Prelude to Terror: The Rogue CIA and the Legacy of America's Private Intelligence Network

by Joseph J. Trento

After decades of writing and research about American intelligence, Joseph Trento has written the most authoritative indictment of CIA splinter groups, two generations of Bush family involvement in illegal financial networks, and the funding of the agents of terror. Prelude to Terror reveals the history of a corrupt group of spymasters—led by Ted Shackley—who were fired when Jimmy Carter became president, but who maintained their intelligence portfolio and used it to create a private intelligence network. After this rogue group helped engineer Carter’s defeat in 1980 and allied with George H.W. Bush, these former CIA men planned and conducted what became the Iran–Contra scandal and, through the Saudis, allied the U.S. with extreme elements in Islam. The CIA’s number-one front man, Edwin P. Wilson, was framed by Shackley and his cohorts so that Wilson’s operations could be taken over. For the first time the story of how CIA director George H. W. Bush was recruited into this network, and brought it into the bosom of the Saudi royal family, is told in detail, as well as how this group’s manipulation of the CIA bureaucracy allowed Osama bin Laden’s fundraising to thrive as al Qaeda flourished under Saudi and CIA protection.

Genres: History, Conspiracy Theories, The United States Of America, Nonfiction, American History, Politics

432 pages, Hardcover

First published May 19, 2005

Reviews

[Justin Tapp · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars. Few books have shaped my thinking like this book. It's hard to write a review of it because there are so many incredible stories in this book. If you want to know the history of the CIA, this is your book.

The author has spent over 35 years as an investigative journalist covering military and intelligence operations. This book is a compilation of 35 years worth of first-hand interviews, painstaking research, and incredible use of the Freedom of Information Act to obtain previously classified and unknown documents. He has done a good job compiling all of this into a readable book (one 46-page chapter has 93 separate citations).
Americans have never heard of Ted Shackley or Ed Wilson, but men like these have shaped our country's intelligence networks and influenced the course of history (click the links to get a sense of what we're talking about here).

The book is essentially about 2 people: Ed Wilson and George H.W. Bush. Wilson was a good businessman who was part of a CIA that became essentially a privatized business network after Watergate. He was later framed and imprisoned by Shackley and the government, mainly because he knew too much.

George H.W. Bush was the son of one of the original CIA men, Prescott Bush. He worked with anti-Castro CIA activities in the 1960s, and later helped protect the CIA from Congressional scrutiny as CIA Director during the 1970's. He partially oversaw the privatization of the CIA, and his Saudi connections would end up making the CIA reliant on foreign intelligence services and embroiled in controversy like Iran-Contra and Iraqgate.

This book definitely shows a different side of Bush "41". His long-running extramarital affair with Jennifer Fitzgerald, stories of his business failures, proof of him working for the CIA long before he says he did, his role in undermining Jimmy Carter, his role and deposits in illegal banks used for black operations, and his protection of the Saudis while arming both Saddam Hussein and Iran in the 1980's, policies which greatly contributed to Gulf War I and 9/11. You won't find this in his autobiography or at his museum in College Station.

It also fills in many of the gaps in House of Bush, House of Saud which I reviewed here and here a couple years ago.

Very little is said about G.W. Bush, 9/11, and Gulf War II, but the history in the book leading to those events is fascinating. Current President Bush is shown as inheriting a mess. This is the author's commentary on the last page:

"George H.W. Bush 's long partnership with American and Saudi Intelligence and money set in motion events that would fall on the shoulders of a son totally unprepared for the challenge. The arc from Prescott to George W. Bush is a three-generation saga of the rise to power of an American family. Ironically, the Bushes survived and prospered in each generation by making alliances with some of the most anti-American elements, and yet disguised these involvements with the noblest rhetoric of public service. President George W. Bush has a lifetime of friends and family who have always come to his rescue. But sometimes friends fail... as Bush learned when he heard the awful news on September 11, 2001... In that moment, his personal history and the dark secret history his father and grandfather helped shaped all came together."

There's so many events beyond the Middle East that are mentioned in this book. Vietnam, South America, Eastern Europe. Mind-blowing information.

After reporting on the CIA for 35 years and seeing it change shape various times, the author comes to this sad conclusion:


"The CIA during the George W. Bush administration has become at best irrelevant and at worst a joke... The people in charge...have taken America's Intelligence, foreign policy, and military into a private world..."

How it got to that point is shown clearly in the long history recorded in the book.

[Thomas Ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Prelude to Terror: The Rogue CIA and the Legacy of America's Private Intelligence Network, Joseph J. Trento (1947-), 2005, 408 pages, ISBN 0786714646, Library-of-Congress JK468.I6 T67 2005 Historical Society Library: https://search.library.wisc.edu/searc...

The biggest takeaway is, what goes around, comes around. One surprise, the entire Islamic world, including Saudi Arabia, has nuclear-weapons technology, as of 2005 (deliberately permitted by Jimmy Carter and later U.S. presidents). No longer a surprise, the CIA works only for itself, for the weapons industry, and for the moneyed elite. The CIA gives no valuable intelligence to even a CIA-cheerleader president.

CIA bosses are loyal not to the Constitution but to each other and to their political supporters. pp. xiv-xv.

The CIA advances U.S. corporate interests overseas. p. 3.

Most CIA operations were ineffective and/or disasters. BUT. Because the president had been in the decision-making loop, potential embarrassment precluded any control of the CIA. p. ix.

Procurement is the source of real power in the military. p. 55.

JFK ASSASSINATION

[Trento doesn't say that after JFK fired Allen Dulles as CIA director, Dulles had the CIA murder President Kennedy (with the approval of Nelson and David Rockefeller and the rest of the Council on Foreign Relations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council... ).

See

The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles [1893-1969], the CIA [1947-], and the Rise of America's Secret Government, David Talbot [1951-], 2015: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

and

/JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters/, James W. Douglass (1937-), 2008: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_W...
]

TREASON

The Ronald Reagan 1980 presidential campaign and the CIA committed treason, persuading the Iranian revolutionaries to /wait/ to release the hostages until /after/ President Carter lost the 1980 election. pp. 205-211.
See also:
/Den of Spies: Reagan, Carter, and the Secret History of the Treason that Stole the White House/, Craig Unger (1949-), 2024: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ,
and Gary Sick, /October Surprise/,
and Bani-Sadr, /My Turn to Speak: Iran, the Revolution & Secret Deals with the U.S./

Top CIA officers went rogue, working to bring down President Carter. pp. 117, 164-165. The rogue officers conducted private clandestine operations, not from CIA stations but through right-wing political organizations worldwide, with funding from oil states and others. pp. 169-180.

After President Carter fired 823 CIA agents in 1977, Theodore C. Shackley continued to direct them in covert operations, focusing on making money through front companies, and undermining Carter's policies, until Carter could be replaced. pp. xiv, 125. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor...

Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter's national security adviser, was a CIA agent controlled by Ted Shackley.

The savings-and-loan crisis of the mid-1980s involved benefactors of the illegal private intelligence network recruited by George H.W. Bush. The Reagan administration delayed the S&L bailout until after Bush was elected in 1988. This raised the cost of the bailout from $20 billion to $1.4 trillion. pp. 329, 345.

AL QAEDA

The Saudi royal family funded Osama bin Laden's operations around the world, including against the U.S., in exchange for his promise not to attack Saudi Arabia. The same Islamic groups the CIA had encouraged to set up mosques in the U.S. to recruit men to fight in Afghanistan, were now being used against Americans. pp. 306-307, 317. The CIA funded seven major mujahideen armies in Afghanistan, including bin Laden's. After the USSR left Afghanistan, bin Laden kept the fighters, expanding the holy war to Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, the Philippines, and Chechnya. The CIA knew, and allowed Islamist holy warriors visas to the U.S. pp. 342-343.

IRAN-IRAQ WAR

George H.W. Bush and his CIA tried to get Iran and Iraq to destroy each other. When Iraq had an advantage, Bush's CIA gave Iraq false satellite images, causing them to place their forces in the wrong places, and suffer horrendous losses. pp. 299, 346.

FIRST (BUSH I) IRAQ WAR

Saddam was angry about G.H.W. Bush's treachery in the Iran-Iraq war, and about the Emir of Kuwait's slant-drilling into Iraqi oil. Bush's ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, relayed to Saddam what top State Department officials had told her, "We don't have much to say about your border differences with Kuwait. We hope you solve these matters quickly." Bush sent young Americans to die to reclaim a royal family's undemocratic emirate for them. pp. 347-349.

GEORGE H.W. BUSH

Arms dealer Sarkis Soghanalian knew too much about George H.W. Bush's illegal Iraqi operations. Bush's Justice Department and a Bush-appointed judge got Soghanalian convicted on false charges of illegal weapons dealing, and put in prison for 6 years. Bush's U.S. Attorney refused to let the FBI see Soghanalian; he wanted to tell them that the USSR was offering nuclear weapons for sale. p. 300-301.

PROFITEERS

Rogue CIA agents sold weapons to both sides in the Iran-Iraq war. p. 236.

Israel had been selling arms to the Shah, and continued to sell arms to Iran's Islamist government. Iran was an enemy, but the sales were profitable. The U.S. shipped arms to Israel, which then sold them to Iran. This violated U.S. law--but when Senator Charles Percy, R-Illinois, questioned it, the Zionist lobby in the U.S. attacked Percy as an enemy of Israel. pp. 280-289.

Both the CIA's Contras and the Sandinistas exported cocaine to the U.S. to fund the Nicaraguan civil war. p. 282.

OIL STATES

U.S.-supported dictatorships in the Persian Gulf repressed their populations and kept them poor, as the U.S. Government expected. The only U.S. interest was cheap oil imports. p. 181. The Saudi Arabian people's average annual incomes declined from $13,000 in 1981 to $6,000 by 2003. This impoverishment, and Wahhabism, fueled what would become bin Laden's war on the United States. p. 338.

ISLAMISTS

After the Bush II Iraq war, the U.S. turned Iraq over to the radical Shiite faction that hates Westerners the most. p. 353.

After India detonated its first nuclear weapon on the Pakistani border in 1974, Pakistan pushed its nuclear program into high gear, with aid from Saudi Arabia, Libya, China, and from freelance weapons dealers. p. 315.

Iran was financing Israel's weapons systems in 1977, including nukes. p. 198, 241. The U.S. had secretly helped Israel build nuclear weapons since the 1950s. p. 318.

The CIA deliberately ignored the imminent Islamic revolution in 1979. p. 182.

The CIA supported Osama bin Laden's Islamic militants in Afghanistan beginning in 1978, without President Carter's authorization or knowledge. p. 167.

Beginning in 1979, Carter, Reagan, and G.H.W. Bush permitted Pakistan to build nuclear weapons, in exchange for Pakistani help fighting the USSR in Afghanistan. p. 313-318, 321-328, 341.

The harvest by 1991: Pakistan developed nuclear weapons technology, shared throughout the Islamic world, including Libya, Iran, Malaysia, and with North Korea. A radical Islamic army, victorious over the USSR, eager to destroy the West. Afghanistan ruled by the Taliban, far more radical and anti-Western even than Iran. USSR collapsed. pp. 168, 314, 317-318, 321-328.

NICARAGUA

President Carter stopped supporting brutal Nicaraguan dictator Somoza in 1978, allowing the Sandinista party to be elected. Rogue CIA agents then began aiding brutal Nicaraguan landlords and military officers, the foundation for what would become Reagan's secret war in Central America. pp. 134-137. Rogue CIA officers offered to sell Somoza information on his political enemies so that he could have them killed. p. 137.

ASSASSINATIONS

The CIA assassinated (20,857 to more than 40,000) people in Vietnam, said by their neighbors to be Viet Cong. p. 47. Rogue CIA officers offered to sell such a service to Nicaraguan dictator Somoza in 1978. p. 137. CIA officers identified hundreds of Iranian dissidents, 1976-1979, so that the shah's secret police could assassinate them. p. 159.

The CIA assassinated Congo's President Patrice Lumumba, and installed corrupt dictator Joseph Mobutu in his place. p. 40.

VIETNAM

The CIA's secret war in Laos succeeded only in addicting servicemen and other Americans to heroin, funding and entrenching organized crime in the U.S. and Asia, training rogue CIA agents, and destroying ancient civilizations. pp. 37, 44-45, 165. (The Johnson administration gave CIA station chief Ted Shackley a medal for it. p. 38.)

The vision sold to the American public of the United States trying to help the freedom-loving government of South Vietnam had no resemblance to the truth. p. 30. The CIA used hundreds of millions of dollars of heroin profits to pay for its secret war in Laos. pp. 31, 33. By 1967, body bags containing dead U.S. servicemen were carrying heroin by the kilo. In the U.S., mortuaries under the thumb of organized crime took delivery of the product for distribution. The U.S. was flooded with Asian heroin. Dover, Delaware Air Force Base became a Mafia drug-pickup point. p. 32.

SAUDIS

The Saudi royal family bankrolled the CIA, to inhibit Congressional scrutiny. The Saudis also, for their own purposes, shaped the intelligence the CIA relied on. p. xiii-xiv. By September 2001, the CIA knew about al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden only what the Saudi intelligence service told them. p. xv. During the USSR-Afghan war, the CIA had dumped money on Saudi and Pakistani intelligence, with no ability to evaluate where it went and what the harvest would be. Part of which would become al Qaeda. pp. 339-342.

CAN'T FIRE A ROGUE

After Nixon fired Richard Helms as CIA director in 1973, Helms continued, unauthorized, to direct CIA covert operations. p. xiii.

ALLEN DULLES and PRESCOTT BUSH

Allen Dulles recruited ex-Nazis, 1945-1947, and the Wall Street bankers who financed the Axis, to create the CIA. pp. 1-2. Allen Dulles had the German banking documents American soldiers had captured, detailing Prescott Bush's financing of Hitler. President Roosevelt learned that Bush had been funneling money to Hitler, but kept it quiet, not to embarrass Bush's partner, a prominent Democrat. Prescott Bush became a U.S. senator, on the committee overseeing the CIA. pp. 3-12.

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very interesting expose of government corruption beginning in the 40's and 50's that led to 9-11-01. Mainly the story of the Bush family and oil and CIA. (kick-backs, payoffs, lies, etc.)

[Adi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes confusing, I had to google peoples names a lot to remember their origins, but a certain degree of that comes with the subject matter. Crucial for anybody to read.

[Colby Shumway · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was certainly challenging to keep all the names straight in this book. However, there was very interesting information revealed regarding the privatization of us intelligence and the systemic corruption and lack of foresight/ regard for consequences that would result from this intelligence privatization.

The details regarding the life of HW Bush, and his rise as a figure was particularly illuminating. Additionally the details about the Iranian revolution, the October surprise, Iran contra, the Iran Iraq more, and much more were very shocking details that I found to be very useful with regards to further reading on this topic.

Overall, this was certainly a dense, informative book that got confusing at times but also had some very valuable tidbits of information.

[W · Rating 1 out of 5]

The author has found a way to make arms dealing boring (no small feat).

[Jay D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great intelligence read.