December 23, 2007 (LPAC)--Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair ordered his Attorney General, in no uncertain terms, to shut down the Serious Fraud Office probe of billions of dollars in bribes by the defense giant BAE Systems, to Saudi government officials in late 2006. New documents were released last week in a British law suit against Blair and others, brought by two anti-corruption groups, the Corner House and the Campaign Against the Arms Trade. The documents details a series of private meetings and correspondences between Prime Minister Blair and Attorney General Lord Goldsmith, in which Blair pressured Goldsmith to shut the probe, because Britain was under enormous pressure from Saudi Arabia. Blair claimed that BAE would lose a pending multi-billion dollar extension of the "Al Yamamah" oil-for-arms deal, and Saudi Arabia would also cut off intelligence flows on Al Qaeda.
According to documents made public on Dec. 21, 2007 by the London Guardian, Lord Goldsmith caved in to Blair's demands, just before SFO investigators were to fly to Switzerland to access bank records of Saudi middle man Wafic Said. Executive Intelligence Review specialists are currently reviewing the newly released documents. So far, EIR is the only international publication to fully expose the $100 billion slush fund, amassed through the "Al Yamamah" deal, and used to finance international covert operations, run by Britain, the United States and the Saudis. The off-the-books funds were generated by the spot market sale of an estimated $160 billion in Saudi crude oil, delivered to BAE in return for an estimated $40 billion in military hardware and services, and tens of billions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks to Saudi princes and other "Al Yamamah" players. The U.S. Department of Justice is currently investigating an estimated $2 billion in payoffs to former Saudi Ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin-Sultan, who was the original broker of the "Al Yamamah" deal with Britain's Margaret Thatcher.
The new revelations could badly damage Tony Blair's ongoing efforts to "reinvent" himself as an international diplomat and philanthropist. U.S. intelligence sources have reported that Blair is in the process of establishing a series of religious and charitable fronts (he recently converted to Catholicism), to conceal some of the same international covert operations, previously run through the BAE/Saudi "Al Yamamah" slush fund. Blair is not only the new "peace emmisary" for the Quartet. He is being promoted to be the next "super president" of a restructured European Union.
