Philippines, Cheney and a coming military coup?

The following is taken from
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/

December 13, 2005 -- Halliburton's connection to low wage slave trading in the Middle East and espionage inside the Vice President of the United States' White House office.

Vice President Dick Cheney's old company, Halliburton, has some interesting partners in its work in occupied Iraq. On Dec. 11, WMR reported on links between Halliburton/Kellogg, Brown & Root and a Viktor Bout-owned airline based in Moldova, Aerocom/Air Mero. Bout's airlines have also reportedly been involved in flying low wage earners from East Asia to Dubai and on to Iraq where they work for paltry salaries in sub-standard living conditions. Halliburton/KBR has sub-contracted to a shadowy Dubai-based firm, Prime Projects International Trading LLC (PPI), which "trades" mainly in workers from Thailand, the Philippines, Nepal, India, Pakistan, and other poor Asian nations.

In 2004, after a Filipino PPI worker was killed in a mortar attack on Camp Anaconda in Iraq, the Philippines government of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo ordered PPI, which is based at P.O. Box 42252, Dubai, UAE, to send overseas Filipino workers OFWs) home from Iraq and Kuwait and banned it from further recruiting in the Philippines. Some of PPI's recruiting included running ads on the Internet. In addition to the other south Asian employees, the Philippine workers were employed by PPI under a Pentagon sweetheart umbrella contract let to KBR under the LOGCAP (Logistics Civil Augmentation Program) III program.

Although little is known about PPI, it reportedly has been linked to Halliburton/KBR for a number of years and has been associated with Halliburton contracts in the Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the Balkans during the time when Dick Cheney headed the firm. PPI has also been involved in operations at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where Filipino workers were involved in building the prison housing suspected "Al Qaeda" prisoners.

Inside sources report that PPI has some high level financial partners, including the al Nahayan royal family of the United Arab Emirates and Vice President Cheney. And there are connections to President Macapagal-Arroyo's ordering the repatriation of hundreds of Filipino workers home from Iraq and Kuwait and the discovery that U.S. Marine Corps and FBI spy Leandro Aragoncillo, a Filipino-American who worked as a Marine security aide inside Cheney's office until early 2002 and who was arrested by the FBI this past October, had stolen dossiers from Cheney's office that were considered damaging to Mrs. Macapagal-Arroyo. Macapagal-Arroyo was sworn in as President on January 20, 2001 (the same day George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were sworn in) after a popular revolution ousted Joseph Estrada. Macapagal-Arroyo, the daughter of past Philippine President Diosdado Macapagal.

Aragoncillo passed Cheney's reports on Macapagal-Arroyo, some of which were obtained from National Security Agency intercepts, to Estrada, a political opponent of Macapagal-Arroyo and an ally of former Philippine First Lady Imelda Marcos. Estrada was planning a coup against Macapagal-Arroyo with U.S. support. Aragoncillo was linked to another U.S.-based Filipino spy -- former Philippine National Police officer Michael Ray Aquino -- who was also involved in passing Cheney's classified documents to Estrada. Aquino, who is wanted in the Philippines for involvement in murder, kidnapping, and drug trafficking, was also arrested by the FBI.

More importantly, Aquino's close friend, Estrada, is also a business associate of indicted GOP lobbyist/reputed gangster Jack Abramoff. Another high-level Filipino-American in the White House, Karl Rove's Assistant and Assistant to the President, Susan Bonzon Ralston, also served as Abramoff's personal assistant at the law firms Preston Gates & Ellis and Greenberg Traurig. Ralston has been called to testify before the grand jury and special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who is investigating Karl Rove's involvement in leaking the name of CIA covert agent Valerie Plame Wilson to the media.

Aragoncillo allegedly passed over 100 documents from a classified FBI computer system at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey while working there as an intelligence analyst for the FBI after he left the Marine Corps. It is significant that Aragoncillo admitted to spying while only working as an aide to Cheney and not when he worked for Vice President Al Gore during 1999 and 2000.
It now seems apparent that Aragoncillo and Aquino were part of an illegal Cheney covert operation to topple Macapagal-Arroyo in retaliation for her stopping PPI's recruiting efforts in the Philippines. That decision by Manila dealt a severe financial blow to the Halliburton/KBR LOGCAP profits in Iraq. It is also of note that Aragoncillo worked with national Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.

What was not anticipated by Cheney was that the FBI would step in and arrest Aragoncillo for culling classified information from the FBI's computers at Fort Monmouth. This case, like the AIPAC espionage case involving top Pentagon officials, has been largely ignored by the media. However, along with the Plame case and AIPACgate, all roads lead back to Cheney's office at the White House.

December 14, 2005 -- Yesterday, WMR reported on Vice President Dick Cheney's involvement with a Philippine espionage ring operating out of his White House office that provided Philippine opposition figures with damaging classified information on President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo gleaned from U.S. intelligence sources, including communications intercepts. Cheney was miffed that a company tied to his old firm Halliburton was prevented by Macapagal-Arroyo from employing and recruiting thousands of low wage slaves from the Philippines for dangerous work in Iraq.

Today, there are reports from Manila that a retired general, Fortunato Abat, has illegally named a "transition government" to replace that of Macapagal-Arroyo.
Arroyo-Macapagal was in Kuala Lumpur attending an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit at the time of the coup attempt. Last week, the building housing the offices of Macapagal-Arroyo's husband was strafed by gunfire and the leader of a 2003 attempted coup against Macapagal-Arroyo, Marine Captain Nicanor Faeldon, was allowed by his military guards to escape from prison and join Abat's forces. Last May, there was yet another military uprising against Macapagal-Arroyo.

U.S.-influenced media in the Philippines is calling for the President to step down, citing dubious opinion polls. It appears that even revelations that Mr. Cheney's "work up" on Macapagal-Arroyo and provision of sensitive U.S. intelligence to Philippine opposition forces did not dissuade him from continuing his plan to topple Macapagal-Arroyo and replace her with a client willing to send Filipino workers back to Iraq. That plan is currently underway in the Philippines and a military government is looming on the horizon.




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