Indeed, Oxfam used some of these funds to run covert supplies to rebel-controlled areas, though officially no major NGO sent food aid to rebel-held territory.
It was, according to Mr Smith, to manage a "special deal" with the sultanate of Brunei and ensure that the covert supplies of oil to South Africa were uninterrupted.
Time will tell whether Britain's embarrassment over covert supplies to Sierra Leone (see article) will make it more or less zealous in the cause.The sad thing is that neither the OAS, nor the UN, nor the EU is likely to cause any immediate worries to the gun-runners of Africa, Afghanistan or the Balkans.
Colonel North, a staff member of the White House's National Security Council, asked the businessmen to help with the covert supply of weapons to the contras.
Turning a blind eye to evidence of North Korea's enrichment work would, they argue, leave Mr Kim with a covert supply of fissile material, whether for bomb making or for export, including to terrorist groups.So far, despite its tough line, says Gary Samore, of the London-based IISS, America has in effect acquiesced in North Korea's becoming a covert nuclear power.
Since December 2015, three cargo ships commissioned by the US military's Special Operations Command (Socom), in charge of the covert supply of weapons to Syria, have left Black Sea ports in the Balkans for the Middle East, according to American procurement documents and ship tracking data.
That would mean that they couldn't get highly enriched uranium, they couldn't get weapons-grade plutonium, they couldn't have a covert supply chain.
Those personal connections and al-Laqis' links to Iran helped Hezbollah maintain covert supply lines and obtain gear like night-vision goggles and even drones.
At the same time he supported the Americans' semi-covert supply of shoulder-held anti-aircraft missiles, which helped persuade the Russians to give up their vain efforts.
Muslims, strengthened by America's Equip and Train programme and by covert arms supplies from Islamic states, may reckon they have reason enough to start fighting: some 40% of Bosnia's population before the war, they now control only 27% of the land.
While he also served as a spy in Chile from 1972 to 1974, at the time Salvador Allende's government was being destabilized, he worked mainly in the Middle East, in Abu Dhabi and Jordan, where he spied on Iraq's covert weapons supplies.
