U.S. Special Forces' opium smuggling in Afghanistan draws ire of Aga Khan.

The smuggling is also reported to involve the huge worldwide air cargo fleet of alleged Russian Jewish weapons smuggler (and friend of Afghan warlord Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum and former supplier of arms to the Taliban and Al Qaeda) Viktor Bout. Iranian intelligence is also keenly aware of the U.S. military's role in smuggling Afghan opium to Turkey and beyond.

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As previously reported by WMR, the Russian/Israeli Mafia-connected Jack Abramoff targeted recently-convicted Ohio Republican Rep. Bob Ney with tainted money in order to neutralize him as a back channel for the CIA to Tehran. Ney worked in Iran's School of Shiraz in 1978 where he became conversant in Farsi. He was also an "energy consultant" (CIA non-official cover) at the same time and was involved with Iran's initial nuclear program development, a program encouraged and assisted by the United States. While a member of the House, Ney provided important contacts for the CIA's Counter-proliferation Division and the CIA front company exposed by the White House -- Brewster Jennings & Associates.

But Ney may not be the only back channel to Iran neutralized by the neo-cons, who are anxious for a war with Iran. According to WMR's Middle East sources, the recent rape charges against Israel's President Moshe Katsav reportedly are an attempt to neutralize him as a back channel to Tehran. Katsav, an Iranian Yazdi Jew, is said to have an important direct link to former Iranian President Mohamed Khatami. One of Katsav's cousins studied with Khatami at Tehran University. In fact, Khatami studied and translated the works of Alexis de Tocqueville into Farsi. Katsav's back channel to Khatami, whose recent visit to the United States was decried by the neo-con quarters, was as worrisome to the neo-cons as Ney's direct links to Tehran. Therefore, Katsav was charged with sexually assaulting a member of the staff at his official residence -- eliminating another important link between the West and Iran.

Ney (l.) and Katsav (r. with George W. Bush) -- victims of neo-con roll up of Iran back channel contacts.

According to U.S. intelligence sources, one of the reasons former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was eager to expose the CIA's Counter-Proliferation work in South and Southeast Asia was that it focused on long-standing smuggling routes dating back to the 1970s, when Armitage worked as a partner for SEA THAI Ltd., a CIA "import-export" proprietary firm in Bangkok. Part of his time with SEA THAI was during the CIA directorship of George H. W. Bush in 1976, a time when the CIA was engaged in opium smuggling with the northern Burmese renegade army of Gen. Khun Sa. This was also a time during which the initial nuclear weapons smuggling operations of Pakistan's Abdul Qadeer Khan and his CIA enablers was underway -- operations that were known to Bob Ney in Iran in the late 1970s and other CIA agents who preceded by over a decade Valerie Plame Wilson and Brewster Jennings in tracking the nuclear smuggling routes that also involved drug smuggling operations. Before arriving in Bangkok, Armitage was stationed in Tehran from 1975 to 1976 where he worked with future Iran-Contra weapons smuggling perpetrator, Gen. Richard Secord.

In 1978, without any previous experience on Capitol Hill, Armitage became administrative assistant to Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas. Had Gerald Ford won re-election as president in 1976, it is clear that Armitage would have gone to the White House to work for a Vice President Bob Dole. Instead, he bided his time and joined the Reagan administration in 1981 as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia and Pacific Affairs and then as 1983 to May 1989, he served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs from 1983 to 1989. From 1989 to 1993, President George H. W. Bush appointed Armitage Special Mediator for Water in the Middle East and Coordinator for Emergency Humanitarian Assistance to the Newly Independent States (NIA) -- a position in which Armitage had first-hand contact with post-Soviet leaders like Azerbaijan's Gaidar Aliev, with whom Armitage would strike even closer ties as head of the U.S.-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce. Armitage's past intrigues throughout Asia were well known to the CIA. The exposure of CIA covert networks in Asia involved in ferreting out nuclear and other smuggling activities kept sleeping dogs laying for members of the Bush II administration who feared exposure of their past and current activities.