrastructure projects in Central Asia and Middle East.

Dr. Kaldirim has also been involved in many other types of projects such as the development of the first Arabic/English microcomputers (he was a founder and developer of Research Computer Technology Company in California (RCTC)). He was one of the developers and founders of American Fiber Optic Company in Long Beach California. Dr. Kaldirim played a major role in the development of the high frequency low noise analog optical receiver and transmitter system for the U.S. defense department. He has worked as senior scientist, advisor and consultant for many international companies and countries including the United States at the highest levels.

Dr. Kaldirim has more than 30 classified publications and scientific articles related to electronics, EMP, EMI, Fiber optic and integrated optics. He also holds patents in Biomedical Engineering, specifically, micro-spherical protein movement using electromagnetic force in the body. Dr. Kaldirim also has an associate professorship, awarded by the ministry of higher education in Turkey.

Dr. Kaldirim received his Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from Yildiz University in Istanbul in 1975 followed by his Master's Degree (MSc) in 1977, Engineering Degree (ED) in 1979, Ph.D. in 1980 and MBA in 1981 from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). He holds both US and Turkish citizenship.