Follow the Pipelines: Uncovering the Mystery of a Lost Spy and the Deadly Politics of the Great Game for Oil

The Crash Of Flight 3804, A Lost Spy, A Daughters Quest and The Deadly Politics Of The Great Game For OilCharlotte Dennett, 2020Oil and Natural Gas are the life blood of Modern Civilization. Modern life, modern militaries, 7.5 billion inhabitants on earth would not be possible without huge quantities of fossil fuels. This fact has been recognized by heads of state and militaries of major powers for over 100 years. This book is a tour de force reconstructing the history of the Middle East, specifically, the great corporate and international power politics concerned with securing access to oil, from the turn of the twentieth century to today. What makes the book unique is that it is also a personal detective story.In 1947, Daniel Dennett, the authors father, was the top American intelligence CIG station chief in the Middle East. At that time there was a fierce competition between the great powers of the time, France, Britain, and Russia to secure access to the vast oil reserves of the region. He was killed in a mysterious plane crash on a plane flight from Jidda, Saudi Arabia to Ethiopia carrying secret radio encryption equipment. The cause of the crash was buried for decades in the top-secret archives of the CIA. This is a story of a daughter’s decades long quest to uncover the facts behind the death of a father she never knew. As she pulls on this thread, a cascade of revelations and connections come forth that can explain a large part of the violence and turmoil that have engulfed the region. As she uncovers the secrets, she exposes a story of corporate, political corruption, an unrelenting and ruthless game to dominate and exploit the vast energy resources of this turbulent region. From the viewpoint of US policy, this is an expose of the facts behind our policies that many of us have suspected but have never been explicitly admitted by our government.From the time Winston Churchill, 1st lord of the Admiralty, converted the British navy to oil, from the time Kaiser Wilhelm began building an oil powered fleet to rival Britain and began building the Berlin Bagdad railway to secure oil rights in the Ottoman Empire, the great game was on. A game that would lead at least in part to WWI. After the war the game continued with the French, the English, the Russians and the Americans all competing to secure their interests over the moribund body of the former Ottoman empires territories. For most of the twentieth century the focus of the game has been pipelines: where the resources were located, how to secure the rights-of-way, and how to secure access points for trans-shipment. In this game shipment access is and was just as important as resource access. As in Real Estate the strategic answer is and has been location, location, location. An amazing revelation: The Balfour Declaration creation of Jewish homeland in Palestine in 1920 was in part a result of Britain’s strategy to establish a secure port on the eastern Mediterranean for its new IPC pipeline from Iraq to Haifa. The pipeline was finally completed in 1935 and closed in 1948 due to sabotage during the 1948 Israeli Arab war.Most people have always suspected that the Iraq war of 2003 was not about weapons of mass destruction. In fact, the implementers of the policy; Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Bolton and Bibi Netanyahu had been advocating and promoting the idea of the war for at least 7 years prior. Revealed: In essence it was a scheme to secure Iraq’s 2nd largest in the world oil reserves for US corporate interests and resurrect the old British IPC pipeline from Iraq to Haifa Israel. Most people would not guess that the US long war in Afghanistan had anything to do with a pipeline. In fact, a US corporate plan has been in place for many years prior for a NG pipeline to be constructed from Baku, Azerbaijan to Pakistan and India only waiting for political stability to proceed. Has the war in part been an effort to create Afghan political stability to allow the multi-billion-dollar project to obtain financing and proceed? Dick Cheney’s Halliburton would be a major beneficiary.The great game proceeds right now. Why is Russia in Syria other than to secure it’s naval base on the Mediterranean? Qatar has the largest reserves of natural gas in the world, but it has no way to get it to the largest market in the world, Europe. To export large quantities of gas it needs a pipeline route through Syria and Turkey. The stumbling block to proceed is the obstruction of the Azad regime in Syria. Hence Qatar’s multi-billion-dollar support of Syrian rebels. A Qatar NG pipeline is a direct threat to Gazprom’s monopoly of the Turkish and European markets. Former KGB officer Yuri Shvets: “Russia’s first priority is to prevent Qatar from building a gas pipeline across Syria. If the rebels win it would be a mortal threat to Gazprom. Gazprom is the financial backbone of the Putin state… the major provider to the state budget, Putin needs to bribe the bureaucracy and buy votes”.Why did the US just recently unilaterally declare Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights in opposition to international law? It has to do with a small oil company called Genie Oil which in 2017 discovered and obtained drilling rights to a gigantic oil field in the Golan Heights. Who is on the board of directors and have varying financial stakes in the company? Would you believe Dick Cheney, Rupert Murdock, James Woolsey and Jacob Rothchild? Will this seizure, “like giving a gut punch to the Arabs”, help bring peace to the region?The great game continues but at what cost? Hundreds of thousands killed, Trillions of dollars expended on endless wars, Millions of refuges fleeing the conflict and destabilizing Europe; For what? The west’s insatiable consumerism, the greed of huge corporations, Saudi Sheiks and plutocrats? We are now at an existential point of no return to save our planet from the burning of these long sought-after fossil fuels. Can we get off this destructive addiction before it is too late? As the author states: “My father’s unease with the imperial drift of Saudi Aramco shortly before his death in 1947 has been borne out in ways he surely could not have envisioned, with Saudi Aramco surpassing the major American oil companies by far as the most profitable company in the world, raking in over 100 billion dollars in profits in a single year. Can a powerhouse that size, now the Biggest of Big Oil surrounded by covetous banks, be restrained by the heartfelt pleas of millions of young climate activists?”Did Charlotte discover the cause of her father’s death? I won’t reveal but it may have had something to do with secret radio encryption gear and a notorious MI6 double agent of the era, Kim Philby. The book ends with a long overdue ceremony in 2019 at CIA headquarters to install Daniel Dennett’ name on the CIA memorial wall of dead heroes. A quote from Daniel Dennett from 1942:“Pray to God that wherever else we may choose to intervene, the United States will be spared the disgrace of intervening in the near east”I have chosen to highlight just a few of the history altering revelations in this book. If you are interested in the history Middle East, the modern Middle East, a tale of greed, betrayal, a tragic story of the Arab people and a fascinating detective story then I recommend highly. JACK

For your Stay At Home/quarantine reading, I highly recommend “The Crash of Flight 3804” , a book that documents the wars over gas and oil in the Middle East-- through the vehicle of pipelines that carry these energy resources.Journalist and lawyer Charlotte Dennett, pieces together the “immediate” past twenty years of U.S. attempted regime change in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Iran with her father’s involvement in oil pipelines in the Middle East as a US government agent in the 1940s after World War II. Sixty years after his death in a mysterious plane crash in Ethiopia, he was acknowledged by the CIA and his name was officially placed on the wall of stars for CIA personnel killed in the line of duty.Dennett documents U.S. government support for the Taliban in the 1990s that had agreed to protect the UNOCAL pipeline that would run from Central Asia through Afghanistan to India to U.S., as well as Saudi, Israeli and Qatar governments’ support for ISIS to prevent the Syrian, Russian and Iran pipeline. Her family’s involvement in the Middle East began at the turn of the 20th century when her grandmother, a young Smith college graduate, went to Istanbul to teach at the American School for Girls. Bennett skillfully weaves the importance of the oil barron financing of the American University network that arose throughout the Middle East in the late 1890’s in Cairo, Beirut, Jerusalem to American influence for oil pipeline and railway construction.Dennett’s book has nuggets of information that make one shake one’s head of how today’s U.S. policies in the Middle East have a shadow back into the region’s history over 100 years ago to include the appointment of an oil barron to be Secretary of State during the Wilson administration.Dennett pieces together events in Washington, and the rich who control US policies, and how they play out in the Middle EastEach chapter should be an oped in major news outlets so that more people could learn about the oil and pipeline wars of the past twenty years in the Middle East are deeply related to similar wars over 100 years ago.She covers Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Libya, Yemen, Israel and Palestine with detailed documentation of the resources she found in archives all over the world—I think it's a great book.

This is an utterly amazing story that is painstakingly documented and written in a fluid style. Charlotte Dennett follows the money and FOIAs the secret documents for over 45 years to find out why her father, a spy for the United States government, died in a mysterious plane crash in 1947. If you like political intrigue and unveiling the CIA and MI5 secrets, and you care about accurate and truthful history, this is a book for you. Ms. Dennett goes above and beyond many writers and political analysts, telling us about "The Great Game for Oil" in the Middle East--and its deadly consequences. Buy it, read it, and buy it and give it to your friends. Anyone who wants to understand US, British and French policies in the middle east -- and why Israel and its neighboring countries are in the position they are in today needs to read this book!

Rambling and impossible to follow, who does she think should control the oil in the Middle East? Russia, Saudia Arabia, Iran, China??

This is an absolute mess of a book. Incredibly difficult to read with a chronology that follows no logic, a great deal of irrelevant material and writing that is like treacle.I really wanted to know about the author's father, who seems to have been an interesting intelligence officer, but it would take a pair of scissors to extract the bits of pieces about him that are hidden away in the very dense text which is more interested in the author that the supposed subject of the book. Unfortunately, he remains lost in all of this.Too many assumptions, too many speculations and too much about Kim Philby who almost certainly had nothing to do with her father's air crash.Edit out 150 pages, put it in chronological order and you would have a good, neat, worthwhile and nicely produced book about the early days of the Cold War in the Middle East.

Flips from past to present but does not confuse the reader. Dennett joined a lot of the dots for me concerning the constant war footing in the middle east. Following the flow of oil along with the flow of BIG money and the power that brings to those who are only serving their own interests.

As the fighting heats up in Ukraine this remarkable book becomes even more relevant in understanding the geopolitics of what may be another 'pipeline' war as the media bombards us with images that obscure the real causes of the conflict as was the case in Syria over the past 11 years.