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• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000201160035-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 19, 2010
• Sequence Number: 35
• Publication Date: September 17, 1975
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/19: CIA-RDP90-00806R000201160035-3
14s Esji~nage,
Four ti! of c si.r.part seriea
By Jim Hoagland
C:ashL>ton Post Foreign Se.ice
BEIRUT-Farouk Jaber counts.
among his friends a former American
secretary of the treasury, a shadowy
but rich Libyan sales tycoon who was
spirited out of Libya on a U. S. Air
Force plane during the 1959 coup, and
the former head of Central intell'-
gence Agency operations in Saudi Ara-
bia.
But Jaber, who acknowledges that
personal relations are a key to doing
bn.;sines~ in the Arab world. stresses
that he has done business with none of
the above. Ile denies that he knew that
the CIA man was anything other than
the diplomat he posed as.
"As a businessman, you meet many
diplomats and other kinds of people."
said Jaber. a diminutive Lebanese con-
sultant and sales representative who
likes to wear American-style short-
sleeve shirts to combat Beirut's oppres-
sive summer heat. "'This man v: as a
good friend, that's all," he said, adding
emphasis on the last two words.
Knowingly and not, Arab busine-s-
men are increasingly meeting intelli-
gence-gatherers. The emeroin2 eco-
nomie power of the Arab world and
the new importance of oil and other
raw materials is causing a basic change
of emphasis in intelligence operations
here, according to we'll-informed
STATCIA and other intelligence agen-
cies have long used commercial covers
and relationships with local busi-
nesses, largely as a matter of conven-
ience. Sma11 travel agencies, manage-
ment consultant firms and impor;-ex-
por t businesses are among many- shel-
ters that have been developed in Bei-
rut. Now intelligence penetration into
the Middle East business world is be-
coming a necessity.
Growing national and private for-
tunes in the Middle East are financing
ventures with long-terns political im-
pact that these agencies must assess.
The specter of economic "strangula-
tions" by oil embargoes and further
price increases as described by U.S.
Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger,
is a high-priority concern.
In the shpdows that envelop both es-
pinnage and 1iddle.East deal-ina%ing,
rich of which it;volves.the expenditure
of vast sums of money for pt:rnoses
that often remain hidden, the point at
which simple intelligence-gathering
ends and deep penetration of policy
malting begins is deliberately left
'fuzzy.
1 ~'S 7
C)1,4 -5 Q y jc p w J
Where the cash ends up in these uni-
q';e "joint ventures" is also carefully
cloaked. But it is clear that some Arab
officials and businessmen who have
dealt with the CIA or have gathered
around themselves the reputation for
doing so have been the recipients of a
number of financial windfalls in the
soaring purchases of arms, sensitive
communication equipment and even
military personnel by the oil produc-
ers.
Suspicions of CIA connections to the
frenetic wheeling and dealing of the
newly rich Middle East add an explo-
sive element to rising public concern
about business practices and corrup-
tion.
The agency is the favorite target of
Arab leftists, who would like to dis-
credit and eventually bring clown pro-
A estern Arab governments. Exposure
of firAi espionage-business connections
would have an even greater impact in
the political role of ITT in Chile in
1970. Despite this risk, the gathering of
economic intelligence is a growth in-
dustry in this region. It is "thy' big new
field," says Miles Copeland, a London
based author of books on the CIA.
Copeland admits to having been a
consultant for the CIA in the Middle
East and has been identified by many
Arab newspapers as an agency opera-
tive.
"The U.S. government departments
responsible for this work art, hair,
squeezed by the enormous demand for
information and judgments and cannot
keen up," Copeland said in a telephone
interview.
Copeland began a management con-
sulting firm in Beirut in 1957. "i e just
started early in the field." He said he
left the firm after it was absorbed into
a new company called Interser to do
similar work for Kermit (Kim) Roose-
velt, a former CIA agent who mounted
the co,-ip that brought the shah of Iran
beck to his throne and who has iii re-
cent years been deeply involved in the
sale ~,i weapons to Middle East coun-
tries.
Copeland reported in detail a con-
versation he said he had with Robert
B. Anderson on the setting up of Inter-
ser. and American businessmen in Bei-
rut who dealt with, the company say
they had the impression Anderson was
associated with it.
Anderson was secretary of the treas-
ury in the first Eisenhower administl?a-
tion. Entrusted with delicate ;political
missions in the .Middle East by Eisen-
hower and later by Lyndon 11. John-
son. he has returned to the region fre-
quently as a representative of Ameri-
can companies seeking business here.
He has denied that he owned Interser,
By chance, Farouk Jaber says, he
and Anderson are friends. Moreover,
Jaber an -,3 .m:. an in-
.^,uential Saudi Arabia-born banker
and sales representative names' Chas-
san Shaker, were clients of ' Interser,
which was run by John M. McCrane,
who now works for Anderson's New
York company.
In what Jaber said was another ex-
traordinary bit of coincidence, Shaker
and McCrane recently were both listed
as prospective shareholders in the Vin-
nel Corp. of California.
Vinnell broke into the headlines
early this year after the company
landed a $77 million contract to send
1,000 former U.S. servicemen to train
Saudi Arabia's national guard in infan-
try tactics, handling armored vehicles
and firing missiles. One congressman,
who. asked not to be identified, imme-
diately labeled the operation as "a CIA
front," and cbntroversy swirled briefly
around Vinnell's "mercenaries."
The tangled chain of events that led
a private American company into the
most sensitive security unit in Saudi
Arabia involves some of the key fig-
ures in the brokering of power in the
Middle East.
How deeply it involves Shaker --- a
Cambridge University graduate in his
early 40s, with a wide range of con-
tacts at the highest levels in Saudi
Arabia, Oman and Jordan-is in dis-
pute.
The story begins In February 1972,
when King Faisal prevailed upon his
brother, Prince Abdul!ah, to bring
American advisers in to reorganize, ex-
pand and train the 35,000-man Bedouin
army that guards key government in-
stallations and Saudia Arabia's oil-
fields.
. 24~-_ I c,/- 3
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/19: CIA-RDP90-00806R000201160035-3