The Safari Club was a covert alliance of intelligence services formed in 1976 that ran clandestine operations around Africa after the United States Congress limited the power of the CIA in the mid-1970s. The Club formed in the late 1970s after the bloodless left-wing Carnation Revolution on 25th April 1974, after which Portugal's last colonies in Africa gained independence. The revolution effectively ended the Portuguese Colonial War.U.S. Relies Heavily on Saudi Money to Support Syrian Rebels , The New York Times, 23 January 2016
The Safari Club formal members were pre-revolutionary Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and France. The group maintained informal connections with the United States, South Africa, Rhodesia, and Israel. The group executed a successful military intervention in Zaire in response to an invasion from Angola. It also provided arms to Somalia, which precipitated an internal divide over American abstention from the Ogaden War. It organized secret diplomacy relating to anti-communism in Africa, and has been credited with initiating the process resulting in the 1979 Egypt–Israel peace treaty.
The Safari Club could not function effectively after the Iranian Revolution neutralized the Shah of Iran.
Organization Alexandre de Marenches initiated the pact with messages to the four other countries—and to newly independent Algeria, which declined to participate.
The original charter was signed in 1976 by leaders and intelligence directors from the five countries:Heikal, Iran: The Untold Story (1982), p. 113.Cooley, Unholy Wars, p. 15.
France – Alexandre de Marenches, Director of the SDECE Saudi Arabia – Kamal Adham, Director of the GIP Egypt – General Kamal Hassan Ali, Director of the Mukhabarat Morocco – General Ahmed Dlimi, Director of the DGED Iran – General Nematollah Nassiri, Director of the SAVAK
The charter begins: "Recent events in Angola and other parts of Africa have demonstrated the continent's role as a theater for revolutionary wars prompted and conducted by the Soviet Union, which utilizes individuals or organizations sympathetic to, or controlled by, Marxist ideology."
The group's purpose was therefore to oppose Soviet influence by supporting anti-communists.Miglietta, American Alliance Policy (2002), p. 20. "The Shah provided covert assistance to groups seeking to destabilize the governments of Soviet allies in the region such as Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as providing assistance to pro-Western governments such as Oman and South Vietnam. In an effort to further advance these goals, the Shah associated Iran with a group of conservative Middle Eastern and African states in an informal organization known as the Safari Club. This group was dedicated to blocking the spread of Soviet influence in the third world." The charter also says that the group intends to be "global in conception". Its formation has been attributed to interlocking interests of the countries involved (which were already cooperating to some degree). Alongside ideological pursuit of global anti-communism, these included the more concrete goals of military strategy and economic interests. Examples include international mining operations and investments in apartheid South Africa's Transvaal Development Company.Cooley, Unholy Wars, p. 16.Heikal, Iran: The Untold Story (1982), p. 112.
Infrastructure
The Safari Club takes its name (reportedly de Marenches' idea)Robert Lacey, Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia, London: Penguin, 2009; ; p. Google Books preview. after the exclusive resort in Kenya where the group first met in 1976. The club was operated by Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi—also a friend of Adham's.Scott, The Road to 9/11 (2008), pp. 62–63. "The Safari Club met at an exclusive resort of the same name in Kenya, which in the same year, 1976, was visited and eventually bought by Adham's friend Adnan Kashoggi.
The original charter establishes that an operations center would be built by 1 September 1976 in Cairo.Heikal, Iran: The Untold Story (1982), p. 114. The group made its headquarters there, and its organization included a secretariat, a planning wing, and an operations wing. Meetings were also held in Saudi Arabia and in Egypt. The group made large purchases of real estate and secure communications equipment.Cooley, Unholy Wars, p. 17.
The creation of the Safari Club coincided with the consolidation of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). The BCCI served to launder money, particularly for Saudi Arabia and the United States—whose CIA director in 1976, George H. W. Bush, had a personal account. "The Safari Club needed a network of banks to finance its intelligence operations. With the official blessing of George Bush as the head of the CIA, Adham transformed a small Pakistani merchant bank, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), into a worldwide money-laundering machine, buying banks around the world in order to create the biggest clandestine money network in history."Trento, Prelude to Terror (2005), p. 104.
BCCI also served as an intelligence gathering mechanism by virtue of its extensive contacts with underground organizations worldwide. "They contrived, with Bush and other intelligence-service heads, a plan that seemed too good to be true. The bank would solicit the business of every major terrorist, rebel, and underground organization in the world. The invaluable intelligence thus gained would be discreetly distributed to 'friends' of the BCCI."Trento, Prelude to Terror (2005), p. 105.
United States involvement
The United States was not a formal member of the group, but was involved to some degree, particularly through the CIA. Henry Kissinger is credited with the American strategy of supporting the Safari Club implicitly—allowing it to fulfill American objectives by proxy without risking direct responsibility ("plausible deniability").Cooley, Unholy Wars, p. 15. "The Carter team adopted a method of avoiding the stigma of direct CIA involvement in covert operations which could go wrong and backfire on the United States. It was a method which Henry Kissinger, first as President Richard Nixon's national security advisor, then as Secretary of State, had refined and applied with skill: get others to do what you want done, while avoiding the onus or blame if the operation fails." This function became particularly important after the US Congress passed the War Powers Resolution in 1973 and the Clark Amendment in 1976, reacting against covert military actions orchestrated within the government's executive branch.Mamdani, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim (2004), pp. 80–84.
An important factor in the nature of US involvement concerned changing domestic perceptions of the CIA and government secrecy. The Rockefeller Commission and the Church Committee had recently launched investigations that revealed decades of illegal operations by the CIA and the FBI. The Watergate scandal directed media attention at these secret operations, and served as a proximate cause for these ongoing investigations. President Jimmy Carter discussed public concerns over secrecy in his campaign, and when he took office in January 1977 he attempted to reduce the scope of covert CIA operations. In a 2002 speech at Georgetown University, Prince Turki Al-Faisal of the GIP (Saudi Intelligence) described the situation like so:Turki Al-Faisal, February 2002, quoted in Trento, Prelude to Terror (2005), p. 102.
As the Safari Club was beginning operations, former CIA Director Richard Helms and agent Theodore Shackley were under scrutiny from Congress and feared that new covert operations could be quickly exposed.Trento, Prelude to Terror (2005), p. 113–114. "Shackley, who still had ambitions to become DCI, believed that without his many sources and operatives like Wilson, the Safari Club—operating with Helms in charge in Tehran—would be ineffective. Shackley was well aware that Helms was under criminal investigation for lying to Congress about the CIA in Chile. Shackley had testified before the same grand jury. Unless Shackley took direct action to complete the privatization of intelligence operations soon, the Safari Club would not have a conduit to DO resources. The solution: create a totally private intelligence network using CIA assets until President Carter could be replaced." Peter Dale Scott has classified the Safari Club as part of the "second CIA"—an extension of the organization's reach maintained by an autonomous group of key agents. Thus even as Carter's new CIA director Stansfield Turner attempted to limit the scope of the agency's operations, Shackley, his deputy Thomas Clines, and agent Edwin P. Wilson secretly maintained their connections with the Safari Club and the BCCI.Peter Dale Scott, "Launching the U.S. Terror War: the CIA, 9/11, Afghanistan, and Central Asia", Asia–Pacific Journal 10(12), 16 March 2012.Trento, Prelude to Terror (2005), p. 314. "The Safari Club was run by the Saudis. It was a club to serve their purposes through the CIA. Shackley and Wilson were not members; only nations could belong. Shackley and Wilson were men who served the club in exchange for power, influence, and money."
Undercover operations without congressional oversight The Safari Club used an informal division of labor in conducting its global operations. Saudi Arabia provided money, France provided high-end technology, and Egypt and Morocco supplied weapons and troops.Bronson, Thicker than Oil (2006), p. 132. "Each Safari Club member brought unique capabilities. France supplied technical equipment for communications and security. Egypt and Morocco provided weapons and manpower. Saudi Arabia financed the group's efforts. The club worked because it reinforced preexisting arrangements. The Saudis were already buying French Mirages for Egypt's arsenal and providing Morocco with financial aid, which by 1980 amounted to around $1 billion a year."Issandr el Amrani, "Security Policy and Democratic Reform in Morocco: Between Public Discourse and Reality"; in Arab State and Neo-Liberal Globalization : The Restructuring of State Power in the Middle East, ed. Laura Guazzone and Daniela Pioppi; Ithaca Press, 2009; ; p. 307. "[Morocco] took part in an informal intelligence-gathering and military operations network known as the 'Safari Club', a late 1970s US-led effort at destabilization of pro-Soviet Sub-Saharan African countries involving France, Egypt, (pre-revolutionary) Iran and Saudi Arabia, created to some extent to enable parts of the American intelligence community to conduct undercover operations without congressional oversight. Morocco's role in that particular initiative was to provide 'muscle' for counter-insurgency operations, as it did in 1978 in Kowelzi, a mining city in southern Zaire that had been overtaken by rebels."Ibrahim Warde, The Price of Fear: Al-Qaeda and the Truth Behind the Financial War on Terror, London: I.B. Taurus, 2007; ; p. 133. "The various members of that group contributed in different ways. Saudi Arabia's contribution was by and large limited to providing money. Under such 'checkbook diplomacy,' the Saudi government would finance, with no questions asked, covert operations in countries such as Angola and Nicaragua." The Safari Club typically coordinated with American and Israeli intelligence agencies.
Debut: Shaba Province of Zaire