
              Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 6  Num. 54
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                    ("Quid coniuratio est?")
 
 
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OPERATION INTERLINK
===================
 
In CN 6.51, Sherman Skolnick pointed out that
 
  ...Watergate was just a minor matter, so that this "zillion" 
  dollar fraud could be perpetrated. Because all during that 
  time of '73 and '74, when things were in crisis -- the *oil* 
  -- the press was talking about Watergate.
 
A reader asked if I had any further info on this matter, and I 
recalled the appearance by ex-CIA agent Trenton Parker on Radio 
Free America back on July 29, 1993. (Some may quibble with the 
term "ex"-CIA.) Was there a conspiracy of some type behind the 
sharp rise in oil prices back around 1973-74? I hauled out and 
dusted off my old tape of Parker's guest appearance.
 
Parker's discussion, on the show, of "Operation Interlink" is 
highly recommended. Parker shared the two-hour program with 
Fletcher Prouty who stated that Parker's revelations "make this 
one of the most important shows on the CIA that has ever 
occurred." (My thanks to Rodney Stich's book, *Defrauding 
America*, for tipping me off to the value of the July 29th show. 
See chapter 18, page 318 of his book. See also the index heading 
"Operation Interlink" in the same book.) Tapes of the show *may* 
still be available from Valentine Communications, PO Box 11089, 
Naples, Fla. 33716.
 
Anyway, I can't say that Parker's discussion of Operation 
Interlink supports Skolnick's claim, *per se*. However it *does* 
support what Skolnick says in a *general* way. I may, among the 
many things I "must get around to doing", find time to dig 
further into the claim of a conspiracy behind the rise in oil 
prices back in '73-'74. At any rate, I now offer my own summary 
of Parker's info on Operation Interlink.
 
In a lawsuit involving Parker, it is alleged that he "was one of 
the persons who acted as the co-ordinating messenger for 
[Operation Interlink], which was designed to control world and 
national oil reserves and raise oil prices and to finance arms 
for various middle eastern Arab nations, in contravention to 
various United States laws." In other words, arms merchants 
wanted to sell their weaponry to the Arabs, but the Congress was 
blocking it. Apparently Parker is saying that the rise in oil 
prices helped pay for the clandestine sale of these weapons.
 
Parker says that he was "trained about oil, and about brokerage 
firms" back in the 1960s, by CIA. He says that Operation 
Interlink involved
   (1) jockeying for strength and position on behalf of the 
international oil companies in the middle east;
   (2) supplying arms, contrary to the wishes of Congress. This 
supplying of arms was disguised partly as "foreign aid";
   (3) a way to get the arms, since Congress was balking at 
paying for them. Raising oil prices was "a key point".
 
"At the same time, there were three major oil areas that were 
expected to come on-line: and those three areas included Alaska, 
Gulf Sea, and also Gulf of Mexico, involving Pemex. And so, ways 
had to be worked out to keep those particular properties off- 
line."
 
The plan was to cut down on the worldwide supply of oil and to 
thereby boost prices, and profits, for the internationals. The 
international oil giants also coveted the oil found by the 
independent oil-drilling companies. "It was wealth, and there are 
people who want to steal wealth," says Parker.
 
According to Parker, the internationals supported advertising 
that *promoted* the idea that the oil companies were making too 
much money. The motive for this was to help gain support for a 
"windfall profits tax". Parker says that the eventual legislation 
only dealt with domestic crude and did not hurt the international 
oil cartels. The national, independent oil firms found themselves 
faced with a price ceiling. This greatly hurt their profits. 
Already badly leveraged via bank loans, the internationals then 
were able to come in, buy up the bank notes, and take over the 
independents.
 
Another strategy used to boost profits was to artificially reduce 
the worldwide supply of oil. Parker claims that hundreds of 
thousands of dollars were funneled to ecology groups who then 
used that money to "shut down an entire Alaskan project in court 
orders." In Mexico, Pemex was enticed to slow oil production in 
return for $2 billion in loans to the Bank of the Hacienda. In 
the North Sea, Parker claims, "catastrophes" began to happen 
which hurt oil drilling efforts there -- "catastrophes" which 
were not, in fact, "accidents" but rather something more sinister.
 
Parker takes pains to emphasize that this was a complicated 
operation. It boils down to international oil companies colluding 
with arms merchants and others to profit from a political 
situation. Congress was against "foreign aid" being used to 
purchase weapons. For whatever reason -- perhaps perceived 
"national security" interests -- it was decided to circumvent the 
wishes of Congress. A way was needed to fund the arms sales. The 
mideast had lots of oil. If prices could be boosted, surplus 
profits could be used to pay for weapons. The international oil 
giants apparently were either enlisted into the operation or saw 
what was happening and included themselves in, to their own 
benefit. Other sources of oil production not in the Middle East 
were slowed or went off-line, prices went sky high, we all payed 
for it at the gas pumps, and some people did quite well for 
themselves.
 
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