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In reply to the discussion: CIA director withheld information about JFK assassination [View all]Octafish
(55,745 posts)85. The Safari Club
We may yet see the day, MoreGOPoop! This writer sheds light on the Org designed to keep Poppy's CIA "open for business" during the Carter years. It also sheds light on why things never really change, such as wars without end and trickle-down economics:
A NEW BIOGRAPHY TRACES THE PATHOLOGY OF ALLEN DULLES AND HIS APPALLING CABAL
by Jon Schwarz
The Intercept, Nov. 2 2015, 1:24 p.m.
EXCERPT...
Because what the Safari Club demonstrates is that Dulles entire spooky world is beyond the reach of American democracy. Even the most energetic post-World War II attempt to rein it in was in the end as effective as trying to lasso mist. And today weve largely returned to the balance of power Dulles set up in the 1950s. As Jay Rockefeller said in 2007 when he was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dont you understand the way intelligence works? Do you think that because Im chairman of the Intelligence Committee that I just say I want it, give it to me? They control it. All of it. All of it. All the time.
In February 2002, Saudi Prince Turki Al Faisal, head of Saudi intelligence from 1977 until September 1, 2001, traveled to Washington, D.C. While there, Turki, whod graduated from Georgetown University in the same class as Bill Clinton, delivered a speech at his alma mater that included an unexpected history lesson:
In 1976, after the Watergate matters took place here, your intelligence community was literally tied up by Congress. It could not do anything. It could not send spies, it could not write reports, and it could not pay money. In order to compensate for that, a group of countries got together in the hope of fighting communism and established what was called the Safari Club. The Safari Club included France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Iran so, the Kingdom, with these countries, helped in some way, I believe, to keep the world safe when the United States was not able to do that. That, I think, is a secret that many of you dont know.
Turki was not telling the whole truth. He was right that his Georgetown audience likely had never heard any of this before, but the Safari Club had been known across the Middle East for decades. After the Iranian revolution the new government gave Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, one of the most prominent journalists in the Arab world, permission to examine the Shahs archives. There Heikal discovered the actual formal, written agreement between the members of the Safari Club, and wrote about it in a 1982 book called Iran: The Untold Story.
And the Safari Club was not simply the creation of the countries Turki mentioned Americans were involved as well. Its true the U.S. executive branch was somewhat hamstrung during the period between the post-Watergate investigations of the intelligence world and the end of the Carter administration. But the powerful individual Americans who felt themselves literally tied up by Congress that is, unfairly restrained by the most democratic branch of the U.S. government certainly did not consider the decisions of Congress to be the final word.
Whatever its funding sources, the evidence suggests the Safari Club was largely the initiative of these powerful Americans. According to Heikal, its real origin was when Henry Kissinger, then secretary of state, talked a number of rich Arab oil countries into bankrolling operations against growing communist influence on their doorstep in Africa. Alexandre de Marenches, a right-wing aristocrat who headed Frances version of the CIA, eagerly formalized the project and assumed operational leadership. But, Heikal writes, The United States directed the whole operation, and giant U.S. and European corporations with vital interests in Africa leant a hand. As John K. Cooley, the Christian Science Monitors longtime Mideast correspondent, put it, the setup strongly appealed to the U.S. executive branch: Get others to do what you want done, while avoiding the onus or blame if the operation fails.
This all seems like something Americans would like to know, especially since de Marenches may have extended his covert operations to the 1980 U.S. presidential election. In 1992, de Marenches biographer testified in a congressional investigation that the French spy told him that he had helped arrange an October 1980 meeting in Paris between William Casey, Ronald Reagans 1980 campaign manager, and the new Islamic Republic of Iran. The goal of such a meeting, of course, would have been to persuade Iran to keep its American hostages until after the next months election, thus denying Carter any last-minute, politically potent triumph.
De Marenches and the Safari Club certainly had a clear motive to oust Carter: They blamed him for allowing one of their charter members, the Shah, to fall from power. But whether de Marenches claims were true or not, we do know that history unfolded exactly as he and the Safari Club would have wished. The hostages werent released until Reagan was inaugurated, Reagan appointed Casey director of the CIA, and from that point forward Americas intelligence community was back in business.
And yet normal citizens would have a hard time just finding out the Safari Club even existed, much less the outlines of its activities. It appears to have been mentioned just once by the New York Times, in a profile of a French spy novelist. It likewise has made only one appearance in the Washington Post, in a 2005 online chat in which a reader asked the Posts former Middle East bureau chief Thomas Lippman, Does the Safari Club, formed in the mid-70s, still exist? Lippman responded: I never heard of it, so I have no idea.
CONTINUED...
https://theintercept.com/2015/11/02/the-deepest-state-the-safari-club-allen-dulles-and-the-devils-chessboard/
When Carter's CIA director, Adm. Stansfield Turner, tossed out the bad apples, rogues, etc. -- Poppy was ticked. They were his chums. So, the petrodollar-connected friends found a work-around. Voila! The hostages are held past the election and Pruneface and Poppy are back in the White House.
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Remarkable, considering how Corporate McPravda has only played the lone nut tune since Nov. 22, 1963
Octafish
Oct 2015
#5
No. Neither were the CIA-Mafia assassination contracts on Castro and Cuban leadership.
Octafish
Oct 2015
#6
The CIA Admitted To Lying About JFK’s Assassination, But No One Really Noticed
Octafish
Nov 2015
#87
I found John Davis' "Mafia Kingfisher: Carlos Marcello and the and the Assassination of John F. ...
Eleanors38
Oct 2015
#58
THAT is the crux of the dilemma: Secret Government does not trump the Constitution.
Octafish
Oct 2015
#35
Consistent with Talbot’s claims JFK’s policies did pose a dire threat to “deep power” interests
MinM
Oct 2015
#33
K&R! Thanks for the thread, octafish! Also, thanks for your tireless dedication to exposing the
Ghost in the Machine
Oct 2015
#23
Dulles knew Bay of Pigs Operation was COMPROMISED, yet gave it his blessing...
Octafish
Oct 2015
#62
(U) DCI John McCone and the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy - David Robarge
Octafish
Oct 2015
#46
''...the JFK case is being solved, thanks largely to the brute force of the power of the Internet.''
Octafish
Oct 2015
#55
DCI Dulles and JCS chair Lemnitzer counseled JFK launch all-out attack on USSR in 1961.
Octafish
Nov 2015
#84