Few events in history are as fascinating in hindsight as the OPEC oil embargo of 1973-1974. The era, in the words of one American historian, was 'a turning point in modern international affairs' -- one which 'fundamentally altered ... perceptions of the international balance of power by showing that the Third World could directly influence the rest of the world by withholding important resources.'

It was that -- and more. The boycott came at a time when the United States was especially vulnerable. Even as humiliated U.S. military forces were trying to exit gracefully from a disastrous engagement in Vietnam, college campuses across the country erupted in a frenzy of anti-war protest. An oppressed black populace rebelled against the old political order, and cries of 'power to the people' added another dimension to the vast divisions emerging within the U.S. At the same time, allegations of political corruption drew the nation's attention to a scandal which would eventually force then-President Richard M. Nixon from office. And in the midst of this upheaval, Congress launched an unprecedented public inquiry into the misdeeds of the CIA around the world.

Across the ocean, however, the story was very different. Nigeria, the demographic giant of black Africa, had opted not to apply the OPEC sanctions. The country, then under the leadership of Gen. Yakubu Gowon, was recovering from a ruinous civil war which had ended only two years before the start of the boycott. Oil sales at drastically-increased prices brought a rush of unprecedented wealth and status that almost miraculously transformed the country and its institutions.

Such sudden good fortune makes it virtually inevitable that things will quickly change -- and change they did. In the summer of 1975, a year after the embargo ended, Gowon was replaced in a coup by Brig. Muritala Muhammed. Muhammed was both a nationalist and a idealist -- and he was no friend of the U.S. His ascension to power sent an ominous signal to American leaders that a second embargo, if one were to come, would likely be complete.

The story of how U.S. leaders dealt with the 'crisis' in Nigeria provides a textbook-perfect illustration of the use of multiple forms of coercion to influence world events.

This report is the result of more than six years of investigation, the declassification of scores of formerly-secret records, the review of hundreds of internal documents from various U.S. government agencies and contractors, and comprehensive library research.

THE CIA IN NIGERIA: OPEC, OIL, AND THE MURDER OF MURITALA MUHAMMED

The assassination of Nigerian leader Muritala Muhammed over 20 years ago [now 40 years] was compared in a confidential U.S. government country memorandum to the murder of President John F. Kennedy in the U.S. a dozen years earlier. Brig. Muritala Muhammed ruled Nigeria at the height of the country's power, from late July of 1975 until he was killed by an assassin on February 13, 1976. Muhammed was succeeded by Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, and the years since the killing have brought a steady decline in Nigeria's fortunes. Whether such events are coincidence or not, it is clear that they served America's interests at a critical point in world history.

The United States has never acknowledged involvement in the murder of Muhammed, but records from that era tell a tale of intrigue and deception -- and present circumstantial evidence that is almost overwhelming.

Among other things, Washington officials in the mid-1970s were openly enthusiastic about undertaking a campaign of economic warfare against the emerging African nation. In fact, there was even serious talk of a military invasion in the event of a second round of the OPEC sanctions that had sent the domestic economy into chaos. And a lengthy and highly-publicised investigation into abuses by the CIA built widespread support for a presidential ban on foreign assassinations -- yet nearly a year passed with no such order.

While nothing has yet turned up to directly link Obasanjo to U.S. covert operatives prior to the assassination, the record clearly shows that after leaving office in 1979 he assumed prominent roles in several U.S.-based institutions, at least two of which have direct and open ties to the CIA.

Accusations of U.S. involvement in the coup erupted spontaneously throughout Nigeria in February of 1976. This much is reflected in a confidential report prepared by the U.S. Information Agency (USIA), the propaganda bureau that oversees VOA broadcasts and U.S. Information Service installations around the world. A secret 1976 Country Plan for Nigeria, declassified in 1991, describes the political climate in Nigeria following Muhammed's assassination as one of 'uncertainty, distrust and suspicion,' and reported, 'Charges of U.S. (CIA) backing for the attempted coup were prevalent [and] the Chancery and all USIS posts were physically attacked.'

The same document leaves no doubt about the importance attributed to Nigeria, calling the nation 'the primary external source of crude oil for the United States,' and repeatedly emphasising the need for increased American influence.

The nervousness inspired by Muhammed's regime is also a recurrent theme of the USIA report. The new government, it said, 'has adopted a much more aggressive stance in foreign policy than the Gowon regime,' often taking positions that are 'in opposition to those of the United States.' The proxy war in Angola was cited as one example, as was the fact that Nigerians in general were becoming 'suspicious of foreign interference in their internal affairs.'

Perhaps worst of all was the insult that was heaped on the Americans when Muhammed refused an official state visit that had been proposed for May of 1976. 'The regime also declined to receive Secretary of State Kissinger during his African trip in May,' the formerly-classified USIA document exclaims.

But equally revealing is a report prepared for Congress in August of 1975, just one month after Gowon was deposed. That study, titled Oil Fields as Military Objectives, was intended, in the words of its introduction, to examine 'the subject of possible military action against oil producing states in the event of a crippling oil embargo' so that legislators could 'evaluate U.S. policy options in the event of such a crisis.'

The complicated 111-page report, which discussed in detail virtually every aspect of military occupation of oil-producing regions, began by noting that 'sustained sanctions by all or most of OPEC's members would disrupt America's fundamental lifestyle and degrade U.S. security,' and that 'the vital interests of our major allies could quickly be compromised.' Retaliation, it explained, would necessarily involve the seizure, possible restoration, and successful operation of overseas oil installations for a period of 'weeks, months, or years,' as well as measures to protect transit and shipping routes.

Nigeria's oil rich southern coast was clearly considered an option -- but not one without drawbacks. In combination with another state such as Libya or Venezuela, the region could supply 'enough petroleum to maintain the U.S. economy at a reduced pace,' while avoiding the logistical problems associated with 'terrain bottlenecks, such as the Suez Canal and Strait of Hormuz.'

But there were also liabilities involved in an invasion of Nigeria. While the military analysts found that non-Arab OPEC countries 'sense no significant threat, and thus have little incentive to plan sabotage operations,' it also worried that 'Nigeria's fields are in mangrove swamps and rain forest similar to those that frustrated U.S. forces in Southeast Asia,' and that the densely-populated nature of the oil-producing region would pose innumerable risks for a military operation.

Talk of an oil war was not limited to inside memoranda like the one provided to Congress. In February of 1975, five months before Gowon was deposed by Muhammed, then-President Gerald Ford admitted to the press that, 'in case of economic strangulation' by OPEC, the United States would 'take the necessary action for our self-preservation.' Secretary of State Kissinger was even more blunt in remarks appearing in a Department of State Bulletin the same month: 'No nation can announce that it will let itself be strangled without reacting,' Kissinger said. 'And I find it very difficult to see what it is that people are objecting to. We are saying the United States will not permit itself or its allies to be strangled.'

The concept found advocates in the press, as well. The March 1975 edition of Harper's Magazine carried a lengthy commentary by one Miles Ognotus -- identified as a 'defense consultant with intimate links to high-level U.S. policy-makers' writing under a fictitious name -- which asserted that, 'mindful of all the political costs and all the strategic risks, it can be done. It must be done.' Failure to defend the nation's petroleum interests, the writer argued, would be to create an 'impoverished America' with 'all of us being forced to finance the executive jets of the sheiks and the fighter bombers of the dictators.'

The second wave of OPEC sanctions never materialised, and gradually the hysteria over oil prices subsided. But where Nigeria was concerned, another kind of war was being quietly carried out in Washington -- one made up of a diplomatic and economic pressures. These actions are the subject of numerous cables between Washington and Lagos in the final days of Muhammed's rule.

Many of the State Department's Nigeria files for the months immediately before the assassination of Brig. Muritala Muhammed remain classified. Others, however, showcase the paranoia that existed in the United States at the time -- not only about access to oil, but also about Nigeria's growing capability to influence neighbouring countries.

A 26 September 1975 communique solemnly announces, for example, that Nigeria had supplied several thousands of dollars to leaders of the then-banned African National Congress in Lusaka. Another, written in January of 1976 and classified as 'confidential,' cites rhetoric heard with increasing frequency from Nigerian leaders about the 'uncompromising supremacy of Nigeria's national interest,' as well as denunciations of what Nigerian leaders called 'blackmail and vicious propaganda' from the west.

Several cables shed light on the escalation of U.S.intelligence-gathering operations during Muhammed's rule. In a 20 January 1976 cable from Lagos to Washington, for example, Donald Easum, the U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria, warned:

'If Nigeria wants to use oil as a political weapon to promote its foreign policy, this would not necessarily involve further nationalisation. But could mean FMG [the Federal Military Government] is considering ways it might assert greater control over which consuming countries get Nigerian oil, depending on positions those countries take on foreign policies issues of interest to Nigeria. ¶ We understand several other possibly important papers/addresses delivered at senior officers meeting, reportedly including Un/Ife [University of Ife] scholar's advocacy of Nigeria's using oil weapon. We and consul Ibadan will attempt obtain relevant papers and will report further if warranted.'

And yet another secret dispatch, written less than two weeks before Muhammed was killed, hints that U.S. officials were prepared to sabotage Nigeria's booming economy. Nigeria, wrote Ambassador Easum on 2 February 1976, 'desires to play leadership role, [and will] require modern army if its power (within African context) is to be credible. Further, it likely that given foreseeable internal political realities, Nigeria will maintain relatively large army for some time to come.'

The same telegram included a laundry-list of modern weapons likely to be acquired by the Nigerian government, and asserted the belief that a 'civilian government might exercise more restraint.'

But it ended with even more menacing words: 'One development would act as a constraint on Nigerian arms purchases: a sharp drop in the price of petroleum. Defence budget would presumably have to be cut proportionately with fall in revenue if government were to meet minimum developmental and social demands on its resources. Easum.'

Three months after Muhammed's assassination, Ambassador Easum paid a visit to Washington where he gave testimony to the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on African Affairs. 'Is there any chance that Nigeria would use oil as a weapon to try to bring the United States around on African policies?' asked committee chief, Sen. Dick Clark. Easum seemed remarkably less troubled by the prospect than he had the previous January. 'Nigerians are ultimately pragmatic,' he responded. 'They would not, I think, make any decision that they did not view as being in Nigeria's national interest.'

Olusegun Obasanjo remained Nigeria's political leader until elections were held in 1979. But he was by no means finished with Nigerian politics. The same could be said about U.S. Ambassador Donald Easum after he left his post in the oil-rich west African nation.

If the early and mid-1970s were a turbulent time for U.S. politics -- both domestic and international -- those years were decisive, as well. The petroleum crisis had impressed on western leaders the extent of their vulnerability to an organised 'third bloc' of developing nations. The 'essential meaning' of the embargo, said one prominent foreign policy expert, 'is that the developed and capitalist states are at the end of a long period of rapid economic growth made possible in large measure by the cheap raw materials of the undeveloped world.' As such, he continued, it serves as 'an early warning signal of the disaster that in all likelihood awaits future generations.'

The 11-page article, appearing in the conservative Jewish monthly Commentary, then touched on a theme that has special relevance for the present day. The confrontation with OPEC, said author Robert W. Tucker of the Johns Hopkins University, points to 'the increasing pressures we will be subject to by those whose numbers grow daily at an ever greater rate and who are determined to share an ever larger piece of a cake that no longer can be considered as indefinitely expansible.'

Tucker's manifesto mirrored a top-level secret study that had been compiled from research by several branches of government literally days before his article in Commentary hit the news stands. In April of 1974, just when the OPEC action was being felt most keenly, Nixon's Secretary of State Kissinger sent an urgent memorandum to the Department of Defence, the CIA, the State Department, the Agency for International Development, and other branches of government active in the so-called 'third world.' Under the heading, 'Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests,' the communique requested guidance on planning a population strategy that could be used as a point of reference through the year 2000. Specifically, the agencies were asked to respond to the National Security Council with an analysis of the 'international political and economic implications of population growth' in developing regions.

The point was clear: the developing regions were quickly becoming a threat to western dominance as grave as the Soviet bloc.

The final report on population and 'third world' politics, over 200 pages in length, was completed in December of 1974. By then, Nixon's vice president had resigned amidst scandal to be replaced by a little-known Congressman by the name of Gerald Ford. Nixon himself abdicated the Oval Office on 9 August 1974, leaving the reigns of government to the inexperienced Ford. The nation's foreign policy, in other words, was largely in the hands of unelected 'experts' like Kissinger.

Not surprisingly, the National Security Memorandum recommended that the most intense efforts to prevent births be concentrated in large countries of 'special U.S. political and strategic interest.' And a key factor in the document's political analysis was access to resources. Furthermore, Nigeria was targeted for reasons fully consistent with the frustrations later expressed in the State Department cables that followed Gowon's removal from office.

The U.S. economy, it warned, 'will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries... Wherever a lessening of population pressures through reduced birth rates can increase the prospects for such stability, population policy becomes relevant to resource supplies and to the economic interests of the United States.'

The task of controlling population was to be accomplished through an intricate, devious, and aggressive plan in which multinational institutions like the United Nations would be used to 'front' for the United States in an attempt to deflect suspicions of ulterior motives. The World Bank, said the lengthy report, would be particularly useful because of its ability to interfere in domestic policies. The study also suggested that food aid be tied to birth control where leaders were reluctant to address the population 'problem.' Ultimately, however, the strategy would depend on the ruin of the emerging oil economies; neither credit terms nor conditional aid nor even coercive diplomacy work well as weapons against self-sufficient nations.

Most importantly, the National Security Council document made clear the fact that high rates of population growth are to the advantage of less-developed regions. It emphasised that nations having abundant natural resources would generally be most problematic to the U.S. since they are, in the words of the document, well situated 'to cope with population expansion.' Nigeria was presented as an example: 'Already the most populous country on the continent, with an estimated 55 million people in 1970, Nigeria's population by the end of this century is projected to number 135 million. This suggests a growing political and strategic role for Nigeria, at least in Africa south of the Sahara.'

To track the careers of the high-ranking U.S. policy makers of the 1970s up to the present time is to follow a sequence of bizarre coincidences -- or perhaps something more sinister. It is here that Obasanjo's ties to the 'inner circle' in Washington become apparent.

From the time he left his post as U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria until the early 1990s, Donald Easum headed an outfit called the African-American Institute, which is headquartered across the street from United Nations in New York. The African-American Institute was created in 1954 with CIA money to promote an 'exchange' of ideas between the United States and the people of Africa. It is essentially the 'liberal' face of CIA-inspired meddling in Africa's internal political institutions.

Although Easum was the chief of AAI, Obasanjo could easily be called its most visible African. Obasanjo has served as an AAI trustee, and as chief of its prominent African Leadership Forum. He was specially honored at the AAI Sixth Annual Awards Dinner in November, 1989. Among those serving on the advisory board of Obasanjo's Forum is the Vietnam war era Defence Secretary and one-time World Bank president, Robert McNamara.

In June of 1990, McNamara was charged with planning a four-day World Bank conference in Lagos, at which population control was the only item on the agenda. Nigerians had strongly resisted such efforts, and indeed, birth rates had soared as post-OPEC wealth increased. And the birth-reduction scheme, as the 1974 National Security Council report made clear, was aimed at crushing Nigeria not only militarily but also economically. So obvious was the ploy that the Bank itself dared not make such a pronouncement. Instead, it sent for Obasanjo.

During its planning and implementation, the Lagos conference was a well-kept secret, and World Bank press officers referred inquiries to Obasanjo's office in New York. After the meeting, however, Obasanjo publicly called upon Nigerian leaders to implement mandatory birth curbs barring families from having more than three children.

And while Obasanjo was in Lagos demanding that compulsory birth control be foisted on unwilling Nigerians, Easum's African American Institute was busy building a shadowy political network to make it a reality. Under a five year contract with the Agency for International Development that was signed in 1988, AAI was assigned to conduct operations calculated to produce 'a policy climate conducive to the successful execution of a national family planning effort [in Nigeria] and to strengthen federal, state, and local government capability in strategic planning in order to efficiently mobilise and execute an effective and self-sustaining national family planning programme.'

Another outfit with extensive ties to Washington's 'secret establishment' is the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a right-wing geopolitical 'think-tank' whose most conspicuous team member was then Henry Kissinger.

Obasanjo's footprints can be found all over CSIS. On 15 December 1987, the former Nigerian leader delivered the CSIS David M. Abshire lecture -- an annual event of no small importance which takes its name from the Center's ambitious founder and head. Abshire was the first director of the Board for International Broadcasting and was a member of President George Bush's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.

The Intelligence Advisory Board, as defined in a presidential decree of October 1985, is comprised of a select group of individuals chosen by the president and authorised to 'continually review the performance of all agencies of the Federal government that are engaged in the collection, evaluation, or production of intelligence or the execution of intelligence policy.' It makes recommendations directly to the president and, when authorised by the president, 'to the Director of Central Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, and other government agencies engaged in intelligence and related activities.'

Indeed, Abshire's CSIS publishes and sells materials written by Obasanjo, including a small paperback book titled, Forging a Compact in U.S.-Africa Relations, which is based on Obasanjo's 1987 lecture.

In 1991, Obasanjo became one of five nominees for the post of UN Secretary General. The reason for his popularity among power-brokers in the west is evident from remarks he made in October of the same year at a Washington conference on 'Sudan and Nigeria: Religion, Nationalism and Intolerance.' During that event, which was sponsored by the government-controlled (and deceptively-named) U.S. Institute for Peace, Obasanjo called for a 'mental decarbonisation of the generality of the people in both countries [Sudan and Nigeria]' -- something his militaristic audience may well have interpreted as a veiled reference to wholesale brainwashing.

Even as the U.S. government was preparing for the possibility of full-fledged sanctions that could impinge on its 'vital interests' and planning its long-range population reduction scheme, another development was taking shape in Congress. In response to growing distrust of government among the American public, the legislature began holding hearings into abuses by the CIA; of particular interest was the matter of political assassinations and plots to overthrow foreign heads of state.

There is abundant evidence of CIA involvement in actions against African leaders. The Agency's role in the 1961 murder of Patrice Lumumba, for instance, was disclosed in some detail by the former chief of the CIA's Angola division, John Stockwell, in a landmark book titled In Search of Enemies: A CIA Story. In that 1978 expose, Stockwell asserts that the Congolese leader had been eliminated to preserve 'a half-billion-dollar investment in Zairian mineral resources,' which the west feared would end up in the wrong hands if Lumumba controlled the vast central African nation.

In his book, Stockwell also recalls a conversation with a fellow U.S. operative who told of 'driving about town after curfew with Patrice Lumumba's body in the trunk of his car, trying to decide what to do with it.' According to Stockwell (and confirmed in testimony given before Congress), Richard Helms, CIA director from 1966 to 1973, ordered the destruction of records relating to the assassination of Lumumba.

Even earlier records from the State Department archives reveal that the United States worked closely with British colonial rulers in the early 1950s as part of a plot aimed at 'breaking the back' of the Mau Mau movement and, in particular, at getting anti-colonial agitator Jomo Kenyatta 'out of circulation without due process of law,' to quote a top secret October 1952 cable from Nairobi to Washington.

One outcome of the hearings -- held in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate -- was that, by early 1975, pressure was put on the White House to issue an order barring foreign political assassinations. And that very month, President Ford freely conceded that disclosure of the CIA's involvement in assassination conspiracies 'would blacken the reputation of every President after Harry Truman.' But oddly, an entire year passed without any such presidential directive.

Ironically, it was not until 18 February 1976 -- five days after the murder of Muritala Muhammed -- that the executive order formally renouncing such actions was signed. By then, Olusegun Obasanjo had been safely installed as Nigeria's new head of state.

There is no shortage of testimony from western strategic specialists, even today, about the importance of 'the oil weapon.' Ultimately, say many of them, the OPEC crisis was for the industrial world a political struggle -- not so much to establish unity among western nations dependent on OPEC imports, but to prevent that kind of unity from emerging among oil-producing countries and, in the longer term, throughout the developing world.

The campaign to undermine Nigeria was by no means an isolated event, but it was a crucial part of a larger strategy. Had events occurred differently there, all of Africa -- and perhaps, all of the southern hemisphere -- would be in a strikingly different position now. Among all the curious facts that surround the 1973-1974 OPEC oil embargo, it is this one that is least likely to be a coincidence.

First published in 1992 & 1993
Reprinted with author's permission.