"The Secret War Machine:

The Missing Link between the Contras and al Qaeda"

Bruce Sterling

It may come as a shock that Vice Admiral John Poindexter has popped up as a
visionary cyberguru for Darpa. Until recently, the former national security
adviser was best known as a convicted conspirator in the late-'80s
Iran-Contra scandal. Poindexter's career move makes sense, though, when you
consider the astonishing prescience of his scheme to fund covert operations
in Central America. The visionary spirit of Iran-Contra never died, and
today it's alive and well and fueling the War on Terror.People born during Iran-Contra are now nearly old enough to drink, so a
quick review is in order. In the mid-'80s, the Republican Reagan
administration and the Democrat-controlled Congress differed on how to deal
with the menace of the leftist government in Nicaragua. Anticommunist
Reaganites favored the classic communist tactic of secretly arming
opposition movements ("contra-revolutionaries"), while Congress considered
this strategy sneaky, illegal, and destabilizing to the international order.
Congress prevailed, cutting off the CIA's funding for a proxy war in Central
America.

But Congress was merely a local outfit. The anticommunist faction both
privatized and globalized, replacing vanished public subsidies with private
funds from right-wing charities like the National Defense Council, the
Nicaraguan Freedom Fund, and the Western Goals Foundation, as well as from
supportive Muslims with oil money to burn. The conspirators secretly
acquired weapons from Israel and sold them to Iran at a hefty profit, which
they turned over to guerrillas fighting the Nicaraguan regime.

Admiral Poindexter's PROF interoffice email system (powered by an IBM
mainframe) seems pretty backward nowadays, but there was an unmistakable
Enron-style genius in routing charity money and Saudi profits through
Israeli arms contractors to buy munitions for Nicaraguan
counterrevolutionaries. John Poindexter, Oliver North, Elliot Abrams,
Richard Secord, John Singlaub, Robert MacFarlane, Adnan Khashoggi, Manucher
Ghorbanifar: These legendary innovators created something truly new and
brilliant -- an offshore, autonomous, self-financing, global, anticommunist
venture-capital outfit big enough to fight a private war against a sovereign
nation. Lieutenant Colonel North liked to call it Project Democracy. It ran
loops around Congress the way offshore Internet porn rings dodge the US
Customs Service.

Hezbollah, the Islamist terror network that still thrives in the ghastly
politics of the Middle East, may have triggered the operation's demise.
Iran, which had bought hundreds of small rockets through Oliver North,
leaned on Hezbollah to release seven American hostages, a cause close to
President Reagan's heart. Somebody, quite likely a Hezbollah terrorist,
leaked the truth about arms-for-hostages to Al Shiraa, a Lebanese
newsweekly. The leak set in motion a stumbling series of revelations and
attempted stonewalls that ended the short, inventive life of Project
Democracy.

Considering the audacity of the scheme's challenge to Constitutional
authority, its principals have done surprisingly well in the years since.
Oliver North gave up his uniform to become what he always had been at heart:
a right-wing political agitator. Elliot Abrams now manages Venezuelan
revolution, counterrevolution, and counter-counterrevolution for the State
Department. And, of course, John Poindexter is in charge of the Department
of Defense's Total Information Awareness program.

But the real success story is the Contras, or rather their modern successor:
al Qaeda. Osama bin Laden's crew is a band of government-funded
anticommunist counterrevolutionaries who grew up and cut the apron strings.
These new-model Contras don't need state support from Washington, Moscow, or
any Accessory of Evil. Like Project Democracy, they've got independent
financing: oil money, charity money, arms money, and a collection plate
wherever a junkie shoots up in an alley. Instead of merely ignoring and
subverting governments for a higher cause, as Poindexter did, al Qaeda tries
to destroy them outright. Suicide bombers blew the Chechnyan provisional
puppet government sky high. Cars packed with explosives nearly leveled the
Indian Parliament. We all know what happened to the Pentagon.

The next Iran-Contra is waiting, because the contradictions that created the
first have never been resolved. Iran-Contra wasn't about eager American
intelligence networks spreading dirty money in distant lands; it was about
the gap between old, legitimate, land-based governments ruled by voters and
the new, stateless, globalized predation. The next scandal will erupt when
someone as molten, self-righteous, and frustrated as John Poindexter uses
stateless power for domestic advantage. That's the breaking point in
American politics: not when you call in the plumbers, but when you turn them
loose on the opposition party. Then the Empire roils in a lather of sudden,
indignant fury and strikes back against its own.

Email Bruce Sterling at Bruces@well.com