Former CIA officer Duane Clarridge has maintained that economic interests were the real reasons France and Russia those countries opposed the invasion of Iraq. "I think the world needs to know why some countries didn’t want Saddam Hussein removed from power.”
Now the officer, infamous for his role in the Reagan administration’s secret war in Nicaragua, is out to prove his charges – with his own investigation of the financial dealings, according to a report in the LA Times.
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Clarridge has been on the ground in Iraq scouting for evidence that French politicians took secret payoffs from Hussein in the 1980s; that Russia received illegal Iraqi oil transshipped through Iran; and that major international companies -- as well as foreign governments -- aided Hussein’s mission to develop weapons of mass destruction.
"It will be a huge bombshell if we can pull it off,” Clarridge said. "I think the White House will be delighted.”
Despite his history, Clarridge retains extensive contacts in Washington, having twice been named to special task forces set up by the Defense Science Board, which advises Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. He has arranged to keep U.S. intelligence agencies briefed on what he uncovers.
Clarridge, the former chief of the CIA’s Latin America division in 1981, when President Reagan began stepping up U.S. involvement in the region, believes the modern CIA has grown too cautious:
"An intelligence agency has to take risks, and it’s going to get into a little — and sometimes a lot — of trouble.”
Editor's note:
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