Profile: Larry Kolb

British forces invade Iraq and occupy Baghdad, ostensibly to save the Iraqis from the Ottoman Empire during World War I. In reality, the occupation is at least partly motivated by the desire to secure the Iraqi oil fields for Britain. Lieutenant General Sir Stanley Maude proclaims: “Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators. You people of Baghdad are not to understand that it is the wish of the British government to impose upon you alien institutions. It is the hope of the British government that once again the people of Baghdad shall flourish, enjoying their wealth and substance under institutions which are in consonance with their sacred laws.” Author and former CIA agent Larry Kolb will write in 2007: “That sounded a lot to me like the rosy assurances our own [American] leaders gave the Iraqis in 2003 not long after we flattened half of Baghdad and then drove our tanks into what was left of it. But history shows that eventually the British liberators were driven out of Iraq by pissed-off locals, the insurgency. Just as eventually British liberators were driven out of Palestine, by both Jews and Arabs. And just as Napoleon, the liberator of Egypt, had eventually been forced by the locals to abandon the Nile in humiliation. The track record of Western armies fighting local insurgencies is abysmal. If President Bush didn’t know that, surely someone on his staff should have.” [Kolb, 2007, pp. 93-94] Three years later, the British will find themselves battling a fierce insurgency in central Iraq (see Early 1920).

Entity Tags: Stanley Maude, Larry Kolb

Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

Robert Sensi’s membership card in Republicans Abroad. [Source: Larry J. Kolb]According to a later account by Robert Sensi, a young CIA agent with excellent contacts among prominent Arabs, the Republican National Committee opens what Sensi calls “a secret channel to Iran.” Sensi is not only alluding to the secret plans for the US to sells arms to Iran, which is just developing (see Early 1980), but to the “October Surprise” of the November 1980 US presidential elections (see October 1980). Sensi will bring the matter up to author and fellow CIA agent Larry Kolb in a Washington, DC, hotel bar in 1986, but will not go into detail. Sensi will note that CIA Director William Casey has been involved in the US’s secret dealings with Iran since the outset, as has Robert Carter, the deputy director of Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign. Sensi will say that Casey, Carter, and the other participants are using the overseas political organization Republicans Abroad as cover for more covert activities. The organization is “a great drawing card,” according to Sensi, who is a member. “It gives us access to embassies and a lot of people we would have had a hard time getting to without the cachet of representing the ruling party in the United States.” Writing in 2007, Kolb will reflect on the Republican Party’s “own in-house team of covert operatives, as capable of conducting espionage and sabotage for the Republican Party as for the CIA. It seemed the Republicans were still doing what they had been caught doing during Watergate. Spying on and sabotaging the Democrats. Ratf_cking, as the Republican operatives called it (see October 7, 1972). Coming just a few years after the Watergate national Passion Play and all it had put our country through, this seemed flagrant and foul, like sleaze squared. And like politics-as-usual.” [Kolb, 2007, pp. 28-29]

Entity Tags: Republican National Committee, Central Intelligence Agency, Larry Kolb, Ronald Reagan, William Casey, Robert Carter, Robert Sensi, Republicans Abroad

Timeline Tags: Iran-Contra Affair

Author and former CIA agent Larry Kolb is discussing the government’s “war on terror” with a friend who works for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The DHS official says: “Look at it this way. The war on terror is being brought to you by the same people who brought you the war on drugs. Think about it—maybe one time in a thousand they actually catch somebody transporting or selling drugs. Then what do they do? They put that person in a federal facility, which is locked down and guarded 24 hours a day. And they still can’t even keep drugs out of that facility, let alone off our streets, or outside our borders. Now, really, how do you think we’re doing in the war on terror?” [Kolb, 2007, pp. 63]

Entity Tags: Larry Kolb, US Department of Homeland Security

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline