operations funded by and carried out by foreign proxies, particularly the Saudis. The Agency had long outsourced operations, but the 1975-76 deal with Prince Adham and Prince Turki al-Faisal, the heads of Saudi GID, along with several other intelligence agencies, known as the Safari Club agreement (see below) changed the global balance of power. See, http://journals.democraticunderground.com/leveymg/280
In addition to circumventing Congressional oversight, Bush's deal with the Saudis was justified as a way to balance the US role in the Mideast. Like Israel, the Saudis became a de facto nuclear power through the cooperation of US intelligence agencies. The Safari Club was a funding arrangement of AQ Khan and Pakistan's weapons program, that became BCCI. With its enormous oil revenues driven slush funds, for the first time in modern history the Saudis also had the power and the permission of the US and the French to develop and run a global paramilitary operation, that became known later as al-Qaeda. BCCI became a full fledged criminal bank with nuclear weapons and a terrorist army. The Bush family, which was already rich, became astronomically wealthy and with its parteners the bin Ladens and the bin Mahfooz, took part in the full-fledged looting of the US banking system in a massive oil patch land grab known to rest of us as the S&L crisis.
But, in the process of entering into a major outsourcing agreement, Bush effectively ended the CIA's independence and role as a national intelligence agency serving solely the U.S. national interest. The Agency became a facilitator of the strategic mechanizations and ambitions of another power, which is how we came to get into all the major Middle East wars since.
GHW is one of the greatest villains in American history.
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