Victor Bout:and the Russian Mafia: America’s Business Associates

Some CIA officials have voiced concern about American involvement with illegal arms dealer Victor Bout,and Senator Russell Feingold has expressed deep frustration over continued ties to Bout. It took undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz eight months to answer Feingold’s May 18, 2004 questions about dealings with Bout. It is unclear whether the US really needs his services in Iraq. In the past the CIA has been a major mover of licit and illicit arms and has often worked with private contractors in doing this. Major political figures have been raked off large commissions from these deals. However, there is growing evidence of ties Bout and the Russian Mafia on the part of the US government people close to it in other parts of the world. It may relate to the scramble of western banks to get their share of the vast wealth that has been pillaged from the former Soviet Union. One important function of the intelligence community is assisting American business. The current black economy is so large that these banks believe they must compete for their share of the money laundering business by dealing with intelligence agencies and organized crime. .It was also important to national security that as much of the Russian loot as possible be in banks that supported the dollar rather than the euro. The Russian mob , known also for extortion and the trade, accommodated western bankers with prostitutes, and later produced embarrassing video tapes . The Russian mob has been good enough to deposit 80% of its drug profits in western banks and it has used these deposits to play on the greed of Western capitalists. In 1997-1998, Mobil Oil entered a deal with Atlas Oil, a Russian mob firm, for oil and advanced $45,000,000 before realizing it had been taken. It received not one barrel for its investment. Seymour Hersh covered the scam in a July 9, 2001 article, but Mobil induced other journalists to make the story go away. One internal memo advised doing nothing as Russian mobsters were far more ruthless than members of American organized crime.

Bout has worked with some American security consulting firms since 1994 and was instrumental in placing the Russian mafia in working relationships with some of them. In the Caucuses, , which has had a history of involvement in the drug traffic, has been working with Far West , Ltd. He added that Far West indirectly cooperates with the US government, and these ties to Far West, Ltd in recent years seem to have the apparent approval of the CIA.

Far West is a major Russian mafia operation that provides security consulting and transportation services. It also moves arms and drugs. From 1991 to 2003, Far West is said to have moved 300 tons of heroin into Western Europe. Vladimir Filin, head of Far West, told a Russian interviewer that his firm was co-founded by an important American corporation. He added that Far West indirectly cooperates with the US government.

We cooperate with the American side in the sphere of commercial transportation not on the basis of direct commercial contracts between our agency [Far West, Ltd.] and the U. S. government, but through the intermediary company co-founded by the agency and a private U.S. company, which in its turn also interacts with the U.S. government.

It is difficult to decipher what that means, but the name Halliburton comes to mind. In 2005, he and two other co-founders,Anton Surikov, and Alexei Likhvintsev, visited President Bush in the White House. Thereafter he and his partners relocated to Dubai and Europe to escape possible arrest. Surikov is considered a retired officer of the Russian GRU as well as a political scientist who opposes Boris Yeltsin and President Vladimir Putin. He admits a connection to CIA agent Fritz Ermarth, who served on the National Security Council twice and retired in 1998. At a 2003 conference in Geneva, Surikov was accused of being a CIA man. As late as 1999, Ermarth was arranging for guns and money to reach a Chechen group that also sold drugs in Europe. OneRuslan Saidov ( sometimes Yasenev) , also part of the Russian mafia, also works various sides of the street including Saudi Arabia, and was paid by the CIA in 2004 to eliminate an Arab leader in Chechnyua who was likely to move from Chehnya to Iraq. The Russian mafia often works through Alpha Bank, which is probably its subsidiary. That bank has business relationships with Halliburton. In 1995 a huge drug warehouse controlled by the bank was burglarized in Siberia and the burglary was investigated by Russian security police..

In the Middle East, Far West cooperates with Diligence ,LCC, a private military corporation founded by William Webster, former head of both the FBI and CIA. These firm also work with recently founded New Bridge Strategies, which is headed by Joseph Allbaugh. He was a campaign manager for Governor Bush as well as his chief-of-staff and he later became head of FEMA. Other partners are George H.W. Bush aids Ed Rogers and Lanny Griffith. The firm has close ties to Neil Bush.

The killing of two American Special Forces soldiers and the kidnaping of Russian diplomats in 2006 was involved with a Bout-related black operation that seems to have gone rogue. Team 121 was comprised of Russian, Israeli, and British mercenaries and was supposed to be used combating private militias in Iraq and turning them against one another. The team was created through the combined efforts of Bout, the Olive Group ( a subsidiary of Blackwater in the United Kingdom, and the Bosnian Defense Fund, of Douglas Feith and Richard Perle. That entity works largely through the Riggs Bank and dates back to the days of the first President Bush. It has had clear links to Al Qasser and Bout .Both of these dealers were involved in the drug trade and moving arms to the Muslim rebels. It has been estimated that at one point, the Kosovo Liberation Front controlled almost 70% of the heroin moving into Europe.


Wayne Madsen, a usually reliable reporter, has been strongly hinting that Bout and the Russian-Ukranian-Israeli weapons-smuggling Mafia has ties to Richard Cheney and other people in the White House. Madsen states flatly that Richard Armitage, undersecretary of State, had been involved in shady dealings in Azerbaijan. The former NSA employee also notes that US Special Forces in Afghanistan are heavily involved in the opium trade and are moving shipments through Turkey and the Balkans with the help of the Russian Mafia and Greek criminals. Madsen notes elsewhere that the Turkish Army is also a major drug trader, so it can be assumed that they participate in this trade. Victor Bout is reportedly a major player in this trade. Two of Bout’s big planes have been spotted frrequently in Kabul and also at the US military base in Frankfurt.

It is not clear that the US moved into the Afghan drug trade immediately after its war there. Prior to the war, the US allied with Afghanistan’s chief narcobaron, Ahmad Shah Massoud, who was an opponent of the Taliban. Another drug baron all was Haji Zaman, and the US persuaded the Pakistanis to release from prison his Pakistani partner Haji Ayub Afridi. These men were also tied to t he Russian mafia and some of their profits got to the Chechnyan rebels. It is possible that at that stage, the US entered into these unsavory alliances as a way of weakening the Russian state. However, by 2006, the US was so deeply involved in the Afghan poppy business that there were complaints about Special Forces hogging the trade and working with “Victor Bout. Some point out that Special Forces had provided the muscle to help the CIA move drugs elsewhere and simply assume this was a resumption of business as usual. A more benevolent interpretation from a conservative publication was that the US had to permit the resumption of the opium trade in order to support the dollar. While Madsen suggests that Cheney and others are running some sort of business on their own, it is much more likely that they have just piggy-backed onto a government operated drug trade that serves some national interests. It could just be a repeat and expansion of what happened under Reagan and the first Bush.

On October 22, 2006, the Iraqi government reported that $600 million had been siphoned off in arms deals. Bout and the Russian mafia were not mentioned. One cannot help wondering, if they were involved, and if any high American officials were participating in dividing the spoils.

The more one digs, the more apparent it is that intelligence agencies, sometimes arms of government, some politicians, and the international underworld all swin in the same muddy water and frequently do business with one another.

The US Government and Victor Bout

The Clinton Administration finally got around to blacklisting illegal arms dealer Victor Bout in 2000, but it took three years of investigating because most of his crimes were committed outside the United States. The George W. Bush government has officially put itself on record as wanting end Bout’s career as an arms trader, but it has unofficially used its influence to keep him in business and has even retained his services. Finally, in November, 2004, President Bush signed an executive order forbidding Americans from dealing with people like Bout. The Treasury missed at least three new US-based airlines he owned, and little progress was very slow in processing the paper work to coordinate Treasury’s work with the UN’s international sanctions. In 2006 the UN again put Bout on its embargo list and ordered the assets of the companies the US had named frozen. The UN report listed many of the weapons he moved, but particularly troubling were thousands of landmines. He was soon called the world’s largest arms dealer and Peter Hain, the current leader of the British House of Commons, called him a “merchant of death.” A Treasury document lists thirty of his companies and claims he has the largest private fleet f soviet aircraft in the world. It is said that he has several hundred shell companies to move assets to and out of. one another in an endless shell game.

After September 11, 2001, the State Department told law enforcement they could look at him but not touch. National Security Advisor Condoleessa Rice implored Sharjah (UAE) authorities not to arrest Bout. . Bout was soon flying troops in Afghanistan, and his planes also removed Taliban and Pakistani fighters to Pakistan. His aircraft have also been observed flying patterns consistent with working for the CIA’s rendition program. At one point the State Department asked other agencies not to use his services in Iraq, but it was clear that at least three of his front companies were being employed. At least one was subcontracted by Kellogg, Brown, and Root. Which paid him to refuel US military aircraft. L. Paul “Jerry” Bremer seemed to shower Bout with good contracts. In 2004, his companies made between 140 and 200 flights into Iraq and they were working for various Pentagon agencies as well as Kellogg, Brown, root. The extent of his employment by Great Britain is not known, but two of his planes took off from an RAF base in Oxfordshire between March 6 and 9, 2005. At the same time, two other planes left RAF Base Norton for Kosovo.

While the US continued to denounce him, it quietly persuaded Great Britain and others to lift sanctions on him in 2004., and the US resisted strong French efforts to put Bout out of business. On November 23 of that year, he met with Rice, Richard Armitage, and Porter Goss ostensibly to consider how Gambia’s image in the US could be improved. Through the right-wing ambassador to Gambia, Victor Bout has met many influential Americans. A good source speculates that he had ties to Jack Abramoff and the Italian mafia who killed Abramoff’s disgruntled partner in south Florida, Gus Boulis.

Bout’s brother. Serguei runs Air Bas, which is very active in Iraq. It could be a front company. His businesses seem to be operated out of Texas under the guidance of Richard Chichakli , a nephew of the late president of Syria. Chickakli is a US citizen, had a distinguished army record, and claimed that he was in intelligence work for 18 years. He also claims that the FBI recruited him to help the bin Laden family get out of the country after 9/11. He claims to only be Bout’s accountant. The FBI seized his records and shut down his practice. The UN has placed an embargo on doing business with him. He has moved to Moscow where he dwells in a five story house. The Russians claim he is not there, but he is seen on the streets and sometimes submits to radio interviews. Bout often flies to the UAE, where most of his companies are located. His brother dwells in Islamabad. Though Chickakli was obliged to flee, Le Monde reported in 2004 that his employer enjoys some sort of amnesty due to his services in Iraq and spreading around favors.

The Child Abduction-Child Sex Trail Goes Cold

So many gaps, contradictions, and disinformation color reports about government sponsored child abduction and abuse, that whatever the real story is, we will probably never know it. We are all conditioned to believe that these sorts of things simply could not happen. Even if there were twice as much partial information available, it would be hard to believe government could be involved, and the story would still be so incomplete that it would be consigned to speculation. According to Nobel laureate, many people–probably a majority– are wired emotionally in such a way that they cannot accept very much bad news about their leaders or society. These folks can rest easy, and the people he calls “realists” will continue to be uneasy because there is more than enough evidence to prompt worry.

A number of sources indicate that Roy Cohn operated a prostitution as early as the fifties and that CIA agent Edwin Wilson was connected with it so that mind control experiments could be carried out by permitting subjects to act out in real life their sexual fantasies. There is a little good information linking the 1950s operation to that of the seventies, which involved both these men. There is some information about a CIA sexual blackmail operation in the 1960s.


Former agent Frank Terpil wrote about agent Ed Wilson’s role in the blackmail operation of the seventies and added that photographs were taken by the agency’s Technical Services Division. The service was used to blackmail members of both parties as well as high government and military officials. Child sex was available, and prominent names were associated with the sex ring, including a future vice president and a very sanctimonious member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Some report that Wilson did not operate the ring in the eighties; it passed to a higher official at Langley. There is only a little information on where the children were obtained. One good source say some came from Covenant House, back in the days when it was operated by a priest who was later removed for sexual abuse.

The names of the people allegedly operating government-tied sex rings are always the same and they are also associated with various Iran /Contra operations and various activities ast the Capizon Indian Reservation in Indo, California. This suggest that only a small minority of government agents are tied to the various illegal activities associated with the CIA, NSA, and FBI since the late seventies. This is comforting in a sense, but it also confirms the claim that a small network of right-wing intelligence people inside and outside the government called “The Enterprise” took shape in the late seventies and has been at work ever since. It emerged in opposition to Jimmy Carter but became an instrument of official policy in the Reagan-Bush,Srs. years. Its status now is unknown. When Bill Clinton said there was “ a government within a government” that he could not control, he may have had this in mind.

There are reports of children being moved through airstrips at Sheridan, Oregon, China Lake, California, and Santa Rosa, California. The latter airstrip sees the most traffic and is operated by FEMA. Of course, that airstrip is near Bohemian Grove, where child sex abuse is alleged to have occurred.

The name that crops up with greatest frequency is that of a man in Division Five of the FBI, who also worked for the CIA. He ran weapons in Iran Contra and did black bag jobs for J. Edgar Hoover. He admitted to Stewart Webb that he was involved in molesting children and said he could not leave black operations until George Herbert Walker Bush permitted it. Later in life in married a woman in the Church of Satan. Now he has infiltrated the ranks of people investigation child abuse and survivors organizations.

There are several survivors’ organizations that are obviously infiltrated by agents of the perpetrators and some people who probably never experienced child abuse. All the survivors claim they were snatched by government agents. They also say they were subjected to various experiments and became intelligence operatives and sex slaves. Some tell some unbelievable stories. Maybe they were preprogrammed to provide this disinformation to make all their claims seem ridiculous. On the other hand, their stories have many commonalities regarding techniques, people, places, and the like.

Incident Raises Questions About Child Abuse

Six dirty, ill-clad children were seen in a Tallahassee park on February 4, 1987. They were with two well dressed men who had an old Dodge van. Someone called the police and reported that something seemed amiss. The two men were arrested and charged with child abuse. They belonged to a Washington-based organization called Finders. The van had a mattress in back, and it seemed that all eight of these people slept there. One child showed signs of sexual abuse. All the children were seven or under ,, and only one would speak. Most of the children did not recognize toilets, telephones, staplers, typewriters, or telephones. They believed they were being taken to a school for very bright kids in Mexico and said they were fed as a reward for obedience. One said the men were their teachers.

Washington, DC and the Customs Service police raided a warehouse and apartment. The former agency was involved because it maintained a child pornography unit. belonging to the Finders. A police detective had previously acquired information that the warehouse had been used for orgies and blood rituals. A large quantity of toys was found. The search produced manuals on how to find children and photographs of nude children. One seemed to accent a child’s genitals. There was a large quantity of tapes, and the Finders had a capacity to produce and reproduce tapes. Telexes were found that showed that children had been moved to all parts of the world, and there was an album showing children and adults in white robes, participating in rituals centering in the slaughtering of goats.

The Washington Police Department quickly dropped the matter—“like a hot stone” in the words of the Tallahassee policy. A WPD official said the case “had become a CIA internal matter.”. The FBI advise the WPD not to forward any formation about the matter. The WPD files were sealed on the matter. However, the children were returned to their parents.

Today, Finders has facilities in Washington and in Culpeper, Va. It claims to be a communal organization that explores rational living and it provides intelligence studies, mostly foreign but some domestic. Its guru, Marion David Pettie, admits that his son and wife had worked for the CIA, but he insisted that he had spent his lifetime trying to keep tract of covert government activities. He insists he was never an employee. He died in 2003. Some speculate that he was a rogue former agent trying to duplicate the agent’s mind control experiments.

An Early Brownstone Sex/Blackmail Operation

An Early Brownstone Operation–Sex and Blackmail Ring

“Brownstone Operation” is another name for a sex/blackmail ring. A number of sources indicate that Roy Cohn operated one in the 1970s. It was reported that Cohn services including providing boys for men of wealth and power. A escort service was used as a “cut-out” for the sex and blackmail operation. A extension of his work was carried on by CIA agent Edwin Wilson and a former Eisenhower administration official who probably was not a CIA agent. There are reports that Wilson and Cohen cooperated in sex/blackmail scams since the 1950s.

A club run by a South Korean intelligence agent was used by them in the 1970s. . The former Eisenhower official was active in the 1976 and 1980 Reagan campaigns and held a White House under the former California governor but reported to CIA Director Bill Casey. In the late seventies, CBS’s “Sixty Minutes” reported that it was the city’s unofficial shadow government. In the eighties, Wilson was jailed on charges illegal gun running, but he always insisted he was carrying out orders.

Former agent Frank Terpil wrote about agent Ed Wilson’s role in the blackmail operation and added that photographs were taken by the agency’s Technical Services Division. The service was used to blackmail members of both parties as well as high government and military officials. Child sex was available, and prominent names were associated with the sex ring, including a future vice president and a very sanctimonious member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Some report that Wilson did not operate the ring in the eighties; it passed to a higher official at Langley. There is only a little information on where the children were obtained.

One good source say some came from religiously operated home for runaway boys. The former Eisenhower official and one of his subordinates had close ties to the boys home. The home was affiliated with a similar home in Guatemala, which was favored by President Anastazio Samoza. The American boys home was lauded by the Reagan administration as an example of what privatization of these services could accomplish. It was also linked to Americacares, an organization that funneled money to the Nicaraguan contras.

Washington Sex Ring Stories Virtually Ignored

Alternative news reporter Tom Flocco writes that since 2000 Jack Abramoff has operated a sex ring in the Sheraton and Ritz Carlton hotels in Washington for influential Republicans. The sexual services of children, bisexuals, homosexuals, lesbians, and others were available for White House and Congressional Republicans as well as journalists. Ranking federal officials, military brass, and media hosts also used the service.

For some time, sex with children centered at Hilton because it had very secure areras to hide vehicles and move children--sometimes drugged--through hallways without the possibility of video surveillance. After employees became suspicious, the child sex operation was moved.

Some people who are incapable of mature sexual relationships prefer sex with children. But in other cases, it seems to be a mixture of sexual attraction and what has been called “libido dominandi.” People who are greatly attracted to accumulating power and wealth find sex with children particularly satisfying because it is easier to exercise complete power over children. To a degree it is a matter of “power tends to corrupt.”



Tom Hennigan, another investigator, claims that federal agents are leaking information about this ring that turned up in the Abramoff investigation and was suppressed. They claim there are photographs of prominent people in compromising positions. He adds that an important Senate leader and possible presidential candidate has visited these parties and is a friend of Victor Ashe, George W. Bush's college roomate. According to him, Jeff Gannon, introduced one leading Republican journalist as well as a ranking British politician to these sex parties.

There was little connection to the Mark Foley scandal except that what seemed to be Abramoff money was channelled to one of the ex-page's families. Another investigative reporter claims that Foley and Jeff Gannon recruited important people for the sex ring.

This information suggests that the Abramoff sex parties were separate from those sponsored by two San Diego Republicans at two other hotels. There was no evidence that those two men offered sex with children. That scandal-- a year old, called Hookergate" and now almost forgotten--involved about 15 Republicans from the House Appropriations Committee, who had access to sex in return for their votes. Two high-ranking figures from the CIA also attended these parties and have since resigned.

All this is reminescent of two sex rings in the 1980s that were mostly patronized by Republicans, intelligence people, and foreign dignitaries. Information about these rings is now appearing on numerous places on the internet. As in the case of the alleged Abramoff ring, children were involved as well as photographs.

Count on it. The alleged Abramoff sex ring will not become national news.

Johnny Gosch and More, Part VI: Some Think Jeff Gannon was Johnny

In 2003, a young man appeared in Washington, whom some thought was Johnny Gosch. At least the fellow had the same initials and was the right age. Jeff Gannon was the name used by James D. Guckert, a person who had a few web sites advertising himself as a $200 an hour male prostitute. In the sex industry, he was nicknamed “Bulldog.” Before he had press credentials, he was attending White House briefings. Though he had no training in journalism, he was soon representing two tiny Right-wing news services and was to attend White House briefings for almost two years. He was known for giving the press secretary and the president softball questions. His questions often included false information about Democrats.

He attended 155 of 196 press briefings over almost two years/ He was in the White House two dozen times when there was no briefing. Fourteen times he entered but did not check out, which led some to say he stayed overnight. Twice he entered without signing in March, 2003, before he was a journalist. He also bragged about having seen secret documents that revealed that Valerie Plame was a covert CIA operative .in 2004, he was invited to the White House Christmas party, a sign of standing in Washington establishment.

Many speculated that Jeff Gannon was really Johnny Gosch and noted that a Jeff Gannon was the Des Moines World Telegram editor who ridiculed the claim that Gannon was abducted. Noreen Gosh has said identifying Gannon has her son is “quite bizarre” but not impossible. It could be argued that if he were her son, she might fear that identifying him would endanger his life. It is known that Guckert graduated from Conneaut Lake High School 1975 and then West Chester University in 1980. Ted Gunderfson, a retired ranking FBI retiree said he had solid information from an unnamed source that Gannon was Gosch. Guckert was probably 48 years old while Gosch would have been 36. Still Ted Gunderson, former FBI agent-in-charge for Los Angeles insists that the CIA can change appearances and ages. Jim Rothstein, a retired New York City detective who has long specialized in child abductions, agrees with Gunderson. .

Soon after people started asking questions about Gannon and tying him to the sex trade, Hunter Thompson committed suicide and Rusty Baker was re-arrested. Baker had served time for having a van-full of pornographic pictures. His subsequent arrest was for not registering as a sex abuser in a county where he no longer lived. De Camp managed to obtain Baker’s release. The arrest was seen as a way of telling Baker to keep quiet. Thompson was working on a story about how explosives leveled the World Trade Center and worried that he would be suicided. In a 2004 interview, he said:”The Bush administration is a heap of Nazi shit. Bullshit. Yeah, you can put it that way. I don't know what your audience is ready for” When he died, Thompson was on the telephone with his wife when he allegedly shot himself, but she said she heard a muffled sound.

Chicago writer Sherman Skolnick has reported that Thompson was doing a book on the politically connected sex trade, but he offered no evidence to support this. There is only mention of Thompson in De Camp’s book, but Thompson never challenged it in court. The only other evidence comes from the Alex Jones radio program. A Thompson acquaintance had this to say:

CALLER “Scott from Texas”: I was just wondering if you guys might be able to clear up something I heard through the journalist Sherman Skolnick. He is reporting that another story or book, I don’t remember exactly which, that Hunter S. Thompson was working on was about this gay prostitution ring in the White House and supposedly that was another touchy topic that he brought out, and the whole…
1. JONES: Had you heard that from Hunter?
PAUL WILLAM ROBERTS: Yeah, I had heard that quite a lot from Hunter. It goes back to Kissinger, I believe.
JONES: Wow.
Now that’s a big confirmation. Now for those who don’t know, We have Washington Times articles from 1989, you know—‘underage call boys in the White House’, and so this is serious . .. Hunter was working on that?
ROBERTS: Yeah, in fact Lyndon LaRouche published some stuff about that. And although, you know, a lot of his material was not that trustworthy, in this particular case there were a lot of sources cited and there was no lawsuit. And where there’s no lawsuit you can be almost guaranteed that it’s true.

Of course, no one can trust the La Rouche people even though they have produced some good material on the Middle East and the involvement of governments in the drug trade. Maybe someday mainstream investigative reporters will get into these taboo waters and sort out what is true.