[Firestarter]

Project Babylon

Here’s some more interesting information on the arms sales to Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, in defiance of a United Nations embargo.
The so-called “supergun” was never built though.

In 2012, in the trial of Asil Nadir a “secret” 1991 CIA report surfaced. There are 2 versions of this report. Both carry the crest of the US Central Intelligence Agency, and are headed “Project Babylon: The Iraqi Supergun”. One is censored.
Certain paragraphs are marked “S NF NC”, which means “Secret, Not to be seen by Foreign Nationals or defence Contractors”.
The unredacted copy is stamped in red with the Hebrew word for “secret” and text typed in black: “From office of prime minister. Date received 11.91”. This suggests that the report was delivered to Yitzhak Shamir’s government in Israel in November 1991 or maybe it was hand delivered at the 3-day Middle East conference in Spain convened on 30 October 1991.


A group of British businessmen and officials smuggled arms to Saddam Hussein. This included artillery expert Gerald Bull, who designed the Iraqi Supergun in “Project Babylon”.
On 22 March 1990, Gerald Bull was shot and killed on the doorstep of his flat in Brussels, Belgium. Twenty thousand dollars lay untouched in his briefcase.
Nine days later, investigative reporter Jonathan Moyle was found dead, hanging in a hotel room in Santiago, Chile where he was investigating arms dealers. Moyle had earlier reported on arms sales to Iraq.

Two weeks after the murder of Bull, British Customs seized 8 gun barrel sections, designed by Bull and manufactured by Sheffield Forgemasters, on board the ship Gur Mariner heading for Iraq.

According to the CIA report, “Kock hired two ex-SAS men [named in the unredacted version] to eliminate Bull”. Stephan Kock also “found that defence journalist, Jonathan Moyle, possessed evidence of UK covert deals. Consequently, Kock and [a third named agent] eliminated him in Santiago, Chile”.
Stephan Adolphus Kock had Bull eliminated because he had “planned a lawsuit to expose UK covert deals”.

Kock also:

arranged the arrest of supergun project manager Cowley and Walter Somers CEO Peter Mitchell, along with several Forgemasters and Walter Somers personnel. UK Customs raided Matrix Churchill, and arrested three executives, while MoD police arrested Ordtec and SRC executives connected to BMARC deals; the (mostly MI6) BMARC executive was protected to avoid exposure. Kock requested the DTI hold a public enquiry into Astra.
Subsequently, Kock arranged the arrest of Unipac CEO Asil Nadir via the UK Serious Fraud Office. However, charges against Cowley and Mitchell were dropped for fear of UK deals with Iraqi supergun. As the Conservative Party sought to avoid defeat in the upcoming UK election, they lost confidence in Thatcher and forced her to resign. (S NF NC).

Kock was a Czechoslovakian consultant to Midland Bank. In 2008, Kock died at his home in Scotland.
Sir John (later Lord) Cuckney, former MI5 spy and chairman of the state-owned International Military Services (IMS), arranged for Kock to work at Astra, making secret supply contracts with Nadir’s Unipac. In 2008, Lord Cuckney also died.

Explosives were manufactured by the British fireworks firm Astra and smuggled in the disguise of chocolate. Gerald James, then head of Astra, has always claimed that Astra didn´t know, but was unknowingly used by Kock.
According to the CIA report, chief executive of Astra, Christopher Gumbley, “travelled to Brussels to meet Bull”.

Olivia Frank, who was forced to spy for MI5 on Elizabeth Forsyth in jail (accused of laundering £400,000 for Nadir but ruled innnocent a year later) and later spied in Germany for Mossad, has said:

On May 10, 1993, six days after Asil Nadir left Britain, MI5 approached me...
Their officer described me as perfect for a so-called deniable operation and offered me a large sum of money as reward if I would agree to meet Mr Nadir in Turkey. MI5 intended to harm him. In order to facilitate false identities, they provided new National Insurance records for me and my partner. An MI6 officer took over the operation when Mr Nadir invited me to meet him in Istanbul. By this time, the investigative reporter Roger Cook had become involved.

I delivered it to Asil’s solicitor Giles Bark-Jones via his partner Fred Bunn, in November 2010 when I met Elizabeth Forsyth, once more, in a London hotel.

According to Elizabeth, Her Majesty’s Government signed no fewer than 36 PII certificates. This had the effect of censoring numerous Turko-British government letters, so that I believe only one such letter was partially revealed in court and even that was redacted.

Frank delivered the CIA dossier for Nadir’s defence to his team. But the UK Government suppressed it through a 36 PIICs.

Elizabeth Forsyth pointed out that Nadir’s Polly Peck International and Astra had shared the same accountant, Dennis Robertson.
In 1997, the late Lord Harris of Greenwich told that the Serious Fraud Office at Polly Peck had found cheques from Unipac to the Conservative Party worth £365,000.

On page 22, the un-redacted CIA report says:

The situation that made Project Babylon feasible began in 1981, as UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher sought to grow the British economy through covert arms deals with Iraq, then at war with Iran. In 1982, at the outbreak of the Falklands conflict, Thatcher sought assistance from the US administration and subsequently, we provided intelligence support. Consequently, in 1983, directed by White House strategy, we co-ordinated covert operations with MI6 that eluded Congressional precincts and projected UK rules that sustained arms sales to Iraq via global covert routes established by the UK. In alliance with MI6, we set up Allivane International, at the core of covert deals with Iraq. Its ultimate owner, Chilean arms dealer Carlos Cardoen, received funds from the UK and played a key role.

https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Document:Pro...i_supergun
(archived here: http://archive.is/7ksQ2)


Here’s part of the censored, redacted report: https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/...245842.pdf

Here’s the “unredacted” version of the previous part of the report but this isn´t even the most interesting part:
http://web.archive.org/web/2013103004113...abylon.pdf


Google and the other “search” engines are having some problems actually finding the information I´m looking for.
For example, when I searched in April the results show images (upper screenprint), but could´t find any images after I click on it (lower screenprint).