Al Qaeda, U.S. Oil Companies, and Central Asia

[struggle4progress]

Excerpt of a forthcoming book entitled The Road to 9/11
by Peter Dale Scott
July 30, 2005
GlobalResearch.ca

What is slowly emerging from Al Qaeda activities in Central Asia in the 1990s is the extent to which they involved both American oil companies and the U.S. government.<1> By now we know that the U.S.-protected movements of al Qaeda terrorists into regions like Afghanistan, Azerbaijan and Kosovo have served the interests of U.S. oil companies. In many cases they have also provided pretexts or opportunities for a U.S. military commitment and even troops to follow. <snip>

In one former Soviet Republic, Azerbaijan, Arab Afghan jihadis clearly assisted this effort of U.S. oil companies to penetrate the region. In 1991, Richard Secord, Heinie Aderholt, and Ed Dearborn, three veterans of U.S. operations in Laos, and later of Oliver North's operations with the Contras, turned up in Baku under the cover of an oil company, MEGA Oil.<14> This was at a time when the first Bush administration had expressed its support for an oil pipeline stretching from Azerbaijan across the Caucasus to Turkey.<15> MEGA never did find oil, but did contribute materially to the removal of Azerbaijan from the sphere of post-Soviet Russian influence.

Secord, Aderholt, and Dearborn were all career U.S. Air Force officers, not CIA. However Secord explains in his memoir how Aderholt and himself were occasionally seconded to the CIA as CIA detailees. Secord describes his own service as a CIA detailee with Air America in first Vietnam and then Laos, in cooperation with the CIA Station Chief Theodore Shackley.<16> Secord later worked with Oliver North to supply arms and materiel to the Contras in Honduras, and also developed a small air force for them, using many former Air America pilots.<17> Because of this experience in air operations, CIA Director Casey and Oliver North had selected Secord to trouble-shoot the deliveries of weapons to Iran in the Iran-Contra operation.<18> (Aderholt and Dearborn also served in the Laotian CIA operation, and later in supporting the Contras.)

As MEGA operatives in Azerbaijan, Secord, Aderholt, Dearborn, and their men engaged in military training, passed "brown bags filled with cash" to members of the government, and above all set up an airline on the model of Air America which soon was picking up hundreds of mujahedin mercenaries in Afghanistan.<19> (Secord and Aderholt claim to have left Azerbaijan before the mujahedin arrived.) Meanwhile, Hekmatyar, who at the time was still allied with bin Laden, was "observed recruiting Afghan mercenaries to fight in Azerbaijan against Armenia and its Russian allies."<20> At this time, heroin flooded from Afghanistan through Baku into Chechnya, Russia, and even North America.<21> It is difficult to believe that MEGA's airline (so much like Air America) did not become involved.<22> <snip>

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