Another person referred to as a “silent partner” in EATSCO was Erich Von Marbod, who later became Carlucci’s special assistant at a company called Sears World Trade (SWT). Von Marbod was also the long-time mentor of Richard Armitage, having supervised him in operations in Vietnam and Iran. In Sept 1975, when Secord was relocated there, Von Marbod went to Tehran as the personal representative of Defense Secretary James Schlesinger. Armitage followed with his own “entourage.”[10]
In 1979, as the Shah was falling, Von Marbod negotiated (or extorted) a memorandum of understanding from the Iranian government which essentially gave power of attorney to the United States government to terminate all of Iran’s military contracts. The document put Iran in a difficult situation with respect to armaments just as it was facing a potential war with Iraq.[11]
Unofficial U.S. aid to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan also began in the summer of 1979. Proxy agents coordinated by the Safari Club had been invading Afghanistan for about a year prior to that. The U.S. aid to the Mujahideen, a rebel group from which al Qaeda originated, officially did not start until 1980 but went on for many years under the name Operation Cyclone. This operation relied heavily on using the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) as an intermediary for funds distribution, passing of weapons, military training, and financial support.
With help from the CIA, the ISI armed and trained over 100,000 insurgents between 1978 and 1992.[12] That is, the Mujahideen, and therefore ultimately al Qaeda, was armed and trained by the U.S. and the ISI during the time when Frank Carlucci was working as Deputy Director of the CIA, leading the Department of Defense, and acting as CEO of SWT, which was discovered to be an arms sales consultant firm. During this time, Armitage was a major driver of this policy, traveling to Pakistan and Afghanistan and even meeting directly with Mujahideen leaders.[13]
In 1980, Secord helped plan the efforts to rescue the U.S. hostages held in Iran and some have expressed suspicions that he and Oliver North sabotaged the final operation for political purposes. Coincidentally, David Rubenstein, the founder of The Carlyle Group, had access to the secret plan for what turned out to be the failed rescue attempt when he was “shuffling through some papers in the president’s inbox.” Rubenstein was actually in the president’s office by himself one night, supposedly looking for a memo. Dan Briody wrote that “President Carter questioned Rubenstein about his late-night foray into his office, asking him pointedly and repeatedly what he had seen while he was there.”[14]
The rescue operation appears to have failed through a hard-to-believe sequence of mechanical problems with the helicopters. It was a challenging plan, but it never really got off the ground at all.[15] Initially, one of six helicopters failed due to rotor blade malfunction, then a second failed in a sandstorm (the common notion is that all of them failed in this way), then a third helicopter failed by way of a faulty hydraulic pump. Finally, a ground-based refueling accident resulted in the deaths of nine people. It was at this time that “Carter’s presidency did not recover.”[16]
Sears World Trade
Considering the Kuwaiti links of Stratesec CEO Wirt D. Walker III, including his leadership of Stratesec’s Kuwaiti-based parent company starting in 1982,[17] it is interesting that Ted Shackley also began working in Kuwait in the early 1980s. It was George H.W. Bush, whose family has many ties to Walker, who helped Shackley get established in Kuwait in the oil business.[18]
Back in the U.S. at this time, Frank Carlucci was one of the most powerful people in government. He was Deputy Secretary of Defense from 1981 through 1982, while Armitage served as Deputy Assistant Secretary and then Assistant Secretary. Despite having this important job, Carlucci left government to run the mysterious SWT for a few years at the height of his government career. After SWT lost tens of millions of dollars in apparently aimless endeavors, Carlucci returned to be Reagan’s National Security Advisor (NSA), and then his Secretary of Defense.
Just before leaving his position as Deputy Secretary of Defense, in 1982, Carlucci did a favor for Secord. After being suspended from his DOD job for three months while he was being investigated by the FBI about his links to EATSCO, Secord was reinstated by Carlucci. Secord retired a year later and established Stanford Technology Trading Group International, which used “a complex web of secret Swiss bank accounts and shell corporations “to build “a lucrative Enterprise from covert-operations business assigned to them by Lt. Col. Oliver L. North.”[19]
It was at this time that Carlucci left his DOD post for SWT, a company which was ostensibly designed to replicate a Japanese-style trading company. Through review of the company’s operations, however, Fortune Magazine suggested that SWT was actually “providing cover jobs for US intelligence operations.” The accusation was supported when the Washington Post revealed the existence of a secret SWT subsidiary called IPAC.
Carlucci joined SWT when Roderick M. Hills, former Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (1975 to 1977), was its chairman. Hills quickly noticed that he was no longer in charge. In an interview with author Joseph Trento, Hills remarked that he was “shocked to see that Carlucci hired Von Marbod when we all knew he was under criminal investigation… When I went down to the Sears World Trade Washington office across from the National Archives, the place looked like spook central. Carlucci was answering to a higher authority, and I don’t think it had anything to do with world trade for profit.”[20] Hills resigned in April 1984, leaving SWT to Carlucci.
Carlucci hired Von Marbod at a salary of $200,000 per year, or approximately half a million per year in today’s dollars. The company had 1,100 employees in offices around the world but Von Marbod worked with Carlucci in Washington, DC. Carlucci hired some other interesting people to run this “spook central” operation. There was:
- S. Linn Williams, a Princeton graduate who was the Vice President and General Counsel for SWT. For many years after his stint there, Williams was with Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, the law firm that employed U.S. Customs Commissioner Robert Bonner, who played an important role in the identification of the alleged 9/11 hijackers, and Ted Olson, whose testimony was critical to the official story about Flight 77.[21]
- Arthur P. Ismay was SWT’s Director of Countertrade. Countertrade was an important function for SWT and was also critical to Iran’s ability to obtain the arms it needed at the time. Interestingly, from July 1962 to June 1964, Ismay was the Officer-In-Charge of the presidential yacht USS Sequoia. President Kennedy held strategy meetings on the Sequoia during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and had his last birthday party on the yacht. Ismay later said he had information implicating a colleague in the Kennedy assassination.[22] He was never questioned about it and, instead, he was told to destroy the ship’s logbook.[23] Ismay went on to become a swift boat commander in Vietnam. After military service, he worked for Rockwell International, the company that was the predecessor to Stratesec’s sister companies, Aviation General and Commander Aircraft.[24]
- Alan Woods was Vice President of Technology for SWT from 1983 to 1985. In his book, Dick Cheney mentioned the importance of the firm Bradley Woods to his own career in the 1970s. And as stated before, Stratesec COO Barry McDaniel is now in close business partnership with Woods partner, Bruce Bradley. Woods had previously served in the Ford DOD as Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs; Special Assistant to the Secretary (Rumsfeld); and as Deputy Director of Presidential Personnel at the White House. After his time with SWT, Woods became a U.S. Trade Representative in the Reagan Administration.
SWT is also where Grant Green comes into the picture. As stated before, Green’s role as Undersecretary of Management in 2001, under Armitage, put him in a position to supervise the issuance of visas to a number of the alleged 9/11 hijackers.
Green worked for SWT during the same four years as Carlucci, from 1983 through 1986. In fact, he was Carlucci’s assistant at SWT and then followed Carlucci to the Reagan Administration, serving as Special Assistant to the President on National Security Affairs while Carlucci was Reagan’s National Security Advisor (NSA).[25] In December 1987, Reagan nominated Green as Assistant Secretary of Defense and Green served in that role for two years under Carlucci, who became Secretary of Defense.
