Intelligence officers confirm Kissinger role in Turkish invasion Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane
Published: Wednesday June 27, 2007
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Release of CIA’s ‘Family Jewels’ provides insight into political juggernaut and Bush Administration adviser
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger pushed for the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus and allowed arms to be moved to Ankara for an attack on that island in reaction to a coup sponsored by the Greek junta, according to documents and intelligence officers with close knowledge of the event.
Nearly 700 pages of highly classified Central Intelligence Agency reports from the 1970's, known collectively as the "Family Jewels," are slated for public release today.
However, the National Security Archive had previously obtained four related documents through the Freedom of Information Act and made them public Friday.
“In all the world the things that hurt us the most are the CIA business and Turkey aid,” Kissinger declares in one of those documents, a White House memorandum of a conversation from Feb. 20, 1975. On the surface, the comment seems innocuous, but the context as well as the time period suggests Kissinger had abetted illegal financial aid and arms support to Turkey for its 1974 Cyprus invasion.
In July and August of 1974, Turkey staged a military invasion of the island nation of Cyprus, taking over nearly a third of the island and creating a divide between the south and north. Most historians consider that Kissinger – then Secretary of State and National Security Advisor to President Gerald Ford – not only knew about the planned attack on Cyprus, but encouraged it.
Some Greek Cypriots believed then, and still believe, that the invasion was a deliberate plot on the part of Britain and the US to maintain their influence on the island, which was particularly important as a listening post in the Eastern Mediterranean in the wake of the October 1973 War between Israel, Egypt, Jordan and Syria.
According to columnist Christopher Hitchens, author of the book "The Trial of Henry Kissinger," "At the time, many Greeks believed that the significant thing was that [Prime Minister Bulent] Ecevit had been a pupil of Kissinger's at Harvard."
Several intelligence sources, who wished to remain anonymous to maintain the security of their identity, confirmed to RAW STORY that Kissinger both pushed for the Turkish invasion of Cyprus and allowed arms to be moved to Ankara.
However, a former CIA officer who was working in Turkey at the time, suggests that Kissinger's statement in the memorandum about Turkish aid likely means the Ford administration, following Kissinger’s advice, conducted business under the table with right-wing ultra-nationalist General Kenan Evren, who later dissolved Parliament and became the dictator of Turkey in a 1980 coup.
“The implication is that the US government was dealing directly with General Evren and circumventing the [democratically elected] Turkish government,” the former CIA officer said. “This was authorized by Kissinger, because they were nervous about Ecevit, who was a Social Democrat.”
“We technically cut off military aid for them,” the officer added, referring to an arms embargo passed by Congress after the invasion. “Technically… technically, but this would imply that the military and/or probably CIA aid continued even after the aid was cut off by Congress. This may substantively be what led to the overthrow eventually of Ecevit.”
According to the former CIA officer, Turkey’s democratically elected President Ecevit had good relations with the Johnson administration, but the Nixon administration, where Kissinger served as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, had issues with Ecevit.
“I don't remember now what all the issues were,” the source said. “But I remember that the White House did not like Ecevit.”
Kissinger could not be reached for comment Monday.
Kissinger, Rumsfeld, and Cheney, then and now
Though no longer a government official, Kissinger remains a powerful force in Washington – particularly within the Bush Administration. Dr. Kissinger was the first choice by President Bush to lead a blue ribbon investigation into the attacks of September 11, 2001. He was, however, quickly removed by the White House after the 9/11 Family Steering Committee had a private meeting with him at his Kissinger and Associates Inc. New York office and asked him point blank if he had any clients by the name of Bin Laden.
According to Monica Gabrielle, who lost her husband Richard in the attacks and who was present as part of the 12-member 9/11 Family Steering Committee during the private meeting, the White House seems to have overlooked Dr. Kissinger's apparent conflict of interest.
"We had the meeting with him... the whole Steering Committee, all 12 of us. Because we are basically doing our due diligence and asking for his client list to be released to see if there was a conflict of interest between his client list and potential areas of investigation," said Gabrielle during a Tuesday morning phone conversation, recounting the events of December 12, 2002. "We went back and forth with him, discussing his client list... asking him who was on it, if there were conflicts and so forth," she continued.
"Lorie [Van Auken] asked, do you have any Saudi clients on your list? And he got a blank look. Then Lorie asked, do you have any clients by the name of Bin Laden? And he was stuttering and mumbling, and finally said he would maybe, possibly consider releasing the client list to an attorney but not for the public."
Dr. Kissinger did not reveal his client list, and the very next day the White House withdrew his name without public explanation.
In Bob Woodward’s State of Denial, Kissinger says he met regularly with Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to offer advice about the war in Iraq. “Victory over the insurgency is the only meaningful exit strategy,” Kissinger said.
Cheney, along with former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, first came to prominence during the administration of President Ford. Rumsfeld had served in various posts under Nixon before being sent to Europe as the US ambassador to NATO in 1973, a period that included the Cyprus coup. When Ford became president on August 9, 1974, immediately preceding the second wave of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, Rumsfeld returned to Washington to serve as his chief of staff, while Cheney became deputy assistant to the president.
Rumsfeld and Cheney gained increasing influence under Ford, reaching their apex of power in November 1975 with a shakeup that saw Rumsfeld installed as Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney as White House chief of staff, and George H.W. Bush replacing William Colby as CIA director.
Together, Rumsfeld and Cheney created a bubble not unlike the one that has enveloped President George W. Bush’s White House, surrounding Ford with a close knit group of advisors who worked to head off any possibility of openness about past misdeeds and to turn the administration sharply to the right.
The aid to Turkey referenced in Kissinger’s cryptic remark was precisely the subject of Congressional oversight on the Executive Branch in 1974-75. In a foreshadowing of how Iran Contra would play out a decade later, the White House violated both US and international law in providing arms and financing to the Turks for the Cyprus invasion.
The CIA, through various spokespeople, would not comment on how much additional information with regard to Kissinger, the attack on Cyprus, and the events leading up to the 1980 coup in Turkey with US support would be part of the declassified documents to come out this week. The only thing the agency would say is that “this was a different CIA at a different time,” and “people need to remember that.”
CIA Document Dump Just Confirms Kissinger's Dark Rep
by Wayne Madsen Page 1 of 1 page(s)
http://www.opednews.comThe recent release by the CIA of documents concerning the agency's illegal surveillance of Americans and involvement in the assassinations of Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, Salvador Allende of Chile, and Patrice Lumumba of Congo, as well as assassinations plots against Fidel Castro, prove what authors and scholars have already concluded about the agency. Most noteworthy is the involvement of Henry Kissinger in giving the green light to Turkey's invasion of Cyprus.
The links between Kissinger and Turkey formed a long lasting relationship between Kissinger and the Israeli Lobby in the United States, particularly the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Turks, particularly the links between AIPAC and the American Turkish Council and individuals like Richard Perle, Marc Grossman, and Douglas Feith. That relationship was exposed with revelations stemming from information divulged as a result of the FBI's firing of Turkish translator Sibel Edmonds and the concentration of the Brewster Jennings & Associates CIA front company on weapons of mass destruction and the Turkish nexus to nuclear materials trafficking from the former Soviet Central Asian states.
When Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974, Kissinger was only concerned about the continued operation of U.S. intelligence bases in Turkey and three in the Turkish zone of Cyprus: Yerolakkos, Mia Milea, and Karavas. Eventually, these listening stations were evacuated in 1975 by CIA agents and U.S. Marines.
Although Barbara Bush blamed CIA whistleblower Phil Agee for divulging the identity of Athens CIA station chief Richard Welch and blamed him for Welch's assassination by left-wing terrorists in 1975, the confirmation of Kissinger's support for the invasion of Cyprus is what triggered a wave of anti-American terrorist activity in Greece in the mid-1970s and well into the 1980s. It is Kissinger who is ultimately to blame for anti-American violence in Greece, both for his support of the Greek junta and his support for the Turkish invasion of Cyprus.
We can also now add Cypriot President Archbishop Makarios to the long list of foreign leaders targeted for assassination by the CIA and Kissinger. From the book "The Cyprus Conspiracy" by Brendan O'Malley and Ian Craig, we know that on July 15, 1974, Makarios' presidential palace in Nicosia was hit with artilley fire from tanks while Makarios was greeting a group of young schoolchildren from Cairo. Makarios' presidential guard fought the coup plotters off for several hours until the rebellious troops stormed the building and set fire to it. The CIA saw to it that Cyprus Radio broadcast the news that Makarios was dead. It was a replay of Santiago, Chile and the anti-Allende coup the year before. Both events had Kissinger's sordid fingerprints on them. Although Kissinger denied it (he has denied almost everything that shows him to be an arch war criminal), it was widely known that he believed Makarios to be the "Castro of the Mediterranean."
Eventually, the right-wing junta that replaced Makarios collapsed along with the Greek military junta in Athens. Makarios, who continued to enjoy international recognition as President of Cyprus while in exile in London, returned to Cyprus to resume his presidency. Makarios died suddenly from a heart attack in 1977, just shy of his 64th birthday.
On March 8, 1970, Makarios' helicopter was was hit with bullets in an assassination attempt also linked to the CIA and the Greek Colonels junta in Athens. Kissinger, at the time, served as Nixon's National Security Adviser.
And in a precursor to the neo-con purge that would drive out many experienced military, intelligence, and foreign service officers who opposed the Iraq war, Kissinger ensured that those within the State Department who opposed Turkey's invasion of Cyprus were removed. They included the U.S. ambassador to Greece Henry Tasca, Cyprus Desk chief Tom Boyatt, and Greek desk chief George Churchill.
The newly-released CIA documents also show that Kissinger was furious at CIA director William Colby for divulging past CIA dirty tricks in the wake of Watergate. Kissinger said he was afraid that he could be blackmailed by the revelations about CIA misdeeds, much of which have come to light as a result of the recent CIA disclosures. Gerald Ford fired Colby and replaced him with George H. W. Bush.
Colby died in a suspicious boating accident in the Cheaspeake Bay in 1996. The CIA documents also reveal that former CIA director Richard Helms warned Kissinger that Colby's disclosures were the "tip of the iceberg" and that much more damaging information might follow. Richard Nixon is quoted in the Watergate tapes referring to Watergate CIA burglars E. Howard Hunt and James McCord's demand for money for his silence as threatening to blow open the "Cuba thing."
It is interesting to compare what Nixon said to Helms' statement:
Nixon to Haldeman on June 23, 1972: "Of course, this is a, this is a Hunt, you will-that will uncover a lot of things. You open that scab there's a hell of a lot of things and that we just feel that it would be very detrimental to have this thing go any further. This involves these Cubans, Hunt, and a lot of hanky-panky that we have nothing to do with ourselves."
Kissinger to President Gerald Ford on Jan. 4, 1975: "Helms said all these stories are just the tip of the iceberg. If they come out, blood will flow."
Nixon's and Helms' comments are now viewed by some historians of CIA operations as referring to the CIA's most probable despicable act: involvement by some of its assets in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The released documents cite links between the CIA and right-wing Cuban exiles involved in plotting the assassination of Castro, Mafia chieftain Johnny Roselli (who was linked to Lee Harvey Oswald assassin Jack Ruby as well as to Mafia dons Salvatore "Sam" Giancana and Sabtos Trafficante), and Howard Hughes' top assistant Robert Maheu, a former FBI agent, who acted as a liaison between Langley and the mob.
The recently-released and heavily-redacted CIA documents, called the "Family Jewels," provide a great deal of confirmation of events already widely known to the public but they pale in comparison to the shocking revelations by Colby to the 1970s Frank Church and Otis Pike Committees and the Vice President Nelson Rockefeller Commission, all of which investigated abuses by the U.S. intelligence community.
http://www.waynemadsenreport.comFor more, visit Wayne Madsen Report, which its publisher, Wayne Madsen, keeps refreshed with more news than any one reporter has a right to.
Wayne Madsen is an investigative journalist, nationally distributed columnist, and author who has covered Washington, DC, politics, national security, and intelligence issues since 1994. He has written for The Village Voice, The Progressive, CAQ, Counterpunch, and the Intelligence Newsletter