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05/14/2003 Archived Entry: "A familiar name pops up in Riyadh blast story"
A familiar name pops up in Riyadh blast story
Funny how all these things happening in the Middle East always seem to trace back to the Bush family somehow.
As befits a company that has been accused of being a CIA front, of recruiting “executive mercenaries” and attempting to overthrow the Prime Minister of a Commonwealth state, the Vinnell Corporation kept a low profile in Riyadh. Its discreet security fooled nobody, however: the bomb attack was the second it has suffered in eight years. In 1995 seven people were killed. This shadowy corporation is said to have been founded during the Depression. Dan Briody, author of The Iron Triangle, a study of Vinnell’s one-time owners, the Carlyle Group, serialised last week in The Times, says that there is “no publicity, no press releases, no news clippings”.
He adds: “No one knows who the original owners were...”
Vinnell’s work in Saudi Arabia dates back almost 30 years, when it won a contract to train Saudi troops to guard oilfields. A congressional inquiry found that it had agreed a “no Jews” clause....
In the early Eighties Time magazine reported that two employees were embroiled in a failed attempt to overthrow Maurice Bishop, the left-wing Prime Minister of Grenada, and soon after that a former employee was implicated in the Iran-Contra scandal.
CIA front. Carlyle Group. Grenada. Iran-Contra. Reads like a Bush Family Greatest Hits.
More on Vinnell
Vinnell Corporation is a construction company founded in 1931. Through experience gained in managing military assignments during the Second World War, Vinnell expanded into a booming construction business in Asia. It won hundreds of millions of dollars worth of contracts and employment for 5,000 personnel during the war in Vietnam. Among its activities there were covert military operations. A Pentagon source described Vinnell as 'our own little mercenary army in Vietnam ... we used them to do things we either didn't have the manpower to do ourselves, or because of legal problems'.
In February 1975 Vinnell secured a US$77 million contract with King Fahd to train the Saudi Arabian National Guard (SANG), the military arm of the House of at-Saud. Today, Vinnell's advertising depicts the firm as 'providing a broad spectrum of professional and technical services to government clients in multiple areas of management and training. Client requirements have led Vinnell to a vast array of challenges, from Malaysia to Mexico to the Middle East, often to the very heart of international conflict areas'. Vinnell has subsidiary operations in Egypt, Oman, and Turkey, but the key area of responsibility remains with SANG. The contract for its one thousand-plus-strong team of advisors was extended in January 1994 to the year 2000 at a cost of US$819 million.
A construction company that specializes in covert military operations. Mm-hmm......
Replies: somebody speaks up.
Starting to sound like Al-Qu'eda wasn't exactly targeting civilians with that bomb.
Posted by madprophet @ 05/14/2003 02:23 PM NY
