Published 29 December 2000 in the Lisbon weekly newspaper Tal&Qual, in Portuguese.
Translation by Mr. Duarte.
http://cryptome.org/pt-surprise.htm
Conspiracy in the Gulf
International plot killed in Camarate
The tragedy in Camarate* was provoked by arms deals during the Iran-Iraq war.
This is the theory defended by the lawyer Ricardo Sa Fernandes in a book to be soon published Frederico Duarte Carvalho If the crash of the plane that carried Sa Carneiro and Adelino Amaro da Costa was an assassination, then what constituted the origin of those deaths were the arms deals during the Iran-Iraq war.
This theory is going to be defended by the lawyer of the
families of the victims, Ricardo Sa Fernandes, on his book The Crime of Camarate, which is due to be published 20 January. Ricardo Sa Fernandes will explain that the assassination was directed at the Minister of Defense, Adelino Amaro da Costa, while the death of the Prime Minister Sa Carneiro was an accident because he wasn't supposed to be on the fatal plane. Amaro da Costa was an undesirable person to the military because he would have received information from our embassies in the Middle East saying that there were important military men involved on the arms deal during the Iran-Iraq war.
Portugal on the route
Such weapons from the Americans went through Portugal using the ports of Lisbon, Leixues and Setzbal. With Portuguese
military personnel, it is alleged, getting their share on the deal.
It is known that the Minister of Defense at the time, Adelino Amaro da Costa, was investigating a secret slush fund controlled by the military. To give a little taste to this situation, let us just say that before taking office as President of the United States, one of Ronald Reagan's first actions was to send the former US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger to Portugal.
Kissinger was in Portugal on 12 November 1980, and held meetings with the then President Ramalho Eanes, the Prime Minister Sa Carneiro and Minister of Defense Amaro da Costa, as well with the then Socialist Party leader Mario Soares and the residential candidate Soares Carneiro.
Officially, Kissinger came to talk about the crisis in Zambia and came to Portugal just in the role of an official adviser to the pharmaceutical company Merck, Sharp & Dohme.
Now with the Sa Fernandes theory, it is strange indeed that the Republicans rushed to send such a prestigious man to our country.
Tal&Qual has made some investigations about a conspiracy theory that runs in Washington corridors, since 1988, the time when it became normal to use the expression "October Surprise," and the connection with this theory of Sa Fernandes. Let us remember that since the fall of the Shah of Iran, in the beginning of 1979, there were 52 Americans hostages held at the US embassy at Teheran, capital of Iran.
Ronald Reagan and George Bush had just became elected, respectively, President and Vice-President of the USA, in a fight won over the former President, the Democrat Jimmy Carter.
The inaugural address of Ronald Reagan happened on 21 January 1981. Soon after that speech the 52 American hostages in Teheran were released after 444 days of captivity. Only in 1988 did the
first questions emerge: Why wasn't Jimmy Carter able to negotiate the release of the hostages, losing that way an important card in the elections that had given the victory to the Republicans?
In fact, Jimmy Carter got the honor of going to welcome the hostages at the US military base in Frankfurt, Germany, just because Ronald Reagan granted that permission. And the rest of the so-called conspiracy began to grow. __________________________
Extra for Cryptome readers: For those not familiar with the Camarate case:
Camarate is the name of the area on the outskirts of the Lisbon airport where a small Cessna plane crashed on the night of 4 December 1980.
On that plane were the Portuguese Prime Minister Sa Caneiro, the Minister of Defense Amaro da Costa, their wives, the Chief of Cabinet Patricio Gouveia and the two pilots.
The real facts regarding the crash of the plane, even after 20 years, have never been determined. But there is strong evidence of an explosion soon after the take-off. The families of the victims are still fighting to take the case to court.
A Portuguese film , Camarate: Acident ou Atentado?, has just been made. Some pictures can be seen at the site www.camarate.com. In the film the name of Frank Carlucci is mentioned. He was at the CIA in 1980 and had been Ambassador to Portugal from 1974 until 1979.
