Bashir and Hariri - Richard Sale parts 1 & 2

Bashir and Hairiri  (Part One) 

By Richard Sale, author of Clinton’s Secret Wars 

The history of our foreign policy in the Middle East are so  ugly and twisted and so stolid and remorselessly ruthless that reviewing them is a real glimpise into genuine moral squalor.  

Lebanon is an excellent example. U.S. policy there in 1982 was under the influence of the truculent hawk, Ariel Sharon. Israel was then supplying covert support to the main Christian group in Beirut, the right-wing Phalangist party, headed by Bashir Gemayel who had the face of a baby and the mind of wolverine. Sharon came to America asking that the Reagan people put up another $ 1- million to support Bashir.  The Reagan people were deeply in thrall to Israeli views and, like Israel, they saw Lebanon as a “regional influence,” and like Casey thought that the PLO was the major threat to Israel and were delighted that Bashir also loathed the PLO. 

Little ducks in a row. 

The case was complicated. Elements in the CIA were opposed because Bashir was a homicidal thug. He had attacked a rival Christian group headed by Tony Frangieh, killing the man’s two-year old daughter, his wife and various staff members of the Frangieh home. In 1980, Bashir had come close to wiping out another Christian group headed by Camille Chamoun. 

Why would Washington want ties to such a man? We are all the slaves of pressing contingencies. The necessary has to get done. Bashir in the early 1980s come to Washington to work for a law firm and the CIA had recruited him there. But the Christian group, the Phalange was a force and we wanted a say in its operations and direction and Bashir, charming and effective seemed the way to have it. And given US influence, the scope of his information, Bashir’s importance grew to become indispensable. 

Beirut at that time was like the Balkans in 1914, teeming with so many spies, they tripped over each other. Bashir was a murderer, but he had political talents and he would say all the right things, speaking of the “new Lebanon” and impressing many who, like Bashir, had no idea of what it meant. 

The Casey operation involving Bashir was complicated. I am speaking here from memory, but as I recall, the CIA station in Beirut couldn’t stomach Bashir whom they thought an abomination) so CIA chief Bill Casey ran the whole operating off the books, outside the normal, internal channels and secret channels using a staffer on the National Security Council who dealt directly with a Bashir aide in Beirut.  It was all very neat and tidy. More and more Bashir began to be seen by Washington as a man who would “stabilize” Lebanon., especially by outfits like the CIA station in Tel Aviv. If Lebanon was allied with the US, it would derail the existing balance of power that then ran in favor of Iran, Syria and other states unfriendly to Israel and America. 

As relations with Bashir grew closer Casey and Reagan approved a more widespread overt op that involved another secret payment of $600,000. Then on Sept. 14, while going to speak at a Phalangist, gathering, a car bomb blew up a building which came down and killed Bashir.The agency was horrified - to have such a prominent asset assassinated meant a major disaster for its reach and authority. 

The Bashir killing brought a train of calamitous events in its wake, one of the most ugly as the Israelis letting Phalangist elements into PLO camps where the inmates were massacred along with dogs, cats and other animals.  The bombing of the Marine barracks was quick to follow. 

The bomb that killed Bashir had been installed by one  Habib Chartouny 26, whose case officer was a captain in the Syrian service and Israeli efforts eventually came up with a Lt. Col. Mohammed, G’aman also a Syrian intelligence officer in charge of Lebanese ops, as the mastermind of the plot.  

All of this could have resulted in a blood feud with Israel killing Syrian agents and vice versa, except for one Israeli intelligence chieftain, Maj. Gen  Saguy, who had always felt a strong Lebanon-Israeli tie to be a mistake along with US support fo Bashir. Casey’s strategic vision had been that of a man with a box around his head. The CIA chief  was left facing a major intelligence failure and a lot of missteps ( One thinks of Samuel Johnson’s quip, “All stupid people think they’re cunning.” In any case, the whole episode of clandestine support for Bashir was buried and kept quiet. 

Bashir and Hariri Part 2 

Moral Squalor 

The tale of Bashir seems an appropriate introduction to a world, like that of Lebanon, in which nothing really is at it seems. 

Rafik Hariri was, like Bashir, thought to be another example of a fruitful CIA recruitment. The original story claimed that Hariri was recruited in the 1980s by the CIA Chief of Station (COS) in Jedda, Saudi Arabia, Alan Fiers, when the Saudis offered Hariri to be the Saudi representative of the Murphy-Habib-Hariri team attempting to identify and deal with menacing regional problems. 

Diplomat Richard Murphy had close contacts with Hariri and most sources think that Murphy passed Hariri onto Fiers. Fiers was reported to be a vain man who wasn’t likely to consider Hariri a plant by Saudi intelligence. Fiers was therefore active in displaying Hariri as an example of a perceptive agency recruitment. (My sources here are all former senior US intelligence officials who only spoke to me on condition of being allowed to remain anonymous.) 

But in summary, Hariri’s chief value would be to promptly pass on to the U.S. and his handlers relevant intelligence able to affect U.S. interests in the region. This meant Saudi diplomatic contacts with Syria and other major area players. 

A Look at the Man 

Hariri began his life an a very poor child in the South Lebanese town of Sidon. After completing high school there, he went to Beirut where he attended the Arab University.  After two years, he dropped out and moved to Saudi Arabia where he became an ace constructor of royal palaces as part of special deals with various Saudi princes and financial backers who continued to back him until he died.  

It was to please this group that Hariri became a member of the Wahabis, an extremely anti-Western and anti-Semitic sect.  According this faction, severe, austere, extreme Islam must be extended to as many areas as possible. In particular, Palestine was placed under severe Sunni Muslim  authority and was to be restored to its position before the arrival of the Zionists.  The same extreme Sunni faction was to use Harir to help fund other extremist Sunni groups. One of the extremist Wahabi groups found an ally in no other than the Al Queda of Osama bin Laden. (There is no evidence of Hariri ever having channeled monies to Al Queda that I know of – allegations by some in intelligence to this effect have never been proved. ) The chief difference was that Osama bin Laden was to use terrorism to advance the Wahabi cause while Hariri’s means were to be diplomatic. 

Hariri soon became a multi-billionaire. The extremist factions passed hundreds of millions of dollars to him as part of “sweetheart deals” in order to enable him to return to Lebanon as a Saudi agent.  Within five years, Hariri had founded his own company SCONEAST that acted to “legitimize” (read “launder”) the proceeds from his ventures. 

In October 1989, the Lebanese National Assembly met in Taif, Saudi Arabia, to ratify the National Reconciliation Accord, forged under Saudi and Syrian tutelage. This ended the decades-old Lebanese civil war. The agreement also asserted Lebanese authority over southern Lebanon, which had been occupied by Israel,  and it also made legal the Syrian occupation of Lebanon. 

Following the accord, the Saudis arranged for Hariri to become the Lebanese prime minster, even though Hariri  for six years was a Saudi citizen and a subject of the Saudi king.  (He remained a Saudi citizen until his death. ) By the time of his return to Lebanon, Hariri’s worth was reliably estimated  by  U.S. sources to be between four and five billion dollars. By a2004, it was estimated to be $10  billion. Said a former senior U.S. intelligence source, “The increase had resulted from the continuing flow of monies from Saudi Arabia in addition to the billions that he and his Lebanese partners have looted from the Lebanese economy.” 

All the while some in the CIA  assumed Hariri was their man, ignoring the fact that the  Saudis were the directing force, and not realizing that all the while, the same Wahabi  factions that funded Hiriri were also busy giving money to extremist Sunni groups whose aim was to reassert Sunni dominance of the eastern Mediterranean. And all the while Hariri advanced such interests portraying himself as a defender of the Sunnis against the Shia and different Christian communities in Lebanon.  

During the sermons Hariri preached in mosques, he  often held up the Hezbollah and other Islamic terrorist groups as models of resistance fighters against Israeli aggression and occupation.  He was quite incapable of shame,  encouraging attacks against minority religious figures and did nothing to prevent attacks against the Christian leaders as well.  In Syria, he used his Wahabi money to buy the cooperation of the Syrian branch of the Syrian Baath Party. To do this, Harari took the sons of such figures as Hikmat Shilabi, Abd al-Halim Khaddam and Mustafa Tlas as his “partners.”  Before the death of then Syrian President Hafiz Assad, Hariri and his Saudi backers believed that the resultant unrest caused by the inexperience of Assad’s son, Bashar, meant that Khaddam could safely be made president overseeing the restoration of majority Sunni rule in Syria under Wahabi influence. 

But Assad had become aware that Hariri posed a threat to the succession of his son, and removed Hariri from office as a precaution. In a flash, a delegation arrived in Damascus from Saudi Arabia protesting Hariri’s fall. The members of the delegation were all members of the Suderi faction of the Royal Family and all devotees of the Wahabi cult.  The delegation demanded that Hariri undergo a gradual “rehabilitation” that would end by restoring him to office. They threatened that if this were not done, Bashar would never be received in Riyadh.  Assad’s reaction was to say lamely that he would think about it, but in fact, he immediately phoned Crown Prince Abdullah in Riyadh to tell the prince what his guests had just said. Abdullah reacted by inviting Bashar to Riyadh in the coming weeks to make clear that he, Abdullah, was in command, not the Wahabi fanatics. 

In a campaign that appealed to the most vile bigotry and inflammatory prejudice on the part of Muslims against Jews and Christians, including allegations that Muslim candidates who opposed him were secret converts to Christianity or agents of the CIA,  combined with huge bribes paid to officials and directly to the electorate, Hariri was restored to office in September 2000. 

Crisis and Death ( Hariri Part 3.) To be continued. 

 

 

 

 

 

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Comments

[Retired (once-Serving)Patriot]

Thank you Mr. Sale for getting this version of history out there. Too bad what snippets of it exist have long been flushed down the American memory hole.

RP

[Patrick Lang]

All

I was serving in the Jeddah US embassy as Defense Attache at the time Richard Sale describes in which he says Rafik Hariri was "recruited" by Alan Fiers. Dick Murphy was ambassador. I remember well the Fiers personality that Sale describes and the enormity of his ego. I did not know Hariri at the time but it was clear that the Saudi government pushed him at the US as part of the Habib diplomatic effort. In the years after government retirement in which I worked in business that was headquartered in Lebanon, Hariri was prime minister twice. Sale's version of these events seems quite plausible and even likely to me. pl

[Fred]

"...ran the whole operating off the books, outside the normal, internal channels and secret channels using a staffer on the National Security Council who dealt directly..."

Shades of Elliot Abrams and Ollie North. Maybe Andrea Mitchell should review her Mid-east history before she talks to the likes of the former again.

[Doug Tunnell]

Thank you for parts I and 2. You might want to look again at the bombing that killed Bashir. I believe the generally accepted version is that the device was placed in an apartment just above the room in which Bashir was addressing his party cadre and not a car bomb. Also, I can't square the date of his "recruitment" with 1980. He was fully on scene as a militia commander in Beirut at that time. Perhaps you intended to place him in Washington in 1970 ?

[Clifford Kiracofe]

Good piece, brings back bad memories.

1. "Alan D. Fiers, Jr, was President Ronald Reagan's Chief of the Central Intelligence Agency's Central American Task Force from October 1984 until his retirement in 1988.

His CIA alias was "Cliff." He pled guilty to two counts of withholding information from the Congress about Oliver North's activities and the diversion of Iran arms sale money to aid the Nicaraguan Contras as part of the Iran-Contra Affair."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Fiers

2. Murphy's wife was associated with the Hariri Foundation.

3. The very pro-Israel Gen.Haig/Sec State was said at the time to have given Israel the "green light" to invade Lebanon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Lebanon_War

[WILL]

it was the medical school dropout, the hakim, Samir "GaGa," Gea-gea that led the raid on Tony Franjieh. the convicted murderer who also killed Sunni PM Karami was pardoned after the Syrians left. GaGa ultimately rebelled against the Phalange and led the pre-eminent Xtian milita, the Lebanese Forces (not LAF but LF). he stabbed the Lebanese Armed Forces led by Aoun in the back by attacking their rear area while they were trying to drive out the Syrians.

The Palestinians refugees were settled in the Beirut area, it is said mainly on Maronite Church charitable land that became armed camps. the Phalange response was excessive as well as their incursions in Druze territory which backfired once Israeli Druze officers intervened in the Chouf. After Damour and what happened in the Aley region, things spiralled out of control.

Bashir, aka Bachir, Gemayel was a flawed individual. His wikipedia bio is very sympathetic & the truth is probably somewhere in the middle b/n that & Sale's view.

The assassination from what i have read was by members of the Syrian Nationalist Party which is mostly Christian Eastern Orthodox. The Orthodox historically tended to have a greater Syria orientation as they are not all concentrated in Lebanon as the Maronites.

I have done some reading of the Lebanese Civil War & look favorably on Gen. Aoun for his non-sectarian outlook. I authored the wikipedia article on Souk-El-Gherb, where the Lebanese Armed Forces repulsed Syrian proxies. The American intervention there, shelling the Chouf Mountains, some say led to the Beirut barracks bombing. The Marines became to be seen as participants in the Civil War. Maybe it would have happened anyway.

The Sabilla/Chatilla revenge massacres are blamed on the South Lebanon Army, from what I have read. From the PA leaks, it doesn't look like the Lebanese Palestinian refugees are going home. It is going to take billions (guess where the gold will come from?) to soothe them. they do not have citizenship nor are they able to legally work! Humans on the shelf.

[William P. Fitzgerald III]

Mr. Sale or Pat Lang,
There are wheels within wheels, as the saying goes. The first Israeli invasion of Lebanon abruptly ended my Leon Uris influenced enchantment with Israel. As I recall, the seige of Beirut was ended by an American brokered agreement whereby the Palestinian fighters were given safe passage by sea to Tunis and we guaranteed the safety of those left behind in the refugee camps. Is that correct? The gurantee, if given was, obviously, worthless.
The Hariri episode seems to follow the general American practice of picking a course of action and then bending facts and reality to support it.
WPFIII

[Patrick Lang]

WPFIII

To Tunis and North Yemen. pl

[Sam Will]

To Doug Tunnell, Will, PL and ALL.
I lived ALL these events from the inside of the LF...
What Doug, Will and PL say here is absolutely correct.
But, what I want ALL of you to know is that contrary to what Richard Sale is saying here...not because he is trying to hide anything...but because he is ill-informed or partially informed... The truth of the matter is that the Christian Lebanese Forces of Bashir GEMAYEL were a CIA Proxy Militia lock, stock and Barrel from its inception and throughout...It was Totally funded by CIA whether On or Off the books... throughout its existence...and most of its arms came through Israel...during the 70s and 80s... In ALL Phases the LF were/are a CIA Proxy Militia/organization...and up until TODAY...The LF have been re-activated under the Banner of Samir Geagea...and it is still today totally funded by CIA and the Saudis...

What is said here about Bashir Gemayel's assassination is Correct but is not the Whole Story...Abou Ayad, the PLO's intelligence Chief at the time had a big hand also in the PLOT, together with Syria's intelligence and the executor was the guy named Habib Shartouni from the SNP... I will post separately the whole story of Bashir's assassination in a separate post...since I was party to the investigation...

[Sam Will]

The Lebanese Forces of Gemayel and Geagea were and still are today a CIA Proxy Militia Lock, stock and barrel from its inception and were funded on or off the books at various times by CIA and are still funded today by CIA and the Saudis, nothing has changed...

[Patrick Lang]

Sam Will

I look forward to it. pl

[Sam Will]

Project "Snowball" and the tragic assassination of Bashir Gemayel, our President-elect.

Operations: "Snowball", "Spark" and " Ironbrain" of IDF..., are IDF operations, planned for ahead of Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982.

Abou Ayyad with The Syrians assassinated Bashir Gemayel because they were extremely worried about his "plans" with Israel....

A young man by the name of Habib Shartouni, executed the whole operation. He comes from the SSNP, Syrian Social Nationalist Party....He was a Cut-out for Syria and Abu Ayyad....

There is a clear PLO/Syrian complicity here and they would probably not be ashamed to even claim it... Mr. Elie Hobeika, LF intelligence Chief at the time, prior to the Hit on Bashir did his best by imprisoning Habib Shartouni on deep suspicions of foul-play, months ahead of the hit on Bashir....only to be pressured by the late Pierre Gemayel "father" to release him immediately, because Habib Shartouni's Aunt who lives in the apartment above the location of the assassination, was the mistress of Jean NADER, [ An influential Phalange Party member...] who bugged Pierre Gemayel so hard about Shartouni..., that Gemayel ended up begging Bashir to force Mr. Elie HOBEIKA to release Shartouni reluctantly.... Furthermore, immediately after Bashir's tragic assassination, Mr. Hobeika captured and imprisoned Shartouni for an in depth interrogation, only two hours after the murder....and Hobeika did get ALL the facts from Shartouni and was able to trace most of the tools which were employed in this "new" kind of attack...because it employed a modern remote controlled device, which ultimately was traced to a Japanese manufacturer... with the credit card slips used in the purchase...etc etc etc. no need to give all the facts here...Shartouni brought all the explosives and other elements of his bomb into the apartment above the scene of the crime, bit by bit in paint containers...since the apartment was being renovated/repainted..., hence he was not caught in the act ahead of time, but his numerous comings and goings had alerted LF intelligence in time, but they obviously failed to dig more...because of the pressure brought to bear when he was in jail, by Gemayel's father for his early release...

Hobeika was always concerned about one thing and one thing only, the security of the eastern sector and the cohesion of the Lebanese Forces... Ariel Sharon took the opportunity of Bashir Gemayel's assassination in order to attack west Beirut and implement "Spark" and "Ironbrain"....and the rest is History...What "Will" says above in the comment section is true..., but the best and most precise account of what happened at Sabra and Shatilla can be found in the Book of Alain Menargues, titled: "Les Secrets de la guerre du Liban" or Secrets of the Lebanon war...It is absolutely accurate wall to wall....
Say what you want about Bashir Gemayel, the fact is that he was elected according to the Lebanese Constitution....and was murdered by Syria and the PLO as head of State... Furthermore, if one puts aside for a moment past deeds of Bashir Gemayel and focuses on what his intentions and plans were around and after his election as President, one sees a purely National Plan meant to benefit all Lebanese. Which is what a Lebanese government should have loyalty for, first and foremost....

Who killed Bashir and why? It was no one with the best interest of Lebanon in mind....but Syria's and Israel who are both the flip side of the same coin since the advent of the Alawite Dictatorship in Damascus in 1970..., that's Lebanon's fate because of the Geopolitical constraints....but for ounce..., I can assure you that Israel had nothing to do with the assassination of Bashir Gemayel...and the MOSSAD Chief came in person...to the scene of the crime in 1982...and was Visibly shaken....I saw him personally...

[Peter]

This reminds me of a wonderful story told by former American Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Jim Akins, who used to say that Israel said that the US gave a green light to Israel for the invasion of Lebanon while Secretary of State Alexander Haig said we didn't. Then he concludes by stating that "this is what happens when you have an Israeli PM who speaks very little English and an American Secretary of State who speaks no English at all!"