Greg Szymanski – Arctic Beacon April 17, 2006
British sources close to the undercover financing network of the illegal arms trade have traced payments totaling 55 million pounds during a seven year period during the Margaret Thatcher era, money going from government coffers to the arms dealers for weapons sent to Iran and Iraq.
For years, investigators have been trying to connect the dots to overseas companies fronting the arms trade despite a press and government black out, naming the Astra Group as one major player.
Generally, sources tracking the money claim the marching orders come from Washington to10 Downing Street, both governments then utilizing overseas accounts and companies to ship arms to Iraq and Iran to fuel the ongoing Middle East conflict, an illegal operation being traced back to the Iraq-Iran conflict and Gulf War I.
According to observers overseas banks and arms companies are the "bank weapons of choice," being used since it keeps the illegal dealings under the American public's radar screen, where scrutiny is still more intense due to severity of Britian's Official Secrets Act. For a good overview of the illegal arms trade, complete with a list of companies and illegal commissions paid, see the Arctic Beacon's four part series,
Blood Money: The Illegal Arms Trade at
www.arcticbeacon.com
New information now surfacing, according to a confidential source close to the British government, claims the 55 million pounds used to fuel the Middle East provided by the UK and the U.S. for weapons used against British and American soldiers, was money transferred covertly from UK coffers via BMARQ of the Astra Group.
"It would apear that the Dept. of Trade and Industry (DTI) inspectors missed this schedule when they raided Astra and took files in the run-up to the Scott Inquiry that looked into the Arms to Iraq scandal," said the British source this week.
The source also verified significant amounts of money during the Thatcher era was laundered to a company called Casalee, a company moving arms to the Middle East owned by John Bredenkemp, an international arms and tobacco dealer operating out of an office at Sunningdale, UK.
"His principal operating company there is Breco," the source said. "They say that Bredenkamp also now has a London residence in Chester Sq., Belgravia that is just 3 doors away from Baroness Thatcher.
"It seems unlikely that a possible link will not be drawn between John Bredenkamp as an arms and tobacco dealer and the two sets of high-profile Party Political donations, including the1million pounds that Tony Blair tried unsuccessfully to return immediately to Bernie Ecclestone on becoming Prime Minister in May 1997. The donor was said to be the tobacco industry."
New developments in the July 2003 murder of scientist and arms inspector, David Kelly, reveal one of the many reasons he may have been killed was due to his knowledge of covert research of the "black only bomb" in South Africa.
Although this has been reported on before in a Sunday Express 2004 article, new information is now linking the connection to his assignment directly from Thatcher and former Prime Minister John Major.
Kelly was said to be involved in the apartheid regime's most secret project. According to a previous London press account, Kelly was involved in Code-named Project Coast, trying to create a genetically engineered weapon to attack only the country's black population and to develop a vaccine to block human fertility in blacks.
Dr. Kelly had visited the project's headquarters soon after he was appointed in 1972 to be head of the microbiology department at Porton Down, Britain's top-secret biological warfare establishment in Wiltshire.
Another reason for Dr. Kelly's murder surrounds his knowledge of the B52 incident in Iran, where the U.S. is said to have drop-shipped or lost nuclear weapons in 1991 without reporting the incident to the United Nations authorities.
The British source provided new information about what Dr. Kelly really knew about the lost nuclear weapons, suggesting Vice President Dick Cheney had a very strong motive to keep Dr. Kelly silent about the B52 incident.
"We now know that Dr. David Kelly did in fact not know about the loss of the very big nukes from the B-52 plane," said the source. "Kelly only ever knew about the smaller battlefield / tactical nuclear bombs that were made by Armscor in South Africa and covertly shipped in 1990 from SA to Oman where they remained during Gulf War-1.
"In July 2003 when Kelly was murdered the fear in The White House (USA) must have been Kelly would claim that the WMD not found in Iraq during Gulf War-2 were in fact the (smaller) lost nukes. The media would then have deduced that the rumour of the B-52g plane having lost the very big nukes in 1991 was probably valid.
"This revelation would have been most untimely for The White House in summer 2003. It would have killed-off the campaign to re-elect GW Bush for 2004, just as it was about to start. It seems more likely that Kelly's assassins were U.S. Navy SEALS under the direction of Dick Cheney?
"At the time of Kelly's death, Tony Blair was in the USA being lauded with the announcement of a Congressional Gold Medal. It seems that Tony Blair is now having second thoughts about taking that medal. It could be interpreted as 'Judas-money' for Kelly's death. Tony Blair even now nearly 3 years on has never gone back to collect that Gold medal.
"I occasionally speak to Michael Shrimpton the International lawyer who claims to be a devotee of the Neo-Cons. This could explain why Shrimpton is always trying to shift the blame for Kelly's murder away from the USA and onto French military intelligence."
For more informative articles. go to www.arcticbeacon.com
Greg Szymanski Greg also has his own daily show on the Republic Broadcast Network. Go to
www.rbnlive.com Greg Szymanski is an independent investigative journalist and his articles can been seen at
www.LewisNews.com He also writes for American Free Press and has his own site
www.arcticbeacon.com
Listen to my Radio Broadcast live Monday night at 8pm Pacific time on LewisNews, returning Jan. 1 2006 Radio
http://webs.lewisnews.com/radio/index.htm Greg is also regular on Rense.com the first Thursday of every month at 9-10 pm pacific time.
Last updated 20/04/2006
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