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THE PALME MURDER
Dean Andromidas
PRESENTATION FOR EIR SEMINAR
STOCKHOLM
24 FEBRUARY 1997
1997 Good afternoon, my name is Dean Andromidas, I am a journalist with the Executive Intelligence Review. I participated with a team of journalists and researchers, who wrote this EIR report, George Bush and the 12333 Serial Murder Ring. This report was commissioned by EIR contributing editor, Lyndon H. LaRouche. It was commissioned because of new information revealing how two South intelligence officers, Greg Williamson and Anthony White were involved in the assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme. As the title indicates, the report attempts to demonstrate that the Palme assassination, among several others, can be directly linked to the international political and intelligence apparatus controlled by former U.S. President George Bush and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.One month before this report was released, EIR published a report entitled, `Would President Bob Dole prosecute drug super-kingpin George Bush'. That report followed a expose in the California daily, The San Jose Mercury, detailing the role of the American Central Intelligence Agency, in flooding American cities with crack and cocaine in the 1980s. That policy, that is, bringing into the United State narcotics by the ton, a policy that left tens of thousands of American citizen addicted or dead because of this illegal drug trafficking, was used as a means foe financing the CIA backed Contras in Nicaragua in their war against the Sandinistas. We felt the San Jose Story, although extremely timely and important in itself, did not go far enough. To blame the CIA without naming those politically responsible for that policy was not enough. Everyone should know that architect Iran- Contra policy and the man who implemented it, was George Bush. This report I believe is also available here and I encourage people here to purchase and read this report as well. It is in fact a companion piece to the report we are discussing here today.
I would like to add here that the purpose for publishing these reports, is not merely to set the record straight, but as an intervention into the growing political upheaval these scandals have sparked in the United States and here in Europe. One only has to look at recent developments in Belgium where over 500,000 people have taken to the streets. Therefore the failure to identify where the ultimate responsibility for these crimes lies will not only be an injustice to its victims but will lead to the sabotage of these investigations.
Although the recent new evidence in the Palme assassination prompted the commissioning of this report, it is far broader then just dealing with the Palme. In fact we examine a whole series of assassinations and murders. The list is gruesomely impressive. It includes German politician Uwe Barschel. He died in 1987, when his dead body was found, in a bathtub, in a Geneva hotel room. At the time it was ruled a suicide, but late last year, that ruling was overturned and it is now being investigated as a murder. Also on the list is the Belgian politician, Andre Cools, shot down in the street, gangland style, in 1991. It, also went unsolved, until last August, when links were discovered to the so called Dutroux case, one of the most vicious child murder cases in the history of that unfortunate country. The list, also includes the Indian Prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, although assassinated at the hands of Tamil terrorists, his own links to the so- called Bofors scandal points to another motivation for his death. The list is longer and includes Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin as well as the mysterious deaths of weapons dealer Cyrus Hashemi, and the assassination of Canadian weapons engineer, Gerald Bull, and a host of others.
On the surface, they all somehow are linked to what has been commonly referred to as the Iran-Contra scandal of the mid 1980s. But on a deeper level, particularly the political figures in that list, including Olof Palme, there actions, prior to their deaths, ran counter to the strategic policy orientation that prevailed throughout the 1980s and led by then Vice president, and later president, George Bush, along with former prime minister Margaret Thatcher. It was a policy orientation, the manifestations of which we see even today, despite the fact that Bush and Thatcher no longer hold government offices. One might add that Bush, who is now Sir George Bush, and Thatcher, who is now Baroness Thatcher, actually do hold high office, but more directly in the service of Her Majesty the Queen. Furthermore, they are not sitting back in retirement but continue to head up powerful political groups operating internationally. One only has to see the role George Bush is personally playing in the ongoing genocide in the great lakes region of central Africa.
The EIR is in a unique position of authority to investigate these cases because Mr. LaRouche has been a target of this same apparatus. Although he wasn't shot dead in the street like many of the others, LaRouche was framed up and thrown into jail in a miscarriage of justice that has been the object of international concern by literally thousands of leading judicial and political figures throughout the world. I will get into this a little later in may talk.
Why do we say George Bush and Margaret Thatcher?
The South African revelations should throw into doubt all the popular and official theories of who killed Prime Minister Palme put forward so far. Particularly the lone assassin and some home grown conspiracy theories, particularly by official circles. After all Palme was not simply a Swedish politician who influence and interests ended as the Swedish border. Whether you agreed with him or not, he was a leading actor on the world's political stage.
I will not go into an examination of the forensic details the Palme assassination or any of the others. Instead I want to discuss the world political stage so to speak, upon which Palme and these other victims were the tragic players.There has been a lot of talk about the Iran-Contra policy and the scandal that followed, but this was only a small part of a larger strategic policy, a policy that dominated and, to a large extent, continues to dominate global strategic affairs.
Iran Contra does not start in the 1983 or 84, it actually starts in the 1970s. It started with the implementation to the so called Bernard Lewis Plan. Named after its author, a Princeton University professor, it was adopted by President Carter's' national security director, Zbigniew Brzezinski. It called for the balkanization of the Middle East and Central Asia along tribal and religious lines, dividing shi'ites from sunnites, moderate muslims from fundamentalist groups, forcing separatist movements, carving new states out of old. Brzezinski, at the time enthusiastically spoke of how "Islamic fundamentalism will become a bulwark against communism." The policy sought to create an `Arch of Crisis' stretching from the Near East up through West Asia and then deep into Soviet Central Asia.
The policy had an immediate effect. Getting the message, the Soviet Union in 1979 invaded Afghanistan, thus signaling that this game would not be played on its territory. Although we will see later how the Soviets would also play this game, and profit by it. The invasion threw Afghanistan into a civil war that has continued to rage for the last 18 years, and even now, threatens to spread into the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union and China. Afghanistan served as a training ground financed and directed by the United States and the British, creating mercenary Islamic fighters who are now the leading terrorist organization throughout the word. It is not surprising that many of these same terrorist organizations are based in London. The Afghanistan disaster was followed by the collapse of the Shah's regime and the coming to power of Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran. It should not be forgotten that the Mullahs came to power with the complicity of powerful elements in the west. EIR has documented this. The ensuing hostage crisis served as an opportunity to justify the approval by Brzezinski, of Iraq's invasion of Southern Iran, leading to a gulf war that raged for 9 years only to be followed by yet another gulf war led by George Bush in 1991. Furthermore, there is a considerable body of evidence to support the idea that the republicans manipulated that crisis to insure the defeat of Carter. This was the so-called October surprise. In 1982 we also had the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, a country already in the throws of a civil war since 1974.
The same policy was extended to other continents. In Africa, several civil wars were ignited which in reality were proxy wars between the Soviet Union and the West. As you can read in the press, these wars continue, but more as proxy wars between the British on the one hand and the French, Americans and Belgians on the other.
Then of course there was Nicaragua and Central America. This Central American war was not so much a proxy wars between the U.S. and the Soviet Union as war between competing drug cartels.
These Zones of conflict extended into Southeast Asia as well.
While this policy closed the doors to economic development in some of the most promising regions of the developing world, they produced tremendous markets for weapons and other military equipment. The U.N. weapons embargoes, which, as we will see, were ignored by those who implemented them, only doubled the price of the weapons and doubled the profits.
These wars or `zones of conflict' contributed to the creation of a vast black economy that generated 100s of billions of dollars. This is no exaggeration. On February 14, an article appearing on the front pages of London's prestigious Financial Times, put today's black economy at one trillion dollars, half of which is the drug trade alone.
One has to see this not simply as individual greed of arms dealers and drug traffickers, but as the direct and intended result of the implementation of very specific policies. Side by side to this so called Bernard Lewis Plan, a fundamental shift in broad economic policy was implemented. It was a policy that turned way from industrial based economy. It decoupled the financial system from the real economy which allowed for massive amounts of speculative profits at the expense of the industrial base of the economy. Under President Carter, U.S. Federal Reserve Board chairman Paul Volcker shot up interest rates to close to 20%. He called the "controlled disintegration" of the American and world industrial economy. These policies were implemented with extra vigor under Reagan, Bush and Thatcher. Since this policy gave full reign to so called "global market forces", the institutions of the nation state were no longer seen as necessary, but a hindrance to the so called deregulation, privatization and globalization of the world economy. This policy had broad implications which I do not have time to go into now, but perhaps we can go into it in the question period.
One has to understand that the sales receipts from these weapons and drug sales, which were enormous, were recycled, or "leveraged" as the market leaders would say, into real estate speculation and new financial instruments unheard of in the past, such as junk bonds, derivatives etc in a policy that helped to create the vast speculative bubble we see today.
In this Darwinian world of the free market, the institutions of the national state and the state itself are impediments to the free market forces. Conceptions as Social Markt Wirtschaft or the Swedish modal have no place. We saw the 1980s bring to power right wing governments throughout the world. The Republicans in the U.S. the Tories in Great Britain, the Christian Democrats in Germany etc.
The role of George Bush and Margaret Thatcher
The political leaders for this policy were George Bush and Margaret Thatcher. Although President Reagan, also believed in these radical free market reforms, it has to be said that there were significant political differences between Reagan and Bush. It was Reagan who took the advise of Lyndon LaRouche and went ahead and implemented the Strategic Defence Initiative. Original policy, which was designed by LaRouche, envisioned the U.S. to entering into strategic partnership with the Soviet Union to end the so-called Mutual Assured Destruction or MAD doctrine formulated by Henry Kissinger and Bertrand Russell. The SDI coupled with a Moon Mars project could have laid the bases a scientific and technological revolution. Both Bush and Thatcher vehemently hated that policy and did everything possible to undermine it. They were joined in that hatred by the Gorbachev faction in Moscow.
The differences between Reagan and Bush could be seen even earlier. Broadly speaking Reagans base of support stood outside of the so called eastern establishment of which Bush was the leading representative. Some would say that Reagan had to take Bush as his Vice President if he ever hoped to reach the Presidency, alive.
Under the U.S. constitution the office of the vice president is extremely limited. He has no executive powers. He is not even expected to attend cabinet meetings. His formal responsibility is that of President of the Senate, which requires him to preside over debates and intercede only if there is a tie in a senate vote. Tradition demands only that he stays awake during senate debates. With Bush this would be very different.
On March 3O, 1981, only three months after his inauguration, John Warnock Hinckley Jr., an apparently deranged individual, who was motivated by his love for a movie actress he has only seen on the silver screen, shot President Reagan. Within 5 hours George Bush returns to Washington from an out of town engagement, presides over a crisis session of the cabinet. At that meeting, that is within 5 hours of the attempt on President Reagans life, it is declared that Hinckley acted alone and there was no conspiracy to kill the President. That decision held despite the fact that Hinckley's own brother, Scott Hinckley, was a personal friend of Neil Bush, George's son and was in fact going to attend Neil's birthday party on the same day John Hinckley shot the President. John Hinckley's father, also in the oil business, helped Neil while he was just getting into the oil business himself. Hinckley senior was also financial contributor to the Republicans and had worked in the past with the State Department on various projects.
I leave it to you to draw your own conclusions. But the fact is, from that day on, Vice President Bush would not confine himself to dozing off during senate debates, but would exercise executive powers only second to those of the President himself. On December 4th, 1981, President Reagan signed Executive Order 12333 allowing for 1) the consolidation of all foreign intelligence operations under the National Security Council, 2) allow for agencies other then the CIA to conduct "special activities" such as covert operations and 3) allow for the use of private "assets" for intelligence operations. Within weeks a series of other Executive Orders were signed which consolidated these above powers within the so called Special Situation Group. We detail in our report a host of official entities, which were put under the direction of George Bush. Thus George Bush held executive control over the entire foreign and domestic intelligence apparatus of the United States. The so called Iran Contra operation became only one of many operations initiated or presided over by George Bush. This was unprecedented in the history of the United States. Ollie North was just a very small cog in this apparatus and took his orders from Bush.
Britain had its counterpart to this apparatus. Its called the Privy Council, which is actually more powerful and enduring then Bush's secret government. Great Britain is not a constitutional monarchy, simply because it has no constitution. It is only through tradition and a few bilateral agreements that the British Parliament appears to exercise sovereign powers. The Privy Council has existed for several hundred years, it is the council of advisors to the Queen. It is juridically independent from the rest of the government, despite the fact that every cabinet minister is automatically a member of the Privy Council. Comprising a few hundred people its members are drawn from government, business, the judiciary, policy circles etc. It is not responsible to the parliament and can hold information in absolute secrecy, by law, from the government. I cannot go into detail, but if examined closely one will find that leading players in the implementation of policies of the 1980s, including massive weapons deals by the so called international explosive cartel were run by Privy Council members. For instance, all British intelligence activities, including MI5 and MI6, the various military intelligence organizations, etc, report daily to the so called Joint Intelligence Committee of the government's security cabinet. Although the prime minister can avail himself of this information, the committee is not required to bring information to the attention of the prime minister unless specifically asked. Nonetheless the chairman of that committee is required to brief the Queen once a week, and I am told that the Queen does attend these briefings every week and makes comments that are taken into consideration.
The international weapons cartel
In 1985 Swedish Customs broke a multinational arms smuggling ring headed by one Karl-Erik Schmitz, which was illegally selling munitions to Iran. This case was in fact one of the most important criminal investigations of the last decades. Although the role of Bofors/Nobel captures the headlines in the Swedish press, it revealed a multinational cartel of leading munitions companies that was responsible for the manufacturing of the vast majority of munitions produced outside of the communist block. Bofers-Nobel was only one player. From Britain it included such companies as British Royal Ordinance, which at the time was wholly own by the British government, Imperial Chemicals and others. In Germany it included Wasseg Chemi. From Belgium it included PRB, a subsidiary of Societe General, Belgium's largest holding company, From France Luchare. There were also companies from Italy, Austria and elsewhere in Europe.
The arms industries of South Africa, Israel and Chile were also integrated into it. Even China and Russia got a bit of the action. In fact, in the former East Germany, under the direction of Schalck Golodkowski, who headed that countries Ministry of Foreign trade's Department of Commercial Coordination cooperated intimately with the Cartel, coordinating shipments to both Iran and Iraq. Schalck also worked directly with Oliver North, selling the East German AK-47 to the Contras in their fight against the communist sandinistas. So much for purity of ideology.
It is crucial to understand the transnational nature of this cartel. It has no loyalty to any one nation or government. It is fully integrated within itself and interfaces with multinational financial institutions such as Midland Bank, Lloyds Bank, PK Banken, Banco National Lavoro, the infamous BCCI bank etc. Many of these wholly illegal deals were underwritten with government export guarantees from the United States and Great Britain. Needless to say this cartel interfaced with some of the most powerful intelligence organizations on this planet, both east and west. An attack on one was seen as an attack on all and each could draw on almost limitless resources. Not because its executives represented some new dark force, but because it is a instrument of a strategic policy controlled at the time by an Anglo-American establishment and its allies throughout the world.
The EIR has written extensively on this international establishment.
The Swedish Customs did an extremely good job, but as far as I can see, they did not get any real cooperation from their British or American counterparts and therefor were left only to deal with Bofors/ Nobel, which was like fighting an octopus one leg at a time.
Now getting back to Olof Palme. We hold in this report that Palme came up directly against this powerful transnational force. Since 1980 he was the official United Nations mediator charged with seeking a solution to the Iran Iraq War. At certain times Palme took that responsibility more seriously then other times. Such as in 1984 when he was about to conclude a settlement of the Iran-Iraq war only to find his Iranian negotiating partner assassinated.
EIR firmly believes that Palme, perhaps through sanctioning the 1985 customs investigation and intervening in the Bofors-India contract and perhaps working in concert with other international political leaders, posed a threat not simply to this cartel, but more importantly the political policy establishment that stood behind it. His elimination had the aim of not only silencing him, but served as an act of political assassination that sent one of the strongest possible signals to any and all who contemplated opposition to this policy and its sponsors.
The South African Connection
In late September 1996, a South African intelligence office, Col. Eugene de Kock, who was appearing before a court that was about pass sentencing on him for multiple murders, told the court that the well known South African spy turned National party politician, Craig Williamson was responsible for the assassination of Olof Palme. A few days later, Brig. Johan Coutzee, Williamson's former boss, identified one Anthony White, a former Rhodesian Selous Scout who later joined the South African army, as the actual killer of Palme. Then a third individual, a Swede, named Bertil Wedin was named by Peter Casselton, an associate of Coutzee. A few weeks ago this same Peter Casselton was found dead, crushed under a truck. The death was ruled an accident, if you care to believe it.
It would be a tragic mistake to jump to the conclusion that the South African government ordered the assassination of Palme because of Palme's support for the African National Congress. The South African government was never that desperate. No. This trio was an asset which could be drawn on for eliminating an impediment to the Bush-Thatcher policy. This group came together in an operations called Longreach which not only had assassination capabilities normally deployed against the ANC, but was in fact interfaced directly British intelligence through one Michael Irwin, a former officer in the British marines. It also the weapons cartel though Mario Ricci as well connections to the South African munitions industry.
Mario Ricci is an Italian businessman who runs a company called GMR. In 1985 Williamson ran GMR's South African operation. It was more then a useful cover for his intelligence activities. GMR was a key player in this international arms business. Ricci is a well known operative with connections to the famous P-2 Masonic lodge in Italy, the Knights of Malta and all the rest. Operating out of the Seychelles he was a key player in oil for arms deals between South Africa and Iran. In fact late last year they were caught in an illegal arms deal to Rwanda that involved South African and Israeli arms.
Now Anthony White. Well he is not even South African, but originally Rhodesian. His former unit, the Rhodesian Selous Scouts, was the source for many of the mercenaries and intelligence operatives operating for the British. After leaving Longreach at the end of the 1980s, he began working for Tiny Roland, whose famous multinational company Lonrho (The former London Rhodesian Company), a company intimately associated with the explosives cartel.
Even more interesting Ricci and Williamson played a role in the so called Operation Lock. This was an operation financed personally by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands and Prince Philip, the consort of the British Queen, These two are the founders of the World Wide Fund for Nature. Operation Lock was sort of an environmentally friendly hit squad comprised of former British Special Air Service officers. Its task was to eliminate rhino poaching in the national parks of Africa. Nonetheless the operation was used against the ANC.
Williamson now works closely with Executive Outcomes,the mercenary company which is responsible for much of the misery we see in the wars currently raging now in Africa.
Even Bertil Wedin, was fully integrated in this international apparatus. My colleagues here can fill in on. The attack on EAP As everyone in this room, in fact everyone in Sweden, who is old enough, remembers how Mr. LaRouche and his associates, some of whom are sitting in the room, were falsely accused of killing Palme. I am not going to review the insanity of these accusations. But since 1986 we have learned precisely how that accusation was created and circulated. In fact the information we have learned since then points to the direction that those who pushed that disinformation line where in fact in the middle of these weapons deals and this entire Bush-Thatcher policy establishment.
In August 1992, a leading former East German Stasi officer, Dr. Herbert Brehmer, speaking on Swedish national radio, explained how his Department 10, responsible for disinformation, put into motion a preplanned disinformation operation to pin the blame for the murder of Palme on LaRouche and his Swedish associates. Such preplanned operations, in themselves leads to interesting speculation. But it should be remembered that under the Communist system there was no Chinese wall separating commercial operations and political intelligence and military operations. It has been fully documented right here in Sweden how the East German trading firms under the control of the above mentioned Shalck Golodkowski were fully integrated in the operations of the explosives Cartel and Oliver North's gun running operations.
Furthermore in 1986 we documented how this disinformation campaign was coordinated with political circles in the U.S. and how that was used in a government prosecution against LaRouche and his associates in the United States. It involved not only the prosecutor himself but the Anti-Defamation League, the National Broadcasting Company and other media outlets. Since 1986 we have found out that this media campaign was coordinated by a Wall Street banker by the name of John Train, in fact he is a leading member of what is known as the Bankers CIA. Starting as early as 1983 he organized a salon of various representatives of the leading press including the New York Times, Washington Post, and NBC TV. He even arranged for a slanderous biography to be written on LaRouche. The latter was a total flop financially but served the purpose of spreading the same slanders among journalists throughout the world. This press campaign was coordinated with the judicial prosecution on totally bogus charges initiated under the direction of Bush. That's documented.
Train got this assignment directly for George Bush's National Security Council. That's documented. His activities against LaRouche were not his only job. His business partner was Arthur Ross, who has served as an official liaison between British MI6 and the American services. His friends include the Jimmy Goldsmith, the British multi millionaire who also played a role in the weapon deals of the 1980s. He was founder and chairman of the Afghanistan Relief Committee which served as a conduit for military aid to the Mujahideen. Train also was a member of the Institute for East West Studies. This was and is an association bringing together leading political, economic and policy figures from both the United States and Western Europe and Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. In 1988 they held one of there major international conferences in Potsdam in what was then East German.
While Train was organizing this disinformation campaign, a western counterpart to the above cited Stasi campaign, against LaRouche, he enjoyed intimate business relations with the owners of Bofors/Nobel. We document in our report the precise business connection between Trains own Smith Train Council and PK Banken's Erik Penser, one of the owners of Nobel/Bofors.
I think I would like to end it there and open the meeting to discussion.
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