Iranian Arms Shipments to Bosnia: 1994 (https://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/ops/bosnia-arms.htm)

 Iranian Arms Shipments to Bosnia: 1994 (https://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/ops/bosnia-arms.htm)

The Balkan war began in 1991 when a conservative Serbian coalition in Belgrade, led by Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and including the commanders of the old Yugoslavian army, decided to use all means fair and foul to keep Yugoslavia together. Croatia, which declared its independence at the same time, put up unexpected resistance. Serbs see themselves as the historically aggrieved party, as brave and sturdy defenders of an authentic Slavic culture against Turks and Teutons alike. Croats regard Serbs as non-European barbarians who lived so long under the Turks they became like them. Croats regard themselves as Central European rather than Balkan and heirs to centuries of Habsburg high culture and civilization. Outsiders can't tell them apart.

The Croats were terribly outgunned, relying on the meager arsenals of the territorial defense forces that had been set up in the old Yugoslavia. Croatia continued to mobilize and purchase equipment through a leaky arms embargo. Analysts claim that large amounts of Soviet-type arms and munitions from the defunct East German Volksarmee reached Croatia via a sympathetic Hungary. Germany clearly favored Croatia and pushed the rest of West Europe into diplomatic recognition of Zagreb in late 1991.

Bosnian Croats and Muslims claimed to have patched things up with the US-brokered agreement signed in Washington in March 1994. They agreed to form a Croat-Muslim federation within Bosnia and then confederate this with Croatia proper. This solidified Croatian power in Herzegovina and provides Bosnian Muslims with much-improved access to arms and munitions. The improved relations mean that Croatian airfields and ports serve as conduits for war materiel from sympathetic Islamic states. Quickly, outside support flowed into Bosnia via Croatia. The first week of May 1994, for example, an Iranian air force transport landed with 60 tons of explosives at Zagreb [See John Pomfret, "Iran Ships Material for Arms to Bosnians," The Washington Post, 13 May 1994, p. A1.]

In April 1996, the Los Angeles Times published an article alleging that in 1994 the Clinton administration had given a "green light" to the government of Croatia to allow Iranian arms destined for Bosnian Muslims fighting in theformer Yugoslavia to transit its country. At the time, a UN arms embargo was in effect forbidding shipments of arms to the former Yugoslavia, an embargo the United States had pledged to uphold. The press account also speculated the US government was engaged in a covert action, not reported to the congressional oversight committees, to facilitate the flow of arms from Iran to the Muslims in Bosnia.

As Reprasentative Diaz-Balart posed the question, "did the White House permit a mortal enemy of the United States to establish a military presence in Europe, or did the White House inspire a mortal enemy of the United States to establish a military presence in Europe? That is the essence of the question that this Congress will be investigating in the next months and that we at this time are authorizing funding for, the select subcommittee of the Committee on International Relations.

"The administration's policy, No. 1, directly contradicts the stated position of the Government of the United States. This Congress repeatedly tried to lift the arms embargo against Bosnia, and the administration opposed us, and the President vetoed our attempts to do so. The policy was also not revealed to the Congress, nor to the American people, and it has allowed the terrorist government of Iran to gain a strategic presence in Europe.

"The administration now admits that despite the fact that it opposed our attempts to openly permit the arming of the Bosnian people by the United States directly or through our allies or responsible Muslim governments, instead of doing that the administration opposed congressional efforts and engaged in this tactic of secretly giving a green light to the arming of the Bosnians by one of the most horrendous enemies of the American people."

House Speaker Newt Gingrich said 11 April 1996 that he, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) and other lawmakers had many meetings with Clinton about U.S. Bosnia policy over the last three years--while the United States was publicly upholding the international arms embargo against Bosnia. Never, he said, did Clinton indicate that the administration had given a green light to Iranian arms smuggling. Gingrich said that congressional leaders who supported lifting an arms embargo -- or who might have approved of covert U.S. efforts to encourage Muslim countries friendly to the United States to secretly arm the Bosnians -- were repeatedly rebuffed by the president. Clinton told them that such efforts would antagonize European allies and violate international agreements.

House Speaker Newt Gingrich said 26 April 1996 that the Clinton administration's secret policy of allowing Iranian arms shipments to Bosnia-Herzegovina may have violated covert-action laws. "President Clinton's policy of virtually inviting Iran into Europe could have disastrous results for America," Mr. Gingrich said in announcing the formation of a special committee to investigate the policy.

Both intelligence committees began investigations at the request of their respective leaderships. Ultimately, the committees found that the US ambassador to Croatia, when asked by Croatian government officials whether the United States would object to the transit of Iranian arms through the country, had responded that he had "no instructions" from Washington on the matter. This response, in turn, led the Croatian government to believe that the United States had no objection, and the flow of Iranian arms through its country expanded significantly.

DCI James Woolsey later contended that CIA had not been advised of the ambassador's response or of any change in the US position of support for the embargo. Indeed, as the Agency began to see signs of the expanded arms flow its own officers raised concerns that the United States might be covertly facilitating the flow of such arms, contrary to the UN embargo.

Beyond this, the committees reached somewhat differing conclusions. The HPSCI found that the US government had had no role in facilitating the arms flow, and thus no covert action had taken place. While the failure of the US ambassador to object to the transshipments had encouraged Croatia to allow them, HPSCI saw his conduct as "traditional diplomatic activity" rather than as covert action. The SSCI, on the other hand, was unable to reach agreement on whether a covert action had occurred but specifically rejected the notion that the ambassador's response to the Croatians constituted "traditional diplomatic activity." Both committees lauded the CIA officers for having raised their concerns to higher levels in the US government.

America used Islamists to arm the Bosnian Muslims (The Guardian, 22 April, 2002) by Richard J Aldrich

 https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2002/apr/22/warcrimes.comment?fbclid=IwAR2n8L3llMx7R7B8q0rKYq4YLJUEaWfYIhUpwviBqowNMXa9x8UEv3GxQHk

 

 The Srebrenica report reveals the Pentagon's role in a dirty war

The official Dutch inquiry into the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, released last week, contains one of the most sensational reports on western intelligence ever published. Officials have been staggered by its findings and the Dutch government has resigned. One of its many volumes is devoted to clandestine activities during the Bosnian war of the early 1990s. For five years, Professor Cees Wiebes of Amsterdam University has had unrestricted access to Dutch intelligence files and has stalked the corridors of secret service headquarters in western capitals, as well as in Bosnia, asking questions.

His findings are set out in "Intelligence and the war in Bosnia, 1992-1995". It includes remarkable material on covert op
erations, signals interception, human agents and double-crossing by dozens of agencies in one of dirtiest wars of the new world disorder. Now we have the full story of the secret alliance between the Pentagon and radical Islamist groups from the Middle East designed to assist the Bosnian Muslims - some of the same groups that the Pentagon is now fighting in "the war against terrorism". Pentagon operations in Bosnia have delivered their own "blowback".

In the 1980s Washington's secret services had assisted Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran. Then, in 1990, the US fought him in the Gulf. In both Afghanistan and the Gulf, the Pentagon had incurred debts to Islamist groups and their Middle Eastern sponsors. By 1993 these groups, many supported by Iran and Saudi Arabia, were anxious to help Bosnian Muslims fighting in the former Yugoslavia and called in their debts with the Americans. Bill Clinton and the Pentagon were keen to be seen as creditworthy and repaid in the form of an Iran-Contra style operation - in flagrant violation of the UN security council arms embargo against all combatants in the former Yugoslavia.

 

The result was a vast secret conduit of weapons smuggling though Croatia. This was arranged by the clandestine agencies of the US, Turkey and Iran, together with a range of radical Islamist groups, including Afghan mojahedin and the pro-Iranian Hizbullah. Wiebes reveals that the British intelligence services obtained documents early on in the Bosnian war proving that Iran was making direct deliveries.

Arms purchased by Iran and Turkey with the financial backing of Saudi Arabia made their way by night from the Middle East. Initially aircraft from Iran Air were used, but as the volume increased they were joined by a mysterious fleet of black C-130 Hercules aircraft. The report stresses that the US was "very closely involved" in the airlift. Mojahedin fighters were also flown in, but they were reserved as shock troops for especially hazardous operations.

Light weapons are the familiar currency of secret services seeking to influence such conflicts. The volume of weapons flown into Croatia was enormous, partly because of a steep Croatian "transit tax". Croatian forces creamed off between 20% and 50% of the arms. The report stresses that this entire trade was clearly illicit. The Croats themselves also obtained massive quantities of illegal weapons from Germany, Belgium and Argentina - again in contravention of the UN arms embargo. The German secret services were fully aware of the trade.

Rather than the CIA, the Pentagon's own secret service was the hidden force behind these operations. The UN protection force, UNPROFOR, was dependent on its troop-contributing nations for intelligence, and above all on the sophisticated monitoring capabilities of the US to police the arms embargo. This gave the Pentagon the ability to manipulate the embargo at will: ensuring that American Awacs aircraft covered crucial areas and were able to turn a blind eye to the frequent nightime comings and goings at Tuzla.

Weapons flown in during the spring of 1995 were to turn up only a fortnight later in the besieged and demilitarised enclave at Srebrenica. When these shipments were noticed, Americans pressured UNPROFOR to rewrite reports, and when Norwegian officials protested about the flights, they were reportedly threatened into silence.

Both the CIA and British SIS had a more sophisticated perspective on the conflict than the Pentagon, insisting that no side had clean hands and arguing for caution. James Woolsey, director of the CIA until May 1995, had increasingly found himself out of step with the Clinton White House over his reluctance to develop close relations with the Islamists. The sentiments were reciprocated. In the spring of 1995, when the CIA sent its first head of station to Sarajevo to liaise with Bosnia's security authorities, the Bosnians tipped off Iranian intelligence. The CIA learned that the Iranians had targeted him for liquidation and quickly withdrew him.

Iranian and Afghan veterans' training camps had also been identified in Bosnia. Later, in the Dayton Accords of November 1995, the stipulation appeared that all foreign forces be withdrawn. This was a deliberate attempt to cleanse Bosnia of Iranian-run training camps. The CIA's main opponents in Bosnia were now the mojahedin fighters and their Iranian trainers - whom the Pentagon had been helping to supply months earlier.

 

Meanwhile, the secret services of Ukraine, Greece and Israel were busy arming the Bosnian Serbs. Mossad was especially active and concluded a deal with the Bosnian Serbs at Pale involving a substantial supply of artillery shells and mortar bombs. In return they secured safe passage for the Jewish population out of the besieged town of Sarajevo. Subsequently, the remaining population was perplexed to find that unexploded mortar bombs landing in Sarajevo sometimes had Hebrew markings.

The broader lessons of the intelligence report on Srebrenica are clear. Those who were able to deploy intelligence power, including the Americans and their enemies, the Bosnian Serbs, were both able to get their way. Conversely, the UN and the Dutch government were "deprived of the means and capacity for obtaining intelligence" for the Srebrenica deployment, helping to explain why they blundered in, and contributed to the terrible events there.

 

Secret intelligence techniques can be war-winning and life-saving. But they are not being properly applied. How the UN can have good intelligence in the context of multinational peace operations is a vexing question. Removing light weapons from a conflict can be crucial to drawing it down. But the secret services of some states - including Israel and Iran - continue to be a major source of covert supply, pouring petrol on the flames of already bitter conflicts.

· Richard J Aldrich is Professor of Politics at the University of Nottingham. His 'The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence' is published in paperback by John Murray in August.

richard.aldrich@nottingham.ac.uk

 

Bill Clinton’s pardon of fugitive Marc Rich continues to pay big By Peter Schweizer (New York Post, January 17, 2016)

 https://nypost.com/2016/01/17/after-pardoning-criminal-marc-rich-clintons-made-millions-off-friends/?fbclid=IwAR3MRIqS1vOxz8BA1VRQNDpUuysxGtHE3reJCS_0pPohSUAfmeuL2aewHLU

On his last day in office, Bill Clinton issued a pardon for international fugitive Marc Rich. Marc Rich had traded illegally with America’s enemies including Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran, where he bought about $200 million worth of oil while revolutionaries allied with Khomeini held 53 American hostages in 1979. Rich made a large part of his wealth, approximately $2 billion between 1979 and 1994, selling oil to the apartheid regime in South Africa when it faced a UN embargo. He did deals with Khadafy's Libya, Milosevic's Yugoslavia, Kim Il Sung’s North Korea, Communist dictatorships in Cuba and the Soviet Union itself. Russian investor Sergei Kurzin worked for Marc Rich in the 1990s. Kurzin has been involved in lucrative Uranium One deal that involved Bill Clinton and Frank Giustra. Russia bought 20 percent of all uranium production capacity in the US, a deal that needed to be signed off on by the State Department when it was headed by Hillary Clinton. While the deal was going through, Bill Clinton was paid $500,000 to give a speech in Moscow, paid for by a Russian investment bank promoting the uranium deal. Kurzin, meanwhile, donated $1 million to the Clinton Foundation.

 

 

Fifteen years ago this month, on Jan. 20, 2001, his last day in office, Bill Clinton issued a pardon for international fugitive Marc Rich. It would become perhaps the most condemned official act of Clinton’s political career. A New York Times editorial called it “a shocking abuse of presidential power.” The usually Clinton-friendly New Republic noted it “is often mentioned as Exhibit A of Clintonian sliminess.”

Congressman Barney Frank added, “It was a real betrayal by Bill Clinton of all who had been strongly supportive of him to do something this unjustified. It was contemptuous.”

Marc Rich was wanted for a list of charges going back decades. He had traded illegally with America’s enemies including Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran, where he bought about $200 million worth of oil while revolutionaries allied with Khomeini held 53 American hostages in 1979.

Rich made a large part of his wealth, approximately $2 billion between 1979 and 1994, selling oil to the apartheid regime in South Africa when it faced a UN embargo. He did deals with Khadafy’s Libya, Milosevic’s Yugoslavia, Kim Il Sung’s North Korea, Communist dictatorships in Cuba and the Soviet Union itself. Little surprise that he was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List.

Facing prosecution by Rudy Giuliani in 1983, Rich fled to Switzerland and lived in exile.

Marc Rich traded illegally with Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini (from left) and made deals with Libya’s Moammar Khadafy, Yogoslavia’s Slobodan Milošević and North Korea’s Kim Il Sung — earning him a spot on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List.Getty Images; EPA; AP; Getty Images

What bothered so many was that Clinton’s clemency to Rich reeked of payoff. In the run-up to the presidential pardon, the financier’s ex-wife Denise had donated $450,000 to the fledgling Clinton Library and “over $1 million to Democratic campaigns in the Clinton era.”

Judge Abner Mikva, a counsel in the Clinton White House and mentor to President Obama, noted that even Obama “was very, very dismayed by the Marc Rich pardon and the basis on which it appears to have been granted.”

But does the story end there? Is it possible the payoffs continued after he left office?

Denise Rich (left,) Marc’s ex-wife, donated $450,000 to the Clinton Library in the run-up to the presidential pardon.AP

The stench of the scandal in early 2001 sent people scurrying. Days after it was revealed that a senior UBS executive named Pierre de Weck had written a letter to Clinton “to support his request for a pardon,” the Swiss banking giant canceled its discussions with Clinton about a lucrative post-White House speech, apparently “worried that a large speaking fee would create an appearance of impropriety.”

Even Bill Clinton eventually admitted that the pardon had been “terrible politics.” “It wasn’t worth the damage to my reputation,” he said.

But while the pardon was a political mistake, it certainly was not a financial one. In the years following the scandal, the flow of funds from those connected to Marc Rich or the pardon scandal have continued to the Clintons.

Rich’s business partners, lawyers, advisers and friends have showered millions of dollars on the Clintons in the decade and a half following the scandal.

Rich died in 2013. But his business partners, lawyers, advisers and friends have showered millions of dollars on the Clintons in the decade and a half following the scandal.

Nigerian businessman Gilbert Chagoury is well known as a close ally and business associate of Rich. The Nigerian media declared in 1999 that the “Gilbert Chagoury-Marc Rich alliance remains a formidable foe.” They sold oil on international markets together. In 2000, Chagoury was convicted in Geneva of money laundering and aiding a criminal organization in connection with the billions of dollars stolen from Nigeria during the reign of dictator Gen. Sani Abacha.

As part of a plea deal, the conviction was later expunged.

Chagoury has been very generous to the Clintons in the years following the Rich pardon. He has organized an event at which Bill was paid $100,000 to speak (in 2003), donated millions to the Clinton Foundation and in 2009 pledged a cool $1 billion to the Clinton Global Initiative. The Chagourys were also active in Hillary’s 2008 presidential bid. Michel Chaghouri, a relative in Los Angeles, was a bundler and served on her campaign staff. Numerous other relatives gave the maximum $4,600 each to her campaign.

Gilbert Chagoury, Nigerian businessman and close ally of RichGetty Images

In return, Bill has lavished praised on Chagoury over the years. In 2005, Bill was the keynote speaker when Chagoury received the “Pride of Heritage Award” from the Lebanese community.

In 2009, CGI gave Chagoury’s company an award for sustainable development. In 2013, Bill showed up in Nigeria for a public ceremony involving one of Chagoury’s projects. When Bill Clinton had his 60th birthday party, Chagoury was an invited guest. Chagoury also attended the wedding of Bill’s longtime aide, Doug Band.

Then there’s Russian investor Sergei Kurzin. He worked for Marc Rich in the 1990s, traveling around Russia looking for suitable investment opportunities in the crumbled former Soviet Union.

An engineer by training, Kurzin has been involved in lucrative deals in Kazakhstan and other countries, including the lucrative Uranium One deal that involved Bill Clinton and Frank Giustra.

Russia bought 20 percent of all uranium production capacity in the US, a deal that needed to be signed off on by the State Department when it was headed by Hillary Clinton. While the deal was going through, Bill Clinton was paid $500,000 to give a speech in Moscow, paid for by a Russian investment bank promoting the uranium deal.

Kurzin, meanwhile, donated $1 million to the Clinton Foundation.

The London-based Reuben Brothers have made a fortune thanks in part to their commodities firm Trans World Metals. According to the World Bank, they founded that firm with money from Marc Rich.

Post photo composite

And they have confirmed that they had business dealings with Rich. The Reuben Brothers, through their own Reuben Foundation, have been enthusiastic supporters of the Clintons. They co-hosted a star-studded gala with the Clinton Foundation in London dubbed the Millennium Network. They have also directly donated tens of thousands of dollars to the Clinton Foundation.

Beth Dozoretz, a longtime Democratic Party donor, was a friend to Denise Rich, and according to congressional investigations, played a “key role” in helping secure the Marc Rich pardon. On Jan. 10, 2001, Dozoretz received a phone call from President Bill Clinton informing her that he was planning to pardon international fugitive Marc Rich. Dozoretz informed her ski partner on that trip, Denise Rich, of the great news.

Beth Dozoretz, a close friend of Denise Rich, refused to testify against herself about Clinton’s controversial pardon of Rich.Reuters

In the years since the pardon was granted, Dozoretz has served the Clintons closely: as the finance co-chair of Hillary’s 2008 campaign and as a senior State Department official during Hillary’s tenure. She has supported the super PAC Ready for Hillary and the Hillary Clinton campaign. Her husband, Ronald, has sent $25,000 to $50,000 to the Clinton Foundation.

Rich died in 2013, and Clinton eventually admitted the pardon was “terrible politics” and “wasn’t worth the damage to my reputation.”Getty Images

Even the smaller phantoms of the Marc Rich scandal have popped up, opening their wallets for the Clintons. Gershon Kekst, who was Marc Rich’s longtime p.r. man in the United States, has contributed more than $10,000 to Hillary’s campaigns since the pardon. Clyde Meltzer was named in the original 1983 DOJ indictment against Marc Rich and Pincus Green. Meltzer pleaded guilty rather than flee the country like Rich and Green. In the 1990s he rejoined Rich, working for the fugitive’s new firm, Glencore.

According to Federal Election Commission records, Meltzer has a slim history of giving money to candidates, giving only $1,000 to a congressional candidate. But in 2007 he gave the maximum allowed to the Hillary Clinton campaign. Three of Marc Rich’s attorneys, Peter Kadzik, Robert Fink and Jack Quinn, also a former counsel at the Clinton White House, have donated to Hillary’s campaigns. Quinn has given between $25,000 and $50,000 to the Clinton Foundation.

These Rich connections are, of course, based on disclosed donations. But we now know that the Clinton Foundation has failed to disclose more than 1,000 donors, despite its written agreement with the Obama transition team that it would maintain complete transparency.

Many of those donations came through a Clinton Foundation project in Canada, which is heavily laden with donations from the natural resources and commodities industries. Kurzin, for example, has given via this route. Are there more Marc Rich-connected dollars that have flowed to the Clintons? Will they ever provide the full disclosure they have so often promised?

It cannot be mere coincidence that in the years of fundraising for the Clinton Foundation, one of the industries that has emerged as a big backer of the Clintons is the mining and commodities industry, where Marc Rich made his fortune.

When it comes to Washington scandals, news usually sends political figures scurrying for cover — leading them to avoid those connected to the scandal. Apparently not so with the Clintons. Are you connected to the disgraced Marc Rich and the terrible pardon? It’s OK, as long as the check clears.

Peter Schweizer is the author of “Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich.”