Far West Ltd.: An Occcasional US Partner

Professor Scott maintains that the business front for this group is Far West LL C, a private security firm once headquartered in Switzerland and now in Dubai. This would represent only one powerful element within the Russian mafia, a large network of competing and antagonistic criminal elements. The firm also has closes ties to Pravda-info. Far West represents the C.I.A., Saudi Arabia, Britain, the Ukraine, and several other countries in opposing the current Russian government. Its officers are Russians and Ukranians, and it is active in Kosovo, Columbia, Afghanistan, and parts of the old Soviet Union. The firm imports cocaine from the Columbian FARC rebels to St. Petersburg. It is estimated that Far West accounts for 80% of the drugs coming into Russia from Columbia and Afghanistan. It also sends some Afghan heroin to Western Europe. It was a creation of four companies in Russia, Turkey, and the United States, but no one will name the firms. One of its founding entities is a division of a major, unnamed American corporation. It has done some work in Georgia for KBR/Halliburton. Closely tied to it are two other private security firms, Diligence Ltd. and New Bridge Strategies. Diligence, Ltd. Is another military company founded by William Webster. It also has a number of Russian figures. New Bridge Strategies is a third such company and has a number of major Republican investors and is headed by Joseph Albaugh, former head of FEMA and a close friend of George W. Bush. Neil Bush is tied to it in some way. Far West is also in the arms sale business and has sold weapons to Iraq and even the anti-American Venezuela.

Major General Vladimir Filin and two other Russian founders of Far West met George W. Bush at the White House in 2005. He owns several Ethanol factories with George Soros in Brazil. He is also a force among the Bavderovites , or Ukranian fascists. Filin, the head of Far West and a major force in Ukranian Military Intelligence, has had C.I.A. ties since the 1980s. They thought about establishing headquarters in Washington but were advised that they could be arrested becauses they sold X-55 missiles to Iran in 2001.

In 2006, General Filin flew to Bolivia for the inauguration of its new president, Evo Morales . Then he made an odd speech to Bolivian intelligence people. Though a longtime C.I.A. asset, he said that the agency is “absolute and universal evil, the Satan and the enemy of human kind" and called the Bolivians to “be vigilant and rely only on themselves.” He said Bolivia could not rely upon the support of foreign leftists and that it should seize control of its natural gas.

Former GRU Major Ruslan Saidov is also inclined to say unpleasant things about his American colleagues. He printed an article in Great Britain that claimed that the US was shipping via plane heroin to the Middle East and that Colonel Caleb Temple of DIA and his colleagues were laundering their share of the profits through Muslim Hawala, the traditional Islamic method of moving money based on mutual trust. SAidov added that they were selling heroin to the very terrorists they were expected to fight.

Far West personnel were involved in provoking a crisis in Georgia, Operation Clean Field, by inspiring actions against the South Ossetians. Robert Kagan, an informal McCain advisor, met with Far West principals in March, and the whole operation had been cleared through the Office of Vice President Richard Cheney and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Arms were sold to the Georgians through Far West and one of its cut-outs. Their unlicensed arms came from pirate factories in Jordan, Bulgaria, and Poland. Some say the goal was to convince Europeans that the old Cold War was not over and that an incidental goal was to help Senator John McCain in the US election of 2008. His international affairs advisor, Randy Scheunemann, has close ties to Far West.

Far West had an undetermined, probably tangential role in a myusterious missiles sale to Iran. In 2005, the Ukranian Defense Ministry acknowledged that rogue elements within it had sold KH-55 cruise missiles to Iran and China in 2001 and that planes transporting them were able to cross the airspace of several countries with no difficulties. All this was facilitated by forms ultimately owned by Kellogg , Brown, and Root, a firm Richard Cheney headed until he became Vice President of the United States. Israeli intelligence cooperates with the United States in many matters, but not the arming of Iran. It helped the Ukranians piece together the story. The matter resulted in the firing of threeofficials. Some Russian intelligence people, who had been helping Iran with arms since the 1980s, were involved in the sale, as were Alfa Group, a network of off-shore companies, and Diligence LLC, Ameerican firms with ties to the intelligence community and Dick Cheney.

Since the discovery of the missile sales, there have been signs that the Ukranians and Russians in Far West were becoming disillusioned with the US , and by 2009 there were indications they may be going their own way.