Fw: CIA Roundup at NVUSA--10/21/2001--Part 2

>
> Part 2
> CIA Roundup at NVUSA--10/21/2001
> Intro & Items 16-31
>
> This is the second of two emails exploring the context for President
Bush's
> order last month to "take the gloves off" of the CIAs pursuit of Osama bin
> Laden.
>
> The following materials (items 16-31) support the claim that the Bush
> family has enjoyed a special relationship to the CIA for nearly forty
> years, with current director George Tenet enjoying a specially warm
> relationship with the Bushes.
>
> CIA critics say the agency already operates, "by whatever means
necessary,"
> including the use of illicit drug profits, and coordination with local
drug
> cartels, for which Afghanistan counts as an especially lucrative source.
>
> The Bush administration awarded the Taliban $43 million earlier this year
> for its cooperation in suppressing opium growing, a move which reportedly
> shifted poppy power to the north, where CIA involvement with the Northern
> Alliance had been underway for some years.
>
> It is interesting to note in passing that there are lingering concerns
over
> the US prosecution of the Gulf War, including allegations that US forces
> "massacred" about 150,000 retreating Iraqi soldiers following their formal
> retreat.
>
> As is already well known to wartime internet junkies, the famed training
> camps in Afghanistan were built with US tax dollars under covert CIA
> supervision through the auspices of Pakistan's secret service, ISI.  But
> ABC also reports that some of Afghanistan's fundamentalist forces were
> treated to training in Virginia.
>
> Someday we'll need a total figure for US money that can be attributed to
> the bin Laden budget.  Meanwhile, I'm guessing at least $10 billion--not
> counting any poppy pennies that may have been diverted to "national
> security".
>
> Finally, the ACLU worries that national intelligence has traditionally
> turned on its own citizens during times of crisis and fear.  This makes
the
> US system complex, argue Paul Wolff and friends, because the struggle for
> democracy at home has sometimes been a costly cause.
>
> NOTE: Page assignments may change as new material is added.
>
> Page H (Cont.):
>
> (16)  Oversimplified, the CIA's primary global foreign policy method is to
> gain influence and control by whatever means necessary. To be a bit more
> clear, let's compare civilian police against covert operatives. In police
> work, law enforcement dealings with underworld elements are always
> difficult and wraught with ethical problems, but civilian police are
> subject to rules and oversight. Conversely, the CIA is comparatively
> unencumbered by the rules that govern civilian police corps, and suffers
> little Congressional oversight. The result of this extreme freedom in
> executing policy, is that the CIA's official and unofficial operatives
> involved in its covert operations division are free to pursue military
> objectives with whatever means they see fit.
>
> These operatives are covert warriors, they are key in expanding the US
> sphere of influence. In order for covert actions to be effective
> politically and militarily, the CIA employs parts of the underworld as its
> operatives (like the thousand foreign agents mentioned above). After all,
> who knows the political and social terrain better than the local mob? But,
> once employed by the CIA, these criminal enterprises naturally expect some
> kind of quid-pro-quo, and in order to concentrate power via its foriegn
> underworld proxies, the CIA has to find ways to reward and empower its
> criminal proxies. If the CIA really wants to gain influence and control in
> countries and economies via alliances with underground criminal
> enterprises, and if these alliances entail protecting drug piplines, well,
> the end justifies the means.
> --CIA & Drugs: An Introduction (ciadrugs.homestead.com). Also:
> Bibliography of Covert Operations in Afghanistan 1992-1996.
>
> (17)  Mr. President, we hope that you and Mrs. Bush will always come home
> to visit us at CIA. We consider it an honor to have our complex named
after
> you, and we will do all that we can to make you and our wonderful country
> proud of us....
>
> The unbiased assessment of our Directorate of Intelligence is that
> throughout your long years of public service you have been among their
most
> dedicated, enthusiastic and discriminating customers. You have always
> understood how vitally important it is for our national leaders to be able
> to make their decisions based on the most complete information and the
best
> analysis possible. As DCI, as Vice President and as President you read
> every single Daily Brief that the Intelligence Directorate produced. Even
> if they doubted that anybody else in the government was reading their
> stuff, they could always count on you! As you know, our analysts pride
> themselves on the accuracy of their predictions. They will always be among
> your biggest fans, even though, Mr. President, you didn’t always call it
> right. And we found one such instance. After President Ford asked you to
> take the CIA job, and you answered the call of duty, you wrote the
> following to your good friend, Congressman Bill Steiger: “I honestly feel
> my political future is behind me – but hell, I’m 51, and this new one
gives
> me a chance to really contribute.”
> --Georg Tenet to Bush Sr. upon the dedication of the Bush CIA Building
> (CIA Website 4/26/1999).
>
> (18)  Tenet is the first CIA director in 28 years to remain in office
after
> the White House switched occupants.
> --Dept. of State (1/16/2001).
>
> (19)  Explosive growth in Afghan opium production is being driven by the
> shared interests of traditional traffickers and the Taliban. And as with
so
> many of these cross-national issues, Mr. Chairman, what concerns me most
is
> the way the threats become intertwined. In this case, there is ample
> evidence that Islamic extremists such as Usama Bin Ladin use profits from
> the drug trade to support their terror campaign.
> --George Tenet (2/2/2000).
>
> (20)  [Afghanistan]: world's largest illicit opium producer, surpassing
> Burma (potential production in 1999 - 1,670 metric tons; cultivation in
> 1999 - 51,500 hectares, a 23% increase over 1998); a major source of
> hashish; increasing number of heroin-processing laboratories being set up
> in the country; major political factions in the country profit from drug
> trade
> --CIA Factbook ( Afghanistan).
>
> (21)  It is only fitting that on December 7th, I quote Harry Truman - the
> President who created the CIA as a hedge against a new Pearl Harbor.
Truman
> once said: "We must help people improve the conditions of life, to create
a
> world in which democracy and freedom can flourish."
> --George Tenet (Vital Speeches 12/7/2000).
>
> (22)  Conveniently ignored in all of the press coverage since the tragic
> events of Sept. 11 is the fact that on May 17 Secretary of State Colin
> Powell announced a gift of $43 million to the Taliban as a purported
reward
> for its eradication of Afghanistan's opium crop this February. That, in
> effect, made the U.S. the Taliban's largest financial benefactor according
> to syndicated columnist Robert Scheer writing in The Los Angeles times on
> May 22. But -- as we described in FTW's March 2001 issue -- the Taliban's
> destruction of that crop was apparently the single most important act of
> economic warfare against U.S. economic interests that the Taliban had ever
> committed. So why the gift?
> --Michael C. Ruppert ( copvcia.org 9/18/2001).
>
> (23)  "Even in Vietnam I didn't see anything like this. It's pathetic,"
> said Major Bob Nugent, an Army intelligence officer. This one-sided
> carnage, this racist mass murder of Arab people, occurred while White
House
> spokesman Marlin Fitzwater promised that the U.S. and its coalition
> partners would not attack Iraqi forces leaving Kuwait. This is surely one
> of the most heinous war crimes in contemporary history....
>
> The massacre of withdrawing Iraqi soldiers violates the Geneva Conventions
> of 1949, Common Article III, which outlaws the killing of soldiers who are
> out of combat. The point of contention involves the Bush administration's
> claim that the Iraqi troops were retreating to regroup and fight again.
> Such a claim is the only way that the massacre which occurred could be
> considered legal under international law. But in fact the claim is false
> and obviously so. The troops were withdrawing and removing themselves from
> combat under direct orders from Baghdad that the war was over and that
Iraq
> had quit and would fully comply with UN resolutions. To attack the
soldiers
> returning home under these circumstances is a war crime.
> --Joyce Chediac (5/11/1991).
>
> Page I:
>
> (24)  But the United States is a very complex system. It's very hard to
> describe because, yes, there are elements of democracy; there are things
> that you're grateful for, that you're not in front of the death squads in
> El Salvador. On the other hand, it's not quite a democracy. And one of the
> things that makes it not quite a democracy is the existence of outfits
like
> the FBI and the CIA. Democracy is based on openness, and the existence of
a
> secret policy, secret lists of dissident citizens, violates the spirit of
> democracy.
> --Paul Wolff, etal. (COINTELPRO 9/1/2001).
>
> (25)  Contrary to the claims of US officials, these were not sophisticated
> training facilities, but improvised structures to put up the trainees. The
> only sophisticated parts of these camps were the ammunition storage
depots,
> which were being used during the Afghan war of the 1980s for storing the
> arms and ammunition given by the CIA before their distribution to the
> Mujahideen by the ISI. Since CIA officials used to visit these camps, set
> up with their assistance, during the 1980s, they were well aware of their
> location and of the location of the ammunition storage depots. It was,
> therefore , surprising that the American bombings of August 20,1998,
failed
> to hit any of the storage depots. They destroyed only the improvised
> residential portions. This doesn’t speak well of the much-vaunted Cruise
> missiles (Tomahawks).
> --SAPRA India (1998). Also posted at americanfriends.org
>
> Page J:
>
> (26)  At the CIA, it happens often enough to have a code name: Blowback.
> Simply defined, this is the term that describes an agent, an operative or
> an operation that has turned on its creators. Osama bin Laden, our new
> public enemy Number 1, is the personification of blowback.
> --Michael Moran ( MSNBC). See also bibliography on covert action in
> Afghanistan.
>
> (27)  Thirdly, Casey committed CIA support to a long-standing ISI
> initiative to recruit radical Muslims from around the world to come to
> Pakistan and fight with the Afghan Mujaheddin. The ISI had encouraged this
> since 1982, and by now all the other players had their reasons for
> supporting the idea.
> --Ahmed Rashid (Center for Public Integrity, CPI 9/13/2001).
>
> (28)  In other words, backed by Pakistan's military intelligence (ISI)
> which in turn was controlled by the CIA, the Taliban Islamic State was
> largely serving American geopolitical interests. The Golden Crescent drug
> trade was also being used to finance and equip the Bosnian Muslim Army
> (starting in the early 1990s) and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In
last
> few months there is evidence that Mujahideen mercenaries are fighting in
> the ranks of KLA-NLA terrorists in their assaults into Macedonia.
> --Michel Chossudovsky (Centre for Research on Globalisation, CRG
> 9/12/2001).
>
> (29)  In Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism (Pluto
> Press: 1999), ABC journalist John Cooley documents how radical Afghan
> militants were trained in Virginia to fight the Soviet Union, using US tax
> dollars in the 1980s. According to Cooley, these militants were trained at
> Camp Peary - CIA facility in Virginia. The Federation of American
> Scientists has published unclassified documents that explain Peary's role:
> to provide "advanced weapons and explosives training"
> --Peace Poster. Also see book review, borrowed from LATimes 1/16/2000.
>
> (30)  But unfortunately we must say that it was the government of the
> United States who supported Pakistani dictator Gen. Zia-ul Haq in creating
> thousands of religious schools from which the germs of Taliban emerged. In
> the similar way, as is clear to all, Osama Bin Laden has been the
blue-eyed
> boy of CIA. But what is more painful is that American politicians have not
> drawn a lesson from their pro-fundamentalist policies in our country and
> are still supporting this or that fundamentalist band or leader. In our
> opinion any kind of support to the fundamentalist Taliban and Jehadies is
> actually trampling democratic, women's rights and human rights values.
> --Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan: RAWA (9/14/2001
> ). See also a hefty collection of materials about US foreign policy at
> thirdworldtraveler.com
>
> (31)  Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA
> aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet
> army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded
> until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that
> President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the
opponents
> of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to
the
> president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was
going
> to induce a Soviet military intervention.
> --Bill Blum's translation (Le Nouvel Observateur, Jan 15-21, 1998, p.
> 76, French Edition). Submitted via email.
>
>
> Clips and Links for Peace at Nonviolence USA,
> please refresh at:
>
> http://911.gregmoses.net
>
>
> greg.moses@marist.edu
> Philosophy
> Marist College
> Poughkeepsie, NY 12601
> http://philosophy.gregmoses.net
> 845-575-3000 x2217
>
> Note: Pursuant to AAUP guidelines on free expression,
> any opinions are those of the author,
> and do not necessarily represent any institutions.
>
>