THE CRASH OF FLIGHT 3804:

A Lost Spy, A Daughter’s Quest, and the Deadly Politics of the Great Game For Oil

Exclusive Lone Star Iconoclast Interview

In her new book, The Crash of Flight 3804, Charlotte Dennett, through declassified documents, tells how oil companies, governments, and their intelligence agencies have been working with enemies and terrorists for mutual benefit and profit.

For Dennett, her intensive investigation of the global elite began when she wanted to learn more about her father’s mysterious death.  What she learned as a result of her decades-long investigation that goes into great detail about the players for oil in the Middle East where her father was America’s first master-spy caused her to begin a mission to alert the world, especially during the Trump era.

“We must no longer sacrifice our soldiers, our blood and treasure, for oil and endless wars,” she said. She explained that her father, Daniel Dennett, would roll in his grave over Trump’s uniquely dangerous Middle East policies, which have sowed chaos even while Trump claims to be bringing the “peace of the century” to this embattled region.

“The Great Game for Oil,” as she described it in the book, is one of civilization’s dirty secrets that remains privy to leaders, elected presidents, dictators, foreign ministers, economic advisers, and oil company executives and their associates, spies, and journalists.

Charlotte Dennett’s father was such a spy deeply involved in unraveling contention among several nations regarding a new oil pipeline in the Middle East which led to her father’s death in a suspicious plane crash in Ethiopia in 1947. At the time, she was just a baby in Beirut and her father was regarded as the United States’ first master spy in the Middle East.

Charlotte grew up to become a journalist and wanted to know details about her father’s death, which led her to search a family trunk that contained some of his papers and put her on track to fight for the release of CIA documents that revealed how Big Oil, intelligence, and military powers have evolved into today’s endless wars based on delicate alliances.

 One of her major concerns is that President Trump’s foreign policy blunders are putting America in line for another major war at a time when the coronavirus epidemic has already vastly destabilized the United States.

The list of his foreign policy follies just keeps growing, she says. Among them is Trump’s support for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salma (MBS) of Saudi Arabia, even after the now nicknamed “Mohammed Bone Saw” ordered the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi for criticizing the Saudi regime.

Others include:

• Trump’s ordering U.S. troops back to Syria “to protect our [sic] oil.”
• Trump’s wild “lock and loaded” threat to Iran that almost brought us to world war.
• Trump’s undying support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s dangerous escalation of conflict in the Middle East, approving Israeli airstrikes on the sovereign nations of Syria, Iran, and Lebanon.
• Trump’s circumventing Congress’s bipartisan ban on weapons sales destined for the widely condemned war in Yemen.
• Trump’s green-lighting Israel’s illegal annexation of the West Bank, then backing off due to international condemnation.
• Trump’s fostering a fraudulent peace plan that strives to further militarize the region to protect the oil and business investments for a relative few, but at the expense of millions.

Dennett doesn’t mince words when identifying the cauldrons of chaos the Trump administration has created.  She has revealed Trump’s desperate dependency on oil companies to support his re-election in her numerous essays over the past year. She also delves back in history and reveals a pattern of powerful leaders playing the Great Game for Oil, from World War I and Winston Churchill’s “first class war aim,” to seize the oil of Iraq. to Saudi king Ibn Saud threatening U.S. oil companies with ending their huge Saudi oil concession if they supported Jewish immigration to Palestine, to President George W. Bush’s effort to replace Iraq’s Saddam Hussein with an exiled Iraqi who supported reopening an oil pipeline from Iraq to Haifa – until Hussein’s replacement was shown to be the author of the WMD fiction.

She says that the enormous oil and gas fields discovered off the coast of the eastern Mediterranean have created a new “free for all” (the original one having been identified by her father after World War II) among America’s allies and enemies, with Israel, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Greece, and Turkey all competing to get the oil and gas in a cold war that could turn dangerously hot at any moment. Trump’s peace plan involves an effort to shore up Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to create an energy corridor along the Eastern Mediterranean – a plan that was first executed (and ultimately failed) with the U.S. invasion in Iraq in 2003 to guarantee the flow of Iraqi oil to Israel. So far, two countries stand in the way of the projected energy corridor: Lebanon and Syria. Trump’s plan also involves building resort hotels in the Red Sea, with the blessings of the notorious Crown Price Mohamed Bin Salman.

Secretary of State Pompeo’s recent trip to get more Arab countries to join in the Israel-UAE accord has been judged a failure because, Dennett asserts, “it ignores the history of conflicts and grievances in the region and the long memory of the peoples harmed by past U.S. interventions.” In short, whatever Trump trots out as his “peace plan of the century” actually guarantees more conflict to come, contributing to World War I-like entangling alliances with the U.S., its NATO allies, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Egypt. and the UAE on one side and China, Russia, Iran, Syria, and Turkey on the other.

The situation today is doubly dangerous as both President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu are desperately trying to save themselves from criminal convictions once they leave office, and so will take us blindly to the brink of irresponsible foreign policy decisions, if not nuclear war, to stay in power and out of jail, says Dennett

Ultimately, it’s all about the oil.  It has become the basis for foreign policy decisions in the Middle East, and now threatens to embroil us in more wars – if not World War III –in that epicenter of hell, says the author.

In an exclusive interview with The Lone Star Iconoclast, Charlotte Dennett answered a few questions:

ICONOCLAST – In your book, you mentioned that during the Bush-Cheney years Vice President Dick Cheney was more interested in his personal business conquests over America’s best interests. Military personnel told me that when the twin towers were destroyed during 9/11 the incoming planes had been detected on radar, but Cheney ordered the military to “stand down,” which granted the terrorists free access to their targets. You write that “serious plotting to get the oil of Iraq began as soon as Bush took office in January 2001, nine months before the tragedy of September 11. Do you feel that 9/11 was perpetrated by our own government to open that door?

DENNETT – Actually, the neocons planned to attack Iraq as early as 1997 when they came up with their Project for a New Century and stated “Bombing Iraq is Not Enough.” Then days after Bush’s inauguration Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil was told that invading Iraq was Topic A for Bush’s National Security Council. Meanwhile, Cheney was setting up his National Energy Policy Development Group including a two page list of “Foreign Suitors of Iraqi Oil Contracts.” David Wurmser, advisor to Cheney, acknowledged that a pretext for war with Iraq was needed – perhaps a major crisis. “Crises can be opportunities,” Wurmser wrote Cheney in January 2001.(See Bamford, Pretext for war), calling for an American-Israeli pre-emptive war  in the Middle East. 911 certainly gave them the pretext they needed, and the era of endless wars in the Middle East began shortly after 911.

ICONOCLAST – You quote enormous casualty statistics in the Middle East that have occurred since the Bush interventions on foreign soil up until now, and the numbers continue to grow, that the “War on Terror” is a misnomer because Afghans know that Americans came to their country because they need Afghanistan in order to get access to the oil and gas of the Caspian Sea, that the United States did not want peace since it stood in conflict with the desire to control another nation’s oil pipelines. You also mention that there were alternatives to war after 9/11. Can you elaborate?

DENNETT – The war in Afghanistan has been called “the Good War,” because our troops were supposedly avenging the deaths of 3000 Americans killed in 911 by Osama bin Laden, at the time living in Afghanistan, then- controlled by the Taliban.  Hence, the war on terror. What really happened was this: The Bush administration cozied up to the Taliban for years prior to 911 because they were regarded as the best warriors to protect the planned route of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline (TAPI), which would carry oil from the landlocked Caspian Sea to India. But there was a falling out with the Taliban after 9ll; they refused to turn over bin Laden unless the US could prove that he was behind 911. The US then decided to invade Afghanistan and set up military bases along the projected TAPI route as shown in a map in my book. The Brown University Cost of War Project has recently issued their latest report on the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and (neighboring) Pakistan with over 810,000 killed due to war violence, over 335,000 civilians killed, 37 million refugees and costing over $6.4 billion. All this so, as State Dept. official Richard Boucher stated regarding Afghanistan “the energy can flow south”

The Iraq war was waged in part to get oil flowing from Iraq to Haifa, Israel in a reconstructed pipeline. Neither pipelines have been built yet due to ongoing violence. Were these wars necessary, and at such cost to human life and treasure? If energy executives say yes, then all the more reason to abandon fossil fuels. No one wants their loved one to die for oil.

ICONOCLAST – Your book documents the Bush Administration’s interfering in Syria in 2007 because of oil, which promoted its civil war in 2011 resulting in a proxy war among superpowers by 2015. You state that you believe it was a pipeline war because of Syria’s unique geographical location. Do you think that President Trump’s about-face on removing troops and his declaration that the Syrian oilfields “belonged to America. We’re keeping the oil…” which flew in the face of U.S. claims to be fighting terrorism when instead the U.S. was bent on seizing a nation’s territory and resources will to this day impact his re-election bid, or have the American people forgotten about it already?

 DENNETT – My guess is that those Americans who read Trump’s inartful  explanation for redeploying troops to eastern Syria “to protect our [sic] oil” will ever forget it. That statement alone confirms what many Americans suspect – that endless wars have been fought for oil.  The US also claims to be fighting terrorists, but has used the presence of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and al Qaeda in Yemen as pretexts for using military force to protect oil. If this were known as well (in other words, the hidden details behind the Great Game for Oil) it might damage Trump’s re-election bid. Unfortunately, the oil connection behind US foreign policy (and wars) is seldom revealed in media accounts, even those that otherwise disparage Trump. It’s all hush hush. Which is why I wrote this book. But whether it can break through the wall of silence is another matter.

ICONOCLAST — I feel your book dovetails into two distinct stories that intersect along the way: the plane crash that killed your father and a history lesson about Middle Eastern oil which is vividly detailed with an abundance of documented sources. It tells the step-by-step story of your extensive and intensive investigation, including governmental roadblocks along the way. Your unending quest for the truth was impressive. Do you have any basic recommendations for other investigative journalists to follow, based on your experiences?

DENNETT – Perseverance. If you feel strongly that a largely uninformed public needs to know the truth about wars, environmental degradation, climate change, pandemics and other catastrophes now besieging our planet (much of it attributable to fossil fuels) then perseverance is the watchword. I persisted for so long because I had a deep longing to know the truth about who or what killed my father; but just as strong a motivator was the horrendous cost of these post 911 wars. My father wrote, in 1944, before being sent to the Middle East as a master spy for the Office of Strategic Services, “We must control the oil of Saudi Arabia at all costs.” To my horror, I found that the “at all costs” mantra was replicated by intelligence operatives in other regions right up to the present. The costs have been incalculable, the horrors among the great moral failures of our time.

Gifted in five languages (English, French, Italian, Spanish and Arabic) Charlotte Dennett is a former Middle East reporter, investigative journalist, and attorney. Born in Beirut of a now-famous father, Daniel Dennett, she began her journalism career in Beirut, Lebanon as a roving correspondent for the Middle East Sketch, an English language feature magazine modeled after Time and Newsweek. In 1974 she traveled throughout the Middle East for the Sketch, focusing on newly emerging Gulf countries and writing special issues on Bahrain, Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Oman, and Iran. In 1975, she became a reporter for the Beirut Daily Star, Beirut’s daily English language newspaper, where she wrote features about Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq.

 She left Lebanon in the spring of 1975 as a refugee from the Lebanese Civil War and settled in New York City. There she met her future husband, author and journalist Gerard Colby. The two teamed up for what would become an 18-year investigation into the genocide of Amazonian Indians, resulting in the 1995 publication by HarperCollins of Thy Will be Done. The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil. The book is now considered a classic. Updated in 2017 as an e-book by Open Road Media, it continues to earn five star reviews on Amazon.com.

 During this period (1975-95) and up until the present, Dennett wrote freelance articles for the London-based The Middle East and New Africa, as well The Nation, The Los Angeles Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, In These Times, the Rutland Herald, Seven Days (Vermont), Huffington Post, and most recently, Counterpunch.

 She has also spoken at numerous college campuses (in Vermont, Massachusetts, New York, and California)

 In 2010, she published The People v Bush: One Lawyer’s Campaign to Bring the President to Justice (Chelsea Green) based on her race for attorney general in Vermont in which she pledged to prosecute George W. Bush (with assistance from the legendary true crime writer and attorney, Victor Bugliosi, serving as her special prosecutor) for sending troops to Iraq on false pretenses.

She views her current book, The Crash of Flight 3804: A Lost Spy, A Daughter’s Quest, and the Deadly Politics of the Great Game for Oil,  to be, in many ways, the back-story to why she felt so strongly about Bush’s ill-conceived and  illegal war in Iraq.

 She has appeared on numerous radio shows, podcasts, and zoom events as she reveals the role of the great game for oil in generating endless wars — discovered while she investigated the death of her father, the first master-spy in the Middle East.