Post by Steve Gardner on Nov 26, 2007 15:51:28 GMT
...and the CIA's Connection to Tim Osman
This, part four of a five part series, originally appeared here - THE ALL-SEEING i
Competition between Russia and the West – initially the British Empire - for supremacy in Central Asia began in the early 19th century with ‘The Great Game’.
Fearful that Imperial Russia might threaten its dominance of the Indian sub-continent, the British attempted to establish Afghanistan as a buffer state. By 1884, a combination of repeated local resistance and continued Russian expansion brought the two countries to the brink of war. Although war was averted and tensions eased with the signing of the Anglo-Russian Convention (1907), the period of detente soon ended with the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Afghanistan subsequently signed a Treaty of Friendship with the newly formed Russian Soviet Republic and achieved political self-determination. This marked the beginning of a steady decline in British influence in Afghanistan.
After World War II, Britain was emasculated as an imperial force. An empowered United States, in line with the Truman Doctrine, sought to assert its influence in Central Asia. Its goals, however, were not simply to contain Soviet expansion, but also to develop and protect its energy interests in the region.
“We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.” Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor to President Cater
With Britain and Soviet Russia otherwise occupied, Afghanistan enjoyed a long period of relative stability. However, in 1973, the former Prime Minister, Mohammad Daoud Khan, seized power in a coup d’etat alleging government corruption and economic mismanagement. Daoud departed from tradition and replaced the Monarchy with a Republic, but he ran a repressive regime and failed to deliver the promised economic reforms. He also pursued a pro-Western policy, much to the chagrin of Soviet Premier, Leonid Brezhnev, who in turn encouraged the hitherto divided Communist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) to re-unite.
At the same, the KGB began attempts to orchestrate a coup against Daoud. They sponsored riots, which broke out on the streets of Kabul in late 1977 and early 1978. The government responded by arresting several prominent PDPA members, one of whom, Mir Akhbar Khyber, was charged with being a KGB spy. When he was killed in custody, the KGB pointed the finger of blame at Daoud, claiming he had ordered the execution. Khyber’s funeral subsequently became the rallying-point for a mass demonstration of Communist unity against Daoud and his government. Daoud responded by ordering the arrest of the PDPA’s leadership, but he was too slow; on April 27, 1978, he was overthrown and executed (see The Saur Revolution). Nur Muhammad Taraki, the Secretary General of the PDPA, then became the first Communist leader of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.
Taraki’s government immediately began the process of reform. It laid out a Marxist agenda, which included land and education reforms, as well as more liberal attitudes towards women. These were seen as an affront to the traditional rural and feudal Afghan way of life; they were also seen as an attack on Islam. By mid-1978, mujahideen insurgents had already established a base in Pakistan and had turned to the West, in particular the United States, for support. Meanwhile, large parts of the country had revolted and the PDPA responded with disproportionate aggression, fuelling the rebellion and causing around half of the army to either desert or join with the insurgency.
In September 1979, Taraki was killed and Deputy Prime Minister, Hafizullah Amin, took control. Soviet leaders soon began to question his loyalty to Moscow following reports that he was purging the opposition of Soviet sympathisers and that he was a CIA agent. Indeed, the Soviets strongly suspected that the CIA had, for some time, been active within Afghanistan. On 27th December 1979, they intervened militarily in support of the Communist revolution.
The Soviet’s suspicion was later confirmed by the then US National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, in an interview with Le Nouvel Observateur in January 1998.
“Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know.” - English proverb
In January 2005, the US Department of State published the CIA’s response to the hypothetical question: Has the CIA ever provided funding, training, or other support to Usama Bin Laden?
More broadly, the Department of State asserted that…
However, there is evidence to suggest that, not only did both the CIA and the US government have a relationship with Osama bin Laden, but that they were rather important ones.
The CIA’s support of the Islamic mujahideen (Operation Cyclone) relied heavily on the intermediation of Pakistani secret service agency, the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI). Much of that support, whether in the form of recruits, finance or equipment, was distributed by the ISI to the mujahideen via Maktab al Khidamar (MAK), which was founded by Dr Abdullah Azzam and Osama bin Laden (allegedly pictured above with Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's National Security Advisor).
Between 1979 and 1992, the CIA is said to have helped train over 100,000 Islamic insurgents at a cost of up to $20 billion. In his book, ‘Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism’, John Cooley reveals that some insurgents were recruited in the US and were sent to the CIA’s spy training camp in Virginia, Camp Peary, where they received paramilitary training. Other ‘unqualified applicants’ were brought into the US using visas issued illicitly by the CIA, according to comments made by Michael Springman, the former head of the American visa bureau in Jeddah, during a radio interview on July 3rd 2002.
Michael Springman’s assertion that Osama bin Laden was a CIA asset is corroborated by claims made in an article by J. Orlin Grabbe. Grabbe describes a meeting that took place in 1986 at the Hilton Hotel in Sherman Oaks, California. This meeting was arranged at the behest of officials within President Ronald Reagan’s administration, who were pushing for arms supplies to the mujahideen to be accelerated. It was said to have been attended by Ted Gunderson, a retired FBI Senior Special Agent; Michael Riconosciuto, a weapons and explosives expert with links to the CIA; Ralph Oberg, who worked at the Afghan desk at the State Department; and Tim Osman, which Grabbe claims was ‘the name assigned to [Osama bin Laden] by the CIA for his tour of the U.S. and U.S. military bases, in search of political support and armaments’ (see ITEM 1 of what is purported to be an official document supporting this claim).
This, part four of a five part series, originally appeared here - THE ALL-SEEING i
~~~~~
Competition between Russia and the West – initially the British Empire - for supremacy in Central Asia began in the early 19th century with ‘The Great Game’.
Fearful that Imperial Russia might threaten its dominance of the Indian sub-continent, the British attempted to establish Afghanistan as a buffer state. By 1884, a combination of repeated local resistance and continued Russian expansion brought the two countries to the brink of war. Although war was averted and tensions eased with the signing of the Anglo-Russian Convention (1907), the period of detente soon ended with the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Afghanistan subsequently signed a Treaty of Friendship with the newly formed Russian Soviet Republic and achieved political self-determination. This marked the beginning of a steady decline in British influence in Afghanistan.
After World War II, Britain was emasculated as an imperial force. An empowered United States, in line with the Truman Doctrine, sought to assert its influence in Central Asia. Its goals, however, were not simply to contain Soviet expansion, but also to develop and protect its energy interests in the region.
“We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.” Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor to President Cater
With Britain and Soviet Russia otherwise occupied, Afghanistan enjoyed a long period of relative stability. However, in 1973, the former Prime Minister, Mohammad Daoud Khan, seized power in a coup d’etat alleging government corruption and economic mismanagement. Daoud departed from tradition and replaced the Monarchy with a Republic, but he ran a repressive regime and failed to deliver the promised economic reforms. He also pursued a pro-Western policy, much to the chagrin of Soviet Premier, Leonid Brezhnev, who in turn encouraged the hitherto divided Communist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) to re-unite.
At the same, the KGB began attempts to orchestrate a coup against Daoud. They sponsored riots, which broke out on the streets of Kabul in late 1977 and early 1978. The government responded by arresting several prominent PDPA members, one of whom, Mir Akhbar Khyber, was charged with being a KGB spy. When he was killed in custody, the KGB pointed the finger of blame at Daoud, claiming he had ordered the execution. Khyber’s funeral subsequently became the rallying-point for a mass demonstration of Communist unity against Daoud and his government. Daoud responded by ordering the arrest of the PDPA’s leadership, but he was too slow; on April 27, 1978, he was overthrown and executed (see The Saur Revolution). Nur Muhammad Taraki, the Secretary General of the PDPA, then became the first Communist leader of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.
Taraki’s government immediately began the process of reform. It laid out a Marxist agenda, which included land and education reforms, as well as more liberal attitudes towards women. These were seen as an affront to the traditional rural and feudal Afghan way of life; they were also seen as an attack on Islam. By mid-1978, mujahideen insurgents had already established a base in Pakistan and had turned to the West, in particular the United States, for support. Meanwhile, large parts of the country had revolted and the PDPA responded with disproportionate aggression, fuelling the rebellion and causing around half of the army to either desert or join with the insurgency.
In September 1979, Taraki was killed and Deputy Prime Minister, Hafizullah Amin, took control. Soviet leaders soon began to question his loyalty to Moscow following reports that he was purging the opposition of Soviet sympathisers and that he was a CIA agent. Indeed, the Soviets strongly suspected that the CIA had, for some time, been active within Afghanistan. On 27th December 1979, they intervened militarily in support of the Communist revolution.
The Soviet’s suspicion was later confirmed by the then US National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, in an interview with Le Nouvel Observateur in January 1998.
Q: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the National Security Adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?
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.
Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
Brzezinski: It isn’t quite that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn’t believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don’t regret anything today?
Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic [integrisme], having given arms and advice to future terrorists?
Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated: Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.
Brzezinski: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn’t a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries.
“Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know.” - English proverb
In January 2005, the US Department of State published the CIA’s response to the hypothetical question: Has the CIA ever provided funding, training, or other support to Usama Bin Laden?
No. Numerous comments in the media recently have reiterated a widely circulated but incorrect notion that the CIA once had a relationship with Usama Bin Laden. For the record, you should know that the CIA never employed, paid, or maintained any relationship whatsoever with Bin Laden (emphasis in original)
More broadly, the Department of State asserted that…
The United States did not “create” Osama bin Laden or al Qaeda. The United States supported the Afghans fighting for their country’s freedom -- as did other countries, including Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, China, Egypt, and the UK -- but the United States did not support the “Afghan Arabs,” the Arabs and other Muslims who came to fight in Afghanistan for broader goals.
However, there is evidence to suggest that, not only did both the CIA and the US government have a relationship with Osama bin Laden, but that they were rather important ones.
The CIA’s support of the Islamic mujahideen (Operation Cyclone) relied heavily on the intermediation of Pakistani secret service agency, the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI). Much of that support, whether in the form of recruits, finance or equipment, was distributed by the ISI to the mujahideen via Maktab al Khidamar (MAK), which was founded by Dr Abdullah Azzam and Osama bin Laden (allegedly pictured above with Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's National Security Advisor).
Between 1979 and 1992, the CIA is said to have helped train over 100,000 Islamic insurgents at a cost of up to $20 billion. In his book, ‘Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism’, John Cooley reveals that some insurgents were recruited in the US and were sent to the CIA’s spy training camp in Virginia, Camp Peary, where they received paramilitary training. Other ‘unqualified applicants’ were brought into the US using visas issued illicitly by the CIA, according to comments made by Michael Springman, the former head of the American visa bureau in Jeddah, during a radio interview on July 3rd 2002.
CBC: So what do you think you were dealing with here; it all sounds a bit like a case of visa fraud perhaps, but why to you think there was anything more than that?
Springman: Well initially I thought that is what it was. There was visa fraud. I had been told by one contact that the price for a visa at the American consulate was the equivalent of $2500 US. But once I got back to the United States, and was out of the foreign service, I ran across a couple of people with ties to the American government, that told me another story; that the CIA was recruiting fighters for the Afghan war against the then Soviets, and that their asset, Osama bin Laden was working with them. They had a recruiting office in Jeddah, they had a recruiting office in Riyadh, and third one somewhere in the Eastern province. And they would send these people to Jeddah, the fifth largest visa issuing post in the Middle East, for visas. They would apparently run these people straight over from their recruiting office over to my visa window. Well obviously, when they were not good solid businessmen, or good upstanding upper class people I would refuse them.
CBC: How many would you estimate that got into the United States that shouldn’t have through this back door?
Springman: Well, in my case I would say as many as 100.
CBC: And when you questioned them, what would they say were their reasons for expecting to get a visa with such slight credentials?
Springman: There was one instance of two Pakistanis who came to me, and they wanted to got to an American auto parts trade show. They couldn’t name the show, and they couldn’t name the city in which it was going to be held. And then the case officer came over and called me on the phone, and said, “Give them a visa”. I said “No, it doesn’t wash”. “Well, we need it, I’m sorry.” Then he went to the head of the consular section and got me overruled, and they got their visas. But when I complained to the powers in the consulate, and the people in Riyadh, I was told to keep quiet, that there was reasons for doing this, that it wasn’t a case of my poor judgment, it was this and it was that. This simply fueled my suspicions that something untoward was going on.
CBC: Was there ever any pattern to these applicants that you could see? To their situations, their skills, their nationalities?
Springman: They seemed to basically people with no real skills. Their nationalities for the most part were Pakistani, Palestinian, Syrian, Lebanese. They were young, in their 20s and their 30s say, and they seemed to have no ties to any place in particular.
CBC: Where did Afghanistan seem to fit into this whole pattern? Because it seems they were going to the US to collect or be rewarded for some past deed, or to be trained for another. Where did Afghanistan fit in?
Springman: Afghanistan was the end user of their facilities. My sources told me that they were coming to the United States for training as terrorists, and they would be sent back to Afghanistan. But then the countries that had originally supplied them certainly didn’t want them back. These were people that had been given skills in overthrowing governments, destroying armored columns and things like this, and the various governments in the region frankly didn’t want them back, because they thought they might apply these skills at home.
Michael Springman’s assertion that Osama bin Laden was a CIA asset is corroborated by claims made in an article by J. Orlin Grabbe. Grabbe describes a meeting that took place in 1986 at the Hilton Hotel in Sherman Oaks, California. This meeting was arranged at the behest of officials within President Ronald Reagan’s administration, who were pushing for arms supplies to the mujahideen to be accelerated. It was said to have been attended by Ted Gunderson, a retired FBI Senior Special Agent; Michael Riconosciuto, a weapons and explosives expert with links to the CIA; Ralph Oberg, who worked at the Afghan desk at the State Department; and Tim Osman, which Grabbe claims was ‘the name assigned to [Osama bin Laden] by the CIA for his tour of the U.S. and U.S. military bases, in search of political support and armaments’ (see ITEM 1 of what is purported to be an official document supporting this claim).
