Wiki: Operation Tipped Kettle

Operation Tipped Kettle was a 1980s US-Israeli government operation transferring weapons seized by Israeli forces from the Palestine Liberation Organization in Lebanon during Operation Peace for Galilee to the Nicaraguan Contras. The operation (involving a shipment in 1983 and another in 1984, both at minimal charge to the US) was a precursor to the transfer of weapons to the Contras from other sources, in what became known as the Iran–Contra affair.[1]

Overview[edit]
Operation Tipped Kettle involved the transfer in 1983 of around 300 metric tons of captured arms and ammunition (worth around $10m, according to the US[2]) in 34 Israeli Government-owned shipping containers, for a $100,000 payment covering handling costs.[1] The transfer was based on talks between Richard Secord and Menachem Meron, the Israeli military attache in Washington, D.C., and was signed off by Israeli Minister of Defense Moshe Arens.[1] In the 1989 trial of Oliver North, it was stated that the US had "admitted for the purposes of this trial that" the matter had begun with a request from the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, William Casey, to Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, to ascertain whether the weapons captured by Israel could be obtained by the US.[2] Casey informed the US Congressional intelligence committees of the arms' acquisition, but not of their destination.[3]

A second shipment (requiring over 100 containers) was agreed in 1984, after the Israeli legislative election, 1984 but before the new government took office, again signed off by Arens. Again the arms ($30-$40m worth) were donated by the Israelis, in return for an expectation of increased military assistance. A Pentagon investigation of a November 1986 complaint from Israel that this expectation had not been met revealed that "The Israeli military attache's office in Washington and the international branch of the Defense Department had reached a secret arrangement: In return for Israel waiving the payment, the U.S. defense contractor Numax was to retain its security clearance and government contracts after being purchased by Israel."[1] Numax Electronics Inc. had been acquired by Israel's Tadiran Electronic Industries in 1983; officially, Numax' classified work was protected by a special arrangement whereby all discussion and work on it would be limited to employees who were US nationals and had the appropriate security clearance.[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Tipped_Kettle

DEEP HISTORY AND THE GLOBAL DRUG CONNECTION, PART 4: ENTER AL-QAEDA

This is Part 4 of a 5-part series. To see Parts 1, 2, and 3, please go here, here, and here.

Excerpt from American War Machine: Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection, and the Road to Afghanistan ( Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2014), Introduction. Deep History and the Global Drug Connection:

Creating an International Islamist Army: Casey, BCCI, and the Creation of al-Qaeda
The other most significant case in which the CIA became a front for sanctioned violence was CIA Director William Casey’s use of the CIA in the 1980s to promote his own plans for Afghanistan. Casey’s Afghan initiatives aroused the concern of the CIA’s professional operatives and analysts, including his deputy directors, Bobby Ray Inman and John McMahon.(35) But this did not deter Casey from making high-level decisions about the Afghan campaign outside regular channels when meeting in secret with foreigners.

One man Casey dealt with in this fashion was Agha Hasan Abedi, a close adviser to General Zia of Pakistan and, more important, the head of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI):

Abedi helped arrange Casey’s sojourns in Islamabad and met with the CIA director during visits to Washington. Typically, Abedi would stay in a hotel and Casey would go to his suite. The two men, who met intermittently over a three-year period, would spend hours talking about the war in Afghanistan, the Iran-Contra arms trades, Pakistani politics, and the situation in the Persian Gulf. (36)

Members of Senator John Kerry’s staff, who investigated this relationship, concluded that Casey in his dealings with Abedi may have been acting not as CIA director but as an adviser to President Reagan, so that his actions were“undocumented, fully deniable, and effectively irretrievable.” (37) (Casey’s dealings with BCCI may not have been at arm’s length: the weapons pipeline to Afghanistan allegedly involved funding through a BCCI affiliate in Oman, in which Casey’s close friend and business associate Bruce Rappaport had a financial interest. (38)

Unquestionably BCCI offered Casey an opportunity to conduct off-the-books operations, such as the Iran-Contra arms deal, in which BCCI was intimately involved. But the largest of these operations by far was the support to the Afghan mujahideen resistance against the Soviet invaders, where once again BCCI played a major role. Casey repeatedly held similar meetings with General Zia in Pakistan — arranged by Abedi (39)— and with Saudi intelligence chiefs Kamal Adham and Prince Turki al-Faisal (both BCCI shareholders)...

http://whowhatwhy.org/2016/05/12/deep-history-global-drug-connection-part-4-enter-al-qaeda/