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The Libyan Gift That Keeps Giving: Sarkozy’s Turn

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In the last few days, Tony Blair has developed Alberto Gonzales-like levels of forgetfulness with regards his flip-flops on Libya as he tries to answer questions about the Abdel Hakim Belhaj rendition.

But it looks like Blair won’t be the only European figure who may soon regret his inconsistency with regards to Libya.

Tucked into an article about US Judge Ricardo Urbina’s decision that British MPs couldn’t use FOIA to get information on British collaboration in our renditions is this tidbit directed as Sarkozy:

Previously unpublished documents show that French secret agents regularly spied on dissidents, and passed on information which led to them being captured and killed.

This all took place while the French President was still calling Gaddafi the “Brother Leader” and treating him as an honoured guest in Paris.

The damning revelations are contained in 5,600 pages of notes uncovered in archives in Sabah, in the south of Libya.

Jomode Elie Getty, a Libyan living in France, said he found a report dated 13 June 2007 that proved a surveillance operation had been organised against him and other dissidents by France’s secret service.

Another intelligence report, filed just before Gaddafi arrived on a state visit to France a few months later, read that it was necessary to “listen to contacts, to identify them and track them down” and to “prevent anti-Libyan acts”. The operation was co-ordinated by loyal Gaddafi lieutenant Bashir Saleh who, intriguingly, was “rescued” by the French during the rebellion and is now under 24-hour protection in Paris.

Then there’s the call from Saif al-Islam for Sarkozy to give back €50 million allegedly laundered from from Moammar Qaddafi through Swiss and Panamanian bank accounts to a key Sarkozy aide back in 2005.

“Sarkozy must first give back the money he took from Libya to finance his electoral campaign. We funded it. We have all the details and are ready to reveal everything,” said Saif-al Islam, currently held in Libya following the overthrow of his father’s regime.

“The first thing we want this clown to do is to give the money back to the Libyan people. He was given the assistance so he could help them, but he has disappointed us. Give us back our money.”

I’m not entirely sure why these EuroNeocons believed they’d be able to flip-flop their support like this and get away with it.

But given the thoroughly uncritical guarantees Libya backers offered that nothing could go wrong, I must confess to a bit of amusement.

Trading Renditions for Oil Contracts

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In September, Libyan rebels found a collection of documents that seemed as if they had been specially packaged to cause the US and–especially–the Brits a great deal of embarrassment. They detailed the rendition to Libyan torture of one of the leaders of the anti-Qaddafi uprising, Adul Hakim Belhaj. Today, the Guardian has a long, important article detailing the story behind that package of documents. Go read the whole thing–but here’s the chronology it lays out.

  1. In the lead-up to efforts to make friends with Qaddafi in 2002 and 2003, the Brits reversed their long-standing tolerance of members of the anti-Qaddafi Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG)
  2. As part of this effort, they tried to expel “M” in an immigration proceeding protected by their version of State Secrets (the form of tribunal the Cameron government is trying to expand)
  3. At the same time, they started working to deliver Belhaj to Qaddafi; in November 2003, the British assured Libya they were working with Chinese intelligence to capture him
  4. In March 2004, the secret court rejected “M’s” deportation from the UK, accusing the Home Office of deliberately exaggerating ties between LIFG and al Qaeda
  5. Also in March 2004, Belhaj and his four months pregnant wife, Fatima Bouchar, were held in a facility on or near the Thai airport for five days; Belhaj was tortured
  6. On March 8, they were then rendered to Libya; the rendition flight stopped for refueling in Diego Garcia (the plane would proceed from Libya to Iraq to render Yunus Rahmatullah–the US prisoner who won a habeas petition in the UK–to Afghanistan)
  7. Two weeks after Belhaj and Bouchar arrived in Libya, Tony Blair visited Libya and Shell announced a £110m deal for oil exploration off Libya’s coast
  8. Bouchar was released after four months–just before she delivered her first child; Belhaj and another LIFG leader, Abu Munthir al-Saadi, were held six years
  9. In early sessions with British interrogators, Belhaj and al-Saadi were told they would receive better treatment if they claimed LIFG had ties to al Qaeda [Note this was in a period when we had reason to want to have good reason to hold a bunch of Libyans we had captured in Afghanistan]
  10. In 2005 the British declared LIFG a terrorist organization and expelled members, including “M”; presumably they used intelligence gathered in Libya using torture

In short, the British appear to have traded a handful of LIFG members to lay the groundwork for an expanded oil relationship with Qaddafi–a relationship that would culminate, in 2009, with the exchange of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi for some BP contracts [see chetnolian’s correction on this point].

And along the way, in a process that parallels what has happened as we’ve killed off Taliban leaders with drone strikes, LIFG grew more extreme.

By early 2005, the British government had been forced to conclude that the capture of the more moderate elements among the LIFG leadership, such as Belhaj and al-Saadi, had resulted in a power vacuum that was being filled by men with pan-Islamist ambitions. Among a number of documents found in a second Tripoli cache, at the British ambassador’s abandoned residence, was a secret 58-page MI5 briefing paper that said “the extremists are now in the ascendancy,” and that they were “pushing the group towards a more pan-Islamic agenda inspired by AQ [al-Qaida]”.

Well then, if Libya ends up going sour or chaos continues to leach into Mali, I guess we’ll only have ourselves and Obama’s celebrated Libyan intervention to blame.

That and the crimes we committed 8 years ago all so the Brits could get Libyan oil.

One final comment. As it becomes increasingly clear how our former partners in crime can make life difficult if they lose their power, I wonder if it changes US willingness to back our old partner in torture in Egypt?

The Dangers of Hiring BAE’s Mercenaries

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How stupid was Moammar Qaddafi, who reportedly hired the same mercenary firm that tried to take out Equatorial Guinea’s dictator in 2004?

A total of 50 private soldiers, including 19 South Africans, are reported to have travelled to Libya on instructions to smuggle the former dictator from his birthplace of Sirte over the border to Niger.

Among them were said to be members of the team led by former SAS officer Simon Mann on the “Wonga coup” to unseat Equatorial Guinea’s dictator.

In addition to Simon Mann, after all, those plotters also had ties to Mark Thatcher, Maggie’s kid. And in addition to Sir Mark’s involvement with that coup attempt, Thatcher was involved in the BAE kick-back scheme with Saudi Arabia. And that scheme reportedly funded covert operations … presumably things like the Wonga coup. Led by the same Saudi family the head of which Qaddafi allegedly tried to assassinate.

Perhaps, after Qaddafi’s “secret” deal with Britain on the Lockerbie bomber, he thought he could trust the same mercenaries tied to a very British coup. Or perhaps he was just in a pinch and couldn’t get any more reliable mercenaries to help him escape Libya.

But it appears Qaddafi shouldn’t have trusted these particular mercs.

It has been alleged that one of the security firms who provided mercenaries for the mission may have acted as a “double agent”, helping Nato to pinpoint Gaddafi’s convoy for attack, and that the dictator’s escape was “meant to fail”.

[snip]

A source in the private security sector said it was “highly likely” that one of those involved deliberately recruited mercenaries who were ill-equipped to handle the mission.

“These guys did not have the experience to be successful,” he said. “The formation of the convoy, the way they tried to leave Sirte, it’s clear they were meant to fail.

“Someone got paid to protect him and at the same time to deliver him.”

Which makes it all the more interesting that Hillary was hanging out in Libya they day before Qaddafi was assassinated. I have noted how convenient it is that Qaddafi didn’t survive to testify at the ICC about how Ibn Sheikh al-Libi was suicided so conveniently; the same is true of his Lockerbie deal. I guess if you own the mercs “protecting” someone, it becomes a lot easier to arrange such convenient assassinations?

I guess dictators today can’t find mercenaries like they used to.

How the Fed Helped Qaddafi Keep His $200B in Loot

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I suggested yesterday that the West will be playing dumb about the extent to which Qaddafi looted the Libyan people becomes known.

But what about how Qaddafi looted us–or, at least, the Fed?

As this article laid out, one of the means by which Qaddafi was looting was the Central Bank of Libya.

Moammar Kadafi secretly salted away more than $200 billion in bank accounts, real estate and corporate investments around the world before he was killed, about $30,000 for every Libyan citizen and double the amount that Western governments previously had suspected, according to senior Libyan officials.

The new estimates of the deposed dictator’s hidden cash, gold reserves and investments are “staggering,” one person who has studied detailed records of the asset search said Friday. “No one truly appreciated the scope of it.”

[snip]

Most of the money was under the name of government institutions such as the Central Bank of Libya, the Libyan Investment Authority, the Libyan Foreign Bank, the Libyan National Oil Corp. and the Libya African Investment Portfolio. But investigators said Kadafi and his family members could access any of the money if they chose to. [my emphasis]

Central Bank of Libya was a significant owner (and is now a 59% owner) in the Arab Banking Company, which got $35B of loans during the crisis.

Arab Banking Corp., the lender part- owned by the Central Bank of Libya, used a New York branch to get 73 loans from the U.S. Federal Reserve in the 18 months after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsed.

The bank, then 29 percent-owned by the Libyan state, had aggregate borrowings in that period of $35 billion — while the largest single loan amount outstanding was $1.2 billion in July 2009, according to Fed data released yesterday. In October 2008, when lending to financial institutions by the central bank’s so- called discount window peaked at $111 billion, Arab Banking took repeated loans totaling more than $2 billion.

Yet all the time the ABC was borrowing $2B chunks of money, Qaddafi was sitting on $200B, which he could have used to provide the bank liquidity.

Mind you, this kind of looting was no doubt going on–and is no doubt going on today, as big banks refuse haircuts in Europe and housing fraud settlements–more generally. Qaddafi is just the very ugly face of how the Fed lending allowed people and corporations who had been looting for some time were able to keep that loot.

The West Is Shocked–Shocked!–to Find Qaddafi’s Loot in their Casinos!

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Now that they’re dancing on Moammar Qaddafi’s grave (or would be, if the rebels would end the trophy show of his body so he can be buried), they’re no doubt faced with a dilemma.

How to get all the money they bribed Qaddafi with over the years back into circulation, paying for consultants on reconstruction and generating fees for their banks?

I expect we’ll see a series of articles like this one, expressing shock–shock!–that Qaddai managed to loot $200 billion from his country.

Moammar Kadafi secretly salted away more than $200 billion in bank accounts, real estate and corporate investments around the world before he was killed, about $30,000 for every Libyan citizen and double the amount that Western governments previously had suspected, according to senior Libyan officials.

The new estimates of the deposed dictator’s hidden cash, gold reserves and investments are “staggering,” one person who has studied detailed records of the asset search said Friday. “No one truly appreciated the scope of it.”

Oh, I’m sure some people “appreciated the scope of it”–like the Goldman Sachs banksters who “lost” almost all of Libya’s investment fund for it. And it’s not like our government hasn’t been fully aware this has been going on. That’s all before you assume we’ve been using SWIFT to monitor Qaddafi’s looting in the name of counterterrorism.

Better for those who want to continue to profit off this money to express shock, though, or Libyans and others might cop on that the big play here is to continue to profit.

(In related news, see this Real News Network video on the looting in Sub-Saharan Africa.)

The OTHER Saudi Assassination Plotter Got a Reduced Sentence in July

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This post from Cannonfire reminded me how convenient for our country it is that Moammar Qaddafi was executed rather than captured alive and tried: he will not be able to tell anyone, now that he’s dead, how Ibn Sheikh al-Libi, who under torture provided one of the casus belli for the Iraq war, came to be suicided in a Libyan prison just as Americans started focusing on torture in 2009.

That, plus the death of the Saudi Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz al Saud, made me think of another plot Qaddafi brings to his grave: that he had purportedly arranged to assassinate then Crown Prince now King Abdullah. The evidence to support that plot mostly came from Abdulrahman Alamoudi, a prominent American Muslim who was arrested in 2003 on charges he violated trade sanctions against Libya.

Tell me if this sounds familiar. A naturalized American citizen is arrested upon re-entry to the country and charged with a bunch of crimes. After a period of no bail, he confesses to participation in the assassination plot of a top Saudi.

Court documents said the assassination plot arose from a March 2003 conference at which Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi and Prince Abdullah had a heated exchange. Angered at how Gaddafi was treated, Libyan officials recruited Alamoudi.

Even after he learned that the target was Abdullah, Alamoudi shuttled money and messages between Libyan officials and the two Saudi dissidents in London, the documents said. Although Gaddafi is not named as a planner, sources familiar with the case have said he appears in the documents as “Libyan government official #5,” who met personally with Alamoudi.

Mind you, though the judge considered the assassination plot in Alamoudi’s sentence, he plead guilty not to murder-for-hire, but to prohibited financial transactions with Libya (the kind of thing JPMC just got its wrist slapped for), unlawful procurement of naturalization, and tax evasion.

Anyway, thinking about the similarities between that case and the Scary Iran Plot led me to consult Alamoudi’s docket (most of which is not available online). What happens to a guy convicted in connection with plotting with a nasty African dictator as we launch the war to finally kill that dictator?

Well, it turns out that at about the time it was clear we’d stick around to ensure Qaddafi died in this kinetic action, a sealed document got filed in Alamoudi’s case. And, on July 20, 2011, Alamoudi got about 30% knocked off his sentence, from 276 months to 197.

Mind you, no one was hiding the fact that Alamoudi would continue to cooperate with authorities while in prison–so it’s no surprise his sentence got lowered. Nor does Alamoudi’s sentence reduction necessarily have anything to do with Alamoudi’s testimony in the assassination plot.

But I do expect, a decade from now, that’s what’s going to happen to Manssor Arbabsiar’s docket.

John Brennan Boasts that an Obama Decision Killed Anwar al-Awlaki

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Okay, I don’t know for a fact that the Senior Administration Official Jake Tapper rather irresponsibly gave anonymity to is John Brennan. After all, Ben Rhodes loves to boast anonymously too.

But given the Administration’s past caution about describing Obama’s role in the Awlaki assassination, I find it interesting that John Brennan this SAO is now claiming credit, in Obama’s name, for Awlaki’s killing, too.

The president emphasized the internationality of the NATO effort, and that’s part of what a senior White House official tells ABC News is the way Obama looks at foreign policy.

“What we’re demonstrating is you can move to a more targeted use of US force and be more successful in achieving our objectives,” a Senior White House official tells ABC News. This means a “smaller footprint, a more targeted use of force. It means less of a cost to taxpayers and troops, and also clearly results in our ability to take care of our interests.”

“With al Qaeda, we’re going after them in a very targeted way,” the Senior White House official says. “With Libya, we identified the unique capabilities the US has to go after Gadhafi,” and then NATO took the lead. The US role from that point on was to be the “glue” of the operation “keeping the coalition together,” providing “targeting, intelligence, refueling, and command and control.”

“Bin laden, Awlaki, Gadhafi have all met their demise in some fashion because of decisions the president made” utilizing this foreign policy view, the senior administration official said. [my emphasis]

Not surprisingly, John Brennan this SAO didn’t boast about the internationality of our effort in Somalia, where al-Shabaab made a grisly display of the bodies of 70 Burundian soldiers serving in AMISOM yesterday; al-Shabaab said they had ambushed the soldiers. John Brennan this SAO only boasts about the victories, you see. Nor did John Brennan this SAO claim credit for killing an American teenager the other day. We’re still pretending that was an accident.

But for the record, John Brennan this SAO can no longer control himself. He’s gonna claim credit not just for Osama bin Laden and Qaddafi–even claim credit for providing the command and control in what was purportedly a kinetic action–but also boast that Obama’s orders resulted in the death of an American citizen.

Obama Apparently Was Hoping for a Trifecta

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Qaddafi last Saturday, Osama bin Laden Sunday, and Anwar al-Awlaki on Thursday.

A U.S. drone strike in Yemen Thursday was aimed at killing Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born radical cleric who is suspected of orchestrating terrorist attacks on the U.S, but the missile missed its target, according to Yemeni and U.S. officials.

[snip]

The attempt to kill Mr. Awlaki was the first known U.S. military strike inside Yemen since May 2010, when U.S. missiles mistakenly killed one of Yemen President Abdullah Ali Saleh’s envoys and an unknown number of other people.

Lucky for Obama, batting .333 is still a great average.

Oh–and too bad about all that collateral damage.

Two lessons for Obama: 1) Navy SEALs are far more effective with far fewer mistakes than drones, 2) that adage about celebrities dying in three? It doesn’t actually raise your odds in military strikes.

The Logical Consequence of Looting in Libya

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Things for anti-Qaddafi forces in Libya have gone from difficult to worse. Yet even after Director of National Intelligence James Clapper made the mistake of telling the truth about Qaddafi’s strength, there has been little discussion about this report from James Risen and Eric Lichtblau (one exception is Dan Drezner).

Here’s part of what Clapper said (the White House has backed away from his comments and Lindsey Graham has called for his resignation for telling the truth).

“Over time I think the regime will prevail,” acknowledged Clapper. “With respect to the rebels in Libya, and whether or not they will succeed or not, I think frankly they’re in for a tough row.”

Clapper added he did not believe Kadhafi, who has earned a reputation as a maverick, planned to step down after more than four decades in power.

“I don’t think he has any intention of leaving,” Clapper said. “From all evidence that we have, which I’d be prepared to discuss in closed session, he appears to be hunkering down for the duration.”

[snip]

Libyan air defenses, including radar and surface-to-air missiles, are “quite substantial,” Clapper explained.

“A very important consideration here for the regime is, by design, Kadhafi intentionally designed the military so that those select units willed to him are the most luxuriously equipped and the best trained.”

With that assessment–which was echoed in testimony by the head of DIA–in mind, consider Risen and Lichtblau’s description of the way Qaddafi has prepared himself financially to weather a rebellion. They describe that he has hoarded away “tens of billions” in Libya which will make the financial sanctions we’re using against him pretty useless.

The money — in Libyan dinars, United States dollars and possibly other foreign currencies — allows Colonel Qaddafi to pay his troops, African mercenaries and political supporters in the face of a determined uprising, said the intelligence officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

The huge cash reserves have, at least temporarily, diminished the impact of economic sanctions on Colonel Qaddafi and his government. The possibility that he could resist the rebellion in his country for a sustained period could place greater pressure for action on the Obama administration and European leaders, who had hoped that the Libyan leader would be forced from power quickly.

In other words, in addition to the tens of billions in assets Europe and the US have frozen, Qaddafi has still more loot available within his country, inaccessible to international sanctions. And that is one thing (the superior Russian arms he has that Clapper mentioned are another) that will allow Qaddafi to wait out the rebels.

Take a step back and think about the implications of this.

According to the story, Qaddafi probably started hoarding money in the 1990s. After the West lifted sanctions on Qaddafi in 2004, the process accelerated.

He has built up Libya’s cash reserves in the years since the West began lifting economic sanctions on his government in 2004, following his decision to renounce unconventional weapons and cooperate with the United States in the fight against Al Qaeda. That led to a flood of Western investment in the Libyan oil and natural gas industries, and access to international oil and financial markets.Colonel Qaddafi, however, apparently feared that sanctions would someday be reimposed and secretly began setting aside cash in Tripoli that could not be seized by Western banks, according to the officials. He used the Libyan Central Bank, which he controls, and private banks in the city. He also directed that many government transactions, including some sales on the international oil spot market, be conducted in cash. “He learned to keep cash around,” said the person with ties to Libyan government officials, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of putting them in jeopardy.

Then, in the weeks before the uprising broke out in Libya, Qaddafi continued to move money around to keep it accessible.

And with it, he is able to outfit and pay his elite troops, mercenaries from other countries, and loyal supporters. He can let oil just sit in the ground (as it did during the previous sanction period), because he doesn’t need to sell oil immediately to get money.

Because Qaddafi managed to loot shrewdly, he is largely immune from our non-military efforts to prevent him from committing genocide against his own people. His looted riches make him the match of most of his country, even backed by the international community.

And the thing is, we knew Qaddafi was doing this looting. Read more →

A Tale of Three WikiLeak Stories

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The NYT has gotten a lot of press for this story, detailing that Qaddafi’s son, Mutassim al-Qadhafi, paid $1 million to have Mariah Carey to sing four songs at his New Year’s Day party in St. Barts, and, the following year, another $1 million to have Beyonce and Usher sing. While it affords the NYT an opportunity to read like the Enquirer, the NYT manages to avoid mentioning other details–detailing how oil revenues have been funneled to Libyan elite in places like Scotland–that appear in the cables they reviewed and which might be more relevant to explain the uprising in Libya.

WikiLeaks Central takes a different approach to reporting on some of the more recent WikiLeaks disclosures on Libya. It describes the supposed turning point in US-Libyan relations after US oil companies, on threat of losing contracts with Libya, pushed through an exception to the Lautenberg Amendment of the 2008 Defense Authorization, which would have made it easier for plaintiffs in terrorism-related suits to seize government assets. The cable describing the reaction to the negotiation of an exception makes it clear Libyans hoped that the deal would encourage the US to pressure Qaddafi to cede power.

Libyan reaction to news of the U.S.-Libya claims settlement agreement is a mixture of relief and high expectation. Libyans are genuinely pleased that a key political irritant in the bilateral relationship has been resolved, seemingly reducing the likelihood that U.S.-Libya relations could lapse back into something akin to the sanctions period. There is also the belief that expanded political and economic engagement with the U.S. and the West, which is expected to accelerate with the lifting of the Lautenberg Amendment and potential asset seizure, will help solidify internal Libyan reforms undertaken in recent years. Many Libyans hope that expanded engagement with the U.S. will include U.S. advocacy for political reform and greater respect for human rights. A key challenge for al-Qadhafi will be to temper expectations that fully normalized relations with the U.S. will prompt an immediate shift in the nature of the regime and its reluctance to move quickly on political reform.

That was over two years ago. And yet Qaddafi is still attacking his citizens from fighter jets.

Surprise. Having paid what amount to bribes to his family and friends to obtain drilling rights, our oil companies have not been in a rush to force Qaddafi to push through political reforms.

But the NYT’s reporting is not all tabloid fare.

This article (can anyone tell whether it appeared in the Dead Tree version?), details the influence the American Chambers of Commerce have in our foreign policy. The article largely focuses on the Chamber’s attempts to defeat Daniel Ortega, with the Embassy cautiously welcoming the efforts. It also details Chamber involvement in Taiwan.

But just as important is the mention of the pressure Honduras’ Chamber brought on Obama to support the coup against José Manuel Zelaya (which an earlier cable had definitively labeled illegal).

In Honduras, for example, executives at the American-affiliated chamber expressed support for the June 2009 coup d’état that forced out President José Manuel Zelaya, the State Department cables say. After leaders in the group applied pressure on the Obama administration, American officials retreated from their initial demands that Mr. Zelaya be allowed to return to power.

As the cables have pretty consistently shown, our foreign policy is increasingly indistinguishable from our business interests. And no matter how often our diplomats describe tepid US support for fostering democracy, it always seem to work out that corporations prefer pliant dictators over real human rights.