Norway’s Terror as Systemic Destabilization: Breivik, the Arms-for-Drugs Milieu, and Global Shadow Elites

Peter Dale Scott

Breivik’s Terror: Was It a Deep Event?

The most surprising aspect of the recent unexpected terrorist violence in Norway is that, in retrospect, it is not surprising. Our revived hopes after the end of the Cold War, that we might finally be emerging into a world of diminishing bloodshed, have been abundantly disabused. Events of seemingly random irrational violence, such as that which so shocked us when President Kennedy was assassinated, have become a predictable part of the world in which we live.

To some extent we can blame the violence on our social system itself. It is clearly unsatisfactory, and needs fundamental reconstructions that nonviolent actions have been painfully slow to deliver. Thus violence slowly builds up at all levels, from the flash mobs of the hopeless at the base of society to the war schemes of those in high places. In such a milieu Anders Breivik is only one of many, from the Unabomber in America to the jihadi suicide bombers everywhere, who have chosen to dedicate themselves to sacrificial violence, rather than to an eventless survival in an alienating status quo.

But the backgrounds of some violent events are more mysteriously organized than, say, those of a resentful and quasi-spontaneous grudge killing or flash mob. For some time I have discussed acts such as the Kennedy assassination as what I have called deep events: events, obscured and/or misrepresented in mainstream media, whose origins are mysterious but often intelligence-related, attributed to marginal outsiders, but intersecting with large and powerful but covert forces having the power and the intent to influence history. More recently I have emphasized the need to analyze deep events comparatively, as part of an on-going hidden substrate in so-called developed societies. And to raise the question whether key deep events are interrelated.

Breivik’s mayhem on July 22, 2011, (henceforth 7/22) has forced me to clarify my definition of a deep event, to distinguish between those which are merely unsolved or mysterious in themselves, and those which have proved to be part of a larger systemic mystery grounded in the structures of either society itself, or its shadow underworld (demi-monde, Irrwelt), or in some combination of the two. As I wrote three years ago, “The unthinkable – that elements inside the state would conspire with criminals to kill innocent civilians – has become not only thinkable but commonplace in the last century.”¹

There is no evidence that Unabomber’s actions, or the two assassination attempts against President Gerald Ford (by Lynette Fromm and Sara Jane Moore) were deep events in this second, more limited sense. The still not understood nerve gas attacks of 1995 in the Tokyo subway, by the Buddhist group Aum Shinrikyo, can be seen as a possible deep event.² The attack on Pope John Paul II is a more probable one, because of the murderer’s membership in the Turkish Grey Wolves, an activist movement close to the Turkish security apparatus now known as Turkey’s gizli devlet or deep state.³

As examples of systemic deep events, we can point to two spectacular bombings in Italy, the Piazza Fontana bombing in Milan and simultaneous Rome bombing of 1969. These were initially blamed on marginal left-wing anarchists, but were ultimately revealed to have been false-flag attacks organized, as part of a strategy of tension, by right-wing neo-fascists inside the Italian military intelligence agency SISMI, with a possible green light (according to the chief of SISMI) from elements in the CIA.⁴ Since then an Italian premier has confirmed that the parallel intelligence structure responsible for the bombings was part of a stay-behind network, Gladio, which we now know was originally organized by NATO as a potential resistance in the event of a Soviet occupation of western Europe. Moreover, in the words of an Italian parliamentary commission, “Those massacres, those bombs, those military action had been organized or promoted or supported…by men linked to the structures of the United States.”⁵

In country after country, the Gladio networks soon deteriorated into activist anti-democratic cells with intelligence connections. They have been shown to have been behind other acts of violence, including the actions of the Grey Wolves in Turkey, and the Brabant massacres of 1983-85 in Belgium.⁶ Nor is this ancient history. In November 1990 Italian Premier Andreotti revealed that Italy, along with France and the other NATO countries, had just convened at a secret NATO Gladio meeting just the month before – i.e., after the fall of the Berlin Wall.⁷

This persisting presence of Gladio networks throughout Europe, including Norway, raises the question: was 7/22 a systemic deep event, or at least a possible deep event? Having pondered this for a month, my conclusions, all tentative except the first, are these:

1) Breivik most probably did not act alone, despite the latest official reports: “prosecutors and police have said they are fairly certain that Breivik planned and committed them on his own.”⁸

2) We should probably look for his associates in the demi-monde mobilized outside and against the state, rather than in the structures of the state itself.

3) 7/22 is probably not a traditional false-flag operation; the milieu of Breivik’s associates is indeed probably that pointed to, without incrimination, in the alleged Breivik manifesto and video.

4) The motive of 7/22 may have been to maximize publicity for the political message of one particular group in this milieu, the Euronationalist Knights Templar of former neo-Nazi turned counter-jihad publicist Nick Greger.

5) We should look behind the counter-jihad ideology of Breivik and Greger’s Knights Templar to the arms-for-drugs trafficking connections of their avowed heroes and contacts – particularly of the Serbian Mafioso and Red Beret veteran Milorad Ulemek.

6) Of particular interest are the criminal connections between the drug trafficker Ulemek (and possibly Breivik) and the Russian arms-and-drugs meta-group Far West LLC – a group I have discussed elsewhere for its involvement in systemic destabilization and conceivably even 9/11.⁹

7) Far West’s involvement in systemic destabilization was probably not just self-motivated, but had protection if not instigation from Far West’s connections to what David Rothkopf, in an important book, has called the illicit shadow elites that are part of the world’s elite superclass.¹⁰

8) Thus Norway’s terror, like comparable bombings in Italy and Turkey, illustrates, once again, the congruence between the dark quadrant of systemic destabilization (or what I once called “managed violence”) and the milieu of the international drug traffic.¹¹

James Petras has wondered whether Breivik’s actions on 7/22 were part of a Norwegian strategy of tension on the model of Piazza Fontana. He has raised what he calls the “obvious question…as to the degree to which the ideology of right wing extremism – neo-fascism – has penetrated the police and security forces, especially the upper echelons?”¹² He thus suspects the extreme delay of the police in reaching the island of Utøya – a suspicion enhanced by “confirmed reports in the Norwegian news media that Mr. Breivik had called the police several times during the attack on Utoya.”¹³

In response, the Norwegian peace researcher Ola Tunander has observed that the Norwegian security establishment and police resources are smaller than foreigners might imagine: “Norway is a small country with a relatively unified power structure, where everyone knows each other, and there is less of a clear split between the security forces and the political elite. Close friends of the Chief of Police, for example the Deputy Foreign Minister, were among those with children on the Utøya island."¹⁴

This may not close the debate. For Norway also had a Gladio stay-behind network, ROCAMBOLE (ROC), that was partly funded and controlled by NATO, the CIA, and the British service MI6. ROC was also controversial. In the 1950s a secret controversy arose from Norway’s discovery that an American in Norway’s NATO HQ had “spied upon high-ranking Norwegian officials.” The left-wing Norwegian intelligence chief who discovered this situation and protested it to NATO, Vilhelm Evang, was later forced out of office by other Norwegian security officials, as the indirect result of a secret allegation forwarded by CIA Counterintelligence Chief James Angleton.¹⁵ So Norway’s security apparatus was not entirely homogeneous and autonomous.

Whatever the facts, 7/22 must be distinguished from a classical false-flag event by Gladio stay-behind networks. Traditionally in such cases, the designated perpetrator was associated, not with right-wingers, but the left.

The Key to 7/22 Lies in the Event, Not in the Man

Breivik the man is unique, proclaiming his affiliations with both the Unabomber’s philosophy and the right-wing counter-jihad milieu. But 7/22 the event is more familiar, and presents a number of features that are also familiar from past deep events:

1) a “legend” or documented characterization of the perpetrator;

2) “planted clues,” or what I have elsewhere referred to as a “paper trail,” often including videos suitable for post-event promotion of the legend;

3) in particular, planted autodocumentation, a genre ranging in variety from the “historic diary” of Lee Harvey Oswald to the manifesto of the Unabomber;

4) a tested modus operandi for a mass bombing.

The word “legend” is a term of art from the intelligence world meaning a myth created around a person, usually to hide their real intent or loyalties.¹⁶ I use it here without prejudging the truth or falsity of the myth, or the related question of authorship. Above all, in what follows, I do not mean to imply that the myth can be dismissed as a cynical artifact. Indeed it seems clear that the author of the manifesto/video, whether Breivik alone or someone else, was consciously creating a myth of a crusade against Islam which they sincerely believed in.

Let me digress for a moment, as someone who believes in the long-term future of democracy, open societies, and multiculturalism as it is developing in America. I see the widespread resentments of Breivik and countless others about “multi-cultis” as a serious phenomenon worthy of sympathetic understanding. Technology and globalization, as much in Russia and China as in the West, are creating problems for the survival and health of cultures everywhere, from Thailand to Tibet to the banlieu of Paris, for which it is difficult to see short-term solutions.

One response, ironically shared by Euronationalist crusaders like Breivik and also their jihadi Islamist opponents, is to be drawn to crusader-jihadi violence. (The secular anarchist Unabomber, quoted by Breivik, shows another version of this response.) Olivier Roy and others have sensitively analyzed the appeal of salafi jihad to young Muslims in Europe, with an identity-crisis caused by their alienation from the various distant cultures of their ancestors, as much as from the Western culture in which they are marginalized.¹⁷ We need also to address the identity-crises of those who see their traditional monocultures, in Norway as anywhere else, challenged by rapid cultural changes that are inadequately discussed, let alone managed.

Take the example of Switzerland, a country that has learned over centuries to live with four different languages and two versions of Christianity that once warred bitterly against each other. This cultural maturity does not equip the Swiss to deal easily with new immigrants who wish to establish not only mosques but Sharia in their midst.

A much longer essay than this one would be needed to explore the resonances of Breivik’s myth. But our topic here is 7/22, not Breivik the man.

The planted clues for Breivik’s legend

Breivik the man must be viewed as unreliable, and every statement from him viewed with the greatest suspicion. Yet his extensive autodocumentation --  by which I mean the Internet manifesto, video, and Facebook page attributed to him -- deserve to be assessed carefully regardless of authorship, especially in the light of later statements he is alleged to have made to the Norwegian police. And here we can say that, whatever the truth about Breivik, the autodocumentation shows connections leading ultimately to the shadowy underworld of arms and drug traffickers that may also have fostered al Qaeda.

It is exceedingly common for high-publicity deep events to be accompanied by such autodocumentation, After the diaries of Lee Harvey Oswald and Sirhan Sirhan, the alleged diary attributed to Arthur Bremer (the man said to have shot the 1972 presidential candidate George Wallace, stimulated Gore Vidal to wonder, in an essay for the New York Review of Books, whether the true author of the diary might not have been the CIA officer and Watergate plotter E. Howard Hunt (or in my terms, whether the Wallace shooting might not have been a systemic deep event).

Nearby in a rented car, the police found Bremer’s diary (odd that in the post-Gutenberg age Oswald, Sirhan, and Bremer should have all committed to paper their pensées). According to the diary, Bremer had tried to kill Nixon in Canada but failed to get close enough. He then decided to kill George Wallace. The absence of any logical motive is now familiar to most Americans, who are quite at home with the batty killer who acts alone in order to be on television.¹⁸

Gore’s perceptive witticism, the “killer who acts alone in order to be on television,” fits Breivik very well: his documents seem clearly designed to generate maximum publicity and speculation.

Somewhat like Breivik, Oswald left behind him a legacy of autodocumentation, some of which proved to be very suited for post-assassination television. This included, besides a diary and extensive political manuscripts, an audio-video tape involving an ex-Army psychological warfare expert, and expounding his alleged political beliefs. Yet the differences are instructive. Oswald’s autodocumentation of his alleged left-wing identity can be seen in retrospect as false, and probably part of FBI-CIA efforts to discredit the Fair Play for Cuba Committee which Oswald tried to penetrate.¹⁹ Breivik’s video appears to express his true beliefs, even though I shall argue in a moment that most of the video may have been prepared by someone else. Yet in contrast to Breivik’s, the misleading Oswald audio-video was aired extensively after the JFK assassination, as part of the propaganda campaign to describe him as a leftist.²⁰ The Breivik video, by comparison, has been downplayed, and has indeed disappeared from many if not most of the web sites where it was originally posted.²¹

This suggests to me that the Breivik video was intended to capitalize on the publicity caused by his actions, but that the group behind this effort was not part of mainstream western society, and is not currently being supported by those in charge of the mainstream media. I shall suggest shortly that it was designed primarily for a different audience: the world of the resentful who find an outlet for their resentments on the Internet.

What Does Breivik’s Video Indicate? That Breivik Did Not Act Alone

Both the content and the authorship of Breivik’s video remain very mysterious. What seems relatively clear is that it was not composed and controlled by Breivik alone.

The evidence for plural authorship for the video is internal.²² Almost all of the video appears to be a speeded-up version of a text-heavy sequence of stills, possibly originally a slideshow presentation about knights templar and their fellow crusaders. It is clear both that a great deal of work has gone into the preparation and presentation of this text, and also that the text serves little or no purpose in the speeded-up Breivik version, For there are sometimes up to about twenty lines of text on a screen page, of which not more than about four or five lines can be read, even swiftly, in the time now allotted to them.

Otherwise the video is of professional quality, definitely not a home movie. One of the stylistic features unifying it is the steady predictable rhythm in the three- or four-second time-lapses allotted to each still. This rhythm is broken, jarringly, at the very end, when three photos of Breivik himself appear. The first two are presented very swiftly, completely out of sync with the rhythmic presentation in the rest of the video.

I am left with the strong impression that whoever added Breivik’s stills at the end of the video – who may possibly even have been Breivik himself – was not the original videographer or slideshow preparer. It was someone instead with a different style, sensibility, and purpose. (It would not surprise me to learn that there are other discernible and even quantifiable differences between the slideshow and Breivik parts of the video, with respect to such details as light.)

Whoever emailed out the video and manifesto just before the attacks was most likely aware of the massacres about to unfold. And if there is more than one author for the video, then Breivik was most probably not acting alone. For the release of the two documents must be considered an integral, indeed an essential, part of the 7/22 event  -- indeed the point of it. I shall argue shortly that its aim was not just slaughter but publicity: to provoke a heightened discussion of the issues and promoters of counter-jihad.

The Modus Operandi of the Bomb

It has been widely noted that Breivik in 7/22 used the same bombing modus operandi as Oklahoma City and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing – an ammonium nitrate bomb concealed in a parked vehicle. As Andrew Gumbel wrote in an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times,

Breivik appears to have been more than simply inspired by American predecessors such as Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber: The materials he used, the way he planned and carried out his attacks, and his own writings all suggest he was deeply familiar with the actions of some notorious political killers on this side of the Atlantic. Breivik possessed a Glock semiautomatic, the same weapon McVeigh was carrying when he was arrested by a hawk-eyed Highway Patrol officer 90 minutes after the April 1995 bombing in Oklahoma. Breivik also possessed a .223-caliber Ruger assault rifle, just like McVeigh.²³

The debate still continues whether Breivik himself could have developed the skills to make a successful ammonium nitrate bomb. But there are strong indications that the 1993 WTC bombers and one of the two known 1995 Oklahoma City bombers (Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols) received training from abroad, possibly from al Qaeda.

In the words of Dana Rohrabacher, Chairman of the House International Relations Committee,

Nichols’ skill as a terrorist seems to have grown while in the Philippines.  Initially he was an unsuccessful bomb-maker.  According to Michael Fortier’s testimony, Nichols and McVeigh failed miserably when they tested an explosive device in the Arizona desert just six months before they bombed the Murrah building.  After Nichols’ final trip to the Philippines, he and McVeigh were fully capable of manufacturing the crude but deadly bomb that was used to bring down the Murrah federal building.²⁴ 

Rohrabacher also explored the apparent connections in the Philippines between Nichols and Ramzi Yousef, the al-Qaeda-linked mastermind of the 1993 WTC bombing. (Yousef is a close associate and relative of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, said to have been the mastermind of al Qaeda’s 9/11 exploit.)²⁵ According to researcher J.M. Berger and others, “In November 1994, Terry Nichols and Ramzi Yousef both walked on the grounds of the same college campus,” Southwestern University in the Philippine city of Cebu, where an Islamist cell was active. Later, each man booked a flight on the same airline.²⁶

It is worth recalling that in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center the attackers were trained by a member of al Qaeda, Ali Mohamed, who almost certainly was a double agent working also for U.S. sources. The same trainer “led” (to quote the 9/11 Commission Report” the 1998 attack on the U.S. Embassy, and may have trained the alleged 9/11 hijackers as well.²⁷

This continuity suggests that all these American incidents of violence may have been part of an on-going strategy of tension, to destabilize society as a means to justify the ever-mounting budgets for America’s security forces. In American War Machine I devoted an entire chapter to the question whether we should see 9/11 as part of an on-going tradition of “engineered” deep events. (I took the term “engineered” from a U.S. army document stating, “The engineering of a series of provocations to justify military intervention is feasible and could be accomplished with the resources available.”)²⁸

The fact that Breivik imitated McVeigh does not prove that they were part of the same organization. It is possible that Breivik consciously imitated McVeigh, as a way of heightening and shading the aura of mystery he cultivated around his actions – or if you will as a kind of hommage to McVeigh, along with the Unabomber and others I shall name shortly. But I shall argue that Breivik may indeed have been intimate with the arms-for-drugs milieu that can also be perceived in the background of both Oklahoma City and al Qaeda. (For al Qaeda, despite the odd denial in the 9/11 Commission Report, was almost certainly a drug-trafficking and drug-supported organization.)²⁹

Breivik’s Finances Suggest He Did Not Act Alone

Breivik’s planted clues about his finances also point mysteriously to international connections beyond what was needed for 7/22 alone. In this case the mystery of his finances is reinforced by evidence we learn independently from the Norwegian police: namely, that in 2007, a year in which he reported little taxable income, the equivalent of $115,000 was mysteriously deposited into Breivik’s bank account.³⁰ This important clue, not coming from Breivik himself, refers to a time when "Government records suggest that …. his early attempts at business were a failure."³¹

Breivik himself has reportedly heightened the mystery behind the alleged “loner.” He is said to have explained to the police that he had ten times as much money (six million kroner, about $1.1 million) to finance his terrorist attacks.³² His lawyer, Geir Lippestad, has added that his planning also involved extensive travel:

"[Breivik] has traveled in many countries in Europe, via car, ferry and plane, said Lippestad. These states correspond to some of those states mentioned in Breivik's so-called manifesto, which he repeatedly mentioned during the interrogations. According to Lippestad, [Breivik's] traveling has been directly related to the planning of the attacks, which was most intense in recent years. He has met with an unknown number of people who have helped him to obtain materials, and he also explained that most of the equipment is from abroad. In earlier questioning, Breivik explained that he had six million [kroner] to finance the terrorist attacks.³³

An even more suggestive lead to this hidden financial dimension is a statement attached to the Breivik manifesto, in which “Breivik” claimed to describe his irregular commercial and banking activity:

2005-2007: Managing director of E-Commerce Group AS (part investment company – 50%, part sales/outsourcing company – 50%). I converted ABB ENK to a corporation (AS). Total of 7 employees: 3 in Norway, 1 in Russia, 1 in Indonesia, 1 in Romania, 1 in the US. Distribution of outsourcing services to foreign companies, sold software/programming solutions. Worked part time with day trading (stocks/options/currency/commodities).

In the words of this statement,

This was a front (milking cow) with the purpose of financing resistance/liberation related military operations. The company was successful although most of the funds were channelled through a Caribbean subsidiary (with base in Antigua, a location where European countries do not have access): Brentwood Solutions Limited with bank accounts in other Caribbean nations and Eastern Europe. E-Commerce Group was terminated in 2007 while most of the funds were channelled in an “unorthodox manner” to Norway available to the coming intellectual and subsequent operations phase.³⁴

Antigua, a small island in the Caribbean, was noted for its corrupt banks with intelligence connections; it was used for example by BCCI and Israeli operatives in the 1980s for illicit arms sales to the Medellin cocaine cartel.³⁵ Some have seen a possible implication of Israel in this allusion to Antigua by Breivik, an avowed pro-Zionist in his manifesto. The same people have pointed to an article by Barry Rubin in the July 31 Jerusalem Post, claiming that the Utoya youth camp that Breivik attacked (and which had been rehearsing ways to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza) was “engaged in what was essentially ... a pro-terrorist program.”³⁶ Finally some have pointed to the growing links between the right-wing parties of Israel and formerly anti-Semitic right-wing parties extolled in the Breivik manifesto.³⁷

In this article I am arguing neither for nor against the possible involvement of Israelis, along with others, in the events of 7/22. I will however argue that we should look for an ultimate source, not in the covert structures of any single state, but in a paranational dark force with the capacity to collude with or even manipulate them.

Breivik, Knights Templar, and the Order 777 of Mad Nick Greger

In short, both the Breivik autodocumentation and independent reports from the police about his bank account suggest that there is an unexplored higher dimension to Breivik’s crimes. The Breivik manifesto and video enhance this suggestion, associating Breivik with an alleged larger movement of neo-Knight Templars crusading in defense of Judeo-Christian Europe.

The manifesto describes a Knights Templar meeting Breivik is said to have attended in London, one consisting of only about five people, including a Russian and a Serbian  (“by proxy, location: Monrovia, Liberia,” apparently represented at the meeting by Breivik himself), who was now eluding punishment for his killings of Muslims in Bosnia. (“I joined the session after visiting one of the initial facilitators, a Serbian Crusader Commander and war hero, in Monrovia, Liberia.”)³⁸

There are reasons to suspect that this Serbian commander was Milorad Ulemek, also known as Milorad Lukovic (or Legija), a former commander of the Serbian paramilitary unit known as Arkan’s Tigers (and later as Red Berets) that initiated ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. The Breivik manifesto extols the Tigers and their commanders (including the late Raznatovic Arkan and Ulemek, the only survivor) as role models.³⁹

The video attributed to Breivik shows some remarkable similarities to another pro-Ulemek video, this one released by the leader of a self-professed Knights Templar group called Order 777. The leader, now allegedly reformed, is a former anti-Muslim terrorist and bomber from East Germany, by the name of Nick Greger (“Commander Mad Nick” or “madnick77”). Greger is a man of many talents and interests, including as an artist and author; and above all he (“madnick77”) is an obsessive poster of videos on the Internet (henceforward “Greger’s videos”). These “Order 777” videos, like Breivik’s, urge Judeo-Christian Europe to unite against the menace of Islam (“it’s not about race, it’s about religion”), and the related menace of globalist multi-culturalism as enforced by the UN and the United States.

One particular video posted by Greger, “The Order 777 -- Immortals,” is so similar to Breivik’s in its stylistic details, that it suggests a common origin may exist for both. Readers can view the two videos and judge for themselves: Breivik’s here, and Greger’s here. Note that both videos are divided into sections, and in each the final “optimistic” (i.e. counter-jihadistic) section is prefaced by the picture of a Knight Templar, with his distinctive heraldry of a red Maltese cross on a white field.

The following description of the Greger video in the London Daily Telegraph is accurate:

The group, calling itself Order 777, claims to bring together Christian resistance movements and features a depiction of a Templar Knight [the one with a red Maltese cross] with the slogan “The Order 777 Strikes Back!” alongside footage of a variety of armed gangs with the words “factions united.”

The groups include the UFF in Northern Ireland, Serbian nationalists, Liberian and Congolese fighters and members of the neo-fascist AWB in South Africa.

In one clip Mr Greger is handling a Kalashnikov and in another says: “The war of the future will be a war of the religions.”…

A number of similarities between the “compendium” [i.e. Breivik’s manifesto] and the Order 777 videos have begun to emerge.

Breivik said he had attended the founding meeting of the “Knights Templar Europe” in London “after visiting one of the initial facilitators, a Serbian Crusader Commander and war hero, in Monrovia, Liberia.”

Both the “compendium” and the Order 777 videos feature a man called Milorad Ulemek, a former commander of the Red Berets, a unit of the Serbian security Services called the JSO, who was arrested in 2004 and convicted of the assassinations of Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic and former Serbian President Ivan Stambolic and of organising the attempted murder of the Serbian opposition leader Vuk Draskovic.

The videos also feature Charles Taylor, the former Liberian dictator now facing war crimes trials, and a girl called “Black Diamond” who fought on the rebel army against Taylor in 2003.⁴⁰

To these similarities should be added others: their division into sections, their opening with a Latin quotation, their staccato sequence of stills surrounded by heavy black borders with accompanying lettering, their background of loud ominous choral music, the scenes from Africa, their focus on heroic or would-be-heroic Christian crusaders, past and present, and their “optimistic” (i.e. counter-jihadistic) final sections, preceded by a picture of a Knight Templar with a red Maltese cross on a white field.⁴¹ There are also photos on the Internet of Nick Greger himself sporting a Knights Templar T-shirt, with the same red Maltese Cross that Breivik posted on the first page of his Internet manifesto.⁴²

In other posts Greger presents himself as a reformed, anti-racist “Christian brother.”

But the “Christians” defended in his video are without exception murderers ready, if alive, to kill again. For example, there seems no reason to call Charles Taylor (to whom Greger dedicated another video)⁴³ Christian, other than that he once teamed up with televangelist Pat Robertson to mine diamonds in Liberia. According to Colbert King in the Washington Post,

The U.S.-educated but Libya-trained Taylor is a menace to all that's decent….With tens of thousands of Liberians slain, hundreds of thousands displaced throughout West Africa, a generation of young Liberian boys ruined by their conversion to child soldiers, women raped and mutilated, his country is in absolute ruins and is ostracized by the world community.⁴⁴

Of greater relevance to this essay, Taylor, like all but two of the nine men celebrated in Greger’s video, was implicated in the arms-for-drugs traffic.⁴⁵

Knights Templar, the International Arms-for-Drugs Traffic, and Far West LLC

 A fact not mentioned in Greger’s video (or so far in the subsequent discussion of it) is that of the nine men celebrated at its outset, all but two (Eugene Terreblanche of South Africa and Laurent Nkunda of the Democratic Republic of the Congo) were united, not by ideology, but by their involvement in the lucrative arms-for-drugs traffic. These included six who have been directly identified elsewhere as drug traffickers:

Charles Taylor, self-installed president of Liberia,⁴⁶

Samir Geagea, militia leader in Lebanon,⁴⁷

Johnny Adair, former Protestant militia leader in Northern Ireland,⁴⁸

Irish militia hitmen Gary Smith⁴⁹ and (allegedly) Billy Wright,⁵⁰

and, most significantly, Breivik’s and Greger’s hero Milorad Ulemek.⁵¹

Ulemek was not just a militia leader, but a Serbian Mafioso and member of

the so-called Zemun clan, a combination of a now defunct secret police unit and powerful gangsters from the Belgrade suburb of Zemun, who ran drug smuggling operations all over the Balkans and were involved in dozens of killings and abductions.⁵²

It is not surprising that Greger’s militia leaders should become traffickers: illicit paramilitaries usually have to acquire and pay for their arms through illicit arms-for-drugs networks. The video’s line-up of Christian drug traffickers reminds us of the current symbiosis between non-state violence (whether that of revolutionaries or of militias hired to fight them) and the drug traffic: the drug traffic now thrives where there is non-state violence, and those involved in such violence (whether of the right or left) support themselves by drugs. Today the global maps of major drug-growing and of non-state violence are virtually one and the same.

But for Breivik’s heroes Raznatovic Arkan and Ulemek Legija, the drugs may have been a more serious and on-going part of their career than as a means to the arms and the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. The Yugoslav

government embodied by Miloševic at the political level and Željko Ražnatovic Arkan as the executioner, represented the mafia in Serbia. Other high-profile actors were involved, including Stanko “Cane” Subotic, who became one of the richest men in Eastern Europe thanks to cigarette smuggling. “Cane” is in golden exile in Switzerland, which does not have extradition arrangements with Serbia. Arkan’s murder in 2000 marked the peak of this phase. Arkan was extorting from all other criminal groups and he was so convinced he was untouchable that he went around without bodyguards”. The Zemun clan came after him, Dojcinovic [Stevan Dojcinovic of CIN (the Center for Investigative Reporting] said. “Under the excuse of ‘avenging’ Arkan, the Zemun clan, in the following years, eliminated all the competition and created the most rigid monopoly. Whatever business you wanted to do, you had to do it with them.”⁵³

Russian sources have linked Ulemek with Vladimir Filin, the Russian leader of Far West LLC, a group of former Soviet military intelligence officers accused of arms and drug trafficking.⁵⁴ In fact, Ulemek was said to have been so close to Filin, that Far West was “threatened” by Ulemek’s (“Legija”’s) imprisonment.⁵⁵ The connection is probable: Serbian and Russian organized crime (allegedly including Far West) were involved together not just in drug trafficking but in the protection rackets at ports on the Black Sea.⁵⁶

Breivik, Destabilization, Far West, and Global Shadow Elites

Far West is not to be thought of as a localized drug mafia like the Zemun gang, but as a multinational linchpin between organized crime, including drug trafficking, and the global intelligence and corporate establishment.  From its origins as a Soviet military intelligence (GRU) group in Afghanistan, with responsibility for narcotics matters, it has expanded globally, and now enjoys connections to the intelligence networks of Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Great Britain, and the United States.”⁵⁷

In particular, as I wrote six years ago,

The group's business front, Far West Ltd [now Far West LLC]. is said to have CIA-approved contractual dealings with Halliburton for geopolitical purposes in the Caucasus, as well as dealings in Iraq with Diligence LLC, a group with connections to Joe Allbaugh (the FEMA chief in 2001) and to the President's younger brother Neil Bush. The head of Far West recently told a Russian outlet that "a well-known American corporation... is a co-founder of our agency."

Because of all these connections transcending normal political and ideological differences, I described it as a “meta-group,” like the drug bank BCCI which was in some significant ways its predecessor.⁵⁸

Today I would say of my essay that I did not distinguish clearly enough between the Far West meta-group itself and its “roof” or protection, the men it dealt with at a still higher level, like Boris Berezovsky’s man Alexander Voloshin in the Kremlin, or the multi-billionaires Roman Abramovich and Adnan Khashoggi. Far West consisted of a multinational connection of structures and networks in particular locations. Those using and protecting it did not constitute a structure, but a paranational milieu without any single location or organization.

These protectors qualify as part of what David Rothkopf has called the illicit “shadow elites, those whose influence stems from illicit or unconventional means.”⁵⁹ Such illicit elites are not marginal: Khashoggi, for example, was once called by his American biographer “the richest man in the world.”⁶⁰ The Russian arms merchant Viktor Bout, who conducted arms deals both with Charles Taylor of Liberia and with Far West in the Ukraine, has been called “the Bill Gates or Donald Trump of modern gun running.”⁶¹

In an era when the combined wealth of the 225 richest people nearly equals the annual income of the poorer half of the earth’s population,⁶² it can be assumed that the power and influence of the illicit wealthy is a major force to be reckoned with in world affairs. And it is clear that some in these shadow elites stand to benefit from the crimes Breivik has been charged with: specifically  “destabilizing or destroying basic functions of society,” and “creating serious fear in the population.”⁶³

In American War Machine a year ago I characterized Far West as a component of a larger war machine, and specifically as an “ongoing destabilization machine” whose principal aim in destabilization is not ideological, but “to promote conditions that facilitate its own business prospects…and specifically the chaos that makes for future contracts.”⁶⁴

This brings us back to Ulemek and Filin, whose connection must have been a matter of business rather than of ideology. Ulemek had been involved in killing Muslim minorities, whereas members of Far West (who included Muslims) were allegedly involved in backing ethnic Muslim jihads inside Russia. But Ulemek and Filin, along with Greger and indeed Breivik, had a common interest in one goal: the destabilization of existing society. Obviously, for their activities, whether paramilitary violence, arms trafficking, or drugs, destabilization is beneficial, even necessary.

Of course destabilization is not profitable to drug traffickers alone. It also generates business for the power bureaucracies and private military corporations whose practice it is to intervene in destabilized countries. And finally it is a source of income to those illicit elites who are themselves safely above drug trafficking, but have become rich through banking the proceeds.

Thus Breivik, who must be condemned both as a psychopathic mass murderer and as a threat to world order, can be seen as someone useful to those whose business it is to profit from the destabilization of that world order.

Behind Systemic Destabilization: A Deep State or a Paranational Dark Force?

The Breivik manifesto and video constitute a veritable cherry orchard of planted clues, from which it is possible to cherry-pick a number of alternative explanatory scenarios. In my own case I have been guided by the need to test a double hypothesis I put forward tentatively in the American War Machine:

1) There exists an on-going milieu that is repeatedly a source for the systemic destabilization in many of the world’s major deep events, and

2) there is a congruence between this dark quadrant of systemic destabilization (or what I once called “managed violence”) and the milieu of the international drug traffic.⁶⁵

I have tried to show in this essay that the events of 7/22, studied in the context of the Breivik-Ulemek-Filin connection, provide an initial corroboration, at this stage admittedly less than definitive, of this double hypothesis.

There was a time when, citing the facts disclosed about the Piazza Fontana bombing in Italy or the Semdinli bombing in Turkey, I tended to identify the source of all such deep events with the parastatal or “deep state” structures in these countries, including the CIA in America. But in American War Machine I give reasons, not easily summarized, for suspecting that for the ultimate source of such deep events we should look beyond the parastatal structures of nations (including the CIA) to a more unstructured and paranational deep force or dark force, or forces, colluding with, and sometimes perhaps manipulating, these parastatal structures.⁶⁶

In Moscow in 2010 I was invited to attend an International Forum on Afghan Drug Production. There a senior Russian counternarcotics official, in the course of a long and intense conversation, said to me, “For many years I have been trying to fight the drug traffic, and up till now I don’t really know what I’m fighting.” I replied, “You know, on page 5 of my next book, I say almost the same thing.” (In American War Machine, p. 5, I write that in choosing to refer to the CIA’s global drug connection, I was not trying to define the force precisely, but “attempting to denote and describe a deep force, or forces, that I do not fully understand.”)

The events of 7/22 do not by themselves resolve the mystery of this dark force. But they do help to underline its on-going significance.

I would like to thank those researchers who helped me with this essay, in particular Magda Hassan and Jan Klimkowski of Deep Politics Forum, and Ola Tunander.

Peter Dale Scott, a former Canadian diplomat and English Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author of Drugs Oil and War, The Road to 9/11, and The War Conspiracy: JFK, 9/11, and the Deep Politics of War. His most recent book is American War Machine: Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection and the Road to Afghanistan. His website, which contains a wealth of his writings, is here.

Recommended citation: Peter Dale Scott, "Norway’s Terror as Systemic Destabilization: Breivik, the Arms-for-Drugs Milieu, and Global Shadow Elites," The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol 9, Issue 34 No 1, August 22, 2011.

Notes

¹ Peter Dale Scott. “Korea (1950), the Tonkin Gulf Incident, and 9/11: Deep Events in Recent American History,” Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, June 22, 2008.