I first ran into his name in connection with the Niger forgeries, when he was being named as a possible forger because he had both Italian and African connections, as well as being friends with Michael Ledeen.
http://www.counterpunch.org/homeland6.htmlTo assure that no one else in the CIA would obstruct Reagan's secret policy, Casey in January 1986 conscripted veteran CIA officer Duane Clarridge into the Counter-Terror Network, as its de-facto security chief. ... Duane "Dewey" Clarridge, a man with an extensive background in terror, was well equipped for managing this job. A rabid right wing ideologue, he was chief of the CIA's station in Turkey in the late 1960s and 1970s, when the fascist Grey Wolves went on a terror rampage, bombing, shooting and killing thousands of officials, journalists, students, lawyers, labor organizers, social democrats, left-wing activists and Kurds. Since then, Turkey' military dictatorship has been one of America's strongest allies.
A body-builder and certified member of the Old Boy clique that runs the CIA, Clarridge in August 1976 helped ADDO Ted Shackley recruit Albert Hakim, later a member of Secord's Enterprise, to spy in Iran. (Shackley was soon thereafter forced into retirement due to his association with "rogue elephant" Ed Wilson, the CIA officer who sold tons of explosives to Libya.) Clarridge was serving as the CIA's station chief in Rome when the Pope was shot, and was chief of Latin America Division from 1981 until 1984, when Nicaraguan harbors were mined and the psyops "murder manual" was distributed to the Contras, with his approval. In this capacity Clarridge helped Richard Secord move PLO weapons captured by Israeli forces during their bloody invasion of Lebanon, through Noriega in Panama, to the Contras.
Clarridge, as chief of the Europe Division, next played a pivotal role in the illegal Iran-Contra operation, by providing the back channel, through his station chief in Lisbon, that allowed North and Secord's Enterprise to sell HAWK and TOW missiles to the Iranians, at a huge profit for Secord and his Israeli counterparts, in exchange for the release of several American hostages. The operation, which subverted the U.S. Constitution and the Bolland Amendments passed by Congress, made Ronald Reagan into the world's biggest, but most adorable, liar.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iraq-downing.htmFollowing the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, and the quick success of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, the INC plan was modified. The new plan was developed with the help of a retired four-star Army general, Wayne Downing
, and former CIA officer Duane (Dewey) Clarridge, who have served as unpaid consultants to <Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress>. . . .
The new version included the INC establishing a firebase inside Iraq, from which it would announce the creation of a provisional Iraqi government . The US would begin an intense bombing campaign, as it did in Afghanistan, and airlift thousands of Special Forces troops into southern Iraq. The United States Air Force would systematically bomb key Iraqi command-and-control facilities. Early versions of the plan did not call for a direct military assault on Baghdad, but proposed quick-strike attacks on military units in the north and primarily in the south. If all went as planned, dissent would break out in the Iraqi military, and Saddam Hussein would have to decide whether to send his forces south to attack the Americans or to keep his forces in Baghdad to guard against an invasion from the north. If Saddam's forces counter-attacked, they would be exposed to American air strikes and destroyed. The INC believed that any show of force would immediately trigger a revolt against Saddam within Iraq. According to Clarridge, the "idea from the beginning was to encourage defections of Iraqi units. You need to create a nucleus, something for people to defect to. If they could take Basra , it would all be over."