The English language news for Spain and Portugal
Lisbon, 26 July 2002
OSWALD LeWINTER ADDRESSES PORTUGAL’S PARLIAMENT
ON THE `OCTOBER SURPRISE’
IMPLICATES KISSINGER IN MURDER OF PRIME MINISTER AND ILLEGAL ARMS TO IRAN DEAL
By Rui Amaral do Brito ©7/26/02
Retired American Major General and former senior CIA officer, Dr. Oswald LeWinter, 71, who has been living in exile near Lisbon since his release from an Austrian prison, where he served two of a four year sentence resulting from a sting operation run against him by the CIA and FBI with the connivance of Harrods millionaire, Mohamed Al Fayed, spoke before the National Assembly Wednesday, July 24th on the subject of Portugal’s part in the infamous and illegal “October Surprise”, which is still officially denied by the U.S. Congress.
The ailing LeWinter, author of two best selling volumes in Portuguese, “Desmantelar A America” and “Democracia E Secretismo”, received a standing ovation from the members of parliament following his talk and two-hour question period, parts of which were carried live on Channel 2. LeWinter is well-known in government circles in Portugal for his role as one of three senior CIA officers who came to Portugal in 1974 to help in the planning of the bloodless coup that toppled the fascist Salazar-Caetano dictatorship and helped extricate Portugal from its unwinnable colonial wars in Africa.
In his speech, LeWinter presented strong evidence that the illegal `October Surprise’ arms for hostages deal struck in Paris meetings between George Bush, the elder, William Casey (later CIA director) and representatives of the Khomeini government on October 19th 1980, resulted in covert arms shipments from the port of Setubal, made on or about December 1st, 1980, to Iran against the expressed prohibition of the Portuguese government.
LeWinter told the assembled legislators investigating the murder of Prime Minister Dr. Francisco Sa Carneiro and hi Minister of Defense, Adelino Amaro da Costa, by an airplane bomb on December 4th, 1980, that on the 15th of November 1980, following the successful election of the Reagan-Bush team as President and Vice-President of the U.S.A., Henry Kissinger arrived in Portugal for talks with Dr. Sa Carneiro but was unsuccessful in securing his assent to the shipment of arms from NATO stores on the U.S. base in the Azores to Iran from a Portuguese port.
The weapons, relabeled as Farm Machinery were shipped nevertheless with the help of two members of the military named by LeWinter, Army Marshall Costa Gomes, who was President of the Republic from 1974-1976, and Admiral Pinheiro de Azevedo, who had been Prime Minister in 1975. Both officers, according to LeWinter, provided covert aid to Kissinger’s local agents in making the secret shipments. LeWinter also told the lawmakers that when the Minister of Defense learned about the shipments he planned to go to the Security Council of the U.N. to report this violation of Portuguese sovereignty. On December 4th 1980, both
men, Sa Carneiro and Amaro da Costa, together with their wives, pilots and Sa Carneiro’s chief of cabinet, were in a private plane that had taken off from Camarate when it exploded, killing all the occupants. No one was ever charged with the murders. LeWinter also presented proof that the administration that followed the tragedy, Kissinger friend and fellow Bilderberg steering committee member, Francisco Pinto Balsemao, allowed uncounted shipments of arms to Iran and the Contras through Portugal.
Source:
http://www.newsmakingnews.com/lewinter8,2,02.htm
—
WTF? This same phrase is now being bandied about by some of the Republicans… what can possibly be in the planning stages? I am worried now.
A Portuguese blogger tipped me off to this old story.
at least as far back as the Reagan/Carter election; i.e., getting the Iranian hostages released at a certain time to make Carter look ineffectual and incompetent.
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_cr/h920205-october-clips.htm
The link above collects some of the news clips from that era and the events surrounding -that- October Surprise.
How much earlier was the phrase used, by whom, and where? And most of all, what is the significance of this phrase being used by Republicans, who you would think would be distancing themselves from references to this earlier scandal??
headline right now:
http://www.drudgereport.com/
‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he appeared in the next month’…
TERESA PREDICTS OSAMA ‘CAPTURE’ BEFORE ELECTION
http://www.drudgereport.com/
smart, very smart! (wonder which one of the new campaignistas thought this one up–get the worst possible “October Surprise” out of the way right now, grab the high ground on it.)
…is kind of like reading and relying on the National Enquirer. In any case, Teresa Heinz Kerry came up with the same conclusion many of us have.
If he’s dead, I think we should check the body of bin Laden for freezer burn IF he turns up in October.
As I understand it, the latest short-duration radio-isotope forensic analyses are extremely effective at dating length of time elapsed since death and, interestingly enough, region of inhabitation before time of death (i.e. if they were feeding Osama MREs for any significant length of time before offing him, it could be picked up). There’s been a fair bit of publicity around these techniques in forensic circles lately due to the pretty famous child sacrifice case in the UK.
Short form: it’s getting tougher and tougher to run a good conspiracy these days.
The fact that Kerry is an investigator and Edwards is a prosecutor hasn’t been lost on me either. I think the neocons realize they really have something to worry about, this is why they’re pulling every dirty trick they can think of, and since they pretty much “own” the media, they can spin anything the way they want it.
What they didn’t count on was that people aren’t necessarily as stupid as they think they are. (Or, at least, that is my hope.)