In an interesting confluence of CIA activities and the energy industry, it is noteworthy that Andre Le Gallo, a former official of the CIA's Operations Directorate and a corporate intelligence official for the now-defunct Enron Corporation, has penned a novel titled "The Caliphate." Echoing typical neo-conservative propaganda angles, the book features a radical Islamic group bent on re-establishing a borderless Muslim empire, the Caliphate, and uses terrorism and assassination to achieve its goals. Not surprisingly, the American hero of the book who strives to thwart the plans of the evil Muslims is named Steve Church.
Le Gallo served as the National Intelligence Officer for Counterterrorism at the CIA. He has also served as Visiting Scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
Former CIA Director and chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Porter Goss, wrote the introduction to Le Gallo's novel. Goss was forced to resign from the CIA after he was implicated in a number of scandals, including the bribery and contract fraud surrounding his Executive Director, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo.
In "Jaded Tasks," the editor wrote about the presence of Le Gallo and fellow ex-CIA agents at Enron and the cabal of ex-CIA officers and individuals like Zalmay Khalilzad, former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq, and Hamid Karzai, current President of Afghanstan, that permeated a number of energy companies closely connected to the Bush-Cheney administration and were connected to the negotiations with the Taliban prior to 9/11 for the Central Asian gas pipeline:
"Another company involved in the CentGas pipeline was the now-defunct Enron, a company that defrauded billions of dollars from its stockholders, employees, and business partners. As with Halliburton and AALC [Armitage Associates LC], a number of former U.S. intelligence officers turned up on Enron’s payroll. The firm had at least three ex-CIA agents on its payroll. These included Andre Le Gallo, who later became a business intelligence consultant based in California, and David M. Cromley, a former CIA clandestine services officer who served in civil-war ravaged Somalia and Liberia and who, after serving as Enron’s chief competitive analysis officer, went to work with three other former CIA/Enron officials at Secure Solutions International. The company was formed from the remnants of the security division at Enron after the financial collapse.
There were reportedly secret meetings held between Enron and the Taliban in Tashkent on September 7, 1996 (also attended by representatives of the Uzbek government and UNOCAL) and at the Houstonian Hotel in Houston in the spring of 1997. Prior to the Tashkent meeting, the sum of $10 billion was moved from a Cyprus bank through Barclay’s Bank in London, and on to Enron in Houston. Saudi financier Adnan Khashoggi, the Saudi billionaire arms dealer and veteran of the BCCI and Iran-contra scandals, reportedly attended the 1996 meeting in Tashkent.
Frank Wisner, who served on Enron’s board, used his links with the CIA station chief in New Delhi (while he was ambassador to India in the mid-1990s) to secure Enron's acquisition of the Dabhol power plant. Wisner assured that Enron would be guaranteed $30 billion in revenue from the government of Maharashtra state, with about half of that net profit. During his stint as the U.S. ambassador to the Philippines from 1991-1992, Wisner clinched Enron the contract to manage two Subic Bay power plants. Wisner's father was a CIA agent who committed suicide in 1965 after a career that included assisting the overthrow of democratically elected governments in Iran and Guatemala. Another Enron director was Henry 'Pug' Winokur, who, from 1988-1997 was Chairman of Dyncorp, a favorite CIA 'carve out' contractor in Latin America, the Balkans, and Africa. Ken Lay, himself, had ties to the intelligence community when he worked in the Pentagon during the Vietnam War."
Secure Solutions International continued to work for Enron even after the energy giant filed for bankruptcy. Its tasks included guarding the Dabhol power plant in India. Secure Solutions, headquartered in Houston, was led by John Presley, a former FBI agent who served as Enron's director of corporate security. In addition to four former CIA officers, the AP reported that Secure Solutions also had a former investgator for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection on its payroll.
Enron shredded hundreds of thousands of documents during the Fall of 2001 after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) revealed it was investigating Enron for possible fraud. The shredding occurred twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and even over Christmas.
In June 2006, Secure Solutions was awarded a $2.5 million contract by the General Services Administration (GSA) in Auburn, Washington for "mission oriented business integrated services." The company also specialized in advising wealthy families on prevention and response to kidnappings. One of the leading underwriters of kidnapping insurance policies for oil company executives and employees traveling abroad was AIG.
