CIA HANDOUTS THAT

ROCKED THE WORLD

J. Michael Springmann
AN INSIDER’S VIEW

© 2014
J. Michael Springmann

Daena Publications LLC

Washington, DC
 Copyright © 2014 J. Michael Springmann
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in
any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, including
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ISBN: 0990926206
ISBN 13: 9780990926207
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014919827
Daena Publications LLC, Washington DC
Author’s Note
Dedication
What Is This About?
Why Did I Write This Book?

I. Enter the Patsy

• The Beginning
• Here Are Two Key Points
• The Magic Kingdom: Confusion to the Americans
• Arrival and Puzzlement
• My New Job as Consular Officer—Issuing Visas
• Ghost Busters
• Exorcists Needed
• A Questionable Question
• Jay the Jailer
• Pool Parties, the Marine House, and the Brass Eagle
• Keep the Saudis Happy, Part One
• Keep the Saudis Happy, Part Two
• They’re Like Termites…But Do More Damage
• Keep That Lid On (So the Whole Mess Doesn’t Boil Over and
Dirty the Stove)
• Revelations on the Road to Unemployment
• How Stupid Could They Be?
II. How Did I End Up In The State Department?
• A-100—Basic Training for FSOs
• Be Careful What You Wish For
• Stuttgart, INR, and the Unemployment Line
• The Heats of India
• The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
• But What about FBI Help? Journalistic Help? High-Powered
Political Help?
• What Does This All Mean?
• Transition

III. Introduction
• Europe
• At Home
• The Third World and Present-Day Troubles

IV. Visas for Terrorists

V. How Did This Start?

• Mohammad Mossadegh: First Victim of First CIA Coup d’Etat
• Guatemala

VI. Asleep At the Switch? Or Was That Train Wreck Long

Planned?
• Afghanistan
• Are Turkeys Smarter Than American Government Officials?
• The Thinking (?) behind This “Policy”
• Training for Destruction—Turkeys Roost Anywhere They Want
• Brief History Lesson
• Saddle Tramps
• Summary

VII. The Balkans

• On the Road to Elsewhere
• Breaking Up Is Easier to Do
 • Here Comes al-Qaeda
• Oh Joy! Bin Laden’s Still Our Boy!
• You Can’t Tell the Players Even with a Scorecard
• Back to the Future
• Al-Khifah and the Big Green Machine
• How Helpers Helped
• Summary

VIII. Iraq
• Who’s the Terrorist Now?
• But What Drove This Train Wreck?
• Distressing Details about the Legion
• Plausible (?) Deniability
• SOME Iraqis Do Talk
• Summary

IX. Libya
• This Didn’t Always Work So Well
• Lacking in CNN’s Report Was Any Sort of Background to the
Situation
• Here They Come Again (With More Help)
• Cui Bono?
• It’s All about Control
• Impenetrable Transparency
• Summary

X. Syria
• Train Those Terrorists!
• And They Might Come Home!
• Garbage about Garbage Trucks, Nonlethal Bombs, and
“Intelligence” Services
• The Ottoman Empire Strikes Back
• Balkan Links
• Extra Help
• Plans for the New Syrian Disorder
• A Lose-Lose Situation
 • A Myriad of Myrmidons
• Summary

XI. Let’s Wrap This Up If We Can

• The Origins of the Train Wrecks Go Back to the Establishment
of the National Security State and its Central Intelligence
Agency during the Administration of Harry S. Truman (D-MO)
• The Security State’s Reach—Why Limit Things to Just One
Continent, Or Region?
• Arbenz Was Not a One-Time Intervention
• Fallout, Blowback, Whatever—It’s A Continuing Train Wreck
• Noam Chomsky said, “Propaganda is to a democracy what the
bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.”
• Afghanistan, Serbia, Iraq, Libya, and Syria
• Some Talkers Talk
• Everything the American Government Does Is Shrouded in
Secrecy—to Its Detriment
• Political Costs
• Material Costs
• It’s Curious, Is It Not?
• Quo vadimus? (Where Are We Going?)

Bibliography
“It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can
stand by itself.”

—Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia.

J
. Michael Resser’s generosity and concern for principles made this
work possible.
I wish to express my great appreciation for the example,
encouragement, and assistance of Barbara Nimri Aziz, PhD;
François Bringer; Habib; Andrew Kreig; Wayne Madsen; Richard
Ray; Barrie Zwicker; and a retired European diplomat.
Additionally, I want to thank the Association of National Security
Alumni, including Verne Lyon and David MacMichael, for giving me
the opportunity to write something of my experiences for its
magazine, Unclassified. Gratitude should also go to Foreign Policy
Journal, Global Outlook (Canada), Global Research (Canada),
OpEdNews, and The Public Record, for generously publishing
several of my articles bearing on this publication’s themes. I would
like to acknowledge my pleasure at being able to express my views
on the Alex Jones Show; BBC’s Newsnight; CBC’s Radio One
program Dispatches; and James Corbett’s Corbett Report. Giulietto
Chiesa kindly had me interviewed for his movie Zero. Elizabeth Metz
graciously let me speak at her 2010 Treason Conference in Valley
Forge, Pennsylvania. If I’ve inadvertently omitted anyone who’s
given me the chance to raise these topics on their websites and
radio shows, I apologize.
Dr. Aziz, David MacMichael, and Habib worked hard to help edit
this book.
 Also, of course, I wish to thank Joe Trento, the journalist, for
alerting me to the Visas for Terrorists Program, the real link to al-
Qaeda and the Arab-Afghan Legion.
T
his opus is dedicated to the people of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya,
Russia, Syria, and Yugoslavia.
I offer it as a small commemoration to both the living and the
dead of those unfortunate countries, particularly those who were
murdered in their millions by the United States of America.
A
l-Qaeda (Arabic for “The Base”) grew out of and became identical
with the Arab-Afghan Legion, those terrorists recruited by the United
States of America, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the Islamic
Republic of Pakistan. Originally sent to Afghanistan, they fought the
USSR’s army and air force following the Soviet Union’s invasion of
that country. Later, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA, the Agency)
directed them to cross the border and destabilize the Muslim
republics of the Soviet Union. Still later, the American government
moved them into the Balkans to destroy Yugoslavia, and then
similarly to Iraq, followed by Libya and Syria.
They received visas to travel to the United States, usually from
Saudi Arabia, for training, debriefing, and other purposes. In
enabling their passage, American government officials violated the
Immigration and Nationality Act as well as the State Department’s
regulations, codified in its Foreign Affairs Manual.
I know. I was there. I issued the visas, and I objected to gross
violations of law and regulation. As a result, as happens to nearly all
whistle-blowers, I was fired.
Since then, I have had inordinate problems with sending and
receiving e-mails, being bombarded with more spam than Monty
Python could handle, periodic difficulties with telephone service,
mysterious computer crashes, and daily robocalls in violation of the
FCC’s Do Not Call List. And the Arab-Afghan Legion is still
marching.
S
imple. It’s past time to expose murder, war crimes, and human rights
violations by the United States of America and its “intelligence”
services. Using the dubious claim of “national security,” the United
States, through the Central Intelligence Agency and the National
Security Agency (NSA), has engaged in and/or organized coups and
other destabilization efforts around the world, most notably in the
Middle East. From Libya to Iran, governments have been
overthrown, politicians assassinated, and everyday citizens
murdered—all with the knowledge of not only the president of the
United States and the executive branch, but the legislative and
judicial ones as well.
The “mainstream” news media will not report on these activities
to expose them for what they are. In fact, TV, radio, and newspapers
flat out support them. Instead of checking power, the media, print or
electronic, commonly act as government agents, parroting the
“company line” and attacking (or ignoring) reports and sources that
expose injustice or illegal policies.
I know about unlawful government plots for a fact. As a career
official with both the Commerce and State departments, I saw these
plots close up during my nine years as a diplomat. First, I was an
economic/commercial officer in Stuttgart (1977–1980), then a
commercial attaché in New Delhi (1980–1982). Later I was a visa
officer in Jeddah (1987–1989), a political/economic officer in
Stuttgart (1989–1991), and, finally, an economic analyst at the State
Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (1991).
For nearly a quarter of a century, I have been speaking Truth
both to Power and the Public. Some people have read my articles,
others have heard me speak. My published critiques on the Visas for
Terrorists Program, my writings about the deliberate destruction of
Iraq, and my speaking out in many venues about what amounts, in
my opinion, to treason by many public officials have not made me
invisible. Nonetheless, from what I’ve seen, many progressives, such
as Stephen Zunes, Peter Kuznick, and Phyllis Bennis, have yet to
come to grips with even part of the problem. Our past still remains
obscure. That’s one reason for writing this book.
Now, after more than twenty years of aggravation in dealing with
the State Department’s bumbling, stumbling Foreign Service officers,
corrupt federal judges, and unethical US attorneys, I have decided it
is finally time to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth about US government support for terrorism and relate it to the
global picture.
I would like to give you, the Esteemed Reader, some
background on this situation, particularly about the kind of people the
US government hires to formulate and manage its imperialist foreign
policy. I am providing my personal narrative to illustrate just how
American foreign policy is really created and implemented,
especially in terms of what I call the Arab-Afghan Legion, who are
terrorists recruited and trained by the United States. This book will
serve to illuminate the dark and ugly corners of the State Department
and its handmaiden, the Central Intelligence Agency and will help
you understand how they have destabilized a major portion of the
world.
This tale is a sordid sketch of backstabbing, disloyalty, double
crosses, faithlessness, falsity, perfidy, sellouts, treachery, and
betrayal. All of this is in addition to the stupidity and incompetence
normally manifested by the State Department and the intelligence
services.
In the first half of the twentieth century, US foreign policy was
already a record of disaster: grievous policy mistakes leading both to
World War I and World War II and their aftermath, as well as our
questionable intervention in, invasion of, and occupation of several
countries in the Caribbean, Central America, and elsewhere. In the
second half of that century, after the so-called “professionalization” of
the Foreign Service and its merger with the Central Intelligence
Agency (and its not-very-Clandestine Service), American foreign
policy became a record of unmitigated disaster: Israel, Korea, Iran,
Guatemala, Vietnam, Chile, and Argentina are but some of the
catastrophes brought into the world by our government.
My story shows how things really work. Inept, degenerate
government officials and career-obsessed idiots created the climate
for what I call the Arab-Afghan Legion, and others know as “al-
Qaeda,” or “ISIS/ISIL.” My story also shows why the quality of
American government has gone from bad to worse. This opus
demonstrates how and why the United States has so deeply
embroiled itself in South and Southwest Asia, North Africa, and the
Balkans.
Throughout this book, bear in mind the credo of the Association
of National Security Alumni:

…covert actions are counterproductive and damaging

to the national interest of the United States. They are
inimical to the operation of an effective national
intelligence system, corruptive of civil liberties,
including the functioning of the judiciary and a free
press. More importantly, they contradict the principles
of democracy, national self-determination and
international law to which the United States is publicly
committed.1
The Beginning

H
aving just joined the “real” Foreign Service (after stints in the State-
Commerce Exchange Program and the Foreign Commercial
Service), I was assigned to Jeddah, the “Grandmother of Cities.”
(Eve, the grandmother of us all, is reputedly buried in it.) There, I
learned that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was a mysterious and
exotic place, but it was nowhere near as exotic and mysterious as
the American consulate general on Palestine Road.
Upon arrival, I found, as a new visa officer, I was expected to
winnow more than one hundred applications a day, separating them
into “issuances,” “refusals,” and what turned out to be “free passes
for CIA agents.” However, none of the clean-cut young fellows at the
consulate (or even any of the pudgy, “been around too many blocks”
types) bothered to clue me in on this special class of applicants.
However.
One day, Eric Qualkenbush, the CIA Base Chief, stopped me
while I was walking on the consulate’s huge compound (which
included a nine-hole golf course). He had a request. Could I issue a
visa to one of his agents, an Iranian whose family owned an Oriental
rug store? Eric said, “Mike, make it look good (wink, wink). We want
him in Washington for consultations.”
 Flabbergasted, I said, “Sure.” Up to that point, I had had almost
a daily battle with Jay Freres, the Consul General, along with other
CIA officials, who demanded visas for peculiar people, that is, people
whom law and regulation required me to refuse. I also had running
fights with visa applicants who told me to approve their paperwork or
they would complain to Freres and have him overrule me.
Why, I wondered, did Qualkenbush clearly explain what was
coming? And why didn’t he tip me the wink about the others, instead
of leaving me to fight continued violations of rule and directive all by
myself?
I was even more flummoxed when Eric’s agent appeared in line
before me while I was on my stool behind the visa section’s armored
window. Secure in my industrial-strength cinderblock office, I went
through the interview: Memo on company letterhead explaining trip
and customers to be visited? Check. Properly filled out visa
application form DS-156? Check. Clean passport with no hidden
notations of previous travel refusals? Check. Coherent,
comprehensive, clear account of travel purpose? Check. Previous
US visa stamps? Check. Appropriate responses to my questions
about proposed journey? Check.
I issued the visa and wished I had more applicants like him.
And yet…
I had heard in Washington about all sorts of abnormal problems
tied to visas in Jeddah. None of it made sense at the time, but the
office atmosphere after my arrival was increasingly poisonous as I
invoked the Immigration and Nationality Act and the Foreign Affairs
Manual in preventing scruffy types from apparently trying to emigrate
to the United States. Despite my questioning people in the office, I
began to suspect that something wasn’t quite right. I knew it wasn’t
right when the State Department later fired me without explanation
and then stonewalled my efforts to learn why.
The following story is what I learned about what was really
happening in Jeddah, how I got there, and the dreadful
consequences of what I learned to be American policy.

Here Are Two Key Points

 First, the Consular Section’s job was to secure visas for CIA
agents, i.e., foreigners recruited by American case offfcers. The
Department of State and the Central Intelligence Agency
collaborated on sending ignorant pawns to Jeddah, a place that was
handling about forty-five thousand visa applications annually. If they
processed the paperwork like automatons and didn’t ask awkward
questions about the applicants, they kept their jobs. If they followed
law and regulation and resisted illegal pressure to overlook the
people who had no real reason for traveling to the United States,
they “weren’t with the program” and could easily be dismissed as
incompetent.
Second, the Department of State already had a watchdog in
place to prevent this type of problem: the Bureau of Diplomatic
Security. According to its website:

D[iplomatic]S[ecurity] works with the Bureau of

Consular Affairs on cases involving allegations of
corrupt American Embassy employees, fraudulent
document vendors, and the use of visas by terrorists,
and those smuggling and trafficking drugs and human
beings.

Passport and visa crimes are federal offenses

punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a fine of
$250,000. The maximum prison sentence is increased
to 15 years if the offense is connected to drug
trafficking, and to 20 years if connected to terrorism.2

So who was committing these violations, and what were they

doing? And why wasn’t the watchdog watching? As I later learned to
my dismay, the visa applicants were recruits for the war in
Afghanistan against the Soviet Union’s armed forces. Further, as
time went by, the fighters, trained in the United States, went on to
other battlefields: Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. They worked
with the American intelligence services and the State Department to
destabilize governments the United States opposed. While it’s no
secret, most knowledgeable people still refuse to talk about this
agenda.

The Magic Kingdom: Confusion to the Americans

Prelude

In 1986, A-100, the introductory class for new Foreign Service

officers (FSOs), consisted of weeks of sitting through dreadfully
boring and generally useless lectures (for which I was paid). At the
graduation session, class members received their orders, along with
a small flag of their country of assignment. Mine was the green flag
of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. I was to be a consular officer in
Jeddah on that country’s west coast.
I was astonished. When I made discreet inquiry of John Tkacik
as to how I ended up there, he replied that he thought I had bid on
the assignment since I appeared so happy at the ceremony. I later
contacted one of our lecturers in A-100 (whose name I’ve forgotten).
My interlocutor told me that the State Department wanted someone
a little older than the average junior officer (I was forty-one) for the
Jeddah position, and someone with my experience at the Commerce
Department because Jeddah was a hub of mercantile activity. This
rationale left me with more questions than answers.
In accordance with Foreign Service practice, I wrote to the
American Ambassador, Walter Cutler, in Riyadh and told him of my
delight in joining his official family. I sent a similar letter to Jay Philip
Freres, the American Consul General in Jeddah at the time. I then
went on to Arabic language class and engaged in regional and
consular studies at the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), the
educational arm of the State Department in Washington.
Surprisingly, I got a call one day from a desk officer (essentially,
those in Washington who follow political, economic, and social affairs
in a country) for Saudi Arabia. Ambassador Cutler was in town for
consultations about the kingdom with State Department officials, and
he invited me to meet with him. I expected it to be a five-minute
“hello and good-bye” session. Instead, Cutler kept me for about forty-
five minutes, telling me the problems my predecessor as vice consul
in Jeddah, Greta Holtz, had created for our embassy in Riyadh.
Visas were being denied to servants of rich Saudi women who, after
all, couldn’t travel to the United States without their entourage of
hairdressers, seamstresses, and other factotums. I sat there and
listened and wondered at this report. Clearly, Cutler was conveying
some message, but for the life of me, I could not puzzle it out.
Afterward, I spoke to the desk officer, who had been there with me
during the talk, asking what that meeting was really all about. His
response was that he didn’t know, saying that Cutler (who had
previously been ambassador to Zaire and Tunisia) was “just a queer
duck.”
Years later, Cutler, then head of Meridian House, a nonprofit that
promotes international understanding, flatly refused to talk to me
about Jeddah. Despite his silence, he knew full well what had been
going on. In a discussion about recruits for the Afghan war in Robert
Dreyfuss’s Devil’s Game, Cutler is quoted as saying, “Where I was,
nobody was looking ahead at what would happen to those
unemployed freedom fighters.”3 (Contrary to what Cutler told me
and, as I learned later, many of Jeddah’s visa applicants were
mujahideen recruits, alleged “freedom fighters”, and not servants of
rich Saudi women.)
Another letter went to John D. Moller, chief of the Consular
Section. Unlike missives to Greta Holtz, I got an innocuous reply
(although he remarked that State had not informed him of my
assignment, and he knew nothing about it until my letter arrived).
However, in June 1994, I tracked Moller down to Kings Colony Court
in Palm Coast, Florida. In response to my letter about visa “issues,”
in part asking about a meeting with the Deputy Chief of Mission,
Dave Dunford and Nick LaRoche, Counselor for Consular Affairs,
and Jay Freres, he replied that he had taken early retirement rather
than continually wrangle with Freres and others about questionable
visas.
Things got stranger. I had a yellow Volkswagen convertible that
the US government would ship to Jeddah for me. However, after I
read in an official report on Saudi Arabia that yellow was a color
reserved for taxicabs, so cars in that hue were not allowed into the
country, I attempted to get advice on what to do. Paint the car? Get
an exemption from the Saudi government if I promised not to
moonlight as a cabbie? No one in Washington knew. Surprisingly, my
cables on the subject to the Administrative Section at my new post
were never answered. Given the seven-hour time difference
between Washington and Jeddah, and my desire not to make
waves, I elected not to telephone to ask why no one answered my
messages. Yet I wondered what was going on.
Then, being “satiably curious,” like Rudyard Kipling’s Elephant
Child, I began asking around about Cutler’s odd remarks on visas in
Jeddah. Heeding the advice of a consular officer that anything out of
the ordinary should be questioned as a source of potential trouble, I
contacted Ellen Goff in the Executive Office for the Bureau of Near
Eastern Affairs (NEA/EX), essentially a position handling
administrative matters. She told me that, yes, she had heard stories
about visa problems in Jeddah, but she had no details on the
subject.
Still puzzled and confused, I went off to Jeddah in September
1987. I later learned that I had been assigned to a CIA post, another
unpleasant surprise. [Most of the American officers and staff did not
work for the State Department, but instead for the Agency (the CIA,
or “Langley” for the location of the CIA in Virginia), or the National
Security Agency (NSA).]

Arrival and Puzzlement

Welcomed with open arms by Jay Freres, the Consul General

(identified by the German journalist Julius Mader as a CIA official),
and Henry Ensher, the political officer, I was told I was an
improvement over Greta Holtz, whom they alleged had had terrible
problems at the consulate. [Years later, I began to realize that this
was more a cover story than anything else, especially since my visa
refusal rate was within five percentage points of hers. According to
one biography, Holtz had had strong ties to the intelligence services,
having previously worked at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA),
later receiving the Christopher Award from the CIA (according to
another biography].4 For someone who created such problems for
our embassy in Riyadh, Greta Holtz has done extremely well for
herself, moving steadily up the promotion ladder. Once Minister-
Counselor for Provincial Affairs in Iraq, she became a Deputy
Assistant Secretary of State. Then President Barack Obama named
her Ambassador to Oman in September 2012. Her new official
biography strangely omits her DIA service, saying just that she
worked in the NATO policy office at the Defense Department. When
in Washington, DC, she lives in a $2.4 million house in nearby
Potomac, Maryland.)

My New Job as Consular Officer—Issuing Visas

Later on, during my service in Jeddah, I began getting referrals

from Freres and Ensher (and others, such as Paul Arvid Tveit, a
commercial officer listed in namebase.org as a CIA official). Initially, I
was approached diffidently with the caveat that, while according to
law and regulation, I had the final decision, they really wanted visas
for their contacts. While no example springs to mind, the referrals,
for the most part, were unremarkable. Later, after I had begun
questioning the credentials of many applicants because they lacked
ties to Saudi Arabia or their own country, the requests became
demands. Then, they became threats.

Ghost Busters

While the Foreign Service is filled with people who do not work
for the Department of State, Jeddah was my first experience with a
majority-spook post. (Intelligence officers, in State Department slang,
are spooks because they’re invisible beings from another world.)
According to both a former CIA station chief (head of undercover
operations in a country) who asked not to be named, and Jay
Hawley, now a retired FSO, the average percentage of intelligence
officers to real diplomats at a given Foreign Service post is about
one in three. My experience in Jeddah, Stuttgart, and New Delhi
might place it higher—at least 50 percent, if not more. According to
the Anti-CIA Club of Diplomats: Spooks in U.S. Foreign Service [sic],
a twelve-page, 1983 Canadian publication (see namebase.org), the
percentage is 60 percent. At Jeddah, to the best of my knowledge,
out of some twenty US citizens assigned to the consulate, only three
people, including myself, worked for the Department of State. The
rest were CIA or NSA officials or their spouses. (NSA creates and
breaks ciphers, listens to telephone calls, and reads e-mails. This
allegedly makes US government communications more secure and
those of American citizens and other nations less so. One of the
languages it teaches its analysts is “Special Arabic”—that is,
Hebrew, helping conceal Israel as being a target of NSA activity.)
Things rapidly went from bad to worse.
My name was on the visa plate that stamped applications to
enter the United States, making me personally responsible for my
actions. After opposing questionable demands for visas, I began to
inquire about what was really going on. First, I asked Jean Bradford,
the head of the Citizens’ Services branch of the consular section.
She told me that “Jay Freres (the source for most of the illegal visa
pressure) just likes giving candy to babies.” I then tried Justice (given
name) Stevens, head of the consular section. He told me to keep
quiet and do what Freres wanted. I later discussed the matter with
Stephanie A. Smith (a former French citizen) who was Counselor for
Consular Affairs in Riyadh, the capital. Another one of those listed as
a CIA official in Anti-CIA Club of Diplomats. Spooks in US Foreign
Service, she told me that Freres’ and others’ demands for illegal
visas were “very bad.” She later advised me to raise the issue with
the Bureau of Consular Affairs on my next trip to Washington
Eric Qualkenbush5, the CIA base chief at Jeddah, whose cover
was head of the Political/Economic Section, came up with a new
demand: he or his staff had to examine and approve all visas that my
staff and I had issued before the stamped passports were returned
to the applicants. I had to wonder if this practice originated from his
experience as a Clandestine Service officer at the CIA station in New
Delhi or as station chief in Sofia, Bulgaria, prior to Jeddah, where
one European diplomat told me he served? (Eric’s assignment after
Jeddah was Bonn.) According to retired consular officers, this
requirement was highly unusual. Another, who asked that I withhold
his name, informed me that the CIA often trolled visa application files
or sought specific information about visa-seekers.)
I myself became suspicious of Qualkenbush’s nerve: amazingly,
he once made an unnecessary point of having me issue a visa to
one of his Iranian contacts, an Oriental rug merchant in Jeddah. Eric
stopped me one day on the compound and told me he was sending
me one of his agents (foreign nationals recruited and controlled by
CIA case officers), asking me to make the visa interview “look good,”
because the CIA wanted the Iranian in Washington for consultations.
Afterward, I thought, why was Eric doing making this request? The
Iranian had a legitimate business, was going to the United States to
meet real carpet buyers, and had been issued several visas before.

Exorcists Needed

In our spook-ridden Jeddah consulate, I sometimes found it was

a daily battle to do my job. Here are just a few examples of what I
discovered and how the laws of the United States were routinely
ignored. Little did I know that I was dealing with recruits for the Arab-
Afghan Legion.
Two Pakistanis came to me for a visa. According to their story,
they were traveling on a Commerce Department–organized trade
mission to an automotive parts exhibition in the United States.
However, they couldn’t name the trade show or identify the city in
which it would be held. I denied their visa request. Within sixty
minutes, Paul Arvid Tveit (now retired and living in Virginia) called
and demanded visas for these same Pakistanis. I explained the
reasons for my refusal, citing § 214(b) of the Immigration and
Nationality Act (a visa applicant is an intending immigrant unless and
until he can prove otherwise) and the Foreign Affairs Manual (FAM,
State’s holy book that carries instructions for everything, including
the requirement to refuse visas if there is any doubt as to the
applicant’s bona fides). Ignoring the law and regulation, Tveit went to
Justice Stevens and the visas were issued.
Then, Karen Sasahara, the political officer and Henry Ensher’s
successor, demanded a visa for a Sudanese who was a refugee
from his own country and unemployed in Saudi Arabia. Following the
letter and the spirit of the law, I refused. Sasahara immediately went
to Justice, and a visa was issued. When I later asked Justice why he
authorized a visa to someone with no ties to the Sudan or the
kingdom, he replied simply “national security,” a phrase without legal
definition.6
Besides staff going to Stevens (now retired and living in
Switzerland), people from outside the consulate frequently went to
Jay Freres to reverse my decisions. One individual, an expatriate
company messenger with a stack of passports, appeared at the visa
window one day, telling me I could issue the visas then and there, or
I could do it after he went to Freres. Per regulation, the only way a
refusal could be overridden was by a senior FSO with a consular
commission, which Freres lacked. Additionally, the senior officer had
to have more information unavailable to the denying officer.
Therefore, Freres acted without authority, also failing to make a
required written report. (Cf. 9 FAM 41.121).

A Questionable Question

One question that I never addressed was, if a junior consular

officer, such as myself, questioned the credentials of all the peculiar
visa applicants, what were the far more experienced Immigration and
Naturalization Service (INS) inspectors doing at the port of entry
when these lowlifes entered the country? How is it that none of them
were turned back? I well remember being told a story by Mike
Carpenter, head of the consular section in Stuttgart in the 1970s.
One of the applicants to whom he had given a visa had been sent
home from New York. Although she had declared to the inspector
that her US visit would be short, INS found a two-year supply of birth
control pills in her handbag, thus indicating her fraudulent plans for a
much longer stay.

Jay the Jailer

Jay Freres did more than help questionable people get visas. He
helped the Saudi government put expatriates in jail. This seemed to
be in keeping with his questionable past, such as his assignment to
Kabul in 1979 when the American Ambassador, “Spike” Dubs, was
kidnapped and killed. As the Afghan security forces blazed away at
the people holding Dubs within Room 117 in the Kabul Hotel,
somehow Freres, head of the Economic/Commercial Section, was
situated outside the space. Dean Henderson, a writer, columnist, and
blogger, asserts that Dubs was also CIA chief of station, unlikely in
knowledgeable people’s opinions. However, a European diplomat
opined that Dubs, and likely Freres, were State Department officials
co-opted by the Agency. Freres later became Political Counselor in
Ankara in 1982. (Other than his service as consul general in Jeddah,
these were his only assignments that I could find in the State
Department’s Key Officers of Foreign Service Posts booklet.)7
Not long after I arrived and began making contacts around town,
consular officers from two European consulates took me to lunch.
Over good food and “Saudi champagne” (sparkling water, apple
juice, and citrus slices), they asked my help in identifying and
publicizing the actions of a fellow of indeterminate nationality having
multiple passports. They said this man possessed an arrangement
with the Saudi government to import and sell liquor and drugs.
According to my interlocutors, he would hold parties in alcohol-free
Jeddah, generously supplying intoxicants, liquid and otherwise. As I
understood it, he would then provide the names of his guests to the
Saudi authorities who, on occasion, would raid the events, arresting
as many attendees as they could catch. In return, he got to keep his
profits (and stay out of jail). Subsequently, at one of the consulate’s
“pool parties,” I happened to meet a man, an American citizen, who
had been to one of the raided functions. Appearing to be in his fifties
and far out of shape, he told me he ran out the back door as the
police came in the front. Despite his age and physical condition, he
said, he was up and over the wall at the rear of the house faster than
a teenage athlete.
Learning about this scam, I felt I should post details of this
mysterious dealer to warn American citizens in our consular district,
the Hejaz. A simple notice, mailed to those registered with the
consulate, would be the easiest way to protect our citizens. When I
suggested this to Freres, as head of the consulate, he refused. He
said it would offend the Saudis, and he ordered me to keep silent.
While I didn’t work in Citizens Services at the consulate, which
deals with the welfare of US nationals and handles any
imprisonments, I still thought it only prudent (and my duty) to quietly
pass the word to people I knew about this subject, Freres be
damned.

Pool Parties, the Marine House, and the Brass Eagle

Alcohol was a big deal in Saudi Arabia where, if you drank and
were caught, you were (1) arrested, (2) flogged, (3) deported. Yet,
despite our efforts to “conceal” alcohol use at the consulate (by
crushing bottles and beer cans, for example), the Saudis knew all
about what the Americans were doing. Saudi citizens and
government officials attended receptions at my house where I served
forbidden drinks. They also attended pool parties and functions at
the Marine House8 where alcohol was provided. Saudi citizens and
government officials attended events at the Brass Eagle, several
rooms that served as the consulate’s private bar. And, if they didn’t
spill the beans about alcohol consumption, a movable Saudi “traffic”
camera overlooked the compound with its parties, and provided a
bird’s-eye view of what went on there, including drinking and mixed-
sex dancing.
Shortly after Lonnie Washington, the only State Department
Communicator (who sent and received official messages) and I
arrived, we learned about the Brass Eagle. Begun by former
consular officer Brad Braford’s wife, it was a remarkably dreary and
sparsely attended place used mostly by CIA officials. We two, with
our household effects still in transit, decided to invite official and
unofficial contacts to this bar. Selling tickets for the local equivalent
of ten dollars for five drinks, we filled the Brass Eagle to overflowing
in no time and made a pretty good profit for the American Employees
Family Support Association (AEFSA) (which may have been a CIA
front). The Agency really didn’t like that we brought non-Americans
to the consulate. So, in retaliation, they put roadblocks into the
otherwise smooth operation of our parties.
Later, after the CIA grasped what a good idea it was to ply
expatriates with alcohol, it began organizing parties around the
consulate swimming pool. The parties, with two hundred or more
guests, generated about one million dollars per annum for said
AEFSA, an alleged nonprofit organization.9
The Marine House was another watering hole. Invitations were
highly prized, and guests tried to compensate for a booze-free week
by drinking as much as they could in a few hours. Many departing
guests staggered out onto Palestine Road, fronting the consulate, in
various stages of drunkenness. (I had arrived in Jeddah too late to
enjoy the Marine House’s “Tarts and Vicars” party, where the female
guests displayed abundant intoxicated skin as they left the grounds
—a blatant violation of Saudi mores.) Sometime later in my tour, a
Marine Corps inspection team arrived to question such consumption
of alcohol and earnings from its sale.

Keep the Saudis Happy, Part One

Consul General Jay Freres’s watchword at the consulate was,

“Don’t offend the Saudis.” At the same time, he refused to hire a
capable, American-educated Saudi female for a US Information
Service position advising on academic study in the United States. (I
learned the previous employee had been fired earlier because she
had allegedly identified a CIA official at one of the pool parties.) Also,
he allowed illuminated Christmas trees (regarded as religious
symbols in Jeddah) to be displayed at the consulate and Christmas
carols to be played over loudspeakers. (This might seem inoffensive,
but the only religion permitted in the kingdom is Islam. Anyone
caught openly practicing another faith suffers disproportionate
consequences.)
Were Freres genuinely interested in not alienating the Saudis,
he could have done more to keep liquor out of nondiplomatic hands
on consular premises. Official receptions could have served fruit
juice and soft drinks, and he could have stopped supplying liquor to
the Mobil Oil Corporation’s boat.

Keep the Saudis Happy, Part Two

Jay Freres and his “Don’t Offend the Saudis” program had as
many holes as a piece of Swiss cheese hit by a shotgun blast.
Again, in Saudi Arabia, Islam is the only religion permitted. People of
other faiths get their prayer books, hymnals, and other religious
articles seized at the border, and if they act blatantly enough, can get
themselves deported. Yet Freres, a Roman Catholic, had an
undercover priest10 say Mass at his official residence on Sundays for
coreligionists from inside and outside the consulate. Protestant
expatriates were allowed to hold services in the auditorium in the
consulate’s main building, something FSOs, such as myself, were
ignorant of. After Freres retired, Tim Hunter, a devout Catholic, told
me that he (Hunter) had been ordered to discourage attendance at
the Holy Church of the Consulate. When he objected, he was
savaged by US government officials.

They’re Like Termites…But Do More Damage

Besides direct confrontation and dubious “referrals,” the spooks,

the “Invisible Ones” were also assigned to the consular section for
“diplomatic cover.” Philip Agee, a former case officer, said to me that,
in Mexico City, where he had been assigned, the CIA always had
one of its Clandestine Service people occupying a consular position.
From what I was told by people in Jeddah, Brad Braford, Andrew C.
Weber’s predecessor, had been assigned to the visa section as a
“part-time” consular officer. (He went on to Dhahran as
political/military officer.) Supposedly, he and Andy Weber had
complained about Jay Freres’s questionable visa issuances.
(Without a consular commission, Freres had had a visa signature
slug11 made, and presumably, used.) Weber would occasionally sit at
the visa window and say to me, “Mike, let me take this next guy in
line, he’s one of mine.”12
CIA involvement in hanky-panky with visas, such as that in
Jeddah, is common in almost every Foreign Service Post. If this
behavior leaks out, it’s quickly hushed up. Remember, it was a CIA
“consular officer” at Khartoum in the Sudan who issued a tourist visa
to Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, later linked to the World Trade
Center bombing in 1993. The “blind” Sheikh had been on a State
Department terrorist watch list when he was issued the visa, entering
the United States by way of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the Sudan
in 1990. [I later wondered if this was the same fellow who had once
sent an emissary to me in Jeddah with his passport and application.
Since we required personal appearances for every nationality except
Saudi (and sometimes even for them), I told the representative I
needed to see the applicant, but I was told the man was
“handicapped.” Still, I thought, why could he not get on a bus in
Mecca to travel to our consulate?]13

Keep That Lid On (So the Whole Mess Doesn’t Boil Over and
Dirty the Stove)

I began to see Jeddah as a very strange place filled with people

I really knew nothing about who conducted themselves in a
remarkably odd fashion. Questions got me nowhere. A plethora of
contacts couldn’t explain to me what really went on inside the
consulate. European diplomats regularly asked about the number of
spooks on Uncle Sam’s payroll there, possibly because Agency staff
didn’t seem to care about their “cover.” Unlike other American
officers, they all drove identical, olive-drab Toyota Land Cruisers with
orange-and-red lightning bolts painted on their sides—with buff
Saudi, instead of green Consular Corps license plates that real
diplomats had on their cars.
As previously mentioned, before I left Washington for Jeddah, I
wrote to Greta Holtz several times, asking about my job and what
she wished she had known before she took up her post there. I
never received a response. When I met her in person, during one of
her visits to Jeddah from Yemen where she was next assigned, she
told me she’d been “too upset” to give me a clear picture. Holtz
called me in Washington, DC after I’d left the service and questioned
me about the progress of my complaints about Jeddah, even though
I’d never mentioned a word to her about the subject.
Then, the Inspectors came.
Periodically, Foreign Service Posts are examined for compliance
with law and regulation, and a report is prepared. Nestor Martin, one
of my close, well-connected contacts, a Cuban American with
intimate ties to intelligence officials, had warned me to say nothing to
the inspectors about problem areas. These included suspect visas,
extremely profitable and voluminous liquor sales to expatriates,
Muslim and otherwise, as well as the harassment of the Arab
American language teacher, Salma Webber. If you do, he cautioned,
you will be fired.
While serving in Jeddah, I was quizzed by Joseph P. O’Neill, one
of the State Department’s Inspection Team members.14 O’Neill
interviewed me and pressed me to confirm what he’d heard about
visa problems and alcohol deals. He shared details new to me and
repeatedly said anything I told him was and would remain
confidential. When I repeated what Nestor had stated to me, O’Neill
reassured me that nothing would happen to my career. After about
an hour, I relented and, trusting my government, confirmed O’Neill’s
suspicions. Just a few days later, Jay Freres wrote a vicious
efficiency report on me that would virtually guarantee my dismissal
from the Foreign Service.
During my conversation with O’Neill, I told him about the file of
shady visas I had been keeping. Neglecting to make a copy or take
the file with me, I later learned it had been mysteriously shredded (by
a person or persons unknown), and O’Neill, I suspect, was the
instigator of that. (He was the only American officer who knew about
this file.) Subsequently, I wrote O’Neill a letter when he was consul
general in Bermuda (and before he traveled to Afghanistan, the
Ukraine, and Uzbekistan on several Foreign Service assignments as
a retiree), asking about what really went on at Jeddah. No response.
Perhaps this was a result of O’Neill’s becoming an “off-the-books”
liaison with the Arab-Afghans he seemed to be protecting. Or,
possibly, it was his ties to the CIA, going back to 1979 when he was
assigned to the American embassy in Tehran when irate students
captured it.15 (O’Neill wasn’t listed in the 1979 Key Officers Booklet,
and he wasn’t listed as a hostage by the Jimmy Carter Presidential
Library and Museum).16

Revelations on the Road to Unemployment

Like Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus, I was blinded by

the “light of truth.” In a chance meeting, Joe Trento, a journalist at
the Public Education Center in Washington, DC, put all the hostility
toward me into perspective. Joe revealed to me what had been really
going on with the CIA in Jeddah and what had been concealed from
me. It wasn’t garden variety visa fraud as I had once thought, but
something much more serious: it was the Visas for Terrorists
Program, set up to recruit and train (in the United States) murderers,
war criminals, and human rights violators for combat in Afghanistan
against the Soviet Union. These men became the founding members
of al-Qaeda, the Arab-Afghan Legion. President Jimmy Carter (D-
GA) and his National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Kazimierz
Brzezinski, began the campaign to assemble these goons to engage
in blowing things up and shooting things down, preferably with Soviet
soldiers inside. To help them do that, Trento said, the Department of
State and the Central Intelligence Agency sent patsies as visa
officers to the Jeddah consulate, then handling about forty-five
thousand visa applications annually. If they weren’t bright enough to
question what was going on, Trento noted, things would be fine. If
they protested the spurious visa requests, as I would, and resisted
illegal pressure to overlook them, they could easily be fired because,
as he added, “they wouldn’t get with the program” and there was
“obviously” something wrong with them.
Supplementing Trento’s remarks were similar statements made
by a former US government employee at the Voice of America and
another man connected with George Washington University in DC. I
reached both by chance in the course of researching an article on
the Middle East, and they told me that the CIA, ably assisted by
asset Osama bin Laden and Saudi connections, had three recruiting
offices in the kingdom: one was in Jeddah, one was in Riyadh, and
one was somewhere in the eastern province of al-Sharqiah.
However, the Saudis, once the Soviets had withdrawn from
Afghanistan, they said, were not pleased with the saddle tramps17
that they had helped recruit. In fact, the Saudis prevented those
who’d been enlisted within the kingdom, particularly the Palestinians,
from returning. They feared they would use their newly acquired
skills to promote “regime change” at home. Other nations in the
region rejected these recruits as well, my contacts told me.
Many recruiting offices were located in the United States, too.
According to background on Abdullah Azzam, one of the cofounders
of the Services Office (an organization inter alia placing Arab
volunteers with Afghan factions fighting the Soviets),

The main aim of Sheikh Abdullah in creating the Jihad

magazine (an Arabic publication providing information
about the Afghan war, focusing on Arab efforts to help
that struggle) was to inform the Arab world what is
happening in Afghanistan; informing them, help
funding, recruit people. [Eventually we printed]
seventy thousand copies [an issue]. Most of them go
to the United States because we had fifty-two
centers in the United States. The main office was
in Brooklyn, [also] Phoenix, Boston, Chicago,
Tucson, Minnesota, Washington DC, and
Washington State. [Emphasis added.] Every year
 [Abdullah Azzam] used to go to United States. The
wealthy of the United States can help much more than
Muslims who are living in poor countries or under
dictatorship.18

When I contacted him by email and telephone in 2013, Sheikh

Abdullah Anas, Azzam’s son-in-law, somehow couldn’t remember
any of this. All he said was that there were only a handful of non-
Afghan fighters and that the CIA had no role in dealing with them.
One cause of his faulty memory might be his gaining asylum in the
United Kingdom. (The UK’s Secret Intelligence Service was a
participant in the Afghan war.) Another might be his rumored interest
in moving to the United States and not wanting to offend the people
who can make that happen.
Perhaps secret travel to the United States by members of the
Services Office was another source of friction in Jeddah. While I was
at the consulate, I proposed meeting with various Muslim
organizations who had been sending me unqualified visa applicants.
These interviewees were clerics ostensibly going to the United
States to preach to congregations but couldn’t explain why there
were no qualified Muslim evangelists in America. I had wanted to
describe to the groups what was needed for visa applications to
reduce the time I spent with unfit candidates. Jay P. Freres forbade
this.
In a subsequent conversation with Celerino Castillo, a former
Drug Enforcement Agency official, I learned that the CIA’s
involvement in the visa process was a successful program of long-
standing in Latin America and, I presume, a model for Saudi Arabia.
South of the border, he said, the Agency would slip passports and
applications from its contacts into packages sent to the local US
consulate or embassy by travel agents. Sandwiched between
legitimate applications, “Agency assets” would not be carefully
examined by consular officers and would thus get a free ride to the
United States.
The question, of course, is: Were these recruits selected in
Washington, DC by CIA headquarters or locally by the base or
station? (A “base” is a CIA office concealed in a consulate, while a
“station” is a CIA office at an embassy and controlling all the
intelligence activities in a country.) Former Agency official Marc
Sageman, (one of only three people who managed the entire anti-
Soviet war in Afghanistan), maintains that the stations and bases
never dealt with Washington. They didn’t communicate with
headquarters on enlisting fighters abroad, he asserted.19 The three
people “managing” the Afghan war were Sageman, Milt Bearden,
and Gus Avrakotos (“Dr. Dirty,” as he was called, the man in charge
of arming the Afghans. He’s now dead). In 2008, Sageman played
up the threat of Muslims as dangerous because they were “self-
recruited, without leadership, and globally connected through the
Internet” and who “lack[ed] structure and organizing principles…”
These were characteristics usually put forward to denigrate a risk.20
Sageman ran “unilateral programs with the Afghan Mujahedin [sic]
between 1987 and 1989 from Islamabad, and also was an advisor to
the New York City Police for years. In 2008, he became its “scholar
in residence.”21

How Stupid Could They Be?

Very stupid.
If I had been informed of what the CIA, the State Department,
and Osama bin Laden were doing in Jeddah, I may have been dumb
enough at the time to have gone along with this policy. After all, I
trusted my government. The CIA and the State Department would
have saved themselves negative publicity, law suits, and twenty
years of painful truth-telling from me.
Another example of gross incompetence at Jeddah was the
inability of the CIA and NSA to learn about a real security issue: the
delivery of Chinese Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles (IRBMs) to
Saudi Arabia. A major story in 1988, US spooks had no idea the
things were actually being delivered. Until I told them.
After several of my European contacts came to my house for
drinks before dinner out, I learned the IRBMs were being off-loaded
from ships in the harbor. I was told that one of my sources had
actually seen not only the missiles but also the Saudi attempts to
conceal the missiles from prying eyes by blocking sight lines with
shipping containers. The next morning, I surprised the Air Attaché
with the story. He immediately worked to secure reconnaissance
photos of the missiles. I managed to irritate Karen Sasahara and the
CIA Base, along with the consul general’s secretary, Jill Johnston, by
demanding a classified cable be sent out to Washington immediately.
(Married to the NSA chief, Johnston had told me she used to work
for the CIA and was disgruntled at having to come to work on her
day off.) I learned from a contact in the US embassy in Riyadh that
my message had been included in the American president’s daily
intelligence briefing.
Aside from my scoop on the IRBMs, I did a goodly amount of
reporting on political and economic issues, to the extent that Joe
O’Neill, then one of the Inspectors, told me I had generated more
analytical cables than the political officer or the Political/Economic
Section. I had written about Saudi businesswomen (unheard of thirty
years ago), my travels throughout our consular district, and the
reasons why people came to America. I also visited American
citizens imprisoned in Saudi jails and identified dead bodies (harder
than it sounds when the passport picture is out of date and the
corpse was three days dead before it was discovered).
I managed this despite wrangling daily with the intelligence
officers who staffed and ran the consulate. These were the people
who arranged for recruiting and training what were then the
mujahideen, who later became al-Qaeda, who then transformed
themselves into ISIS. I saw, but didn’t recognize, their start at
Jeddah. We’ve all seen their later development and what happens
when the intelligence services control foreign policy and diplomacy:
the people they assembled aided the breakup of Yugoslavia, the
destruction of Iraq, the collapse of Libya, and the savaging of Syria.
In high school, after having read William J. Lederer and Eugene
Burdick’s book, The Ugly American, a damning account of American
arrogance, incompetence, and corruption overseas, I became very
interested in international affairs. This motivated me to attend
Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. In the 1960s,
this was the only such undergraduate program in the country. Like
most of my fellow graduates, I would enter the Department of State.
Coming from a working-class family, and despite having read
Lederer and Burdick’s book, I was really ignorant of the true nature
of the Foreign Service and its respected members. I would later
learn that most are an inbred, hidebound group of pseudo–upper
class cookie-pushers more concerned with advancing their own
careers than in formulating and carrying out an ideology-free,
intelligent American foreign policy.
My 1967 oral interview for a post in the Foreign Service was
conducted by three Foreign Service officers (FSOs), one of whom
was Ellsworth Bunker (one-time ambassador to South Vietnam and
a war hawk). While I had no problems with the history and
geography questions, my answers to queries such as “Do you play
bridge?” (No) or “Do you subscribe to the New Yorker?” (No) did not
sit well with the three examiners: I was not of the elite. It got worse
when, asked for an example of an American foreign policy problem, I
replied “Vietnam.” I added that I found it strange to learn that the US
government was keeping information about its bombing attacks on
Southeast Asia from the American people while the Thai,
Cambodians, Laotians, and Vietnamese, who were being bombed,
all knew what was going on. My interview went downhill from there. I
thought I had walked into the 1955 Gary Cooper movie, The Court-
Martial of Billy Mitchell, centered on the grilling of a nonconformist.
My impression after that was, if I spoke my name, it would surely be
challenged. Clearly, they didn’t like me from the beginning and were
looking for any excuse to get rid of me. How dare I question the
basis for our disastrous war? Were I Jesus Christ on rollerskates, I
would still have failed.
So I went to graduate school at Catholic University, again in
international affairs, and joined the Commerce Department’s
International Trade Administration. In 1969, I again sat for the
Foreign Service exam, once more passing the written but failing the
oral, now set up to supposedly resemble a real day at the office.
After another failure, I retook the test in 1984, emphasizing how
much I wanted to work for the State Department and noting my work
abroad in the Department of State–Department of Commerce
Exchange Program, a way to provide Washington assignments for
FSOs and overseas assignments for civil servants. This time, I
passed.
Or, so I thought.
The medical office of the State Department decided that my
admittedly lousy feet should disqualify me from of the Foreign
Service. When I sued for discrimination, the Department fought back
for two years, even though the law requires an employer to provide
“reasonable accommodation” to an employee or job applicant with a
disability. Although I needed no special accommodation for my feet,
the Senior Deputy Assistant Secretary in Medical Services, Paul A.
Goff, MD, wrote that I shouldn’t be hired because I couldn’t run away
from terrorists’ bullets.
It ought to have been apparent to me right then that the State
Department simply ignores laws it feels are inconvenient. I learned
more about this later on when I was ordered to issue visas to
terrorists.
A-100—Basic Training for FSOs

After two years of delay and litigation, the State Department

finally offered me a choice of jobs I couldn’t refuse. I could be a
political officer, an economic officer, a consular officer, or an
administrative officer. According to the Foreign Service’s orientation
program, called A-100, political and economic officers consort with
presidents and kings, consular officers are social workers, and
administrative officers fix broken toilets. Having an undergraduate
minor in economics and having worked at the Commerce
Department, I elected to become an economic officer.
As a reward for my persistence, I was sent to Saudi Arabia.
First placed in the thirty-fifth class of incoming FSOs, I got to
interact with my fellow recruits, a remarkably disparate bunch, made
up of several political appointees, some Congressional staffers,
former Peace Corps members, along with others from State and
local governments in the Southwest. There were former civil
servants from the Internal Revenue Service, who routinely
disparaged the taxpayer. And then there were a couple of CIA
Clandestine Service case officers who were assigned there for
diplomatic cover. Probably, their inexperience and naïveté gives an
indication of how the Arab-Afghan Legion came to be raised and
used.
Some class members had lived abroad, some were married to
aliens, but most didn’t appear to have a clue as to what the Foreign
Service really did. To remedy this deficiency, A-100 provided
seemingly eternal lectures on how the State Department and the rest
of the federal government operated. There were visits to
congressional offices and conservative think-tanks. There was a
language aptitude test. There was the never-used Myers-Briggs
personality test, which supposedly measures how people perceive
the world and make decisions. Then there was John Tkacik, the
moderator of the program. He once asked me, since I was older and
presumably more stable than the others, if I knew which of my fellow
A-100 colleagues, all with Top Secret security clearances, were
using drugs.
 During the program, we were all asked to bid on future
assignments, using our interests, backgrounds, and language
aptitude as qualifying factors. Since I had been there before, knew
the country and its people well, and spoke the language fluently, I
picked Germany as my priority and named several other countries
worldwide. In its wisdom, the Foreign Service assigned me to Saudi
Arabia, a state never on my bid list.

Be Careful What You Wish For

Maybe this is not a real Chinese phrase. Maybe this is an

anonymous quote. Regardless, in reality, it certainly is a clear
indication that there may be unforeseen and unpleasant
consequences if you get what you really want.
I really wanted to be a Foreign Service officer. I really wanted to
travel the world, formulating and conducting American foreign policy.
I really wanted to belong to a Club of Gentlemen Adventurers who
made their living through writing a weekly gossip column.
What I got was a world of trouble in Jeddah, followed by a
sphere of strife in Stuttgart. All the while, I never grasped that I had
gotten embroiled in a worldwide terrorist program. I thought I had
been fighting simple corruption, not interfering with the recruitment of
al-Qaeda.

Stuttgart, INR, and the Unemployment Line

Stuttgart

Happy to leave Jeddah in March 1989, I went on to Stuttgart, a

city I knew and loved. Unfortunately, I found to my dismay that, in the
intervening period, the consulate there had become infested with
spooks who hadn’t a clue about diplomacy. The alleged diplomats
who really worked for State didn’t either.
 During my previous assignment in Stuttgart in the late 1970s,
the only intelligence official I knew was the “Land (German State)
Liaison Officer.” He was a civilian working for the 66th Military
Intelligence Group (MI 66) headquartered at the time in Munich. His
task, as explained to me, was counterintelligence—looking for
possible threats to the rear of the US armed forces in Baden-
Wṻrttemberg, where the army’s VII Corps was headquartered.
In 1989, it was another story. At that time, the Stuttgart
consulate was a show of how the Foreign Service had fallen into ruin
through providing cover to “intelligence” officers as well as hiring and
promoting remarkably incapable individuals with serious mental
problems.
In Stuttgart, I was reincarnated as political/economic officer
(tagged a “CIA position” by M. Waltraut Enzmann, a longtime
German employee at the consulate). Knowing that I, a real FSO, had
been an Economic/Commercial officer in the past, Paul Warren-
Smith, one of the locally hired staff, asked why I had been a consular
officer in Jeddah and what I had been doing there. I jokingly said,
“Selling visas for fun and profit.” (The fun was relative; the profit was
very real as visa fees paid for my salary and benefits as well as
those of my three-man staff.)
When Jane Whitney, head of Stuttgart’s consular section,
overheard my remarks, she ran to the Consul General, Phil Griffin,
telling him I should be investigated for corruption. Griffin, who went
on to become consul general at Jeddah in 1991, told me that he
knew Whitney had mental problems and was a troublemaker, but he
had to talk to me about what I did in Jeddah for form’s sake. He then
asked me if I had taken illegal payments for issuing visas to
unqualified applicants. I told him the truth: I hadn’t.22
Whitney wasn’t the only corrupt FSO whom I had come across.
While assigned to New Delhi in 1980 as part of the new Foreign
Commercial Service (FCS), I had worked with Edward W. M. Bryant,
Counselor for Commercial Affairs. Renowned for his insulting
behavior, secretiveness, and petty feuds,23 he had a remarkable
inability to get along with US and other diplomats. Worse, I was told,
he took bribes from Indian businessmen for recommending them to
American companies as trade partners. According to the Defense
Attaché’s Office and the CIA station in New Delhi, one of these was
Nand Khemka, a known Soviet agent and conduit for “black” money
in India. More disturbingly, the counselor’s wife, Bilha Mosheva
Bryant, an Israeli, was believed to work for Israeli intelligence. After
their return to Washington, she took up a position in the State
Department’s Bureau of European Affairs. Like Whitney, what was
widely known was never acted upon.
Phil Griffin, contrary to regulations, absolutely refused to write an
interim efficiency report on me before he left Stuttgart for Jeddah in
1991. Griffin gave me no explanation for this omission, although I
asked about his noncompliance with procedures. My thought then
and now is that he had his instructions from the Central Intelligence
Agency. After his retirement from the Department, Griffin represented
the Saudi Bin Laden Group (SBG-USA) in Rockville, Maryland.24
There were other “problem” children in Stuttgart as well.
Leroy (Lee) Beal had been administrative officer there, before he
was transferred to Jeddah, where I met him. In Saudi Arabia, he was
totally ineffective, at one point flatly refusing to help me get my
daughter a Saudi visa to visit me and later castigating me for
questioning his racist evaluation of a Black man (Lonnie Washington)
assigned to the Administrative Section. One German contact, Lisa
Klemm, told me that Beal spent his days in Stuttgart folding and
unfolding paper towels in his office. According to corridor talk, Beal
had problems with alcohol, one of the two job hazards FSOs face.
(The other is divorce.)
Beal’s successor in Stuttgart was Donald S. Bryfogle, who did
nothing that I knew of, and did it badly. The only good thing that
Griffin’s successor as consul general, Douglas H. Jones, did in his
brief tenure there was to send Bryfogle back to Washington. Jones
also wanted all my routine reports on Southwest Germany classified
so that congressmen and others couldn’t read them.25
Jones and his replacement, Day Olin Mount (formerly with the
NSA in Bad Aibling, Bavaria), both had a curious career pattern: they
had spent most of their working lives in Washington, DC, with brief
excursion tours to Scotland and Greece, respectively, something
totally out of character for a typical FSO. The Legal Advisor’s Office
at the State Department once called me and my editor, Verne Lyon,
at Unclassified, telling us not to connect the two men to the CIA.
Mount was especially bad in that he was a poor manager and
really didn’t grasp how Germany was changing. He repeatedly
blocked me from reaching out to less popular German politicians,
such as Rolf Schlierer, the leader of the local Republikaner (the
“Reps”), a farther right group. Olaf Grobel, once US Political
Counselor at Bonn, wanted them investigated for Nazi ties. I tried
unsuccessfully to get Schlierer sent to America in the US Information
Agency’s International Visitor Program. This would have gotten him
meetings with local US politicians and immigration groups. (The
Republikaner campaigned on immigration reform). But Mount held
tight to the “old guard,” the doddering, centrist, pro-US politicians
and groups whose leadership had, essentially, ossified in the years
since the 1950s.26
Mount repeatedly defended his secretary, a former East
German, Brigitte Shaw, who either had mental problems or was a
“sleeper” agent for the German Democratic Republic’s Stasi (secret
police). (This latter possibility was alleged by Will Kramer, a former
US Information Service official.) A one-time refugee from the East,
she was unstable but remarkably adept at disrupting the smooth
operation of the consulate. Besides watching to see who might come
late to work or park an extra car in the building’s lot (and then calling
the offending individual’s superior), Shaw would occasionally dump
trash in my office. Mount thought so highly of Brigitte that he bought
her a huge tropical fish tank to watch in the office—with taxpayer’s
money.
Another source of instability and bias in our office was Gabriele
Pohlenz-Daniel, a German national and my Political Assistant. A
staunch member of the center-right Christian Democratic Union
(CDU), she always pressed its partisan views in official reporting and
worked to suppress those of parties she opposed. These were
usually the Free Democrats (a right-wing, business-oriented group)
and the Republikaner. Despite my objections, Mount supported and
promoted her.27 Mount later became ambassador to Ireland (1996–
1999).28
 Then there was Kathy Hennessey, assigned to the consular
section. When I met her in Washington, she was full of questions, not
about what the consulate was like or about Stuttgart and its citizens,
but rather about fashion trends. Later, I began hearing grumbles
from Jane Whitney about how Kathy wasn’t giving her the slightest
idea when she would actually travel to the consulate and take up her
posting. Telling Kathy that this could harm her career, I tried
unsuccessfully to get her to take action.
My next official dealing with Kathy came about through a
problem she created for the consulate and the US government.
One day, I had a call from an officer at the US European
Command (EUCOM) headquartered at Patch Barracks in a Stuttgart
suburb. Kathy had refused to provide a tourist passport to an Air
Force general traveling to Greece with his family within the next
twenty-four hours. The general, who had only an official passport
(neither military, diplomatic nor tourist), had learned he needed a
Greek visa for the trip. This document would take time whereas a
tourist passport didn’t require a visa and could be issued quickly. For
hours, I tried to negotiate with Miss Hennessey. She repeatedly
refused, asserting she didn’t do “walk-ins.”
Using my very best diplomatic and political skills, I pointed out
how her intransigence made the consulate look bad, needlessly
antagonized a high government official, and might well spoil the
vacation of an entire family. Additionally, I noted that gaining friends
at Patch Barracks might shorten the inspection of consulate staff
members’ private cars when entering the base. (US military
personnel, in their own vehicles, breezed right on through.) I was
eventually successful: the passport was finally issued, although we
kept a Foreign Service national (local hire) overtime.29
In Stuttgart, I also kept up my political and economic reporting,
covering hot topics, such as Germans leaving the USSR where they
had long been settled, the flow of East Germans across the inner
German frontier after the Berlin Wall came down, and the
Republikaner (whose questioning of the status quo nobody wanted
to hear about). I even polled a series of “men in the street” about
their mixed views of Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the
USSR’s Communist Party, during his Stuttgart visit.
 This reporting was familiar ground to me since I had done
similar work fifteen years earlier as part of the State-Commerce
Exchange Program when I was economic/commercial officer in
Stuttgart. I covered nuclear power, then a divisive issue in the
country, along with other energy issues, such as renewable forms of
power. Besides carting moon rocks to Heidelberg’s famous Max
Planck Institute, I traveled to trade fairs around the country,
promoting American business interests. Additionally, I met with
German and American businessmen, and wrote about financial and
industrial developments. I also summarized German newspaper
reports on items of interest to Washington. To build on my contacts
and improve my language skills, I hosted a weekly English/German
conversational group in my residence. At one point, I was told that I
had more official and unofficial contacts than any officer at the
consulate save the consul general.

The Heats of India

Between my assignments to Germany (1977–1980; 1989–1991)

and Saudi Arabia (1987–1989), I spent two years in New Delhi
(1980–1982) as the FCS Commercial Attaché. In India, I had to
contend with, as noted, Edward W. M. Bryant and his successor,
Hallock Rutherford Lucius. The Economic Counselor tagged him
“Luscious” Lucius, the “Loan Arranger,” for unsuccessfully seeking
high-profile credits for India. I traveled around Hindustan, meeting
many local businessmen and writing reports on my contacts in the
country. One, titled “Christmas Cheer,” covered a luncheon at the
home of a KGB officer, Boris Krylov. One of the Communicators,
David Smith, told me that the account circulated to great merriment
throughout the embassy. (I had humorously recounted the the tale of
atheist Mr. Krylov’s Christmas tree and other religious decorations.
The report included his clumsy efforts to pour me full of Moldavian
brandy to loosen my lips and reveal secrets I did not possess.)
The CIA was heavily represented in Delhi, with the “shadow”
Economic Section larger than the real one. True to form, many of the
spooks never declared themselves to the American diplomats they
depended on for cover. One of the “Econ” officers drove a Padmini
(an Indian Fiat) with Indian and not diplomatic license plates,
occasioning many questions about her status.
Thanks to Nick Heflin, the Econ Counselor, I got to see how
diplomacy was really done. A high-level Commerce Department
trade mission had come to India, looking to conclude a mutually
beneficial arrangement for both countries. While Indian government
and US officials publicly sat at a table and wrangled about the terms
of the agreement, Nick Heflin included me in a literal “back room”
with an economic officer and several Indian government
functionaries. There, we drafted the real pact that would be publicly
signed later.
In contrast, “No Thanks” to Ambassador Harry G. Barnes Jr. and
his Deputy Chief of Mission (deputy ambassador) Marion V.
Creekmore. Through them, I learned how diplomacy was not to be
done. For example, Barnes and Creekmore (the latter once
associated with the questionable Southern Poverty Law Center30)
were obsessed with selling big-ticket items to India, such as
Lockheed C-130 cargo planes and General Electric jet-engine-
powered generators. Either forbidden by American export control
regulations or opposed by Indian government ideology, anyone could
see that their pet projects were going nowhere. Meanwhile, the two
men flatly refused to help an American firm work with the Indians to
bring solar-powered irrigation pumps to poor farmers beyond the
electric grid. Expensive airplanes and oil field generating sets were
sexy. Helping boost food production with bits of plastic, rubber, and a
solar array apparently didn’t enhance careers. Working with the US
company, I myself set up an operating pump in a decorative pond in
front of the embassy where Barnes and Creekmore would see it
every day when they came to work. To no avail.

Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR)

In 1991, transferred to Washington, DC from Stuttgart, I became

INR’s economic officer for all countries south of the Rio Grande
along with the islands of the Caribbean. INR is the country’s oldest
intelligence organization, and I was not surprised to see Henry
Ensher there. Up on the eighth floor, in my infrequently visited
cubbyhole, I could smell them cooking pizza in the basement
cafeteria. However, I spent most of my time in the Sensitive
Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF), a glory hole that had no
water fountains or toilets because spies could track messages
through their pipes. To get into the SCIF, I needed a special badge
(which also got me unescorted access to the CIA at Langley). To get
this special badge, I had to wait until the special badge issuer
returned from vacation. Then, I signed a paper saying I had read all
the code words for the sources of all the information we would be
consulting to write our reports. (These were words like “Keyhole,”
covering satellite photos called “overhead imagery.” I’ve forgotten
most of them, but they can be found in the 1989 novel The War
Birds, by Richard Herman.)
INR was an information junkie’s dream. Besides reading
publications like the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the
Washington Post, and wire service feeds from the Associated Press,
United Press International, and Reuters, our staff had access to
restricted diplomatic reporting, such as “NODIS,” that is “No
Distribution” beyond the addressee. We also saw NSA intercepts of
telephone calls and encrypted communications. (While highly
classified, these included an innocuous conversation between two
Japanese businessmen in a Swiss hotel and the vice president of
Panama talking on routine matters). Additionally, we got to see
some, but not all, CIA messages. (The Agency has a tap on the
State Department’s circuits and can read every incoming and
outgoing message.)
At the time of the questionable 1991 Russian coup attempt, I
could compare what was reported in the newspapers with what State
and the CIA were writing. It seemed the only difference between
journalists’ accounts and the highly classified versions were the
specific names and other sources used in the government’s
messages. Either the press was very accomplished, or the
intelligence services were not particularly proficient.
We were also treated to briefings at NSA (called the Puzzle
Palace), based at Ft. Meade. According to experts there, if the NSA
can’t pluck messages out of the air, it can prevail on friends at the
CIA to install listening devices at a target’s location. Additionally, we
visited the National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC), at the
time located in Southeast Washington.31

The Unemployment Line

One day in late 1991, my career development officer called me

into her office, and she told me that my appointment was being
terminated. I asked if this was because I had scooped the CIA and
NSA on the Chinese IRBMs or because I had done such extensive
political and economic reporting in Jeddah and Stuttgart. Then again,
was it because I had refused to issue visas to unqualified
applicants?32
I never got a clear response to my question.
I decided then that I had nothing left to lose. I contacted the
Government Accounting Office (GAO) branch at Main State, asking
them to look into all the issues revolving around the suspicious visa
program and my reports of questionable liquor sales at Jeddah. I
approached the Inspector General’s Office at State and filed a
complaint on the same issues, and I met with the staff of the House
Foreign Affairs Committee.
GAO’s raison d’etre on its website is “to help improve the
performance and ensure the accountability of the federal
government for the benefit of the American people.” Nonetheless, it
sent me a “Thank you” but did nothing. The Inspector General’s
Office replied it could take no action because two years had elapsed
and my boss, Freres, had retired. Besides, it said, visa issuance was
a matter of “interpretation.” The Diplomatic Security officer, Travis
Moran, simply told me I had a “personality conflict” with Jay Freres.
To be sure, Diplomatic Security and the Department of State
sometimes go after corrupt FSOs. The following a are cases in point.
According to the Washington Post, government officials arrested
Thomas P. Carroll at his parents’ home in Chicago in March 2000.33
Mr. Carroll, along with a Guyanese citizen, formed a conspiracy to
sell visas to aliens. Carroll amassed a small fortune in the process:
$1.3 million in cash and gold bars.
On February 6, 2003, the State Department announced that
Alexander Meerovich had pled guilty to one count of visa fraud.
According to State’s press release, “We will continue to investigate
all allegations of visa fraud vigorously and seek to prosecute and
punish those people engaged in visa fraud to the fullest extent of the
law.” Really?
On August 1, 2013, David Seminara at the Center for
Immigration Studies published an article, “Crooked FSOs Busted for
Selling Visas.” It recounted the stories of Michael Sestak, chief of the
nonimmigrant visa section at Saigon, Vietnam, and Edy Zohar
Rodriguez Duran of Georgetown, Guyana. Sestak had been arrested
in May of that year for conspiracy to commit visa fraud and bribery
while Duran was alleged to have sold visas for sex and money.
Considering these cases, why didn’t they follow up on my
charges? My guess is that they knew about the visa program for al-
Qaeda.
Besides GAO and Diplomatic Security, I sought help from
Congress, asking for intervention by the House Committee on
Foreign Affairs. Astonishingly, during my Capitol Hill meeting with a
committee staffer, he asked me, “Don’t you think we need the CIA?” I
don’t recall my answer at the time, but I know what I would say now
if I were asked the same question again: “Hell, no! The Agency is
illegal.” (It’s principal division, the Clandestine Service, has no lawful
basis for existence.)
When I was fired, State gave me no severance pay and DC’s
unemployment compensation (taxable thanks to Ronald Reagan)
didn’t go very far. In any case, I expected that speaking several
languages and having lived and worked on three continents would
get me a better paying and more interesting job than what I had had
at the State Department. I was wrong. After hundreds of letters and
telephone calls, none of which generated an interview, I thought,
“Am I being blackballed?” A reference-checking firm gave me a
transcript of a conversation they had with Day O. Mount, former
consul general in Stuttgart. In response to questions posed by a
“prospective employer,” his vague remarks appeared calculated to
ensure that the “caller” wouldn’t touch me.
This situation reinforced what I had seen earlier: efforts in
Stuttgart to get me to fail, all of which were undoubtedly tied to the
CIA and the visa incidents in Saudi Arabia.
While preparing this book, I found documents indicating some
back-door communications (written, telephonic, and face-to-face)
among Sally Lindover, then administrative officer; Samuel Shelton
Westgate III, then director of Amerika Haus, the US Information
Service facility in Stuttgart; and Day Mount. All were uniformly
negative about my tenure in the Foreign Service. One report by
Westgate to Lindover referred to papers that would reflect adversely
upon my future in the Foreign Service. In that, he suggested she
transmit them to Washington for inclusion in my personnel file.34

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)

I decided that I would try to get my job back. To do so, I needed

information as to why I had been fired in the first place. (Remember
that this was before I met the journalist, Joe Trento, who explained to
me the incidents at Jeddah.) Depending on what I found, I could
either be reemployed or obtain enough knowledge to sue the
Department of State for wrongful dismissal.
In 1992, I decided to file under the FOIA to learn about my
dismissal from State. I bought a copy of Litigation Under The Federal
Open Government Laws. I also cadged free advice from the
attorneys who had earlier sued the government on my behalf for
discrimination. If this project taught me anything, it is that the United
States of America refuses to obey its own laws.
Passed in 1966, over the objections of the US Justice
Department, the FOIA was strengthened in 1974 following the
Watergate affair. President Lyndon B. Johnson (D-TX) at one point
threatened to veto it. The object of the law is to provide people with
access to material about the federal government or, for that matter,
records that the government has about them. In practice, the
executive branch and the courts do not treat the FOIA as the law of
the land.
I saw exactly how this worked.
I filed a FOIA request with the Department of State in 1992.
After delays, State sent me a few documents, which I already had,
such as pay stubs and orders to travel to Saudi Arabia. I repeatedly
challenged the department, stating explicitly what I was looking for.
Exasperated, I filed suit in the US District Court for the District of
Columbia. This action brought an excess of irrelevant paper: more
pay stubs and copies of my travel orders and immaterial cable traffic
that I had written or that had mentioned me in insignificant ways. I
got nothing of substance relating to my dismissal. When I asked for
records I knew I had created, such as my report about the Chinese
IRBMs, or the classified attachment to the 1989 Inspection Report
(an account of how well the consulate followed law and regulation), I
was told that they couldn’t be found. When I asked for reports about
liquor sales at the consulate in Jeddah or the CIA’s involvement in
getting an American businessman fired and thrown out of Saudi
Arabia, I was told that those matters were classified. The judge,
Harold H. Greene (now deceased), could see those records, but I
couldn’t, even though I had been on the scene and knew what had
been going on.
Eventually, the Justice Department prevailed on the judge to
dismiss my case, after Justice and its client, the State Department,
got the matter sealed as a threat to “national security.” How could
obtaining information about losing my job endanger “national
security”?
In July 2010, I wrote State asking for what I should have
requested twenty years earlier: copies of the visa application forms
that I had denied and that Jay Freres and Justice Stevens
subsequently approved. I also sought all records, cables,
memoranda, notes, etc. that referenced them. I named the people
involved in the creation of these documents and told State’s Office of
Information Programs and Services (OIPS), which manages the
FOIA there, about their likely locations. For two years, I heard only
that I was ineligible for expedited processing or a fee reduction for
filing a FOIA request in the public interest.
 When I sought advice and counsel from organizations
supposedly having a stake in open government, such as the
Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), the Center for National
Security Studies, Public Citizen, the Center for Constitutional Rights,
as well as the Government Accountability Project, I got nowhere.
They either didn’t reply or, like Kate Martin, Director of the Center for
National Security Studies, said they were too busy.35

The State Department’s Position

State, through its representation at the office of the US Attorney

for DC insisted that the judge assigned to my case, Reggie B.
Walton, dismiss the matter because the Department (1) couldn’t find
any of the records I requested, and (2) it was State’s policy to
destroy documents according to a prescribed schedule. (Walton had
been appointed to the court by George W. Bush. He was named to
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court [FISA] by Chief Justice
John G. Roberts, another Bush appointee.)

I rebutted State’s remarks and I got virtually the same response

each time. For example, I asked if they had contacted any of the
people most directly involved in the Visas for Terrorists Program,
listing their names and addresses. State’s reply was that the agency
didn’t search officials’ personal records, and it was under no
obligation to contact people long retired for information. When I
probed for confirmation of the records’ destruction, I was told only
that they no longer existed. When I pursued the dates of the alleged
eradication and sought the names and titles of those who did the
obliterating, I was only told that all was done according to the rules.
To rebut State’s demand for the names on the visa applications I
had sought, I filed an affidavit with the court, noting that, while in
Jeddah, I had adjudicated about forty-five thousand visa requests
per annum, an average of between one hundred and two hundred
per day. During this period, I explained, the office held filing cabinets
overflowing with very old visa requests, many dating back five to
possibly ten or more years. Apparently, none of my predecessors in
the position as Chief of the Nonimmigrant Visa Section had
destroyed many or any visa applications during their tenure, even
though State Department regulations required that this be done
annually. During my time there, my small three-man staff and I could
not destroy the ancient visa forms and still do our regular job. That
involved handling the paperwork and background check procedures
on the hundreds of people a day who applied for permission to visit
the United States.
Conceivably, after twenty years, some records might finally have
been shredded. However, what is impossible to grasp is that it was
done without any record, however general, of that destruction taking
place. Note the comment of Nick Pope, a former Deputy Director in
the Directorate of Defence Security, British Ministry of Defence:

…It is certainly the case that in any large organization

files and documents go missing or staffs, for whatever
reasons, are unable to locate them. However, in
government, the military, and the intelligence agencies
document security and information management are
generally taken extremely seriously, for obvious
reasons, especially where classified and/or sensitive
operations are concerned.36

However, Judge Walton ordered judgment in favor of the

government, as most federal judges do in Freedom of Information
matters dealing with subjects more substantive than the nesting sites
of spotted owls.37 He wrote that I had been claiming that the State
Department had improperly withheld documents and said I had failed
to exhaust my administrative remedies (an entirely incorrect
assertion).38 He also ruled that State had conducted an adequate
search for the records I had sought (even though the Department
repeatedly claimed it hadn’t looked because it allegedly purges visa
applications annually). In effect, Walton worked with the State
Department’s Office of Information Programs and Services (headed
at the time by Margaret Grafeld, whom I believe to be a CIA official)
to create a tenth exemption to the Freedom of Information Act:
Nonexistent Records.
A similar story involves the Office of Information Programs,
which has a declassification section staffed by former Foreign
Service officers. One of them, Frank E. Schmelzer Jr., now
deceased, told me that one declassification project he had been
given had been sabotaged. Zionists at the State Department had
“disappeared” records they didn’t want to see the light of day. State,
of course, took no action against anyone involved in that.

But What about FBI Help? Journalistic Help? High-Powered

Political Help?

Ha!
After striking out with GAO and the House Committee, I called
the Federal Bureau of Investigation and its parent, the Justice
Department. No one wanted to talk with me. After the September 11,
2001, terrorist attacks, fifteen of whom, according to the Los Angeles
Times, got their visas at Jeddah, I again called the FBI (at Joe
Trento’s suggestion).39 After being passed from office to office, I was
told to ring up their Washington Field Office. I did and was told
“someone would get back to me.” I’m still waiting. It’s probably just
as well, otherwise I would be at Guantanamo Bay or in a secret
concentration camp somewhere else in the world. The Associated
Press wasn’t interested. I called Craig Whitlock at the Washington
Post and was ignored. I met with a journalist at the Los Angeles
Times’ Washington bureau, providing him with copies of all the
information I had, including the denizens of the Jeddah CIA Base.
Nothing came of that other than a lunch on their dime.
Over more than twenty years, I’ve written to the Chairmen of the
Senate and House Intelligence Committees (John D. Rockefeller and
Jane Harmon), the Democratic Leader of the House of
Representatives (Nancy Pelosi), the Chairman of the House
Government Operations Committee, and so on. I never received a
response from any of them.
What Does This All Mean?

Like the September 11, 2001, attacks themselves (described by

journalist Peter Lance as having become a cold case), the Visas for
Terrorists Program, which helped recruit the “muj”, later, al-Qaeda,
later ISIS/ISIL, but what I call the Arab-Afghan Legion, is shrouded in
secrecy, cover-ups, and deliberate government obfuscation. Just as
Daniel Hopsicker recounted in detail in his book Welcome to
Terrorland, Mohammed Atta & the 9/11 Cover-Up in Florida,40 it’s
virtually impossible to penetrate the smokescreen generated by
federal agencies. People refuse to talk, and people deny
wrongdoing, while investigatory agencies, such as the FBI, either
take no action or assert that there is no need to act. Essentially, as
Hopsicker notes, “There is a demonstrable, provable, and massive
federally supervised cover-up in place…But the real question, of
course, is: What are they covering up? What’s the reason for it?” 41
The reason, I believe, is this: murder, war crimes, human rights
violations by government officials in support of al-Qaeda, and the
creation of a cadre used to destabilize governments and countries
on America’s black list.
Throughout Hopsicker’s investigation and during my experience
and my inquiry into the visas issue, we were blocked—officially and
unofficially. In my case, it was (1) the US Department of State, its
Inspector General, and Diplomatic Security; (2) the Government
Accounting/Accountability Office; (3) the Federal Bureau of
Investigation and the US Justice Department; (4) individuals in the
State Department and Central Intelligence Agency, both serving and
retired; (5) the US District Court for the District of Columbia; (6)
Congressmen and Congressional committee staff; (7) the
Washington Post; the Los Angeles Times; the Associated Press. In a
normal world, this might strain credibility, but, today, given the growth
and reach of the National Security State, it does not.
This pattern of obfuscation has not gone unnoticed by others. In
Peter Lance’s preface to Triple Cross, in relation to unbelievable
American governmental burial of evidence and failure to take action
against attacks on the United States, he writes, “I believe that their
motive was to sanitize the record and thus prevent the public from
understanding the full depth of the FBI/DOJ [Department of Justice]
missteps” [if, in fact, they were real missteps]. 42
Too many people, and too many organizations with a watching
brief for wrongdoing, ignored and continue to ignore clear evidence
of questionable behavior linked to criminal activity. One or two or
three individuals or institutions might disregard the evidence, arguing
it being insubstantial or unauthoritative. However, when the roll is
called, too many ignore too much. As we know, “national security” is
a wonderful magic spell able to make malfeasance and misfeasance
disappear, and corruption, fraud, mismanagement, and abuse of
authority become invisible.
Add to this situation those people who ought to know but profess
no knowledge, and the soup gets mighty murky. Let me list three
examples.
1) I spoke by telephone on April 15, 2013, with Andrew I.
Kilgore, publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs
and former US ambassador to Qatar (with a curiously-checkered
State Department career pattern). In his soft Alabama drawl, he drew
on his many years East of Suez to say that all the Arabs recruited for
the war against the Soviet Union stayed in Afghanistan, rather than
go home. In response to my question about their traveling to the
Balkans to fight the Serbs or to Iraq to fight the Americans, he said
that this was not so. He maintained that their whole purpose was to
fight the communists (although, contradicting himself, he did say a
few went to the Balkans).
2) Ali Ahmad Jalali, once a colonel in the Afghan army, a planner
with the resistance there, a Minister of the Interior, and now a scholar
at the National Defense University in Washington, DC simply doesn’t
answer phone calls, e-mails, or letters. (A retired European diplomat
suggested that Jalali is still in the CIA’s employ.)
3) Clovis Maksoud, a well-connected one-time Arab League
ambassador and prolific writer and speaker on just about anything
involving the Arab world, told me that he knew absolutely nothing of
the Arab-Afghans.
This pattern is followed by other experts, such as Husain
Haqqani, a journalist, diplomat, and adviser to four Pakistani Prime
Ministers. Although a former Pakistani ambassador to Washington,
now a Director of International Relations at Boston University, as well
as a Senior Fellow and Director for South and Central Asia at the
Hudson Institute, a policy research organization in Washington, DC,
he does not respond to e-mails or letters about the itinerant
gunslingers recruited by Jimmy Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski. The
same holds true for Simbal Khan, PhD, once Director for
Afghanistan, and Central Asia at the Wilson International Center for
Scholars in Washington, DC, and now CEO of Indus Global Initiative
as well as a Senior Research Fellow at the Islamabad Policy
Research Institute.
Silence in the face of twenty years of seeking answers to my
not-very-complicated questions shows me that there are those in the
US government who will never admit to folly. Some officials, judicial
or executive, employed or retired, will forever hide illegal behavior,
especially with the help of the Congress. Judge Harold H. Greene
and Judge Reggie B. Walton were, and are, in my opinion, opposed
to the public’s right to know. Successive attorneys at the US Justice
Department appear to be more loyal to their organization than to the
federal Constitution, which they have sworn to “support and
defend…against all enemies, foreign and domestic” (5 USC § 1331).
They haven’t, perhaps, considered the possibility that some
individuals in the government are those enemies.
The same holds true for the officials of the CIA’s “not-very-
Clandestine” Service and the Foreign Service mentioned throughout
this publication. Please take note of all the letters I had sent them
and ask why no one, save Justice Stevens, ever responded.
Similarly, Justice, in a telephone call, simply denied that any irregular
visas were ever issued. Do these people really believe in what they
were doing? Have they never questioned the results of their actions?
Do they realize their lives served a lie? Do they fear retribution?
In my view, the answer is yes to all of the foregoing and more
besides.
Tim Hunter, former US Army counterintelligence officer and
administrative attaché in Jeddah commented as follows:
 The contradictions of US foreign policy are endless,
traceable to the fact that few Americans care about
foreign policy. Most Americans don’t want a foreign
policy…period. Most, objectively speaking, are
functioning isolationists. The intelligentsia has not
created a foreign policy that has national support, only
a series of ad hoc, periodic eruptions. Therefore, there
is no consensus about foreign policy in America.
Foreign policy in the United States is all about rip-offs
by certain ethnic groups with power and major
corporations with overseas interests.43

The Department of State, charged with formulating and

administering American foreign policy, on occasion hires and
promotes incompetents, drunkards, crooks, and human rights
violators. Worse, that unfortunate organization then seeks to protect,
to shield, and to defend them. Corrupt officials such as Jane Whitney
and Ted Bryant, the Commercial Counselor in Delhi, are allowed to
retire on fat pensions (averaging more than $5,000 a month),
diagreeable and uncooperative applicants are hired and given
tenure, while others, like my predecessor at Jeddah, obtain full
careers in exchange for silence on the “Visas for Terrorists” Program
(if, in fact, they even work for the Department of State).
Not even Adolf Hitler and the Nazis brought terrorists to
Germany, trained them thoroughly, and then allowed them to operate
against the German people. The United States did, though—and
used its foreign ministry and intelligence services to help. And then
covered it up. And still works very hard to keep the lid on.
Anyone who challenges the “official” view of American history is
automatically labeled “conspiracy theorist,” a carefully constructed
term devised to divert attention away from dangerous reality and
evidence demonstrating wrongdoing.
Yet…
Michael Parenti, political scientist and historian, put this all in
perspective:
 Conspiracies do exist. If we define conspiracy as
planning in secret for illicit purposes while misleading
the public as to what is happening, then there have
been conspiracies aplenty. There was the secretly
planned Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, initially
presented to the public as a purely Cuban émigré
venture; the fabricated story about a North
Vietnamese Tonkin Gulf attack against US destroyers,
designed to induce Congress to support greater
military involvement in Indochina; the CIA’s
clandestine operations to assassinate foreign leaders
and overthrow governments; the FBI’s COINTELPRO
program to use illegal methods to disrupt dissenting
organizations in the USA; the Watergate break-in and
the Watergate cover-up; and above all, the Iran-
Contra affair, involving the unlawful use of funds,
secret bank accounts, the criminal destruction of
government documents, the illegal financing of
counterrevolutionaries in Nicaragua, the complicity of
other nations, and a secret coterie of unsavory
operatives all covered over with lies and
misrepresentations served up by the president of the
United States and other top policymakers. Not all
conspiracies are fantasies.44

The foregoing personal account, Parenti’s comment, the

references to Peter Lance’s Triple Cross, as well as Daniel
Hopsicker’s book Welcome to Terrorland, Mohammed Atta & the
9/11 Cover-Up in Florida indicate deliberate government obfuscation,
if not outright conspiracy.

Consider the following.

Former diplomat, university professor, and author Peter Dale
Scott notes in The Road to 9/1145 that, if the stories about Ali
Mohamed being an FBI informant and CIA and army veteran are
true, then:
 1. A key planner of the 9/11 plot, and trainer in hijacking, was
also an informant for the FBI.
2. This operative trained the members for all of the chief Islamist
attacks inside the United States—the first World Trade Center
bombing, the New York landmarks plot, and finally 9/11—as well as
the attacks against Americans in Somalia and Kenya.
3. For four years, Mohamed, already named as an unindicted
conspirator, was allowed to move in and out of the country.
In Triple Cross, Lance appears to solve this riddle: In Ali
Mohamed’s New York trial in 2000, he [Lance] commented, “Why did
the Feds let Ali Mohamed sit out that trial? Why did they make a
secret plea agreement with him; yet not force him to testify?
Because Mohamed wasn’t just the government’s best witness to al-
Qaeda’s successes, he was also the best witness to the failures of
the FBI and the CIA to stop bin Laden’s terror campaign.”46
Continuing, Peter Lance invokes the Spirit of Watergate, the
vast Nixon “conspiracy”: What did the government know, and when
did they know it?

There’s little doubt that the CIA and DIA [Defense

Intelligence Agency] ran interference for him from the
mid-1980s at least until his army discharge in late
1989. Ali may have lost his official status as a CIA
asset in 1984, but it seems clear that some
government agency helped him circumvent the Watch
List, to secure his JFK Warfare Center posting, and to
operate in the highly secure environment of Fort
Bragg for years, despite compelling evidence of his
loyalty to radical Islam.47

In one of the many instances in Triple Cross where there was

clear evidence clearly ignored of untoward events that were to
happen (or be permitted to happen), Lance states:

The FBI found that early warning of the 9/11 attacks

on Ayyad’s computer [Nidal Ayyad, one of Ali
 Mohamed’s trainees] within one week of the Trade
Center bombing in 1993. Why didn’t they pick up on
it? Why did senior FBI and Department of Justice
(DOJ) officials continue to deny al-Qaeda’s
involvement and insist for years that the bombing was
the result of a “loosely organized group” of Sunni
extremists, a position that would persist right through
the 9/11 Commission that endorsed the same
conclusion?48

Lance’s best description of the FBI is that it “was a dog

asleep.”49 A dog “put to sleep” might be more apt, especially given
the following incidents.
In Triple Cross, Lance continually brings in references to US
government use of misinformation to cover-up (gover-up?)
embarrassing knowledge of either its incompetence or corruption, or
both. One instance demonstrating this situation was the sabotage of
TWA Flight 800, a flight from New York to Paris and Rome in July
1996. In Chapter 23, “Bojinka Fulfilled,” Lance dismisses the wild
claim that an empty fuel tank exploded, causing the crash. His view
is that a bomb on board did the job and provides persuasive
information to support that outlook, such as the finding of explosives
residue in the wreckage.50
In another instance, Lance notes in Chapter 24, “Crossing The
Line,” that “the Feds in the FBI’s New York Office and the SDNY
[Southern District of New York] had now begun to cross the line from
negligence to intent in their disconnection of the dots [resulting from
a series of investigations linking al-Qaeda and bin Laden and
plotters in New York City].” In addition, he lambastes the carefully
chosen ones, saying “the FBI and Justice Department had gone into
containment mode [in later summer and early fall 1996], with key
officials deciding to limit the evidence and affirmatively acting to
disconnect certain dots…in others, the containment of intel was
more subtle, designed to chill special agents who might otherwise
have complained to their superiors about the disconnect.”
 Another example of Lance’s belief that a “gover-up” was in place
concerned the 9/11 Commission Report:
I had developed a source on the commission staff, a
former law enforcement officer [who] gave me an early
warning that the commission had already begun to
follow a predetermined “script” of events. Democrats
and Republicans, he suggested, had gotten together
and agreed up front to follow a limited investigation of
the events…

The source insisted that evidence was being “cherry-

picked” in order to fit their limited story the commission
staff was prepared to tell…51

Transition

Having gotten this far, Esteemed Reader, you now have the
background to understand the sordid history of US foreign policy.
You’ve read the thumbnail sketches of State Department and
intelligence service personnel. I hope you can see that there are
failures to formulate a realistic, rational, ideology-free foreign policy
based on tact and common sense, as well as universal human
rights.
The visas issued in Jeddah for the mujahideen and, ultimately,
al-Qaeda and ISIS/ISIL, were not a one-off program. My experience
was only part of the picture. I was in at the beginning of a sordid,
grim, and very dangerous shift in American foreign policy. Prior to
the Afghan war against the Soviets, the United States destabilized or
overthrew governments on an ad hoc basis. With the creation of the
“muj,” who morphed into “al-Qaeda,” who then became “ISIS/ISIL,”
the American government developed a cadre of radicals. The
government also did its best to get rid of anyone, like me, who came
close to examining what was really happening.
Please bear this situation in mind throughout the following
sections dealing with American involvement in other countries’
internal affairs since 1945, which led to the Arab-Afghan Legion and
its use in destabilizing governments and countries on Uncle Sam’s
“enemies list.” My experience was not unique, but it helped lead to
what the government was and is really doing.
T
he US government has a long history of destabilizing or planning to
destabilize countries and their rulers, not just in the Third World but
in Europe and at home in the US. Here are but a few, truncated
examples, providing a small taste of what was to come later.

Europe

In Italy, roughly one hundred people were blown up, first in Milan
(in 1969) and then, Bologna (1980), ostensibly by anarchists but, in
reality, by Italian military intelligence—at the behest of American
covert organizations. General Vito Miceli, chief of Italian military
intelligence, attested “that the [institution that did the bombings]…
was formed under a secret agreement with the United States and
within the framework of NATO.” Paolo Taviani, onetime Italian
defense minister, stated “that during his time in office [1955–1958]
the Italian secret services were bossed and financed by ‘the boys in
Via Veneto’—that is, the CIA agents [sic] in the US Embassy in the
heart of Rome.” Years later, Italian secret service General Gianadelio
Maletti said “that the CIA gave its tacit approval to a series of
bombings in Italy in the 1970s to sow instability and keep
communists from taking power…The CIA wanted, through the birth
of an extreme nationalism and the contribution of the far right—to
stop [Italy] sliding to the left.’”52
Italy was part of NATO, an “ally.”

At Home

There was “Operation Northwoods.”

This was a scheme devised by the American general staff to
begin a war with Cuba. Likely growing from President Dwight
Eisenhower’s (R-KS) idea, the object was to put an end to Fidel
Castro once and for all. “[T]he plan called for innocent people to be
shot on American streets; for boats carrying refugees fleeing to be
sunk on the high seas; for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched
in Washington, DC, Miami, and elsewhere. People would be framed
for bombings they did not commit; planes would be hijacked. Using
phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus giving
Lemnitzer [Lyman L. Lemnitzer, four-star general and Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff] and his cabal the excuse as well as the
public and international backing they needed to launch their war.”53
“Operation Northwoods” looks like a blueprint for September 11,
2001.

The Third World and Present-Day Troubles

Former professor of economics (University of Ottawa) Michel

Chossudovsky, now President and Director of the Centre for
Research on Globalization (CRG) and Editor of GlobalResearch.ca,
linked a 2013 CNN video to an article on his website about former
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In it she formally acknowledged
that the United States created, trained, and paid the Afghan
mujahideen, the same people she said American soldiers were
fighting. Clinton admitted that President Ronald Reagan (R-CA),
along with the Democratic leaders of Congress, thought it was a
great idea to end Soviet attempts to control Central Asia. So, the
American government worked, she said, with Pakistani Inter-
Services Intelligence [ISI] and the Pakistani military to recruit
Wahhabi fundamentalists from all over, including Saudi Arabia, to
battle the USSR.54
This was the beginning of al-Qaeda. The “Base” formed the
basis for the Arab-Afghan Legion, whose steady march to terror
makes Xenophon’s Anabasis (his account of Greeks trapped in
Persia after helping a fifth century BC regime change) seem like a
stroll in the park.
Chossudovsky added that Clinton neglected to mention that the
United States had never, in the past thirty years, stopped supporting
and financing al-Qaeda. America, in fact, used it as a means of
wrecking free and independent states, violating the UN Charter and
other treaties and international acts to which the US was signatory.
As an example, he points out that the new Secretary of State, John
Kerry, was in close contact with al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda-affiliated
organization in Syria, a US-funded entity on the State Department’s
terrorist list.55
Small beginnings? Unconnected events? Maybe. But, from tiny
acorns, mighty oaks do, indeed, grow. For example, consider all
those visas I was required to issue in Jeddah, the place where the
September 11 hijackers got their papers to come to the United
States. Are some really large buildings missing from New York’s
skyline?
O
n September 11, 2001, alleged “terrorists” captured four airplanes.
They flew two of them into the World Trade Center in New York City,
and one into the Pentagon in Alexandria, Virginia. Another was
reportedly retaken by the passengers on board, but later supposedly
crashed. According to the Los Angeles Times, fifteen of the nineteen
supposed hijackers obtained their visas to visit the United States
from the American consulate general at Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. What
the LA Times did not say was that the Jeddah consulate, like the
American consulate at Benghazi, Libya, was an American
intelligence operation in which close cooperation with terrorists was
more important than diplomacy. Jeddah, in the 1990s, was the fifth-
largest visa-issuing post in the Middle East. It had long been aiding
the CIA and its then-asset Osama bin Laden in recruiting terrorists
for training in the United States for use in the war against the Soviet
Union in Afghanistan. Many had thought that, with the end of the
USSR’s occupation of Afghanistan, the American training program
ceased. However, analysis of wars conducted by George W. Bush
and Barack H. Obama in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan,
Syria, and Yemen seems to show that the Visas for Terrorists
Program had never stopped and may well have been expanded, a
view shared by journalist Joe Trento.56 Further, it apparently had
long been in operation elsewhere. I well remember speaking with a
retired consular officer in the 1990s, telling him about the enormous
pressure to issue illegal visas at Jeddah. His response was that it
had happened before, was apparently happening again, and it was
now time to get the CIA’s Indians back onto the reservation.
T
his Visas for Terrorists Program was set in motion by President
James Earl Carter (D- GA) and his National Security Advisor,
Zbigniew Kasimierz Brzezinski, upon the advice and counsel of the
Central Intelligence Agency. However, this was not an ad hoc
operation, conceived and carried out in response to a specific foreign
policy issue. Rather, it was another of too many CIA efforts to
destroy governments, countries, and politicians disfavored by the
American “establishment” in its “bipartisan” approach to matters
abroad. Whether it was opposing the imaginary evils of communism,
the fictitious malevolence of Islam, or the invented wickedness of
Iran, America and its intelligence services, brave defenders of “The
City Upon A Hill”57 sought out and created fear and loathing of
peoples and countries essentially engaged in efforts to better their
lives and improve their political world. Along the way, Agency-
sponsored murders, war crimes, and human rights violations proved
to be good business. Jobs for the Clandestine Service (people who
recruit and run spies), sales of weapons and aircraft, as well as the
myriad items needed to control banks, countries, and peoples all
provided income for and benefits to American companies.
The manner in which this was done helped create and shape a
coast to coast consensus of support for the intelligence services and
their actions. Kevin Robert Ryan, in Another 19, Investigating
Legitimate 9/11 Suspects,58 devotes chapter 11 to a discussion of
originating and framing “the national conversation about terrorism,”
containing examples of terrorism propaganda and actions, including
Gladio, devised by US government officials. Gladio was a NATO
concept of stay-behind secret European armies to counter
communist takeovers of countries at the ballot box. It engaged in
subversive and criminal activities in several nations.
Discussing terrorism roles for L. Paul Bremer, head of the
Coaliton Provisional Authority and Presidential Envoy to Iraq, and
Brian Michael Jenkins, an alleged security expert, Ryan notes:

…it would not have been the first time that the
American people were subject to the hard sell of a
threat to national security only to discover that the
threat was overblown or nonexistent. The Soviet
military threat to the U.S. after World War II is now
widely known to have been a fabrication that was
hyped for political and financial gains.59

The propaganda that drove the Cold War was

effective in establishing government policy primarily
because it was effective in framing the national
conversation about what threats were important to
consider and in controlling the media. The same has
been true for the propaganda driving the War on
Terror.60

To improve our understanding of Langley and the US

government’s approach to foreign policy, let’s focus on just a few
American-engineered disasters as a means of gaining perspective
on the Visas for Terrorists Program, run, in part, out of the CIA’s
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, consulate. Aimed at getting the Soviets out of
Afghanistan, that agenda drew on expertise acquired throughout the
growth of the National Security State. Its first success in destroying
governments was overthrowing the legitimate rule of Mohammed
Mossadegh in Iran in 1953. The second success was in deposing
Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, president of Guatemala, the following year.
Thanks to the politicians in Washington, there were more and there
will be more. America is, essentially, a failed state whose raison
d’etre is global war to keep its economy “healthy.”

Mohammad Mossadegh: First Victim of First CIA Coup d’Etat

In 1951, Mossadegh led the seizure of the Anglo-Iranian Oil

Company (later, British Petroleum, now BP), with a near-unanimous
vote in parliament where he piloted the National Front. After years of
exploitation and fed up with British imperialism, including its invasion
and occupation of the country during World Wars I and II, the Iranian
government demanded damages and compensation for lost
revenue. Britain retaliated with a boycott and an embargo on Iranian
oil, designed to create economic problems there, not unlike US
pressure on the country today. (Anglo-Iranian, 51 percent owned by
the UK government, had kept 84 percent of Iranian oil revenues for
itself, more than double the sum it gave Iran as royalties. In contrast,
in a 1950 agreement, ARAMCO [Arabian American Oil Company] in
Saudi Arabia gave its hosts 50 percent of profits derived from Saudi
oil.) Mossadegh, on becoming prime minister, visited the United
States in 1951, primarily to defend the nationalization of Anglo-
Iranian. Despite a six-week tour of the United States, meeting
President Harry Truman and addressing the UN’s Security Council,
the British and the new American government, led by yet another
soldier (Dwight Eisenhower) and the Dulles brothers (Allen, Director
of Central Intelligence; John Foster, Secretary of State) saw
Mossadegh as a radical socialist with possible ties to the Soviet
Union. All seemed to ignore British reality: that the UK government
had nationalized coal, electricity, and railroads in the late 1940s.
They also apparently ignored Mossadegh’s foreign and domestic
status of lawyer, anti-colonialist, and attendee at the Carthaginian
Treaty of Versailles Conference in 1919. He was Time magazine’s
Man of the Year for 1951. The Anglo-Americans were undoubtedly
concerned that his defiance of the colonialists thrilled the Arabs in
the region. In Iran itself, Mossadegh had the support of nearly 100
percent of the population, according to the American ambassador in
Tehran.61
The United States, working in concert with the United Kingdom,
began to manipulate elections in Iran with a view toward removing
Mossadegh’s supporters through “free and fair” polls—and worse.
Langley had been using its unlimited funds to buy the support of
“Iranian journalists, preachers, army, and police officers, and
members of parliament” to stir up opposition to the lawful
government and to remove Mossadegh from power. Not unlike
present-day events in the region, the Agency bought the help of the
“Warriors of Islam” listed by that same office as a “terrorist gang.” 62
CIA official Kermit Roosevelt Jr., grandson of President Theodore
Roosevelt (R-NY), organized the coup. Kermit set mobs loose in the
capital and spread rumors that Mossadegh was “a Communist and a
Jew.” Roosevelt’s “rent a thugs” (including Ayatollah Ruhollah
Musavi Khomeini, a future leader), masqueraded as communists,
attacked clerics, and wrecked a mosque.63 At the same time,
Roosevelt and his minions worked with the weak “Shah” Mohammad
Reza Pahlavi to issue decrees removing Mossadegh from office. The
Prime Minister retaliated by arresting the Shah’s emissary and
stating that the Shah could not remove him without consent of
parliament. Fearing a backlash from Mossadegh’s supporters, the
Shah fled the country.
However, Roosevelt, the CIA, and Britain’s Secret Intelligence
Service (MI6), using mutinous soldiers and hired demonstrators,
managed to get Mossadegh arrested and confined to his house for
life. When the Shah flew back to Tehran from exile, CIA Chief Allen
Dulles accompanied him. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, becoming a
staunch puppet of the United States to whom he owed everything,
subsequently ran a brutally repressive government from 1953 to
1979. That year, he was overthrown by a popular revolt. In the
meantime, the United States got access to a great supply of black
gold. (Iran then pumped about 40 percent of Middle Eastern oil.)64
The CIA executed similar scenarios in Latin America. First,
however, there was Guatemala.
Guatemala

Dwight D. Eisenhower wanted to nullify the November 1950 free

and fair election of Jacobo Arbenz Guzman as president of
Guatemala. Arbenz, not unlike Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, sought a
redistribution of wealth to benefit the poor, providing them freedom,
health, and happiness. However, Arbenz had roused Dwight D.’s ire
by speaking out against the 2 percent who had owned 60 percent of
the land. He wanted to continue the revolution against the policies of
the ruthless, US-backed dictator, Jorge Ubico, overthrown in 1944.
America’s “fawning corporate media” (to use ex-CIA officer Ray
McGovern’s term) went on the attack. The New York Times tagged
the Arbenz government as a cancer and asserted that Communist
influence was growing, calling the regime “a…front for Russian
imperialism in Central America.” The Washington Post, ever a tool of
the US government, titled one article “Red Cell in Guatemala.”65
Arbenz was undaunted. His first move was to target the United
Fruit Company (UFC) holding five hundred fifty thousand acres, 20
percent of the country’s arable land, with connections to railroads,
ports, shipping companies, and banana plantations. He offered UFC
$600,000, based on the company’s own assessed value of the
acreage. Unfortunately for Guatemala, the Dulles family and high
officials at the State Department such as John Moors Cabot,
Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs; and Thomas
Dudley Cabot, his brother, Director of International Security Affairs
were large stockholders in and/or former board members of United
Fruit. They would do whatever it took to preserve their personal
interests. They could count on strong support in Congress,
principally Senate Foreign Relations Committee member, Henry
Cabot Lodge Jr. (R-MA), whose family had long profited from its
United Fruit holdings.66 (And whatever it took included using former
US Ambassador to Greece, Jack Peurifoy as Ambassador to
Guatemala. Tagged by his wife as “pistol packing Peurifoy,” he was
also known as “the butcher of Athens” for his direct, “undiplomatic”
efforts on behalf of the right-wing, anti-communist government of
Greece. Peurifoy, who could speak no Spanish, sent a long cable
after an acrimonious dinner he had with Arbenz. He wrote, “I am
definitely convinced that if the President is not a communist, he will
certainly do until one comes along.”67
In late summer 1953, following the Iran coup, the Eisenhower
administration decided to use covert action in destroying the Arbenz
government. Walter Bedell (Beetle) Smith, former CIA director and
another military man took charge of wrecking the elected Arbenz
regime using propaganda and disinformation. (“According to a
United Fruit Company official, the Agency had help. ‘United Fruit was
involved at every level’ in the planning and execution of the coup. [A]
mercenary force was trained on one of the company’s plantations in
Honduras.”68 In a June 1954 armed attack, American warplanes
supported CIA-trained hirelings from neighboring Honduras and
Nicaragua. At first unsuccessful, the invasion was supplemented by
additional US military aircraft. After Arbenz, seeing all was lost,
handed the government over to a military junta, the CIA bombed the
principal military base and the government’s radio station.
Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles (for whom the Chantilly,
Va. international airport is named), announced that democracy had
triumphed over Communism in Guatemala. A British official noted
otherwise, commenting “in places [that speech] it might almost be
Molotov [then Russian foreign minister] speaking about…
Czechoslovakia—or Hitler about Austria.”69
Bill Blum related the American government’s use of the news
media (with CIA assistance) to isolate and bring down Guatemala’s
legitimate government. Misinformation spread by the US Information
Service in Latin America, such as the distribution of one hundred
thousand copies of the pamphlet “Chronology of Communism in
Guatemala” along with twenty-seven thousand copies of “anti-
Communist cartoons and posters” helped the coup succeed. The
Americans even solicited the Roman Catholic Church’s Francis
Cardinal Spellman to help the CIA meet with churchmen in
Guatemala and have them preach against the godless
Communists.70
Esteemed Reader, that was then; this is almost now. Let’s jump
twenty-five years to Afghanistan, “the Graveyard of Empires.”
Afghanistan

In 1979, a popular, student-led revolt drove the brutally repressive

Shah of Iran, a longtime American lapdog, from power.
Consequently, US intelligence agencies lost access to Iranian-based
message interception posts targeting the Soviet Union, at the time
extending its influence in Afghanistan. To replace these posts,
American officials suggested that Pakistan take over.
Simultaneously, the Central Intelligence Agency advocated secret
American backing for Afghans resisting the Soviet-supported
Communist government in Kabul. To avoid directly antagonizing the
Soviets, the CIA would pass money and weapons through the
Pakistanis, who already had been providing aid to the rebels using
Saudi money.
US President Carter (D-GA) and his National Security Advisor,
Zbigniew Brzezinski bought this idea, although Carter did not accept
it at first. The selling point was that it would oppose Soviet policy in
Afghanistan. Additionally, it would divert Muslim energy (buoyed up
by their success in overthrowing the Shah) away from the United
States. The intent was to channel it toward the Russians. Carter set
the train wreck in motion on July 3, 1979, when he signed an
intelligence “finding” allowing $500,000 in nonlethal Agency aid to
Afghan insurgents. That day, Brzezinski asserted, he wrote a note to
the president saying that this assistance would likely “result in
military intervention by the Soviets.”71
Zbig’s crystal ball had the right wavelength. On December 24,
1979, the Red Army marched into Afghanistan. Apparently, the initial
purpose was to replace an unmanageable but pro-USSR
government with a more flexible one. Zbig and “official” Washington
saw it otherwise, as a Soviet drive toward the Indian Ocean, the
greatest of Britain’s fears in the nineteenth century.
Pakistan’s military government (with its interest in atomic
bombs) was no longer an odorous polecat. It was an ally. It needed
America’s support and protection, no matter its questionable policy
toward human rights or support for attacks on the US embassy in
Islamabad. Brzezinski wanted to make the Soviets pay. In a secret
memo to Carter on December 26, 1979, he wrote that the invasion
gave the United States a chance to “sow shit in [the Soviets’]
backyard.” According to Trento, America “would pay for the shit, the
Pakistanis would deliver it, and the Afghans would do the actual
sowing. Years later, the blow-back from the operation would result in
a worldwide shit storm.”72
As Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen (R-IL) is often misquoted
as saying, “A million here and a million there, pretty soon, you’re
talking real money.” Carter and Brzezinski’s war in Afghanistan
proved the phrase to be right on the mark. Carter’s State Department
first offered Pakistan $150 million in aid and credits. Then, Secretary
of State Cyrus Vance upped it to $400 million. After Pakistan
deemed this insufficient, Warren Christopher, Deputy Secretary of
State, and Brzezinski proposed $500 million in economic aid over
two years. This was also unacceptable. As finally configured, the
dollars for dynamite program began with a piddling $20 million for
weapons in 1980, and $30 million in 1981, but then jumped
substantially through that decade, reaching $630 million in military
aid per annum by 1987. During the ’80s, more than $3 billion moved
out of the taxpayer’s pockets and into the CIA, which passed the
funds on to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and then to
the Afghan terrorists.
The United States and its supposed “intelligence” service
directed that $3 billion to the Afghan “insurgents,” the mujahideen,
through Pakistan’s president, Muhammad Zia Ul Haq. He then
guided the funds (and weapons purchased with them) to the most
extreme faction there, led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.73 Former State
Department official Stephen Cohen noted: “The people we did
support were the nastier, more fanatic types of mujahideen.” Oliver
Stone, film director, screenwriter, and producer and Peter Kuznick,
history professor at American University in Washington, DC, add that
“The CIA even provided between 2,000 and 2,500 U.S.-made
Stinger missiles, some of which Wikileaks revealed were used to
down NATO helicopters three decades later.”74
According to Washington’s Blog,75 Brzezinski said of and to the
mujahideen, “We know of their deep belief in God—that they’re
confident that their struggle will succeed. ‘That land over there is
yours, and you’ll go back to it someday because your fight will
prevail, and you’ll have your homes, your mosques, back again
because your cause is right, and God is on your side.’” Citing a
variety of sources and the Maktab al-Khidamat (Services Office,
which supported the Arab-Afghans), www.globalsecurity.org wrote:

Many Muslims from other countries assisted the

various mujahideen groups in Afghanistan. Some
groups of these veterans have been significant factors
in more recent conflicts in and around the Muslim
world. Osama bin Laden, originally from a wealthy
family in Saudi Arabia, was a prominent organizer and
financier of an all-Arab Islamist group of foreign
volunteers; his Maktab al-Khidamat76 funneled money,
arms, and Muslim fighters from around the Muslim
world into Afghanistan, with the assistance and
support of the Saudi and Pakistani governments.
These foreign fighters became known as “Afghan
Arabs” and their efforts were coordinated by Abdullah
 Yusuf Azzam. (A highly influential Palestinian Sunni
Islamic scholar and theologian, who preached in favor
of both defensive jihad and offensive jihad by Muslims
to help the Afghan mujahideen against the Soviet
invaders and became a leader of al-Qaeda.)77

As Washington’s Blog observed (and as my experience in

Jeddah confirmed), Osama bin Laden partnered with the CIA to
recruit Arabs from countries all over the Middle East, including
Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, as well as from Palestinian refugee camps.
Non-Arab militants from Pakistan were also enlisted. The Agency, it
was said, felt that Arabs were easier to deal with than Afghans. Prof.
Michel Chossudovsky’s article “Who Is Osama Bin Laden” 78
recounted the numbers of those Arab-Afghans marching towards
global war. Cheered on by the CIA and Pakistan’s ISI, roughly thirty-
five thousand Muslim radicals hailing from forty countries fought in
Afghanistan from 1982 to 1992. Tens of thousands more studied in
Pakistani religious schools. In all, one hundred thousand Arab-
Afghans “were directly influenced by the…jihad.”79 Part of the funds
for this came from the drug trade.80 CIA affiliates boosted drug
production and use in South Asia and beyond astronomically.81
Despite (or, perhaps, because of) the decision to send a
considerable amount of modern weapons and a bonanza in covert
funds, the people involved still support that policy. As Washington’s
Blog noted, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), then on the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence where he remained until 2011, asserted in
the 1990s he would still support Osama bin Laden’s fighters. Even
knowing what they might do subsequently, “It was worth it,” he said.
(Hatch serves now on the Senate Subcommittee for Crime and
Terrorism.) In 1998, Brzezinski, asked by Le Nouvel Observateur if
he regretted “having given arms and advice to future terrorists,”
responded “No.” As Washington’s Blog recounts it, Brzezinski went
on to say, “What is most important to the history of the world? The
Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up
Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold
War?”
 Brzezinski, who later became foreign policy advisor to Barack
Obama, left out something a bit more substantive in his “clarification”
of his actions. According to Peter Dale Scott in The Road to 9/11,
Carter’s National Security Advisor82 set up a Nationalities Working
Group to exploit Muslim dissatisfaction within the USSR. 83 At the
center of this group were the disciples of a Russian count, Alexandre
Benigsen, who viewed fundamentalist Islam in Central Asia as a
great threat to the Soviet Union.84 The group worked with the Saudi
intelligence service to contact Soviet Muslims visiting Mecca for the
Hajj.85 86
What’s more, Brzezinski said that Carter, as early as 1978, had
approved his (Brzezinski’s) proposals to undertake “a
comprehensive, covert action program designed to help the non-
Russian nations in the Soviet Union more actively pursue their desire
for independence—a program in effect to destabilize the Soviet
Union.”87 The CIA distributed written materials to different ethnic
regions, especially in the Ukraine88and worked with ISI, Saudi
Arabia, and the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO) to
distribute Wahhabi-oriented Qurans in the USSR.89 (Wahhabis are
extremely purist Muslims who dominate religious life, politics, and
society in Saudi Arabia.)
It wasn’t just money, propaganda, and influence that Brzezinski
was peddling. In January 1980, the Polish national security advisor
traveled to Egypt to drum up support for jihad in Afghanistan. He
persuaded Anwar Sadat, then president of Egypt, to allow the US air
force to fly Soviet-made Egyptian weapons to recruited fighters in
Afghanistan. Sadat, who despised the Muslim Brotherhood, worked
with the Americans to recruit, train, and arm groups of Brotherhood
members, who were later called the mujahideen.90 Just like Obama
and Syria today,91 US military trainers were sent to the “Gift of the
Nile” to instruct Egyptian volunteers for jihad.92
It wasn’t just in Egypt or elsewhere that the mujahideen were
trained. Beginning in 1980, thousands were brought to America and
made competent in terrorism by Green Berets and SEALS at US
government East Coast facilities.93 According to Jane’s Defence
Weekly, quoted in The War on Truth,94 “Over ten thousand
mujahideen were ‘trained in guerilla warfare and armed with
sophisticated weapons.’”

Are Turkeys Smarter Than American Government Officials?

Not unsurprisingly, Brzezinski’s turkeys, after 1993, came home

to roost. Several men who were convicted of blowing up the World
Trade Center in 1993 “had trained or fought with or raised money for
Brzezinski’s “agitated Muslims.”95 Peter Dale Scott concluded that
the CIA-supported opposition to the Soviets in Afghanistan was the
“worst conceived” covert operation in US history. Some of the
“disastrous details” were “to sponsor an ‘Arab-Afghan legion’ and
then expand the resistance campaign into an international jihadi
movement.”96 Scott further notes that “Casey [CIA Director William J.
Casey] began to use the outside—the Saudis, the Pakistanis,
BCCI97to run what they couldn’t get through Congress.”98 Scott
explains “Thus BCCI enabled Casey to conduct foreign policy
without the constraints imposed by the public democratic state. Our
archival and mainstream histories have not yet acknowledged this.”
99
Washington’s Blog goes on to quote journalist Robert Dreyfuss
as writing:

In the decades before 9/11, hard-core activists and

organizations among Muslim fundamentalists on the
far right were often viewed as allies for two reasons
because they were seen as fierce anti-communists
and because they opposed secular nationalists such
as Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, Iran’s Mohammed
Mossadegh…Choosing Saudi Arabia over Nasser’s
Egypt was probably the single biggest mistake the
United States has ever made in the Middle East.

According to Washington’s Blog, Dreyfuss a allowed that

another great error was the wild idea that Islam would penetrate the
USSR and unknit the Soviet Union’s Asian regions. He added that
the US alliance with the Afghans long predated the Soviet invasion in
1979. It was really rooted in CIA actions there back in the 1960s and
1970s, and it progressed to the jihadists’ civil war in the 1980s,
giving rise to the Taliban and al-Qaeda. In his book, Devil’s Game,
Dreyfuss shows that the diplomats and analysts at the US
Department of State were clueless as to what was occurring in Iran
and other countries, and that they had little knowledge of Islam,
something my own short experience at State confirmed.
Perez Hoodbhoy, Pakistani nuclear scientist and peace activist,
was quoted in the Blog as writing: “Officials like Richard Perle,
Assistant Secretary of Defense [1981–1987], immediately saw
Afghanistan not as the locale of a harsh and dangerous conflict to be
ended but as a place to teach the Russians a lesson.”100
Washington’s Blog noted that the Saudis readily embraced the
Afghan war, if only as a means of providing an outlet for their
disaffected subjects who questioned the kingdom’s corruption and
repression, and its alliance with the United States. CIA-funded ads
appeared in publications all over the world, seeking recruits for the
Great Jihad against the Soviets. The US Agency for International
Development (USAID) gave $50 million to the University of Nebraska
to print textbooks urging Afghan children to “pluck out the eyes of the
Soviet enemy and cut off his legs.” They glorified Islamic militancy
and sought to neutralize Marxism. As examples, fifth-grade Afghan
refugees once learned the Pashto language from characters named
Maqbool and Basheer in a story book. Maqbool tells Basheer they
should help the rebel fighters ready their machine guns. Basheer
concurs. Soon they are meeting with a mujahideen commander. “We
want you to help clean the weapons and fight the Russians in jihad,”
he tells Maqbool and Basheer. Additionally, boys learned arithmetic
by counting pictures of soldiers, tanks, guns, and land mines.101 102

The Thinking (?) behind This “Policy”

 RAND Corporation (Reseach and Anylsis Corporation) Analyst
Cheryl Benard, wife of the ethnic Afghan Zalmay Khalilzad who was
successively US Ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq, and the United
Nations (2003–2009), said:

We made a deliberate choice. At first, everyone

thought, there’s no way to beat the Soviets. So what
we have to do is throw the worst crazies against them
that we can find, and there was a lot of collateral
damage. We knew exactly who these people were,
and what their organizations were like, and we didn’t
care. Then we allowed them to get rid of, just kill all
the moderate leaders. The reason we don’t have
moderate leaders in Afghanistan today is because we
let the nuts kill them all. They killed the leftists, the
moderates, the middle-of-the-roaders. They were just
eliminated during the 1980s and afterwards.103

Esteemed Reader, please go over the foregoing quote again.

The United States of America, deliberately, with malice aforethought,
sought out, hired, and turned loose murderous, crazed fanatics to
engage in Mongol-style barbarism. No thought, apparently, was
given to the results, other than to destroy the Soviet Union’s forces in
Afghanistan. The United States ignored the effects and ignored the
future activities of those creating such effects. If you hire terrorists,
are you not a terrorist yourself?
Stone and Kuznick noted: “Casey [Director of Central
Intelligence William J. Casey] ignored repeated warnings that the
religious fanaticism he was helping unleash would eventually pose a
threat to US interests. He instead persisted in his view that the
unholy partnership between Christianity and Islam would endure and
could be used to bludgeon the Soviets throughout the region. In fact,
in mid-decade [the 1980s], Casey unleashed mujahideen raids
across the border into the Soviet Union [with half the world’s arsenal
of nuclear weapons] in the hope of inciting Islamist uprisings by
Soviet Muslims.”104
Training for Destruction—Turkeys Roost Anywhere They Want

US helicopters, after the American invasion and occupation of

Iraq, were targeted by freedom fighters there. This “was a typical
example of how the aid supplied by the CIA to Islamist terrorists in
the 1980s contributed to the escalation and spread of terrorism in the
world.” The ’copters have been downed by hitting the stabilizing tail
rotor with a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG), a tactic similar to
shooting down Blackhawk machines later on in Somalia in 1993.
This stratagem had been taught to Arab-Afghans fighting the
Soviets, who had then taught it to the Somalis and Iraqis.105 Besides
educating Arab-Afghans in helicopter destruction, George Crile, CBS
News producer and correspondent, noted that their CIA training also
included “urban terror with instruction in car bombings, camel
bombings, and assassination.”106 One of the instructors was Ali
Mohamed, chief al-Qaeda terrorist teacher as well as an FBI
informant. He was also a US Army and CIA veteran. He recruited
and trained Arabs at the al-Khifah Center in Brooklyn, New York.
(The Center, founded by Abdullah Azzam, Osama bin Laden’s
mentor, was part of the Maktab al-Khidamat [Services Office]).
Located on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, al-Khifah inducted Arab
immigrants and Arab Americans into the fight in Afghanistan and,
later, Bosnia. Al-Khifah was a channel for funds supporting these
operations and had close ties to the CIA.)107 A second branch of al-
Khifah was located at 2824 Kennedy Boulevard in Jersey City,
N.J.108
Scott’s summary of this is excellent: “…small cliques of
policymakers, acting at the highest levels of secrecy, are able to
make ill-considered decisions…that will have long-term and tragic
effects worldwide. This system also preserves itself by cover-up.”
The establishment view of US ties to Afghanistan and al-Qaeda
makes “no mention of Ali Mohamed, the al-Khifah training camp, or
Springman’s [sic] statements about CIA visas for Islamists and
jihadis.”109 [This quote is from a television program with clips from
investigative journalists Greg Palast, Joe Trento, several others, and
the author. The gist of my remarks was: What I was protesting was,
in reality, an effort to bring recruits, rounded up by Osama Bin
Laden, to the United States for terrorist training by the CIA. They
would then be returned to Afghanistan to fight against the then-
Soviets.] It wasn’t just Peter Dale Scott’s picking up on this point.
Craig Unger did as well, in his book House of Bush, House of Saud,
The Secret Relationship Between the World’s Two Most Powerful
Families.110 He quoted me as saying “I complained there [Jeddah]. I
complained here in Washington to Main State, to the Inspector
General, and to Diplomatic Security, and I was ignored.”
Journalist Joe Trento covered this situation in more detail in his
book, Prelude to Terror.111 Basically, I “repeatedly confronted [my]
bosses about their approval of questionable visa applications.
Springman [sic] pushed so hard for answers that he was eventually
warned to do just what he was told…As Springman [sic] kept
pushing for an explanation, his fitness evaluations became more
critical of him and he was eventually dismissed.”
In addition to Trento’s publication, in his two books, The War On
Freedom and The War On Truth, Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed,
Executive Director of the Britain-based Institute for Policy Research
and Development, published excerpts from my interviews with the
BBC and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).112 This
started a new and still continuing debate.
Citing an interview with Frank Anderson, CIA Near East
Operations Chief, Unger wrote “This was blowback. ‘Afghanistan
provided a place where these guys could hang out in a subculture for
people who wanted to be warriors…It built up the craft of giving
money to people like this that undoubtedly continued past when it
should have.’”113
Unger continued: “The forces opposing the United States in the
wake of the Afghan war are almost entirely of its own making.”114
Furthermore, the Arab-Afghans have never been completely
disbanded.115 116
As noted elsewhere in this book, “Under the encouragement of
CIA Chief William Casey, the United States then participated in the
decision to deploy these Muslims outside of Afghanistan…” In 1981,
Casey, Saudi Prince Turki bin Faisal (1968 graduate of Georgetown
University’s Foreign Service School; Director General of Saudi
Arabia’s General Intelligence Directorate, 1979–2001; Saudi
Ambassador to the United States, 2005–2006) and ISI began
working to create a foreign legion of jihadi Muslims, that is, Arab-
Afghans.117
According to John Pilger, Australian journalist:

[In 1986] CIA director William Casey had given his

backing to a plan put forward by Pakistan’s
intelligence agency, the ISI, to recruit people from
around the world to join the Afghan jihad. More than
100,000 Islamic militants were trained in Pakistan
between 1986 and 1992 [the Soviets left Afghanistan
in February 1989], in camps overseen by CIA and MI6
[the UK Secret Intelligence Service, its external spy
agency], with the SAS [Special Air Service, UK
Special Forces, soldiers undertaking “unconventional”
missions] training future al-Qaida and Taliban fighters
in bomb making and other black arts. Their leaders
were trained at a CIA camp in Virginia [Camp Peary,
or “The Farm,” near Williamsburg]. This was called
Operation Cyclone and continued long after the
Soviets had withdrawn in 1989.118

This, in essence, was the origin of the Arab-Afghan Legion. It

takes no great logic to infer that it would be used wherever best it
might be employed as a cadre to destabilize governments disliked by
Washington. It’s clear that continuing Operation Cyclone, even after
the Soviets left Afghanistan, showed that the operation would
continue as long as the intelligence services wanted and as long as
it proved useful for their designs.
Scott wrote “Casey startled his Pakistani hosts by proposing that
they take the Afghan war into enemy territory—into the Soviet Union
itself…Pakistani intelligence officials—partly inspired by Casey—
began independently to train Afghans and funnel CIA supplies for
scattered strikes against military installations, factories, and storage
tanks within Soviet territory…”119 [The architect for this plan was
Graham Fuller, a former CIA official whose daughter, Samantha,
married Ruslan Tsarnaev, uncle of alleged Boston Marathon
bombers Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev].120
As Peter Dale Scott continues:

Unquestionably…MAK centers [Makhtab al-Khidamat,

Services Offices] in America, such as the al-Khifah
Center in Brooklyn, were in the 1980s a major source
of both recruitment and finance for the MAK, if only
because the United States was one of the few
countries in which recruitment and financing were
tolerated and even protected. “Millions of dollars each
year” are said to have been raised for the MAK in
Brooklyn alone.121

To continue the links between the parts of the Arab-Afghan

Legion and its masters at Langley, the journalist John Cooley, in
Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America, and International Terrorism122
characterized Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman (involved with the 1993
World Trade Center Bombing and now jailed at the Buttner Federal
Correctional Institution in North Carolina) as “helpmate to the CIA in
recruiting young zealots, especially among Arab Americans in the
United States for the ‘jihad in Afghanistan.’”123 Rahman, commonly
called the Blind Sheikh, had worked with Abdullah Azzam, creator of
the Maktab, and Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. Yet, the CIA had
brought him to the United States with a tourist visa. Once here, he
had preached (and helped recruit mujahideen) in Brooklyn at the al-
Farooq Mosque, part of the al-Khifah center on Atlantic Avenue. The
Overlords of Langley either didn’t know, didn’t want to know, or didn’t
care what would happen once their tool, the Sheikh, had finished his
work. Or, is it, perhaps, that the spooks hoped that the uproar
generated by Omar Abdel Rahman’s actions and his arrest would
direct the public’s attention away from their next move in their Game
of Life and Death?
Pakistani journalist and author, Ahmed Rashid, recounted:
 In 1986, the secret services of the United States,
Great Britain, and Pakistan agreed on a plan to launch
guerrilla attacks into Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
Afghan Mujahideen units crossed the Amu Darya
River in March 1987 and launched rocket attacks
against villages in Tajikistan. Meanwhile, hundreds of
Uzbek and Tajik Muslims clandestinely traveled to
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to study in madrassahs
(religious schools) or to train as guerrilla fighters so
that they could join the Mujahideen. This was part of a
wider U.S., Pakistani, and Saudi plan to recruit radical
Muslims from around the world to fight with the
Afghans. Between 1982 and 1992, thirty-five thousand
Muslim radicals from forty-three Islamic countries
fought for the Mujahideen.”124 Yet, the Soviet Union
formally dissolved on December 25, 1991.

Can anyone believe the lies that the US government and those
of its “allies” put out about being attacked by “terrorists”? The United
States and the United Kingdom created the problem they use to
justify repression at home and endless war abroad.
Although there is no clear date when the United States decided
to employ these fighters all around the world, it is most likely that the
decision to do so was taken during the Afghan war against the
Soviets. However, as Peter Dale Scott says (and history shows),
Jihadi Muslims connected to al-Qaeda continued to be used for
Western causes throughout the 1990s. In Azerbaijan in 1993, former
KGB strongman Heydar Aliyev seized control of the country with
Agency help. His backing came from hundreds of jihadis recruited by
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and shipped to Azerbaijan. To aid Aliyev as
quickly as possible, they flew on an airline set up by CIA veteran Ed
Dearborn. Funds for this allegedly came in part from Western oil
companies who paid to collect the jihadis. In 2003, the US State
Department designated Hekmatyar, a Pushtun rebel commander, as
a “terrorist”.
Jihadis also took part in two Balkan campaigns in the 1990s, on
the same side as the United States and NATO. Scott adds, “In
Bosnia, in the mid-1990s, NATO and al-Qaeda were on the same
side…”125
The efforts to destabilize and destroy the Soviet Union were
practiced and perfected in the Balkans and Iraq. Additionally, the
propaganda used to cover US actions was fine-tuned during those
conflicts.
First, the USSR was a nation of many different ethnicities,
religions, and tensions. The CIA managed to exploit them, causing
upheavals in Chechnya, Dagestan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, etc.
Langley used its influence with the American news media and
politicians in the United States to depict the crises the CIA had
created as homegrown, the result of problems inherent in a
totalitarian state. As Peter Bergen explains in his book Holy War,
Inc.:

But then:…there have been at least two decades of

collaboration by the United States and CIA with
Islamist elements who made no secret of their hostility
toward America. It is striking that this collaboration
continued even after bin Laden in 1996 issued the first
of his fatwas [legal opinions or rulings issued by an
Islamic scholar] declaring the United States to be an
enemy. It came long after the identification of the 1993
World Trade Center bombers Ramzi Yousef and
Mahmud Abouhalima, who had trained in
Afghanistan.126

Scott adds:

What is slowly emerging from the revelations of al-

Qaeda’s activities in Central Asia throughout the
1990s is the extent to which the group acted in the
interests of both American oil companies and the US
government. In one way or another, a few Americans
in the 1990s cooperated with al-Qaeda terrorists in
Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Kosovo, and possibly
 Bosnia. In other countries—notably Georgia,
Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan—al Qaeda terrorists have
provided pretexts or opportunities for a US military
commitment and even troops to follow.127

Americans Richard Secord, Harry “Heinie” Aderholt, and Ed

Dearborn, were all career air force officers with ties to Langley.
Veterans of US activities in Laos and Oliver North’s Iran-Contra
operations, they materialized in 1991 in Baku, the capital and largest
city of Azerbaijan. The company they allegedly worked for, MEGA
Oil, never found any black gold, but the firm’s activities substantially
aided in the removal of Azerbaijan from post-USSR influence. These
men, although not officially on Langley’s payroll, were, on occasion,
loaned out as CIA detailees, according to Thomas Goltz in his book,
Azerbaijan Diary.128 “Over the course of the next two years, the
company they worked with [MEGA Oil] procured thousands of
dollars’ worth of weapons and recruited at least two thousand
Afghan mercenaries [read: Arab-Afghans] for Azerbaijan—the first
mujahideen to fight on the territory of the former Communist
Bloc.”129

Brief History Lesson

At this point, readers should carefully consider some American

history, particularly the penchant of the federal government to
provoke war while giving the appearance of being the victim of an
armed attack.
Mexico

Just before the US war against Mexico in 1846, President

James Knox Polk (D-NC) ordered soldiers to occupy disputed
territory between the Nueces and Rio Grande rivers. When the
Mexicans defended against this incursion, Polk used this reaction as
a casus belli, eventually seizing half of Mexico in 1848.
 The South

In April of 1861, US President Abraham Lincoln (R-IL), knew

that abandoning Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina’s harbor
would give legitimacy to the Southern secessionist movement. He
used warships to resupply the federal garrison with supplies that
may have not been needed. The ships also carried reinforcements
for the garrison. The timing is clearly suspect. Lincoln did this shortly
after negotiations to head off the war had taken place in March and
early April in Washington. When the Confederate commander, P. G.
T. Beauregard, saw the federal ships, he opened fire on the fort,
giving Lincoln his war, one that killed more Americans than in all
previous and subsequent conflicts combined.
World War II

Prior to December 1941, “Peace President for Life” Franklin

Roosevelt (D-NY) evidently wanted war with Germany. When his
unrestricted antisubmarine warfare against German U-Boats west of
the twenty-sixth meridian failed to goad Hitler into war, Roosevelt
turned his attention to Germany’s ally, Japan. He hoped to provoke a
clash with that partner, one that would drag the Nazis into conflict
with the United States. While hectoring Japan for its actions in China
and Southeast Asia, Roosevelt, in July 1940, cut off all exports to it,
including vital raw materials, such as oil. The same month, he also
ended all imports from Japan and froze that country’s assets. The
former US president Herbert Hoover characterized this action as
“sticking pins in a rattlesnake.”
Vietnam

Then there was the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which President

Lyndon B. Johnson (D-TX) used to gull an ignorant Congress into
authorizing virtually all-out warfare against North Vietnam on August
7, 1964. To quote John Prados from the National Security Archive in
Washington, DC: “[T]he United States at the time was carrying out a
program of covert naval commando attacks against North Vietnam
and had been engaged in this effort since its approval by Johnson in
January 1964.”130 Johnson and the US government asserted that,
on August 4, 1964, there had been a night attack on two American
destroyers, USS Maddox and USS C. Turner Joy, by North
Vietnamese forces. Unfortunately for the American politicians, the
drafted citizenry, and the Vietnamese people, “there was absolutely
no gunfire except our own, no PT boat wakes, not a candle light let
alone a burning ship. None could have been there and not have
been seen on such a black night,” wrote Commander James B.
Stockdale in his memoirs.131

Yet the American program of causing unrest continued, with

combatants sent to Kashmir in Northern India and Chechnya in the
USSR. The ISI sent “Islamist fighters to Central Asia and the
Caucasus…When Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and
Uzbekistan became independent of Moscow in 1991, the ISI played
a pivotal role in supporting Islamist armed insurgencies, which
destabilized them.”132

Saddle Tramps

Like America’s decades-long war in Indochina, the war in

Afghanistan, which could be considered illegal and unconstitutional,
produced well-trained experts in death and destruction. Whether US
government officials thought beyond the moment in Afghanistan, or
whether they gradually came to the realization that the lowlifes they
had organized, trained, and sent off to war could be used as a cadre
of destabilizing agents elsewhere, won’t be known until someone is
brave enough to talk. Further, given the American penchant for
covering up murder, war crimes, and human rights violations to
protect careers and pensions, that will likely be never.
As is not generally known, many countries the United States
worked with to produce “jihadists” for the war in Afghanistan against
the Soviets simply emptied their prisons and sent the inmates to the
“Front.” 133
 Finally, what is more remarkable, is that “progressives,”
including people supposedly conversant with international affairs and
ostensibly opposed to America’s imperialist, capitalist, and terrorist
foreign policy, still toe the government’s line on the Arab-Afghans.
I spoke briefly with Phyllis Bennis, a Fellow from the Institute for
Policy Studies and a writer, analyst, and activist on Middle East
affairs in Washington, DC. I had met her by chance on Saturday,
June 15, 2013, at the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
(ADC) annual convention at Washington’s Marriott Wardman Park
Hotel. In response to my questions about the Arab-Afghans and their
worldwide jihad, she denied that they had ever existed and said,
even if they once did, they no longer were in operation. (According to
one source, Bennis has no idea of what constitutes “Imperialism.”)
Also at the convention, I met Houeida Saad, once ADC Legal
Director when I was an intern there. She denied the existence of
anything called “Arab-Afghans.” However, before going to law school
and joining the ADC, she told me that she had been a registered
nurse in South Asia treating wounded mujahideen. Since, to the best
of my knowledge, she speaks only English and Arabic, I doubt that
she ministered to many Afghans. Saad is now General Counsel,
Renown Health Care, Reno, Nevada, and has been an adjunct
professor of law at American University’s Washington College of
Law.

Summary

The US government has a long history of destabilizing or

planning to destabilize countries and their rulers, not just in the Third
World but also in Europe and, most surprisingly, at home.
The CIA worked with, inter alia, Italy to ensure that the dreaded
Communists would never gain control. To do that, Langley organized
bombings, “false flag” events that killed one hundred people,
ostensibly by the “Commies” in 1969 and 1980.
At home, America’s General Staff planned a series of “false flag”
attacks against Cuba in the eaerly 1960s. Assassins were to kill US
citizens on the street, vessels carrying Cuban refugees were to be
sunk, planes were to be hijacked, and a wave of violent terrorism
was to be launched in Washington, DC, Miami, Florida, and
elsewhere. (These actions appear to parallel September 11, 2001,
along with events in the Balkans, Libya, Iraq, and Syria.)
Misdirection is an old American tradition. James Knox Polk used
it to dismember Mexico, Lincoln to attack the South, and Lyndon
Johnson to escalate the destruction of Indochina.
Building on past “clandestine” successes, such as the overthrow
of Mohammed Mossadegh, lawfully elected prime minister of Iran,
and Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, constitutionally elected president of
Guatemala, the American president, James Earl Carter (D-GA) and
his National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, set about to use
Afghanistan to shatter the Soviet Union. Of course, they only
planned to kick out the “Commies,” while splintering the Muslim
republics of the USSR. But in doing so, they created al-Qaeda,
which, to all intents and purposes, is the Arab-Afghan Legion. It’s
now operating in Syria (after past successes in the Balkans, Iraq,
and Libya). Carter, Brzezinski, and their underlings recruited, trained,
and armed fanatics from all over the Islamic world, using the
intelligence services and money from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to
do so. Their object was “plausible deniability.”
The result was a reliable, not-too-well organized cadre of
“saddle tramps” who could be used anywhere, anytime, for anything
(as long as there were “enemies” of the United States to be found).
America used carefully chosen leaders, such as those of the al-
Farooq Mosque in Brooklyn, the Blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman,
and Osama bin Laden to create and coordinate the arms of the
octopus.
Yet, despite this sordid part of the history of the United States,
alleged progressives, including people supposedly conversant with
international affairs and ostensibly opposed to America’s imperialist,
capitalist, and terrorist foreign policy, still toe their government’s line
on the Arab-Afghans.
On the Road to Elsewhere

S
cott notes that America, following the Soviet withdrawal from
Afghanistan, ended up with a “disposal problem.” What happens to
“the well-trained militants if their long-established channels of
support were suddenly broken off”? To avoid justified anger and
redirect their attention elsewhere, “an easy solution was to divert its
Arab-Afghans to Bosnia.” A writer for the Independent (a British
newspaper), Andrew Marshall, penned, “In December 1992, a US
Army official met one of the Afghan veterans from Al-Khifah [in
Brooklyn] and offered help with a covert operation to support the
Muslims in Bosnia, funded with Saudi money, according to one of
those jailed for assisting with the New York bombings.”134
Stone adds that “many of the US-backed jihadis who had fought
against the Soviets in Afghanistan joined the Islamist cause in
Chechnya, Bosnia, Algeria, Iraq, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia,
Kashmir, and elsewhere.”135 What is also known is that they were
likely initially used in Bosnia, in the first “war of humanitarian
aggression.” That self-contradictory phrase aptly described the idea
of President William J. Clinton (D-AK) to justify attacking Serbia. He
grounded this on questionable claims of genocide and “ethnic
cleansing” (something Israel has been engaged in for decades).
Breaking Up Is Easier to Do

In the former Yugoslavia, another country of varying religions,

ethnicities, and regional hatreds, US policy was to capitalize on
internal tensions, helping pit Croats and Slovenians against Serbs,
Roman Catholics and Orthodox against Muslims, and Slavs against
non-Slavs (modern Albanians). All the while imported fighters from
the Legion were wreaking havoc, the Americans were insisting
something had to be done “to protect” the various groups being
exploited. As tensions rose, the different states of Yugoslavia
declared (or were encouraged to declare) their independence.
Germany, a US client state, hastened, if not directly caused, the
breakup of the country through its 1991 recognition of the most
economically developed states of the Yugoslav Federation, Slovenia
and Croatia. The Americans, for their part, wanted to control the
other parts of the confederation in order to command routes to
Caspian Sea oil resources.136
American propaganda, flooding the media, was particularly
effective, initially convincing long-term observers of the international
scene, such as myself, that something had to be done about
murderers, war criminals, and human rights violators in what was
once Yugoslavia. However, the lies, half-truths, and distortions of fact
used to support US policy soon became glaringly evident and
increasingly out of touch with reality.
As in past actions against the USSR, the United States and
Germany trained fighters, supplied arms, and provided financial aid
to rebels seeking overthrow of their government. Economic
sanctions were applied to Yugoslavia, hastening the country’s
collapse. Furthermore:

The Kosovo Liberation Army [note that the word

“Liberation,” like the word “Free” in “Free Syrian
Army,” has connotations for Americans, who, as Ali
Mohamed noted, see what they want to see and hear
what they want to hear]…directly supported and
politically empowered by NATO in 1998, had, in the
 same year been listed by the US State Department as
a terrorist organization supported in part…[by] loans
from Islamic individuals, among them allegedly
Osama bin Laden…Ramush Haradinaj, a former
K[osovo] L[iberation] A[rmy] commander…today an
indicted war criminal, was the key US military and
intelligence asset in Kosovo during the civil war and
the NATO bombing campaign that followed. The
London Sunday Times reported that “American
intelligence agents have admitted they helped to train
the Kosovo Liberation Army before NATO’s bombing
of Yugoslavia.137

Here Comes al-Qaeda

According to Yossef Bodansky (an Israeli American who served

as Director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and
Unconventional Warfare for the US House of Representatives from
1988 to 2004): “Bin Laden’s ‘Arab-Afghans’ also have assumed a
dominant role in training the Kosovo Liberation Army.”138
Kosovo was an area where US and al-Qaeda interests crossed
and supported each other. In fact, freelance journalist Tim Judah
noted that Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) representatives met with
American, British, and Swiss intelligence officers in 1996 and,
possibly, even earlier. US “private” firms dealing with the military,
such as MPRI (known only by its initials and headquartered in
Alexandria, VA) may have handled these links. MPRI’s Richard
Griffiths (Maj. Gen. USA, ret.) had a long-term relationship with KLA
commander Agim Çeku. Together they planned “Operation Storm,”
an attack by Croatia against Serbia.139
The former Canadian Ambassador to Yugoslavia, James
Bissett, once stated: “Many members of the Kosovo Liberation Army
were sent for training in terrorist camps in Afghanistan…Milosevic is
right. There is no question of their [Al Qaeda’s] participation in
conflicts in the Balkans. It is very well documented.”140
Oh Joy! Bin Laden’s Still Our Boy!

John R. Schindler, professor of strategy at the US Naval War

College, prominent Neocon, and former NSA intelligence analyst and
counterintelligence officer, was cited in Washington’s Blog on the
Legion. Schindler, in his book Unholy Terror: Bosnia, Al-Qa’ida, and
the Rise of Global Jihad,141 asserted that the United States backed
Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda members in the Bosnia conflict,
1992–1995.
Specifically, Schindler stated that interventionists seeking the
destruction of Serbia controlled the US State Department, but the
George H.W. Bush administration would not back them. However,
Bill Clinton, with “scant interest in foreign and defense policy”
became president. Clinton sought to bomb the Serbs to help the
Muslims, following “the lead of progressive opinion on Bosnia.”142
Schindler amplified his remarks, writing that

Thousands of Muslims, mainly, but not exclusively

Arabs, emerged from the Afghan crucible with
invaluable combat experience, the largest contingent,
like Osama bin Laden himself, were Saudis, some
5,000 in all, followed by 3,000 Yemenis, 2,800
Algerians, 2,000 Egyptians, Tunisians, 370 Iraqis, 200
Libyans, dozens of Jordanians, plus a fair number of
Pakistanis, and small contingents from Indonesia to
Bosnia.143

Unable or unwilling to return home, they were looking for work.

(Egypt and Algeria, for example, were not hospitable, having a
decidedly unfriendly political climate.) The Maktab al-Khidamat
(MAK), Services Office, set up by Osama bin Laden, Abdullah
Azzam, and Abdullah Anas to manage recruitment, training, and
weapons for Afghanistan, handled the Arab-Afghans’ transfer to
Bosnia. Al-Qaeda led most of the four-thousand-odd Arab-Afghans
who were bin Laden’s boys. The rest was comprised of mujahideen
from other countries, such as Egypt’s Islamic Group and Algeria’s
Armed Islamic Group. Fighters and instructors came also from
Turkey and Lebanon, including some from Hezbollah. It was not
easy getting these groups to the Balkans, owing to the siege of
Bosnia’s capital, Sarajevo, and a dearth of secure ways in. Thus
Zagreb, capital of Croatia, became the center of MAK’S operations
(and that of nineteen other organizations).144
The “muj” used “an intricate support web that spread across
countries and continents to keep the holy war going.” One of the
most important pieces, left over from the Afghan war’s recruitment,
was the al-Khifah mosque in Brooklyn.145
Bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was often in Bosnia, as
was bin Laden himself, the latter using a Bosnian passport. Renate
Flottau, the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel’s Balkan
correspondent, saw bin Laden there in 1994 with the mujahideen,
who claimed they were “humanitarian aid workers.”146

You Can’t Tell the Players Even with a Scorecard

During the Bosnian war of 1992–1995, some foreign Muslims

came to Bosnia as mujahideen. The war had been depicted in the
international press as an attack on Muslims by Serb forces that
struck Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) communities indiscriminately and
committed significant atrocities against the Bosniak population. This
moved Muslims who shared mujahideen beliefs to come to the aid of
oppressed coreligionists, and presented an opportunity to strike at
“infidels.” The number of foreign Muslim volunteers in Bosnia was
estimated at about 4,000 in contemporary newspaper reports,147 and
much like fighters sent to Afghanistan, they came from places such
as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, and the
Palestinian Territories, to quote the summary of the International
Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia judgment.148 John
Schindler estimated their numbers as being between five thousand
and six thousand.149
The evidence shows that foreign volunteers arrived in central
Bosnia in the second half of 1992 with the aim of helping Muslims
against the Serbian “aggressors.” Mostly they came from North
Africa, the Near East, and the Middle East. The foreign volunteers
differed considerably from the local population, not only because of
their physical appearance and the language they spoke, but also
because of their fighting methods.
The Independent noted that a large number of Britons traveled
to Bosnia for the war. On February 10, 1993, Steve Boggan wrote
that “Thousands of Britons, including ex-servicemen, boy
adventurers, and ‘untrained idiots and psychopaths’ may be fighting
in the former Yugoslavia, according to Whitehall sources and the
editor of a specialist magazine.”150 As reported by former army
officer David Lord, editor of Combat and Survival, the British Foreign
Office underestimated the number of UK citizens acting as
combatants in the Balkans. An “astonishing amount of mail” from
British men fighting there came to his magazine, Lord said.
Additionally, he noted, his estimate of “thousands” battling in the
former Yugoslavia came from numerous soldiers seen wearing UK
Royal Marine and Parachute Regiment berets. Soldiers of the British
Territorial Army (the Reserves) also were engaged in combat in
Bosnia. Particularly valued, the article said, were British soldiers with
experience in Northern Ireland. Bosnian officers, as one of the British
mercenaries stated, were asking him, and presumably others, to
help recruit groups of former servicemen for the war.
In April 2000, the official Yugoslav news agency Tanjug
published a story from Priština, Kosovo, about Osama bin Laden and
Abu Hassan being there. Their intent was to “carry out terrorist acts
in Kosovo”. The AFP [Agence France Presse] wire service picked up
and carried the story.151
What Tanjug did not publish was the information that the Blind
Sheikh, Omar Abdel Rahman, had been involved in bringing “al-
Qaeda/Arab-Afghan” fighters to the region. Here’s what Nafeez
Mosaddeq Ahmed had to say:

It was the blind sheik’s status as a CIA asset vis-à-vis

the Bosnian conflict that appears to be the primary
reason he was granted effective immunity by US
 intelligence agencies despite being implicated in
criminal acts and terrorist plots. His involvement in a
covert US operation to transfer al-Qaeda militants to
the Balkans in order to escalate the destabilization of
Yugoslavia granted him free reign [sic] to pursue
criminal and terrorist activities within the US, to the
point that even after the bombing, high-level elements
of the US government were extremely reluctant to
prosecute him—perhaps for fear of revealing the
extent of post–Cold War US co-optation of al-Qaeda.
[Maryland attorney] Jack Blum, investigator for the
Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee, complained
that: “One of the big problems here is that many
suspects in the World Trade Center bombing were
associated with the Mujahadeen [sic]. And there are
components of our government that are absolutely
disinterested in following that path because it leads
back to people we supported in the Afghan war”—and
crucially, to people whom the government continued to
support in the Bosnian war.152

Back to the Future

Since the Muslim fighters in the former Yugoslavia didn’t walk or

swim to the Balkans, it would seem that someone or some entity
paid their travel costs, outfitted them, and provided them with
weapons. Perhaps it was the same someones and same entities that
assisted Osama bin Laden and others to attack the USSR in
Afghanistan?
Yes, indeed.
The Americans created a covert conduit involving Iran, Turkey,
Saudi Arabia, and the Bosnian Muslims “to fly in al-Qaeda
mujihadeen [sic] forces connected to Osama bin Laden from
Afghanistan, Algeria, Chechnya, Yemen, Sudan, and elsewhere.”153
 John Schindler notes that Richard Holbrooke, Assistant
Secretary of State for European Affairs (1994–1996), had believed
that secret American support for the Afghans was an ideal pattern for
sending arms to Bosnia through Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and
Pakistan.154
The American ambassador to Croatia, per orders from
Washington, DC, contacted leaders in Croatia and Bosnia about
supplying them with arms, with the help of Iranian Boeing 747s as
transport. Providing the president of Croatia with a check for $1
million, the Iranians then followed up with three flights a week
carrying arms and ammunition. President Bill Clinton’s National
Security Council oversaw this operation, without informing Congress,
reminiscent of Ronald Reagan’s Iran-Contra operation.155 In July
1994, Assistant Secretary of State Alexander Vershbow allegedly
told Dutch government officials that the United States knew of the
weapons supply line and that the American government backed it.156
The not-so-secret arms drops antagonized many people,
especially officials of NATO governments that had soldiers in Bosnia.
One British general flatly stated, “They were American arms
deliveries. No doubt about that.” While US officials denied that the
flights took place, Europeans knew that the American Airborne
Warning and Control System aircraft (AWACS) had to have seen the
clandestine, coordinated activity. Despite all this, the Director of
Central Intelligence, R. James Woolsey, asserted that the CIA was
not moving weapons to Bosnia. (This was not unlike Milt Bearden’s
and Marc Sageman’s statements on Afghanistan.) Schindler wrote
“Britain’s Defence Intelligence Staff investigated the reports and
concluded that the operations involved three countries and were
directed by Clinton’s NSC.”157
“Front companies” (ostensibly real businesses that mask
intelligence operations) could well have been doing Washington’s
bidding.
Cees Wiebes, a Dutch scholar who has researched the topic
with thoroughness and balance, and enjoyed access to classified
NATO records, concluded that although there is “no hard evidence”
that the Clinton administration was behind the mystery flights,
Washington’s involvement appears beyond question. Given US
control of Bosnian airspace during the conflict, no sustained air
supply program could have operated without American awareness
and backing, according to most of those who looked into the
matter.158
Not unlike present-day actions in Syria and Iraq, there was a
massacre at a market in Sarajevo designed to show that the
opponents of “regime change” were responsible. When an explosion
killed sixty-eight civilians, wounding over one hundred, unlike today,
the intelligence services of Canada, Britain, Denmark, Sweden,
Belgium, and Holland independently concluded that the Muslims had
blown those people up to put the Serbs in a “bad light.”159
Yet, years later, no one acknowledged that it had been US policy
to allow al-Qaeda into the Balkans and to provide unofficial American
diplomatic and military support. How Osama bin Laden’s boys got to
the region “were questions no one in Washington seemed eager to
ask or have answered.”160
“Coincidentally,” one of those entities involved, the United
States, forcefully opposed the Serbs and their government, savagely
bombing them in 1995 and 1999, under the guise of NATO (an
alliance formed in 1949 to oppose the Soviet Union). The American
government and its NATO partners, just as they later did in Iraq and
elsewhere, targeted bridges, factories, power stations,
telecommunications facilities, and refugees. The more refugees that
could be created, the better. The aim was, essentially, to dehouse,
deculturalize, destabilize, and destroy the civilian population. That
had been the North’s goal in the American South during the War
Between the States and the United States’ aim against Germany and
Japan in World War II.161 After all, nothing succeeds like success.

Al-Khifah and the Big Green Machine

In 1993, the al-Khifah mosque of New York set up a Bosnian

office in Zagreb, Croatia, apparently in close correspondence with
Brooklyn. “The Deputy Director of the Zagreb office, Hassan Hakim,
admitted to receiving all orders and funding directly from the main
US office of Al-Khifah on Atlantic Avenue controlled by Shaykh Omar
Abdel Rahman.” Bosnian Jihad handbills were also disbursed by al-
Khifah’s Boston branch.162 But it wasn’t just people “unofficially”
recruited off the streets for the Arab-Afghan Legion. The US Army
helped provide fighters to destroy Washington’s “enemies” in the
Balkans. Before his conviction for his part in a plan to blow up public
structures, government offices, and other locations following the
1993 World Trade Center bombing, Clement Rodney Hampton-El
related a chilling tale. Hampton-El, a convert to Islam and a fighter
wounded in the Afghan war, was called to Washington by the Saudi
Embassy. There, he met with Prince Abdullah Faisal (who may have
been Prince Sultan bin Faisal bin Turki bin Abdullah al-Saud,
mysteriously dead four months after being named an al-Qaeda
accomplice).163 The prince handed over $150,000 to train and
support the mujahideen and their families.164Hampton-El then went
to Ft. Belvoir, Virginia (roughly twenty miles from DC and
headquarters for the US Army’s Intelligence and Security
Command), where he was given a list of soldiers who were ending
their tours of duty and who would be suitable for recruitment as
fighters in the Balkans.165 A radical cleric called Abu Ameenah Bilal
Phillips (born in Jamaica as Dennis Bradley Phillips) got Hampton-El
these names. Phillips, a Saudi government employee, was head of
the kingdom’s “Project Bosnia” in America and, while in Saudi
Arabia, preached conversion to Islam to US soldiers stationed
there.166

How Helpers Helped

Saudi Arabia did more for the destruction of Bosnia than its
close “ally” the United States of America has let on. According to
Schindler, the CIA believed that one-third of Islamic charities
engaged in Bosnia, especially the IIRO, had “facilitated the activities
of Islamic groups that engage in terrorism.” Moreover, the Saudi
High Commission for Relief for Bosnia, set up in 1993, had
distributed about $500 million in aid. Where it went is unknown, but
after the September 11, 2001, attacks, raids on its Sarajevo office
turned up before and after pictures of the World Trade Center and
information on how to counterfeit US State Department identification
badges. Seized records also disclosed minutes of meetings with
Osama bin Laden.167 (N.B. When I was in Jeddah, 1987–1989,
Saudi charities and aid to Muslims abroad were part of the US
mission’s reporting plan; that is, the American government wanted to
learn as much as possible about them. Now we know why.)
As Schindler notes, Mustafa Kamel Suleiman, a veteran of both
Afghanistan and Bosnia, received orders from an unspecified source
and went from Afghanistan, where he had been living, to Bosnia with
a group of recruits. First, he traveled to Saudi Arabia, progressing
from there to Croatia and then to Bosnia with his mujahideen. A
Bosnian military group met them at the Zagreb airport, getting them
accredited as “Islamic relief workers” by the Croatian foreign
ministry. Other of the “muj” masqueraded as UN staff and
journalists.168 Furthermore, it’s Schindler’s claim that Osama bin
Laden, in Bosnia, transformed the original al-Qaeda from
Afghanistan into the “flexible, well-funded multinational jihadi
organization it became.”169
Did he do so with or without American and Saudi and other
help? The Third World Relief Agency, which was set up “to spread
radical Islam,”170 funded the war in the Balkans. Between 1992 and
1995, it passed on $2.5 billion in Islamic aid to the Party of
Democratic Action, a Muslim political party in Bosnia.171 Schindler
does not specify the sources of the aid other than to note it came
from “governments who wished to mask their support for
radicalism.”172 Nor does he say exactly where it went. However,
Pakistan’s ISI, long a supporter and pass-through for the covert cold
war against the Soviets, provided antitank missiles to the Bosnian
Muslims. Additionally, help came from UN forces in Bosnia, such as
Turkey, Malaysia, and Bangladesh. They sold large quantities of
ammunition to Bosnian Muslim fighters.173 The “muj” ran a training
camp outside Milan, Italy, which provided refresher instruction when
necessary. Some of those trained were traveling with Italian
passports.174 On November 20, 2005, the waynemadsenreport.com
noted that additional monies for the Albanian and Bosnian guerrillas
in the Balkan war came from an entity titled “The Bosnian Defense
Fund,” a body created with a special account in the “Bush-influenced
Riggs Bank and directed by Richard Perle and Douglas Feith.”
Richard Perle had been Assistant Secretary for Defense, 1981–
1987; Feith had been Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, 2001–
2005. The Fund collected monies, according to a later Wayne
Madsen report, from various Arab and Muslim countries (such as the
United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar). Amounting to
hundreds of millions of dollars, the cash was managed by Feith’s law
firm, Feith and Zell, the Riggs Bank, and the Central Bank of Bosnia-
Herzegovina in Sarajevo.175
Riggs, like BCCI, was a remarkably dirty bank, with questionable
clients ranging from African and Latin American despots such as
Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet to Saudi Arabian diplomats
(Prince Bandar bin Sultan). One major customer was the CIA, with
an unknown number of bank accounts. Fined $25 million for banking
violations and investigated by the US Justice Department, Riggs
went out of business, with PNC Bank buying the remnants in 2005.
Prosecution appeared to evaporate when the bank’s ties to
American government officials, hush-hush agencies, and US covert
operations began to surface. For example, Bandar and his wife
denied money laundering or financing 9/11 hijackers but he “fund[ed]
the Contras at the behest of the White House, support[ed] the
Afghan rebels against the Soviet Union, and serv[ed] as a go-
between in the mending of the Libya-US relationship.”176
Madsen further reported that there was a pipeline carrying
money between Osama bin Laden and Bosnia at a time when
French intelligence reported that bin Laden and his cohort were in
Darunta, Afghanistan, and still under the control of the CIA and
British intelligence around 1993. Madsen noted the importance of
this link: bin Laden had apparently visited Bosnia and carried “at
least one Bosnian diplomatic passport” and had dealt with Bosnian
diplomats in Vienna. This money link between Bosnia and bin Laden
included the Third World Relief Agency, a Saudi businessman, a
Bosnian, the Sarajevo Deposit Bank, and the First Austrian Bank.177
 “America’s financial support for ‘Al Qaeda’” also tied the Clinton
Administration to backing al-Qaeda training in Bosnia and Kosovo.
Rahm Emanuel, at the time assistant to the president for political
affairs, was deeply involved in Clinton’s foreign policy machinations
in Bosnia and Kosovo. Emanuel asserted that Clinton went to both
regions to handle al-Qaeda instruction. (Certainly, Clinton supported
al-Qaeda training in both areas.) Madsen added that there were
believable Serbian reports that fugitive financier Marc Rich (later
pardoned by Clinton) had been engaged in arms smuggling to
Bosnian Muslims.178
While the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
poured money into financing the destruction of the Balkans, it fell to
Prof. Michel Chossudovsky to illuminate another dark corner of the
war’s bankrolling: drugs. In a Global Research article,179
Chossudovsky recalls past CIA covert operations such as those in
Central America, Haiti, and Afghanistan. Illicit dope funded the so-
called “Freedom Fighters” Langley sponsored in those areas. As an
example, Chossudovsky noted that Iran-Contra rebels and the
Afghan “muj” got their funds through “dirty money” being transformed
into “covert money” by way of shell companies and the lending
structure. Weapons and drugs and money flowed across the borders
of Albania with Kosovo and Macedonia. For hefty commissions,
“respectable” European banks, far removed from the fighting, dry-
cleaned the dirty dollars. The drugs went one way, and the
greenbacks another, helping pay the fighters and their trainers.
Writing in Global Research,180 Prof. Chossudovsky added to our
knowledge of the sources of support for the Bosnian Muslim Army
and the KLA—opium-based drug money direct from the Golden
Crescent (Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran).

Mercenaries financed by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait had

been fighting in Bosnia.181 And the Bosnian pattern
was replicated in Kosovo: Mujahadeen [sic]
mercenaries from various Islamic countries are
reported to be fighting alongside the KLA [Kosovo
Liberation Army] in Kosovo. German, Turkish and
 Afghan instructors were reported to be training the
KLA in guerilla and diversion tactics.182

Worse,

The trade in narcotics and weapons was allowed to

prosper despite the presence since 1993 of a large
contingent of American troops at the Albanian-
Macedonian border with a mandate to enforce the
embargo. The West had turned a blind eye. The
revenues from oil and narcotics were used to finance
the purchase of arms (often in terms of direct barter):
“Deliveries of oil to Macedonia (skirting the Greek
embargo [in 1993–94] can be used to cover heroin, as
do deliveries of kalachnikov [sic] rifles to Albanian
‘brothers’ in Kosovo.”183

Then there were the shadowy American aircraft that flew into
Bosnia.
A Norwegian helicopter pilot, Captain Ivan Moldestad, reported
the landing of a mysterious C-130 (Lockheed’s large cargo plane)
with a fighter escort at Tuzla airbase in Bosnia. When he reported
this to NATO’s Combined Air Operations Center in Vicenza, Italy, the
organization told him no planes had landed, he was entirely
mistaken in what he had seen, and then it hung up. However, other
Norwegians witnessed similar occurrences and made written reports.
Still the talk on the flightline and among intelligence and special
operations personnel was that these were American aircraft and that
Washington was secretly arming the Bosnians. On a subsequent
visit to Zagreb, Moldestad ran into three American officers who knew
of his reports. Displeased, they took him to a fifth floor hotel balcony
and suggested “things could get messy” if he stuck with his story.184
The Americans had more help from their client state, the Federal
Republic of Germany. Its external intelligence service, the
Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), had helped arm the Muslims during
the war. Additionally, BND officers had penetrated UN and European
programs and sent firearms and other deadly devices to the Muslims
through “peacekeeping channels.” Moreover, “[T]he head of
Germany’s team of EU peace monitors was actually a BND officer,
and the Germans shipped munitions in food packages, with shells
hiding in boxes of powdered milk.”185
Schindler’s Unholy Terror goes on to link the Americans and
their Bosnian operation to the September 11, 2001, attacks on New
York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It seems that Khalid
Sheikh Muhammad, alleged mastermind behind those events, had
fought in Afghanistan (after studying in the United States) and then
went on to the Bosnian war in 1992. In addition, two more of the
September 11, 2001, hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-
Hazmi, both Saudis, had gained combat experience in Bosnia. Still
more connections came from Mohammed Haydar Zammar, who
supposedly helped Mohammed Atta with planning the World Trade
Center attacks. He had served with Bosnian army mujahideen units.
Ramzi Binalshibh, friends with Atta and Zammar, had also fought in
Bosnia.186 This is yet another clear-cut example of officially unofficial
US government support for terrorism. Also, it was one more example
of the treachery of the American government, both against its own
citizenry and its employees. Give the terrorists the tools and means
to do the job, even if it means killing people en masse and then
prosecuting the crooks afterward for taking care of business. This
was also true of Emmanuel “Toto” Constant, death squad leader,
human rights abuser, and CIA asset in Haiti. They’re like Kleenex—
use them for their intended purpose and then throw them away.187
Unofficially but officially sending Americans to fight in someone
else’s war is celebrated in real-life fiction. In 1941, US Army Air
Corps pilots resigned their commissions to fly first-line US fighter
planes (the P-40 Warhawk) for the Chinese government. They fought
against Japan while it was still at peace with America. Yet, the words
“covert operation” never seem to be used in connection with this
activity, and no one ever seems to question the ends resulting from
such means.
Indeed, according to Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, there is reason
to believe that the CIA struck a deal with Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-
Qaeda jihad group leader. If he and his band of men did not attack
US interests in the Balkans, al-Qaeda would be free to engage in
anti-American operations elsewhere in the world, including in the
United States. Ahmed notes that al-Qaeda (the Arab-Afghans)
appeared to accept the arrangement.188
In sum, “If Western intervention in Afghanistan created the
Mujahideen, Western intervention in Bosnia appears to have
globalized it.”189

Summary

Throughout this section, we’ve seen how the US government,

which increasingly resembles a terrorist organization, worked with
extremists, including its then-asset Osama bin Laden, to destabilize
and then destroy Serbia. According to John Schindler, professor of
strategy at the US Naval War College, the American Department of
State and President Clinton sought to bomb the Serbs to help the
Muslims, “following the lead of progressive opinion on Bosnia.”
Thousands of Arab-Afghans (Saudis, Yemenis, Algerians, Egyptians,
Tunisians, Iraqis, Libyans, Jordanians, and others), with extensive
combat experience gained fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan on
behalf of the Americans, opened a new front in the Balkans. They
had weapons procured with help from the US government, as well as
money from the Saudis and Americans, including that passed
through the al-Farooq mosque in Brooklyn. They had the assistance
of the Maktab al-Khidamat (Services Office), set up to recruit, train,
and aid fighters for the Afghan war. Richard Holbrooke, Assistant
Secretary of State for European Affairs, wanted a repeat of the
Afghanistan model in the Balkans, using Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and
Pakistan to send arms to the combatants. Front companies, secret
arms drops, and Clinton’s National Security Council all played a role.
The result was the creation of a larger and more capable cadre
of murderers, war criminals, and human rights violators. They
enabled the United States to topple a socialist opponent of its
policies in Yugoslavia, tap the natural resources of the region, and
control the routes from and access to oil and natural gas in Central
Asia.
American propaganda that flooded the media about murderers,
war criminals, and human rights violators was particularly effective in
gaining support in the United States and abroad.
Like actions against the USSR, the United States trained
fighters, supplied arms, and provided financial aid to rebels seeking
to overthrow their government. Washington and NATO applied
economic sanctions to Yugoslavia, hastening the country’s collapse.
The KLA, directly supported and politically empowered by NATO in
1998, had been listed by the US State Department as a terrorist
organization supported in part by loans from Islamic individuals,
among them allegedly Osama bin Laden.
According to Yossef Bodansky, an Israeli American, “Bin Laden’s
‘Arab-Afghans’ also assumed a dominant role in training the Kosovo
Liberation Army.” The former Canadian Ambassador to Yugoslavia
James Bissett once stated: “Many members of the Kosovo Liberation
Army were sent for training in terrorist camps in Afghanistan. There
is no question of their [Al Qaeda’s] participation in conflicts in the
Balkans…” John R. Schindler, professor of strategy at the US Naval
War College, asserted that the United States backed Osama bin
Laden and al-Qaeda members in the Bosnia conflict, 1992–1995.
Richard Holbrooke, Assistant Secretary of State for European
Affairs (1994–1996), believed that secret American support for the
Afghans was an ideal pattern for sending arms to Bosnia through
Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan. The American Ambassador to
Croatia, Peter W. Galbraith, contacted leaders in Croatia and Bosnia
about supplying them with arms, with the help of Iranian Boeing 747s
as transport. President Clinton’s National Security Council oversaw
this operation, without informing Congress, not unlike what Ronald
Reagan had done during the Iran-Contra operation.
Yet, years later, no one in official Washington acknowledged that
it had been US policy to allow al-Qaeda into the Balkans and to
provide unofficial American diplomatic and military support. How
Osama bin Laden’s boys got to the region “were questions no one in
Washington seemed eager to ask or have answered.”
 The US Army helped provide fighters to destroy Washington’s
“enemies” in the Balkans. Ft. Belvoir, Virginia, (roughly 20 miles from
D.C. and headquarters for the United States Army’s Intelligence and
Security Command), supplied a list of soldiers who were ending their
tours of duty and who would be suitable for recruitment as fighters in
the Balkans.
The Americans and their Bosnian operation were linked to the
September 11, 2001, attacks on New York’s World Trade Center and
the Pentagon in that some of the same players appeared in both
places. Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, alleged mastermind behind those
events, had fought in Afghanistan (after studying in the United
States) and then went on to the Bosnian war in 1992. In addition, two
more of the September 11, 2001, hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and
Nawaf al-Hazmi, both Saudis, had gained combat experience in
Bosnia. Still more connections came from Mohammed Haydar
Zammar, who supposedly helped Mohammed Atta with planning the
attacks. He had served with Bosnian army mujahideen units. Ramzi
Binalshibh, friends with Atta and Zammar, had also fought in Bosnia.
T
his section has been remarkably difficult to write due to well-
connected, “progressive” Iraqis not responding to requests for
interviews or suggestions for sources. These include: Anes Shallal,
the owner/operator of Busboys and Poets, Washington, DC
restaurants, which he makes available to people and organizations
who criticize the US government. Among such are Sibel Edmonds
(former FBI translator and alleged whistleblower) and Code Pink.
Shallal’s sister, May Kheder, also would not talk, even though an
attorney, who had defended Arab Muslims that the US government
had charged with criminal activity. Also in the group are Aseel
Albanna, an activist and member of Iraqi Voices for Peace, Iraqis in
Jordan, Iraqi Youth Foundation, and Fuel on the Fire, and, formerly,
an official at the Iraqi Cultural Center in Washington, DC. Another US
critic is Dr. Sami Albanna, with ties to US government agencies, yet
an alleged activist and member of Iraqi Voices for Peace and The
International Council for Middle East Studies. None of them would
meet with the author, however informally. Additionally, Raed Jarrar,
once Communications Director, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination
Committee, initially wouldn’t even talk to me, then despite help from
an intermediary, never followed through on my requests. Asked
directly about the Arab-Afghans at the Palestine Center in DC,
September 3, 2014, neither Sami Albanna nor Jarrar responded to
my inquiry. Rend al-Rahim Francke, Executive Director of the Iraq
Foundation, despite phone calls and e-mails, refuses to speak with
me. SourceWatch has tied her and her foundation to rightists, such
as L. Paul Bremer III, and banksters. Anna Eshoo (D-CA), a
supporter of Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and one of the few Iraqis in
government, also did not respond to inquiries.
Whether unknown people or organizations have instructed these
individuals to be uncooperative, or whether they fear the
consequences of providing firsthand information on a delicate
subject, or whether, as some Arabs have told me, persons from the
region simply do not cooperate with anyone unless they see an
advantage in doing so are questions I can’t answer.

Who’s the Terrorist Now?

The people of Iraq not only had to contend with the Arab-Afghan
Legion, they had to deal with the New Mongols, who employed them.
Not since Hulugu, grandson of Genghis Khan, destroyed Baghdad in
AD 1258, killing nearly a million people and annihilating the Abbasid
Caliphate and Islam’s Golden Age, has the Land Between the Dijla
and Furat had to contend with such barbarity—until the Americans
invaded and occupied the country in 2003.
At the Palestine Center’s September 3, 2014, briefing on Iraq in
crisis, Sami Albanna, Raed Jarrar, and Adil Shamoo (the last a
professor at the University of Maryland and Associate Fellow at the
Institute for Policy Studies) squarely blamed the United States for
Iraq’s troubles. According to Shamoo, America created the internal
dissensions and sectorial divisions, now rampant in the country, with
its 2003 invasion. Continuing, he indicted Europe, Israel, Kuwait,
Saudi Arabia, and the United States for making matters worse.
Shamoo asserted that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is
made up of former Ba’athists, al-Qaeda members, and Sunnis who
lost their positions of influence. ISIS funding, he declared, comes
from the Saudis and the Gulf states, along with the Islamic State’s
sales of oil at $25 a barrel, one-quarter of the 2014 world price.
Jarrar, suddenly critical of the United States in public (perhaps
reflecting a new job with the American Friends Service Committee),
blamed America’s invasion and occupation of Iraq for Mesopotamia’s
problems.
Sami Albanna also jumped on the “Bash America” bandwagon,
contending that the CIA had been behind previous coups d’état in
Iraq. He emphasized that Langley brought on the 1958 revolt that
abolished the British-installed monarchy and later put the Ba’ath
(Resurrection) Party into power in 1963. Albanna also stressed that
the Kurdish Peshmerga is a US creation.

But What Drove This Train Wreck?

In January 2005, Newsweek wrote that the American

government was weighing a “Salvador Option” to counter resistance
fighters in Iraq. (During the Reagan Administration, US armed forces
trained and supported the Salvadoran military, which engaged in
outrageous murders, war crimes, and human rights violations, as
they fought a popular uprising against a repressive government.190
Retired four-star US Army general Wayne Downing, former head of
all US Special Operations Forces, corroborated this in a January 10,
2005, interview with Katie Couric on the NBC “Today Show.” She
had asked him about the “Salvador Option” story. He said, “What
they’re considering is to use a special—or more special Iraqi units
trained and equipped and perhaps even led by US Special Forces to
conduct strike operations against this—this insurgency, against the
leaders of it, which of course is a very valid strategy, a very valid
tactic. And it’s actually something we’ve been doing since we started
the war back in March of 2003.”191
Max Fuller, the Newsweek article’s a author, went on to note
that, in September 2004, Counselor to the Ambassador for Iraqi
Security Forces, US Colonel James Steele began work with the
Special Police Commandos, formed under Iraq’s Interior Ministry.
Before working with this “elite” unit, Steele had helped organize and
develop similar groups in El Salvador between 1984 and 1986.192
Steven Casteel, a former assistant administrator for intelligence at
the Drug Enforcement Administration, and senior vice president,
international business development, Vance International Inc.,193
aided Steele in this effort. Then working as senior advisor to the Iraqi
Interior Ministry, Casteel helped create the Police Commandos, who
deliberately cultivated a terrifying appearance. “During raids,” said
Fuller, “they wear balaclavas and black leather gloves and openly
intimidate and brutalize suspects, even in the presence of foreign
journalists.”194
Fuller noted the upsurge in mass executions and mass burials
had occurred soon after organization of the Commandos and
correlated with locations where they had operated. Iraqi and US
government sources, providing sketchy evidence, claimed that the
dead were victims of “insurgents.” Fuller, however, added that “many,
if not all, of the extrajudicial killings in Mosul have been carried out
by the Police Commandos.”
A cursory read of any newspaper shows that these killings are
continuing in 2014, with little or no definitive attribution to individuals
or groups, other than “Al Qaeda” or “terrorists” or ISIL/ISIS.195 But, in
the past, things were different. According to Fuller,196 accusations
were leveled against the Commandos in three Baghdad massacres.
On May 5, 2005, fourteen young men, with their hands tied, were
found lying in a shallow grave with gunshots to the head—after
torture and beatings. In reality, they had been farmers going to
market. On May 15, 2005, fifteen more corpses came to light, again
with bound hands and bullets in the head.197 This wasn’t al-Qaeda
or ISIS/ISIL in action but governmental forces which the US trained
and organized.
“The Association of Muslim Scholars quickly responded to the
wave of killings, accusing soldiers and Interior Ministry commandos
of having ‘arrested imams and the guardians of some mosques,
tortured and killed them, then got rid of their bodies in a garbage
dump in the Shaab district’”198
Now, the Iraqi government is wading deeper into the morass,
tying itself to terrorists. According to a Washington Post report199,
Nouri al-Maliki’s government has been seeking to employ the
“insurgents” from al-Qaeda that the United States had previously
recruited. Al-Maliki is reviving America’s old policy of arming and
paying Sunni tribesmen who had initially fought the US invasion and
occupation. Called al-Sahwa (the Awakening), Baghdad’s puppet
government is giving the new recruits millions of dollars along with
weapons, such as three thousand Russian machine guns and two
thousand AK-47 rifles delivered to Ramadi. Not all Iraqis see this as
progress. One unnamed official said, “We reject our sons being
rentals. They are used like a disposal tissue, to wipe up the
problems and then thrown away.” Another, Sheikh Rafai Mishhin al-
Jumaili, accused the government “of sectarianism, saying it has
branded all rebel tribesmen as al-Qaeda to justify attacks on them.”
(This has been, as demonstrated here, the practice of the CIA and
the rest of the American government through the course of the US
“intervention.”)
Now, in June 2014, the Awakened Ones appear to be
sleepwalking. The Statesman ran an AP report on the situation on
June 25, 2014.200 The piece discussed waking up the Awakening, to
which the Americans had given more than $370 million between
2006 and 2009. 201 The article continued, touching on new American
fears. Worried that the Awakening might become a form of
somnambulism, the United States is reputedly concerned that funds
and weapons passed to the new recruits might well go to “terrorists”
not officially sanctioned by Uncle Sam but supported instead by
Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Many of those who awakened but went
back to sleep are now joining forces with the Islamic State of Iraq
and the Levant (ISIL), along with other Sunnis and about one
thousand Ba’athists, holdovers from Saddam Hussein’s secular,
socialist party.
George W. Bush’s personal representative to Iraq, John
Negroponte, created death squads there, patterned on the ones he
supported in El Salvador, while he was also American ambassador
there.202 Negroponte, as Dr. Elias Akleh noted in “American Terror
Strategy in Iraq,”203 had learned his trade while supervising the CIA’s
Phoenix Program in Vietnam. Akleh defined Phoenix as involving
“the training and the arming of death squads specialized in torture,
forced interrogation, assassination.”
Aiding Negroponte in this matter were Political Counselor Robert
Stephen Ford (later US Ambassador to Syria) and Henry Ensher (my
old “friend” from the CIA base/American consulate general at
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia). Ford helped recruit the death squads, using
his contacts with Shiite and Kurdish militia groups. Ensher, now
American Ambassador to Algeria, played an important role on the
“team,” reaching out to a wide range of Iraqi extremists.204
In corroborating Max Fuller’s views and General Downing’s
remarks, Akleh flatly stated that the American aim in Iraq was divide
et impera (Imperial Rome’s principle of divide and rule). With a goal
of “spreading a sectarian hatred between the three major Iraqi sects,
Kurds, Shiite, and Sunnis,” American agents, ably assisted by Israeli
ones, executed Sunni and Shiite leaders while blowing up their
mosques and setting off explosives in their communities. This turned
the groups from fighting the American invaders to battling each
other.
Additionally, Dr. Akleh wrote that US forces targeted civilians
and tried to link the attacks to the resistance, attempting to cut them
off from the Iraqi population that sheltered them. The assailants
weren’t the Anglo-Saxon Christians from the American Midwest but
were “Al-Qaeda,” “Al-Zarqawi,” or “foreign terrorists.” Following the
lead of the Nazi SS in wartime Czechoslovakia, and as they had
done with Operation Phoenix in Vietnam, the Americans destroyed
entire villages for protecting opponents of the invasion.
US officials, such as James Steele and Steve Casteel, as Dr.
Akleh perspicaciously wrote, created sectarian, vigilante militias,
placing them under the control of Iraqi politicians, such as Iyad
Allawi, “for their protection.” Akleh further asserted that directing
Kurdish Peshmerga and Shiite militias against the Sunni “increase[d]
the likelihood of sectarian hatred and civil war.” To its everlasting
discredit, the US Marine Corps created its own Iraqi militias. Dr.
Akleh stated that, in January 2005, the 7th Marines established a
group called “The Iraqi Freedom Guard,” paying each member $400
a month (at the 2005 exchange rate, that was nearly 600,000 Iraqi
dinars). The 23rd Marines also set up a militia, mostly from Basra,
called “Freedom Fighters.” Both groups, Dr. Akleh said, were used in
attacks in Anbar Province in western Iraq. Continuing, Elias Akleh
said that the American forces had worked out an agreement with
Moqtada Al-Sadr’s Mahdi army, always described in the US press as
“anti-American,” to pursue and seize members of the resistance.
Robert Dreyfuss wrote in “Phoenix Rising,”205 that Congress had
given $3 billion to the CIA to create militia-run paramilitary units. The
object was to kill “nationalists, other opponents of the US occupation
and thousands of civilian Baathists up to 120,000 of the estimated
2.5 million former Baath Party members in Iraq.” Furthermore,
Dreyfuss asserted that the lion’s share of this money would help
“create a lethal, and revenge-minded Iraqi security force.” As
Dreyfuss said, citing John Pike in globalsecurity.org, “The big money
would be for standing up [sic] an Iraqi secret police to liquidate the
resistance.” Continuing, Dreyfuss noted that the Iraqi secret police
would be “staffed mainly by gunmen associated with members of the
puppet Iraqi Governing Council…linked to Ahmad Chalabi’s Iraqi
National Congress…the Kurdish pershmerga…and Shiite
paramilitary units…”
Yet, no mention was made of the real saddle tramps, the Arab-
Afghans, who undoubtedly formed a goodly number of the people
engaged in “extrajudicial” killings in Iraq.

Distressing Details about the Legion

Methods of implementing divide et impera varied. The US-

sponsored Al Iraqiya TV channel ran a program six nights a week
called “Terror in the Grip of Justice.” It denigrated opposition fighters
as criminals, alcoholics, and homosexuals, people whom good
Arabs, Muslims (and others) believe to be sinners. Dr. Akleh also
noted that American soldiers would routinely stop a car, confiscate
the driver’s license, and send the driver off to be interrogated. While
he was absent, explosives would be placed in the vehicle. Upon his
return, he would be directed to a police station to get his license
back. A US helicopter would follow, detonating the bomb by radio
just as the car reached the cop shop, thus giving the appearance of
another “terrorist” attack.206
 “Outsiders” helped the Americans wreck Iraq by convoying
terrorists into the country and supplying them with weapons. Just as
the Americans used the Arab-Afghans in the former Yugoslavia to
turn the country into a collection of small, weak statelets, they, the
British, and the Israelis used them, in vain to date, to split Iraq into
three pieces, the Kurdish north, the Sunni center, and the Shii
south.207
However, with the recent successes of The Islamic State of
Syria and the Levant (ISIL)/Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), RT.
com reported June 27–30, 2014, that the Kurds would likely use the
turmoil occasioned by the group’s attacks on the Iraqi army to
declare the north of the country an independent state, thus beginning
the permanent division of Iraq. As one Iraqi American commented,
Barack Obama can now say, along with George W. Bush, “Mission
Accomplished.” The Washington Post ever the propaganda organ,
added that Massoud Barzani, head of the “largely autonomous
Kurdistan Regional Government,” seeks a plebiscite on seceding
from Iraq.208 The article asserted that Iraq is separating into three
pieces “since “[the] Islamic State [of Iraq and Syria] routed the
government’s forces and took over a vast stretch of territory…[in
June].” As Wayne Madsen wrote June 26–27, 2014: “There are
credible reports that US Special Forces in Jordan helped train many
of the ISIL fighters [obviously more of the Arab-Afghans] now in
control of a large swath of western Iraq, including former US military
bases and the Baji oil refinery, Iraq’s largest.”209
Michel Chossudovsky concurs. Writing in Global Research he
said, “The Islamic State is not an independent political entity. It is a
construct of US Intelligence.” Continuing, he decried the fact that the
CIA, with help from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey, is clandestinely
backing the Caliphate. Israel is also participating, sending aid to al-
Qaeda in Syria through the Golan Heights and to the Kurdish
secessionists in Syria and Iraq as well.210,
Chossudovsky went on to emphasize that there was no al-
Qaeda in Iraq prior to the American invasion of 2003211 and it did not
emerge in Syria until the “US-NATO-Israeli supported insurgency in
March 2011.” Indeed, Chossudovsky remarked that the ISIS attacks
are intended to “destroy and destabilize Iraq as a Nation State.”
Projected to topple Iraq’s al-Maliki government, the Islamic State is
aiming at breaking up the country into three pieces. It has no interest
in traditional “regime change.” As is the case of Yugoslavia’s
partition, Washington would find this in its “national interest.”
Naturally, as Chossudovsky observes, Iraq’s fragmentation will
impact Syria. The latter country is roughly an arc-shaped slice of
pizza, with Christians, Druze, Shiite Allawi, Sunni, and Yezidi (an
obscure, much-persecuted religion212) distributed through it.
The article also speculated that asking Iran to help mediate the
Caliphate conflict is one way of causing that country’s intervention, to
its detriment.
Ultimately, Chossudovsky ventured that the map of the Middle
East could be redrawn along the lines proposed by Lt. Col. Ralph
Peters, USA (ret.): Iraq in three pieces; “Kurdistan” made up of parts
of Turkey, Iraq, Armenia; an enlarged Jordan, absorbing part of
northwest Saudi Arabia; a truncated Saudi Arabia, with chunks gong
to an Arab Shia state (mostly the Eastern Province), an Islamic
Sacred State (principally the Hejaz) and Yemen.
The Americans couldn’t divide Iraq with their army, navy, and air
force in eleven years. But now, with the aid of terrorists from the
Arab-Afghan Legion, the United States appears to be succeeding,
after years of preparation. From the enthusiastic declarations carried
in the “fawning corporate media” about the wild men from ISIL/ISIS,
it appears that US policy in Mesopotamia is following that enunciated
by Cheryl Benard in describing the destruction of Afghanistan: recruit
the most unstable, ruthless fanatics to get the job done.213
The investigative journalist Wayne Madsen blames Dick Cheney
and L. Paul Bremer for the collapse of Iraq.214 They toppled Iraq’s
secular President Saddam Hussein and engaged in “‘de-
Ba’athfication’ that would erase Iraq’s legacy of pan-Arab socialist
secular rule.” Add to that Bremer’s policy of demobilizing the Iraqi
army, and you end up with “fertile ground” sown with ISIL’s dragon
teeth “to germinate and flourish.” Madsen also condemns Paul
Wolfowitz, Bush Deputy Secretary of Defense, for “eliminat[ing from
leadership]…Saddam Hussein’s chief officials…[which he says] led
to the current rise of ISIL and their Salafist supporters in Iraq and
Syria.”
Furthermore, as Madsen continued, it was Barack Obama’s twin
picks for National Security Advisor and Ambassador to the UN,
Susan Rice and Samantha Power, respectively, who helped “bring
about a Sunni-led…revolt against Syria Baathist leader Bashar al-
Assad.” With Assad losing power in east Syria, ISIL forces, “backed
by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, [were able] to gain a foothold in Iraq and
expand the conflict against Assad to threaten the outskirts of
Baghdad and the Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki [sic] government.”

Madsen commented: What the neocons want more

than anything else is Arab killing Arab and Muslim
killing Muslim. Mossad’s fingerprints are found in
supporting a number of radical Arab and Islamic
factions…for the sole purpose of driving wedges
between Arab and Muslim states and peoples. Only
through a policy of population cleansing in Syria, Iraq,
Palestine, and other Arab states will there be
lebensraum (living space) for a greater Jewish
state.215

Moreover, according to Reuters, the Israeli government told the

United States on Thursday, June 26, 2014:216

…Kurdish independence in northern Iraq was a

“foregone conclusion” and Israeli experts predicted
the Jewish state would be quick to recognise a
Kurdish state, should it emerge…Israel has
maintained discreet military, intelligence and business
ties with the Kurds since the 1960s, seeing in the
minority ethnic group a buffer against shared Arab
adversaries.
 But the “fawning corporate media” tends to underreport this, a
point noted by Marsha Cohen in LobeLog:

A decade ago, Seymour Hersh called attention to

Israel’s close ties with the Kurds. Hersh’s “Annals of
National Security: Plan B,” published in the New
Yorker, is noteworthy, particularly in light of mounting
criticism against the Obama administration’s handling
of the current crisis. US officials interviewed by Hersh
told him that by the end of 2003, “Israel had
concluded that the Bush Administration would not be
able to bring stability or democracy to Iraq, and that
Israel needed other options.” One of those options
was expanding Israel’s long-standing relationship with
Iraqi Kurds and “establishing a significant presence on
the ground in the semiautonomous region of
Kurdistan.”

Although the reliability of Hersh’s sources was

challenged at the time, they have been affirmed by
more recent articles and reports. Neriah [Jacques
Neriah, retired Israeli colonel and foreign policy
advisor to PM Yitzhak Rabin], writing in August 2012,
cites numerous reports in the Israeli media about the
activities of Israeli security and military personnel
working for Israeli firms in Kurdistan: According to
Israeli newspapers, dozens of Israelis with a
background in elite combat training have been
working for private Israeli companies in northern Iraq,
helping Kurds there establish elite antiterror units.
Reports say that the Kurdish government contracted
Israeli security and communications companies to
train Kurdish security forces and provide them with
advanced equipment.217
 The Washington Post reported in June 2014218 that the “rebels”
have erased most of the border between Syria and Iraq, and it
seems clear that Washington intended this result. Free to move the
extremists it armed and trained between the two countries, the
United States now appears able to completely destroy the political
integrity of Iraq, having previously obliterated that country’s
infrastructure, army, and culture. Iran, as Liz Sly reported,
denounced continued American interference in Iraq, claiming
Washington sought “to dominate Iraq and have its agents rule over
the country.” Additionally, Teheran argued that “the United States is
dissatisfied with the result of elections in Iraq, and they want to
deprive the Iraqi people of their achievement of a democratic
system…” The Post’s Loveday Morris and Karen DeYoung quoted
Rick Berenson, RAND Corp. analyst, as saying “…I think what we’re
looking at is the beginning of the disintegration of the state of Iraq.”
219
It’s not hard to speculate that the latest attack on Iraq with a
“new” set of bogeymen, ISIL, is merely a continuation of the old
policy, coupled with the ongoing destruction of Syria. It’s significant
that the Obama administration was reportedly “undecided” over
attacking ISIL. After all, why bomb the people you sent to smash
what’s left of Iraq?220 That Post article continued the falsehood the
US government is not arming and training terrorists in both Syria and
Iraq. It also claimed that there were no more American soldiers in
Mesopotamia, asserting that US officials can’t deal with both
countries separately and they must “…build effective partnerships.”
Retired DC Superior Court Judge Thomas Andrew O’Keefe had
a different view.

Iraq is still filled with thousands of US military

personnel and contractors housed at the US Embassy
compound in Baghdad and at US consulates in Basra,
Kirkuk, and Mosul who serve as military trainers or
security guards. In addition, the US military still helps
patrol Iraqi air space and also trains the country’s
nascent air force. This does not include the thousands
of American military contractors [mercenaries] on the
 Iraqi government payroll who previously were paid by
the US Department of Defense.221

PRESSTV222 attributes the disaster that American policy in the

region has become to National Security Advisor Susan Rice; the US
Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power; and former
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Citing an interview with
investigative journalist Wayne Madsen, it asserted that “US policy is
constantly shifting like the Middle East sands.” Madsen observed
that “the recent crisis in Iraq is a result of US activities in the region.”
According to the interview, ISIL/ISIS in Iraq is directly attributable to
America providing weapons and other aid to the Syrian rebels,
“many of whom are al-Qaeda affiliates…Some of this weaponry has
been used across the border in Iraq.” It’s clear to the author that any
change of heart about ISIL/ISIS by the US government can only
come from their possible or projected attacks on the Kurds.
On June 22, 2014, AFP (Agence France Presse) reported Iran’s
President Hassan Rouhani as warning Muslim states supporting
Sunni combatants now devastating Iraq that they could become the
insurgents’ next target. While Rouhani did not name names, “officials
and media in…Iran have hinted that…ISIL are being financially and
militarily supported by Saudi Arabia and Qatar.” Both these American
allies against “terrorism” were deeply embroiled in destroying Libya
and Syria. AFP quoted Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei, as saying “This is not a Shiite versus Sunni war, unlike
what American officials say”…while blaming the United States for
“disrupting (Iraq’s) stability and threatening its territorial integrity.”
According to Al Jazeera,223 Iraq had been beefing up army units
on its western border, hoping to block terrorists from neighboring
countries, including Syria, from entering. Citing Iraqi Prime Minister
Nouri al-Maliki, the news channel noted that 90 percent of foreign
fighters infiltrated the country through Syria, where they had been
training. Once there, they engaged in terror bombings, such as those
in Baghdad. Additionally, Al Jazeera reported August 21, 2005, that
Iraq accused Jordan of hosting people involved in “terrorist acts” in
Mesopotamia. Iraqi government spokesman Laith Kubba announced
that 281 foreign fighters had been jailed, including eighty Egyptians,
sixty-four Syrians, forty-one Sudanese, twenty-two Saudis, and one
Briton. Kubba also noted that hostiles have used Jordan to mount
attacks on his country, some perpetrated by exiled Iraqis, such as
Saddam Hussein’s family and exiled Ba’athists. Continuing, Kubba
said that “Jordan, Syria, and the United Arab Emirates are being
used as ‘safe havens’ for elements that ‘support and practice
terrorist acts in Iraq.’” (He didn’t mention the fact that Jordan and the
U.A.E. were and are “allies” of the United States or that Jordan is
making its land available for terrorist training by Americans and
others.)
Syria, on the other hand, declared that it had been doing all in its
power to control its six hundred kilometer border (nearly 373 miles)
with Iraq. Al Jazeera reported on July 21, 2005,224 that the Syrian
government had told diplomatic missions in Damascus that its
soldiers had been attacked “not only by infiltrators and smugglers but
by the Iraqi and American forces.” Despite one hundred clashes,
some involving American soldiers, the US government claimed that
Syria had not been doing enough to stop the passage of fighters
across the Iraqi border. Also, it was not interdicting the transfer of
funds to fuel the opposition to the American occupation of Iraq. In
reply, Syria noted that it had caught 1,240 combatants, deporting
them to their respective countries. Additionally, the government had
investigated, it said, roughly four thousand more individuals who left
or attempted to leave for Iraq to join the fighters there. From all
indications, just as Moammar Gaddafi was ousted and Libya paid the
price for dealing adversely with the Arab-Afghans, so apparently will
Bashar al-Assad, if Washington and Israel have their way.
In September 2005, the Iraqis and Americans seized about two
hundred men in a “rebellious” section of Tal Afar, a town near the
Syrian frontier. According to Iraqi army captain Mohammed Ahmed,
one hundred and fifty of those captured were Arabs from Jordan, the
Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.225 Unnamed US government officials
insisted that “many foreign nationals” were fighting American forces
between the Dijla and Furat. A Syrian had been sentenced to life
imprisonment by an Iraqi court after being captured in Falluja and,
allegedly, intending to fight the Iraqi forces. Another, a Saudi, also
got life after entering Mesopotamia illegally to battle the government.
Another Syrian obtained six years “for entering Iraq illegally to join
the armed fighters.” A Libyan was sentenced to fifteen years for
entering Iraq illegally from Syria and conducting “terrorist actions”
against Iraqi security forces. An Egyptian received only two years for
having “an expired entry visa” after being found with three other
combatants in a house with arms and ammunition.226
Even the one-time Afghan American Ambassador to Baghdad,
Zalmay Khalilzad, asserted that “terrorists” were traveling from Syria
to Iraq. Al Jazeera reported that Khalilzad, in remarks to journalists
at the US State Department, had threatened Syria for allowing
“foreign terrorists” to stream across its border with Iraq. He claimed
that would-be terrorists were flying to Syria from other countries in
the region (such as Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and North Africa), getting
training, and then moving into Iraq. 227 Al Jazeera reported one of
the kingdom’s dissidents, Dr. Muhammad al-Massari, as saying the
Saudis have supplied thousands of fighters to Iraq. Resident in
London, al-Massari observed that there were five thousand
mujahideen sent to battle the American invader in Baghdad alone,
with others joining them from the rest of the Arab and Muslim
worlds.228 The reportage added that L. Paul Bremer III, Administrator
of the Coalition Provisional Authority, had expounded the view that
“most of the ‘terrorists’ in Iraq were not Iraqis but came from
countries such as Syria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and the Sudan.”
Bremer observed that sealing Iraq’s frontiers was a demanding, if not
impossible, task. Al Jazeera’s report contained some of the George
W. Bush administration’s continued fulminations against Iranian and
Syrian guerillas in Iraq. In accordance with its claims, the US
government had asserted that “foreign fighters” had instigated four
suicide bombings, killing 34 and wounding 230 in Baghdad.
In an earlier statement, Bremer had stressed that, while
American government forces had captured nineteen “Al Qaeda”
members, he had no idea of their nationalities. Bremer did know, he
said, that of the two hundred forty-eight men the US military seized,
there were one hundred twenty-three Syrians and many Iranians and
Yemenis. His basis for this information was questioning “the usual
suspects,” plus documents the men were carrying. According to Al
Jazeera’s Baghdad correspondent Jawad al-Umari, Bremer’s
remarks were designed to pressure the countries named, such as
Syria and Iran, presumably to do more about restricting the flow of
combatants.229
Hard analysis of the captives’ origins wasn’t always possible. Al
Jazeera reported on October 24, 2010, that identities of thousands of
foreign fighters seized by US soldiers were often obscure.230 When
arrested, many had foreign passports or no identification
whatsoever. American armed forces guessed at the nationalities of
those captured through “accent, dress and mannerisms.” The
combatants from outside Iraq, according to US authorities were
Syrians, Saudis, Egyptians, Yemenis, Libyans, Afghans, Pakistanis,
Lebanese, Jordanians, and Algerians, just like in Afghanistan,
Bosnia, and Libya. Additionally, some came from “Western
countries,” that is, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United
States. The Arab-Afghan Legion was and is a remarkably wide-
ranging organization.
The origins of the “terrorists’” weapons weren’t quite so obscure.
According to Global Research, the Israeli paper Ma’ariv Daily News
announced March 7, 2007, that Shmoel A Avivi, a retired Israeli
officer, had established a firm in Iraq to covertly sell weaponry to
“terrorist groups in Iraq.” Ma’ariv wrote that Amnesty International
had claimed that Avivi was one of the largest arms dealers in the
region. The Israeli journal noted that “Iraqi sources” asserted that
attacks in the country had been sponsored by Mossad, the CIA, and
former agents of Saddam Hussein. Additionally, Hadi Ameri, Iraqi
parliament security commission chairman, had charged the
occupying coalition of secretly masterminding “terrorist” attacks and
organizing “terror” squads in his country.231
According to another Al Jazeera story, the Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia is at the bottom of many terrorist attacks. 232 In a meeting at
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s residence, comprising al-Maliki,
US Army General David Petraeus, and US Ambassador Ryan
Crocker, the prime minister blasted the kingdom and its leadership,
saying, “Most terrorists here are Saudis; the Saudi people have a
culture that supports terrorism.” Furthermore, al-Maliki held the head
of Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence service, Prince Muqrin bin
Abdulaziz, responsible for provoking sectarian violence in Iraq. Al
Jazeera quoted al-Maliki as saying, “I told Vice President Cheney
that (Saudi) Prince Muqrin is funding a Sunni army to oppose the
Shia army.” (Muqrin is now the kingdom’s deputy crown prince.)
Global Research News, along with the FARS News Agency
reported on January 4, 2014, that Saudi Arabia was continuing to
support the culture of terror. It asserted that the kingdom is still
backing the al-Qaeda “terrorist groups in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.”
Moreover, the House of Saud (which essentially owns the country)
has been clandestinely shipping small arms, explosives, anti-armor,
and antiaircraft weapons into and through Iraq from the Saudi city of
Nakheib and the Ar Ar border crossing.
On March 8, 2014, BBC News reported more of Nouri al-Maliki’s
extremely negative remarks on Saudi support for terrorism in Iraq.
Citing an undated interview with French television channel France
24, the BBC recounted al-Maliki as saying that Saudi Arabia and
Qatar had “effectively declared war on Iraq” and that Saudi Arabia
supported “global ‘terrorism’.” The Iraqi prime minister charged that
the Saudis were attacking his country through Syria. In addition, he
alleged, “accusations that he was marginalizing the Sunnis [the
minority branch of Islam in Iraq] came from sectarian groups with
links to Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which are majority Sunni states.”
The report noted that UN figures show that violence in 2013 had
killed 8,868 people [an astonishingly accurate figure, given the
vagueness of the number on Iraqis the Americans have killed since
2003].
The United Kingdom also applied its own highly developed form
of terrorism to Iraq, using the Special Air Service (SAS). In
September 2005, several SAS members, disguised in wigs as al-
Qaeda terrorists, shot two Iraqi police officers who had been
watching them. The Britons were soon captured and their vehicle
was found to be filled with explosives that they intended to detonate
in the middle of Basra, Iraq’s chief port. Although the Iraqis jailed the
SAS terrorists, the British army, using tanks and helicopters,
attacked the prison and freed them for future crimes. Attacks on UN
headquarters in Iraq, a plethora of car bombings, as well as strikes
on embassies and mosques were seen by the Iraqi man in the street
as foreign forces’ efforts to destabilize the country and incite
communal violence. The intent, by American, British, and Israeli
groups, in part using Kurdish Peshmerga guerrilla forces, was to
provide reasons to continue the occupation and partition of Iraq into
Kurdish, Sunni, and Shii sections, on the model of what had been
done to Yugoslavia.233
As noted in the waynenadsenreport.com,234 the Washington
Post had stated on August 14, 2007, that the US military in Iraq was
working with Sunni “ex-members” of al-Qaeda in Baghdad, Anbar,
and Diyala provinces. Madsen further noted that Langley was also
working with pro-al-Qaeda and Taliban elements in Pakistan. In an Al
Jazeera “In Depth” report called “Iraq’s Summer of Terror,”235
Brigadier General Saad Mann, the Iraqi Interior Ministry Spokesman,
was quoted as saying that most of the attacks in the country can be
blamed on al-Qaeda. He also observed that “what is happening in
Syria is definitely affecting Iraq.” Unnamed Iraqi security officials said
that more “foreign suicide bombers” and fighters from North Africa
and other Arab countries are coming across the Syrian frontier. Yet,
the author, Jane Arraf, wrote that many political organizations,
seeing that they were losing at the ballot box, had turned to
intercommunal violence to regain their diminished power.
According to the New York Times, “Smuggling routes and
alliances that moved terrorists and supplies into Iraq during the
height of the war, in 2006–2007, have been reversed, allowing
fighters and supplies to flow into neighboring countries, particularly
Syria.” 236
On August 12, 2013, PRESSTV, the Iranian news service,
quoted Belfast-based author and Middle East expert Saeb Shaath as
saying that Saudi Arabia, together with the United States, Israel,
Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates, have been sponsoring
sectarian violence in Iraq. Additionally, Shaath noted that the support
for Iraqi terrorism included financing and training. Shaath tied Hillary
Clinton to this, referring to Clinton’s CNN and YouTube clips wherein,
he said, she conceded that the United States had created al-Qaeda,
which the Saudis financed and the Wahhabi extremists ran.
Expanding on his theme, Shaath claimed that the US armed forces
and the CIA were partners in a Saudi terror campaign in Iraq.
 According to a June 2009 report by United Press International,
“insurgents” in Iraq were using recent-model Beretta 92 pistols
produced without serial numbers, obviously meant for intelligence
operations or terrorist groups having government support. Analysts
suggested that the weapons were probably from the CIA or Mossad
and were intended for agents provocateurs participating in US
government-sponsored “insurgent” attacks against civilians. The aim
was to delegitimize the resistance.
This apparently led to the import of Afghan [Arab-Afghan?]
mercenaries recruited from Taliban ranks into Iraq to fight civilians
there. Their role also included attacking Iraqi and occupation military
forces. According to Iraqi police reports, the constabulary found thirty
to forty Afghan Taliban hidden in a trailer entering Baghdad. When
questioned, the fighters said that the US government had brought
them there with the goal of creating as much trouble as they could.
Senior US military officers then ordered the Iraqi police to release
them, which they did.237
Earlier, US intelligence had noted senior al-Qaeda financial
figures were in Iraq, moving large amounts of untraceable gold in
and out of the country, principally through the cities of Baghdad,
Falluja, and Samarra (with its two-thousand-year-old gold
exchange). The Coalition Provisional Authority of Jerry Bremer
allowed free movement for the al-Qaeda personnel, permitting them
to exchange the precious metal for cash at money exchanges in
Mecca, Amman, Dubai, and London. Saudi Arabia helped with this
exchange, funding al-Qaeda in Iraq by transferring gold bars through
eight to ten locations.238 Underwriting al-Qaeda there in fact is
sponsoring the Iraqi Branch of the Arab-Afghan Legion.
According to Global Research,239 the American journalist,
Seymour Hersh disclosed that “an unknown number” of mujahideen,
Taliban, and al-Qaeda, were “flown to safety” in a US-sponsored
airlift out of Afghanistan, giving rise to the suspicion that they had
moved on to other countries, such as Iraq, with the “tacit” approval of
the US Defense Department (apparently in late 2001). Global
Research suggested that Northern Iraq (where many of the Kurds
live) is “virtually a US protectorate.” The publication noted that
American intelligence and military officials knew of and ignored the
influx of these Afghanis as well as terrorist acts taking place in
Kurdish areas. Furthermore, the piece suggested that Ansar al-Islam
(Supporters of Islam), a Kurdish fundamentalist group, of which
many Arab-Afghans were members, received the same support from
American intelligence organizations as other al-Qaeda groups in
Central Asia. The intent, Global Research continued, was to further
destabilize Iraq through contrived weakening of the established
Kurdish political parties and the creation of a Muslim theocracy. Colin
Powell, as Secretary of State and another military man (retired U.S.
Army General) claimed in an address to the UN on February 5,
2003, that the head of the Kurdish terrorists was Abu Musab al-
Zarqawi, who had “fought in the Afghan war more than a decade
ago.” What Powell omitted was appropriate background for his
remarks. What he did not say was that al-Zarqawi had fought in an
American-sponsored war led by the Central Intelligence Agency.
Moreover, he was most likely “trained and indoctrinated” in a CIA
camp in the region.240
As reported by Thomas Hegghammer, there were four thousand
to five thousand “private global foreign fighters” operating in Iraq
after the US 2003 invasion. 241 These came from many Arab
countries, the United States and Europe, as well as Turkey. One of
Hegghammer’s tables notes that only one thousand to fifteen
hundred of these fighters had been campaigning against America
and its NATO puppets in Afghanistan after 2001. Again, the imported
combatants came from numerous Arab countries, the United States,
and Europe. Hegghammer mentioned that many activists, especially
from Saudi Arabia’s Hejaz (Western Province), emphasized outside
threats to the Islamic umma (community). They also established “a
global network of charities for the provision of inter-Muslim aid.” This
enabled them to round up soldiers for Afghanistan, the Arab-
Afghans, who then went on to constitute a foreign fighter cadre.242
The Hejaz supplied most of the Saudi warriors who went to
Afghanistan before 1987 (the year I arrived in Jeddah and when the
orders to issue visas to questionable applicants began). 243
Referring to links among the outside combatants, Hegghammer
continues his analysis, asserting that “recruitment literature” from
previous wars was recycled to promote subsequent conflicts.
Personnel also “overlapped” he said, with the Arab-Afghans being
originators of at least eight later engagements. While there was no
central command, many of the cadre fought in more than one war,
with some engaged in five or six different ones.244
Brian Fishman, once with West Point’s Combating Terrorism
Center and now with the New America Foundation, asserted that the
biggest inflow of foreign fighters to Iraq took place in 2006–2007,
with six hundred joining the cause.245
On July 8, 2013, Ayub Nuri, a Kurdish journalist told the author
that, when the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, it bombed Ansar
al-Islam in the North, sending foot soldiers there. He was at the front,
reporting on the fighting, and saw many of the dead, with their
identification papers, including passports. Among the fallen were
Algerians, Saudis, Chechens, and Afghans, as well as Syrians,
Turks, Iranians, and Iraqis. In fact, he had interviewed one captured
soldier, who acted as an interpreter between the Arab-Afghans and
the Kurds in Ansar al-Islam. Remarking it was dangerous to arm
these kinds of people, my contact added they don’t believe in
borders, and they would go on to other conflicts because there were
no limits against whom they would fight to advance their cause. He
contended that al-Qaeda was not different from the Arab-Afghans
and that both derived from the US war against the Soviets. In Nuri’s
view, the groups in Syria opposing Bashar al-Assad’s government
are the same type, if not more so, as those in Iraq, who fought to
destabilize the government there. It is significant that John
Schindler’s Unholy Terror tied Ansar al-Islam to Bosnia. “Ansar’s
hardcore operatives were experienced fighters who had battled in
Bosnia,” he states246
An NBC News analysis, published June 20, 2005, helped
substantiate this claim. A report by Lisa Myers and the network’s
investigative unit noted the national origins of more than 400
“foreign” fighters who had fallen in Iraq since 2003: Saudi Arabia, 55
percent; Syria, 13 percent; North Africa, 9 percent; and Europe, 3
percent. The reasons the Legionnaires, from twenty-one countries,
gave for fighting don’t really hold up: they were poor, they were rich,
they saw the Americans killing Iraqis on TV. Chris Kyle, former Navy
SEAL, wrote that he had shot some Chechens in Iraq.247
Plausible (?) Deniability

More to the point, the foreign fighters got to Iraq because they
had been recruited as terrorists. In a July 24, 2013, telephone call
with Bob Baer, former CIA case officer in the Middle East and South
Asia, he told me the Arab-Afghans had not been directly recruited by
the Agency, but that their gathering had been “outsourced” for
“plausible deniability.” Milt Bearden, former Pakistan station chief
and field officer in Afghanistan; Vince Cannistraro, former case
officer and chief of operations and analysis at the CIA’s
Counterterrorist Center; and Larry Johnson, former CIA analyst and
State Department official had all told the author that the CIA only
recruited Afghans. All omitted any discussion of their instruction.
Baer told me that US policy was to have the Saudis handle the
recruitment program. They were the ones who located the
Palestinians, Pakistanis, etc. 248 The Saudi official in charge was
Ahmed Badeeb, chief of staff to Prince Turki al-Faisal, head of the
Saudi Intelligence Presidency. Badeeb had also been a teacher to
Osama bin Laden.249
Badeeb was also a well-connected bagman. To support
operations in Pakistan, he once arrived in Karachi aboard a Saudia
Airlines flight with “a little extra.” Besides his personal baggage, he
was carrying $1.8 million in freshly printed currency, imported directly
from the United States. Badeeb conveyed this money in person to
Pakistan’s president, Zia Ul Haq, and a group of his generals in
Rawalpindi. It was part of a payment for Chinese-made, rocket-
propelled grenade launchers.250 The Saudis also channeled funds
delivered by Badeeb and others through religious charities to support
their intelligence functions. Ultimately, the money went to Afghan
commanders outside of ISI or CIA control. Badeeb also set up safe
houses for himself and other Saudi intelligence officials with the aid
of these charities.
Saudi involvement also kept the beneficiaries of this aid from
learning how closely the Americans were involved, the reasoning
being that the fighters objected to direct contact with Westerners.251
The watchword was plausible deniability. Baer added that
outsourcing in all this plausible deniability was so effective that
everyone concerned was unaware of US involvement, including
American intelligence involvement. They believed that this was a do-
it-yourself jihad. Besides the Saudis, recruitment was also handled
by the ISI, who worked with the Haqqanis (a US-designated terrorist
group) and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
Training was outsourced as well. ISI could do this because its
“military and intelligence officers, bureaucrats, undercover agents
and informers” were thought to total about one hundred and fifty
thousand men.252
According to a January 7, 2008, Christian Science Monitor
article, “the bulk of foreign fighters [operating in Iraq] originate from
countries with whom the United States is allied…”253 Citing a report
produced by the Combating Terrorism Center at the US Military
Academy at West Point, the article noted, however, that the
individuals fighting in Iraq come also from Libya, Algeria, Morocco,
Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen. They entered Iraq through Egypt, Syria,
Germany, and Turkey (with the exception of Syria, all countries
involved in helping to destabilize the Middle East). The authors of the
report, Lt. Col. Joseph Felter and Brian Fishman (neither of whom
would speak with me) said that those fighting in Iraq got there
through “very established routes,” a clear tipoff that the United States
is involved.
John Schindler amplified this information, noting that Bosnians
had gone on to fight in Iraq. He said that the German BND Director,
August Hanning, had confirmed this. According to Schindler, a
mosque in Sarajevo operated as the local recruiting station for “muj”
bound for Iraq and Chechnya. Not quite twelve hundred volunteers
had followed this connection with Iraq in the years between 2007
and 2011. Abu Anas al-Shami, a Jordanian and second only to Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi in managing fighters in Iraq, had come from
Bosnia after his mid-1990s service there.254

SOME Iraqis Do Talk

 On August 25, 2013, I spoke with a female Iraqi asylee about
her former country. The gist of the conversation was that the United
States was deeply involved with terrorism in Iraq.
While my interlocutor was in Jordan, she told me that she
interpreted at a 2006 conference facilitated by the Jordanian Ministry
of the Interior. At the meeting, a high-ranking US official (whose
name she no longer recalls) met with former leaders from Saddam
Hussein’s government, mostly from the city of Falluja, in al-Anbar
province. Discussed in that conference were ways in which the US
government could help restore former Iraqi government officials to
power. (By way of clarification, she noted that Jordan had worked
very closely with such people since many from Saddam’s regime
had gotten sanctuary there. They were given preferences, she said,
that others who fled to Jordan from Iraq did not get. In fact, the two
countries were so closely connected that Saddam’s middle daughter,
Raghad, is living there with her family.)
Turning to years of terrorist attacks on the people of Iraq,
notably the appalling upsurge now murdering scores of individuals all
across the country, she said most people believe that the United
States is behind those actions. They frankly don’t believe US
assertions that terrorists are responsible for the attacks. Not only do
Iraqis in Iraq support this view, Iraqis in the diaspora, especially in
the United States, hold to this belief as well, she said.
Additionally, my contact said al-Qaeda, America’s all-purpose
villain, simply consisted of people and their weapons who had been
smuggled into Iraq in 2003. After the destruction of the Iraqi
government and the dissolution of the army and police force, there
were no internal controls nor was there any authority acting to seal
the country’s borders. Never airtight, they were now wide open to
anyone who wanted to enter, or leave.
My informant also told me many Iraqi Sunnis believe that the
groups harming buildings, installations, and people there are all
supported by Iran, another American bogeyman. Some of this could
well be the result of the Sunni lamenting their loss of power. In the
past, although they formed only about a third of the population, they
dominated the nearly two-thirds that was Shii (Source: CIA World
Factbook). My contact added that this was likely true. The Sunni in
the West are behind the killings, kidnappings, and bomb attacks so
that they might regain power. Certainly, Barack Obama believes this.
After an October 2013 Washington meeting with Nuri al-Maliki, the
American president asserted that Iraq needed an election law “so
Iraqis can express their differences politically instead of using
violence.”255
The new Iraqi government, my contact believed, was an
American puppet and was doing all it possibly could to destabilize
the country. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s administration has so
poisoned the well that many Sunni abroad believed that the Shii are
at the bottom of Iraq’s troubles.
Another Iraqi, a Christian, told me on October 5, 2013, that she
had contacted several relatives still in Iraq on my behalf. They told
her that they believed the source of all the current violence in the
country can be laid at the feet of domestic terrorists rather than
foreign fighters, in particular a group known (in translation) as “The
Band of People of the Right.” It was the old story, she said, of the
Sunni versus the Shii. They also asserted the Iraqi government,
installed with American help, is astonishingly corrupt, with the current
prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, seeking an unprecedented third term
to which he is not entitled by the constitution. In the meantime, she
noted, al-Maliki is sending fighters and weapons to President Bashar
al-Assad in Syria. Finally, in addition to expressing amazement at
other Iraqis’ refusal to cooperate with my research, she suggested
that, based on her knowledge and her relatives’ comments, Iran is
the big winner in the “Iraqi Stakes.”
Complicating affairs, my August 25 interlocutor, a Shia, asserted
that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, hand in glove with Israel, supports
the Sunni and their actions. The Saudis, as noted elsewhere in this
work, did yeoman service in recruiting, training, and financing the
Afghans and the Arab-Afghans.
The Saudis, being fundamentalist Sunni (Wahhabis), appear, I
was told, to be doing all in their power to incite religious conflict in
the region, conceivably as a way to weaken Arab states and their
efforts to form more democratic governments. Certainly, the
Wahhabis despise the Shii, and are behind, I was told, outrageous
threats to exhume from his grave in Najaf, Iraq, Ali ibn Abi Tallib, one
of the four “rightly guided caliphs” who succeeded the Prophet
Mohammed. He was the first Imam of Shiism and was assassinated
in AD 66. Syrian rebels, strongly supported by the Saudis, have also
suggested they would imperil the Damascus shrine of Zainab Bint
Ali, granddaughter of the Prophet Mohammed and a revered figure
for Shia Muslims.

Summary

Following the US attack on and occupation of Iraq, the American

Embassy in Baghdad, along with the Department of Defense, and
the Central Intelligence Agency created sectarian, vigilante militias,
placing them under the control of Iraqi politicians. The US
Ambassador, John Negroponte; the Political Counselor, Robert S.
Ford; Ford’s deputy, Henry Ensher; and the US Army’s Special
Forces recruited and used death squads to strike at Iraqi resistance
leaders.
The American aim in Iraq was divide et impera. With a goal of
spreading a sectarian hatred between the three major Iraqi groups,
Kurds, Shiite, and Sunnis, American agents, ably assisted by Israeli
ones, executed Sunni and Shiite leaders while blowing up their
mosques and setting off explosives in their communities. Congress
gave the Agency $3 billion to create paramilitary units run by militias.
The object was to kill “nationalists, other opponents of the US
occupation, and thousands of civilian Baathists.”
Additionally, and as part of this process, just as it had done in
the Balkans, the American government convoyed terrorists into the
country and supplied them with weapons. According to Al Jazeera,
combatants infiltrated Iraq from Syria to engage in terror bombings.
As in similar events in Afghanistan and Bosnia, these included
Egyptians, Syrians, Sudanese, and Saudis. Also among the Arab-
Afghans, according to Iraqi government spokesman Laith Kubba,
were those from safe havens in Jordan, Syria, and the United Arab
Emirates. An Iraqi army officer noted that Yemenis, Jordanians,
Sudanese, and Syrians had been captured. US soldiers also seized
Afghans, Pakistanis, Lebanese, Algerians, Saudis, Syrians,
Egyptians, Yemenis, and Libyans. The Israeli press linked a retired
Israeli officer to covert sales of weaponry to terrorist groups in
Mesopotamia. An Iraqi parliamentarian charged the occupying
coalition with secretly masterminding terrorist attacks and organizing
terror squads. The Coalition Provisional Authority (the ad hoc
occupation government) allowed al-Qaeda financial figures to move
large, untraceable amounts of gold in and out of Iraq. An American-
sponsored airlift flew many mujahideen out of Afghanistan,
presumably into Iraq and other countries. Many Legionnaires had
moved to northern Iraq, and former Secretary of State Colin Powell,
another retired general, stated that the head of al-Qaeda in Iraq had
fought in Afghanistan with the CIA.
Saudi Arabia continued with its successful efforts, perfected in
Afghanistan, to create a culture of terror. The kingdom is still
supporting the al-Qaeda terrorist groups in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.
Moreover, the House of Saud has been clandestinely shipping small
arms, explosives, anti-armor, and antiaircraft weapons into and
through Iraq from the Saudi city of Nakheib and the Ar Ar border
crossing. According to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the
Saudis have been attacking his country through Syria.
H
owever, please note that Central Asia, the Balkans, and Iraq were
not the only places the Arab-Afghan Legion was employed.
As Andrew Kreig wrote, “The North African street protests
provided an opportunity to overthrow Libya’s longtime director,
Moammar Gaddafi. Players included his opponents, such as radical
militants as well as Gulf monarchies and NATO allies.”256
According to Peter Dale Scott:

It also seems quite clear that Western intelligence (at

least British) found al-Qaeda itself to be a useful ally
against a common enemy—the secular dictator,
Muammar Gadhafi of Libya. As the French authors
Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquié have
pointed out, Gadhafi’s Libya in 1998 asked
INTERPOL (International Criminal Police
Organization) to issue an arrest warrant for Osama bin
Laden. They argue that bin Laden and al-Qaeda
elements were collaborating with the British MI5 [sic;
MI5 is the Security Service, dealing with
counterintelligence and focusing on internal threats] in
an anti-Gadhafi assassination plot.257
 “A leader in the plot was Anas al-Liby, who was later given
political asylum in Great Britain despite suspicions that he was a
high-level al-Qaeda operative. He was trained in terrorism by the
triple agent Ali Mohamed, while Mohamed was still on the payroll of
the US Army.”258 Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed says al-Liby was more
than a suspected high-level al-Qaeda operative. He had been on the
FBI’s list of Most Wanted Terrorists for allegedly helping blow up US
embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. The American government
offered $25 million for his arrest and conviction.259
How did Syed al-Liby escape such a dragnet? Ahmed makes it
clear: “…Anglo-American intelligence agencies have compromised
and, indeed, entirely blocked investigations to apprehend Osama bin
Laden and al-Qaeda…[so as] to pursue terrorist operations
perceived to be within Anglo-American strategic interests….They
clearly believe that the end justifies the means…”260 Continuing, he
questions the public statements that al-Qaeda is a group to be
apprehended and removed from circulation. Rather, he suggests that
for British intelligence employing terrorists is fairly routine.261
Al-Liby wasn’t a unique case. Another Libyan, Khalifa Hiftar, was
a former general who sought refuge in the United States and,
according to the Washington Post, “apparently” became a citizen,
voting in 2008 and 2009. Hiftar, residing in CIA-friendly Fairfax
County, Virginia, sold his $612,000 house and moved to Libya in
2011, just as the American effort at “regime change” began. Once
there, he led rebel forces against the legitimate government, earning
accolades for his heroism. Now, Hiftar, after months of plotting, is
again working on a new government for Libya, using militia units to
attack “Islamist” rivals defending the current administration. In the
multicolumn article, the Post somehow omitted the origin of
resources enabling a “refugee” and his family to exist and buy an
expensive house. He was most likely on Langley’s payroll, hardly a
rarity in such cases. 262
Although President Barack H. Obama had declared in a speech
in Accra, Ghana, in 2009, that “Africa’s future is up to Africans,” it
was really American policy toward Africa, as elsewhere in the world,
to remove political leaders that the United States considered
“inconvenient”. Those who opposed or who were at odds with US
plans, such as socialists, communists, and “Islamists” became
legitimate targets of Yankee weapons.
On March 19, 2011, Obama began combat against Libya without
securing a Congressional declaration of war, as the federal
Constitution requires. He also refused to notify Congress that
American forces were engaged in combat operations, in violation of
the War Powers Act, adopted in response to the reckless,
unconstitutional actions by the president in going to war in
Vietnam.263
The US and NATO air and sea attacks on Libyan soldiers and
civilians also included actions by intelligence and special forces
designed to disrupt the country’s stability. The American president
provided weapons and funds to alleged “rebels” to further destabilize
Libya.
The British, the French, and the Americans finally succeeded on
October 20, 2011, when Libyan President Gaddafi was murdered.
This followed eight months of a NATO bombing campaign coupled
with internal warfare using outside fighters affiliated with al-Qaeda.
Concurrently, the neocolonialists fomented a rebellion supported by
foreign weapons and intelligence agencies.
Recently, George F. Will, a conservative columnist writing in the
Washington Post, put this situation in perspective.264 He said:
“Today, Libya is an anarchy of hundreds of rival militias…This
humanitarian imperialism [“to protect Libyans…from the supposed
threat of genocide…”] quickly became an exercise in regime change.
But the prolonged attempt to assassinate Gaddafi from the air made
no provision for a replacement regime.” Citing Alan J. Kuperman at
the University of Texas, Will noted:

Gaddafi did not initiate violence against peaceful

protesters. Rather protesters initiated the violence that
engulfed four cities. Media reports “exaggerated the
death toll by a factor of 10, citing ‘more than 2,000
deaths’ in Benghazi during the initial days of the
uprising, whereas Human Rights Watch (HRW) later
 documented only 233 deaths across all of Libya in
that period.” Furthermore, when the United States and
a few other NATO nations intervened in March 2011,
“Gaddafi already had regained control of most of
Libya, while the rebels were retreating rapidly toward
Egypt. Thus the conflict was about to end, barely six
weeks after it started, at a toll of about 1,000 dead.”

This Didn’t Always Work So Well

According to CNN, “Officially, the US presence [in Benghazi]

was a diplomatic compound under the State Department’s
purview.”265 But, “the larger US grouping was in a secret outpost
operated by the CIA.” Further, like the Agency’s consulate at Jeddah,
most there didn’t work for State. When thirty people were evacuated
from this “diplomatic compound” in Benghazi on September 11,
2012, twenty of them were CIA employees. The CNN piece simply
provided more cover for Langley, without answering any real
questions as to why the spooks were on the loose. For example, it
stated that the “Agency had two objectives in Libya: countering the
terrorist threat that emerged as extremists poured into the unstable
country, and helping to secure the flood of weapons after the fall of
Moammar Gaddafi that could have easily been funneled to
terrorists.” Yet, there was no real hard news provided for just why
there was a “terrorist threat” or where this “flood of weapons” came
from in the first place. The article did mention comments by
Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA): “There are questions that must be
asked of the CIA and this must be done in a public way.” Wolf noted
that he’d been getting calls from CIA officials who wanted to talk, but
“If you’re fifty years old and have two kids in college, you’re not going
to give up your career by coming in [and telling the true story]…give
them the protection so they can’t be fired [for talking out of school].”

Lacking in CNN’s Report Was Any Sort of Background to the

Situation.
 The United States of America had been providing more than two
thousand al-Qaeda fighters with arms and other support in parts of
eastern Libya. The guerillas were “Salafists,” a militant, Sunni
extremist group, similar to the puritanical, reactionary form of Islam
practiced in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and to an extent, in the UAE.
Those states backed NATO’s efforts to unseat Moammar Gaddafi’s
secular government. The anti-Gaddafi combatants came from
Afghanistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, and
Tunisia, as reliable Libyan journalists stated. [These were the same
origins and fit the same pattern as the warriors who had fought in
Afghanistan and Bosnia and Iraq.] The same reporters were present
when French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy met with
representatives of the revolutionary National Transitional Council.
Levy reportedly told the Council that, if they wanted more aid from
NATO, “they should establish relations with Israel.” Later, the Council
announced that, if it won the war against the government, Libya
would establish diplomatic ties to Israel. Additionally, Levy reputedly
convinced French President Nicolas Sarkozy to be the first to
recognize the revolutionaries and send French forces to help
them.266

Here They Come Again (With More Help)

Patrick Martin, writing in Global Research, observed that the

difference in manpower between the “diplomatic” and CIA
compounds was caused by the main thrust of the US government’s
plans for Libya.267 In 2011, it was overthrow Gaddafi. In 2012 and
later, it was recruit soldiers and supply weapons to Muslim fanatics
trying to overthrow the government of Syria. Martin, quoting the
World Socialist Web Site, stated that Libyan extremists comprised
the largest part of the combatants active in Syria, making up twelve
hundred to fifteen hundred of about thirty-five hundred men sent to
Syria from great distances, such as Chechnya and Pakistan.
Essentially, they were more Arab-Afghans, in many instances
“veterans of guerrilla fighting in Afghanistan, either as part of the US-
backed war against the Soviet army in the 1980s, or in the ongoing
war against the US-NATO occupation regime established in 2001…
The CIA had mobilized Islamic fundamentalists, including veterans of
the al-Qaeda and Taliban war in Afghanistan, to fight Gaddafi, and
was recruiting them for a new war against Assad.”
What CNN likewise omitted was what was carried in the
waynemadsenreport.com: 268

The flow into Libya of “terrorists” and weapons came

as the direct result of US government actions. The “El
Salvador” option has also been used in Libya, where
al-Qaeda irregulars, drawn from Iraq, Afghanistan,
and Yemen, have been carrying out murders of Libyan
civilians, especially black Libyans and African guest
workers, on behalf of the Libyan rebel government.
Some of the murders of civilians have been blamed on
pro-Muammar Qaddafi forces but they have, in fact,
been carried out by al-Qaeda units fighting with the
rebels and are being directed by CIA and MI6
advisers. Ford [then US Ambassador to Syria] has
been providing advice to the Libyan rebels on how to
carry out their death squad attacks.

CNN also didn’t report that the US government had sent a

Blackwater (later Xe, later Academi, later Constellis) veteran to help
the insurgents fight against the lawful governments of Libya and
Syria. As Business Insider reported March 2 20, 2012, Blackwater’s
former director, Jamie F. Smith, had provided security for anti-
government Libyan National Transitional Council members.
Additionally, he had helped train rebel soldiers after imposition of the
“no-fly zone” in March 2011. Smith, later chief executive of SCG
International, another private security company, stated that his
former firm consisted of Defense Department and CIA personnel.
The article, by Michael Kelley (based on an Al Akhbar English
report), noted that Smith “allegedly” participated in the murder of
Moammar Gaddafi. Blackwater’s one-time director had worked in
Libya with Fred Burton, an official at STRATFOR, a private
intelligence gathering organization. In the 1990s, Burton had been
Deputy Chief of the US State Department’s counterterrorism section
in the Bureau of Diplomatic Security. Burton claimed that Smith had
been in Syria collecting information on the opposition to President
Bashar al-Assad. Smith had also been meeting with Syrian
insurgents in Turkey. The two had been receiving “air” support from
then-Representative Sue Myrick (R-NC), outspokenly anti-Arab and
anti-Muslim, who had been a member of the House Permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence.
The story told by what former CIA official Ray McGovern calls
the “fawning corporate Media” was that Libya, like Iraq, like Iran, like
Syria is/was a “bad” country. Maximilian Forte summarized the
stories used to justify American, British, and French attacks on that
North African state.269 Under the guise of NATO’s “responsibility to
protect” the people there, the people with the highest Human
Development Index (a UN measurement of well-being) in all Africa,
Western military forces destroyed the country. Now, the Index only
records the steep collapse of all indicators of well-being.
One author, Phil Greaves, writing for Global Research, cited
“Capitol Hill speculation” that US agencies working in Benghazi were
aiding the movement of surface-to-air missiles out of Libya, through
Turkey, and into the possession of Syrian extremists. Greaves added
that the CIA had been “consulting” with Qatar’s structure of arms
smugglers, run out of the Emir’s palace. The intent was to ensure
that the Salafist fanatics in Syria had enough guns from Libya’s
stores. Alluding to a November 2011 London Telegraph story,
Greaves noted that one of the leaders fighting Gaddafi, Abdel Hakim
Belhadj, seen as the local al-Qaeda/LIFG (Libyan Islamic Fighting
Group) commander, had visited Turkey, meeting with members of
the Free Syrian Army. Principal topics at the conference were
sending “money and weapons” to the insurgents and Libyan training
of Syrian combatants. Additionally, the piece cited a Fox News report
from December 2012 that the arms shipments began in October
2011, following the murder of Gaddafi. Originating at a number of
ports and continuing weekly, the goods sometimes moved in six-
hundred-ton batches. Fox News’ source affirmed that the arms,
along with combatants to use them, were definitely going to Syria
and that the US government knew everything. This was not
unsurprising since there was a citation to a March 30, 2011, New
York Times report that the CIA had been operating in Libya “for
weeks.” The British paper, Independent, published an account of
Obama’s seeking Saudi arms for the Libyan “insurgents.” The
American president also persuaded Qatar and the United Arab
Emirates to send weapons to Benghazi, asking them to send non-US
weapons to allow “for plausible deniability.” This violated Obama’s
own “No-Fly” Zone and arms embargo policy, not to mention the US
Constitution and International Law. Greaves also speculated that the
arms traveling to Syria began about the time protests against Bashar
al-Assad started, back in the spring of 2011. He suggested that this
was when Qatar, with the knowledge and assistance of the CIA,
began organizing weapons shipments from Libya to Syria.270
As Forte notes:

We were told that Muammar Gaddafi threatened mass

atrocities, even “genocide” against Benghazi. We
were told that he fueled his troops with Viagra, so they
could go on a systematic spree of mass rape. We
were told that he used the air force against unarmed,
peaceful protesters. We were told that he imported
African mercenaries to butcher his opposition. And we
were told that our military intervention would save
lives and was designed to protect civilians.

The problem was that none of that was true.

This was instead a series of “incubator babies” stories (Recalling
the false Iraqi “atrocities” conjured up by a member of the Kuwaiti
ruling family, coached by PR firm Hill and Knowlton, to justify George
H. W. Bush attacking Iraq): exaggerate and repeat such fabrications
often enough and some of it might seep into public “consciousness”
as if it were fact.271
Why not? After all, Americans really are pig-stupid and badly
educated.272
 It surely worked. Maximilian C. Forte had their measure in
Slouching Towards Sirte, NATO’s War on Libya and Africa273. It
wasn’t a war over oil, although that was a factor, nor about saving
lives (more were killed with intervention than without). It was about
control, about militarizing Africa.274
Forte argues in his Preface that

[I]t is part of an ongoing contest between US power (in

decline) against the interests of China, Russia, and
other ascendant regional hegmons [sic], to secure
access to both material and political resources in an
effort to stall the impending demise of the United
States while making the world safe for transnational
capital. Finally, the intervention was an attempt to
control the directions of uprisings in a region of critical
geopolitical and economic significance to the United
States and Europe. Libya, once prosperous,
independent and defiant, is now faced with ruin,
dependency and prolonged civil strife, precisely at a
time of extreme political and economic volatility and
uncertainty in the world system. This is the kind of
Libya that has finally met with Western approval.275

Cui Bono?

The media, such as Al Jazeera and CNN, parroted US

government lies about Libya and Moammar Gaddafi. Yet, they
concealed the fact that among the terrorists fighting the legitimate
government were foreign combatants, including military aircraft and
soldiers from the repressive emirate of Qatar.276 In arguing for an
immediate attack on Libya, newly appointed US Secretary of State
John Kerry portrayed himself as “protector of Muslims,” just as Italian
dictator Benito Mussolini had done while riding his horse into Tripoli
on March 20, 1937. A quick, successful war, supposedly waged for
humanitarian purposes, would help the world to forget the distasteful
image of American aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan. There would
be no time for Congressional debate, awkward questions, or
criticism.277
A major US goal was to capitalize on the possible gains
resulting from intervention on the pretext of supporting Libyan street
protests similar to those in Tunisia, Egypt, and other countries. The
American government could obtain increased access for US
corporations to Libyan reconstruction funds, block any Russian or
Chinese attempts to secure Libyan oil contracts, install a “friendly”
administration, and increase the presence of the newly established
AFRICOM (US Africa Command),278 This tactic would diminish the
power of the African Union and remove the possibility of a Libyan-led
substitute. Other aims were to “politically stabiliz[e] the North African
region in a way that locked out opponents of the US; and drafting
other nations to undertake the work of defending and advancing US
political and economic interests, under the guise of humanitarianism
and protecting civilians.”279 Like Saddam Hussein, Slobodan
Milosevic, and Bashar al-Assad, Moammar Gaddafi had run afoul of
the United States and Europe: the assassinated Libyan leader had
espoused a concept more deadly than supplying weapons to help
the Irish Republican Army fight British imperialism. His goal was “a
central Libyan leadership role in an integrated Africa.”280
One result? Sirte, Gaddafi’s hometown, “used to be a beautiful
city, one of the most beautiful in Libya. Today it looks like (postwar)
Leningrad, Gaza or Beirut.”281 In just seventeen days, NATO air
raids had murdered more than two thousand Libyans in Sirte.282
Further, it wasn’t just Sirte that was destroyed—it was the whole of
Libya. Thomas Gaist, in Global Research, noted that the US and
European forces had flown more than twenty-six thousand sorties
against Libyan targets, “carpet-bombing” Tripoli and Sirte. On the
ground, Western lawbreakers relied on “Islamist and al-Qaeda
elements as proxies to help conquer Libya, devastating the country
in the process.”283 That devastation was calculated and long
planned.
At a Group of Eight (France, United States, United Kingdom,
Russia, Germany, Japan, Italy, Canada) meeting in L’Aquila, Italy in
mid-2009, newly elected President Barack Obama would not meet
with Gaddafi, a man George H.W. Bush had brought into the US
sphere. As Forte noted, this “was a major shift in stated US policy.”
Obama’s “administration [proved] more severe toward Libya than
Bush’s, with little awareness by the US public and with all of the
‘strategic ambiguity’ that Obama swore he would eliminate.”284
Under Obama’s policy, Libya was turned into an arsenal of
fascism. With weapons shipped into the country by Europe, the
United States, and the repressive Gulf monarchies, added to Libya’s
own supply, there were more arms in the Libyan Jamahiriya285 than
in the entire arsenal of the British army. Disturbingly, as many as
three thousand surface-to-air missiles disappeared following the
assassination of Gaddafi. Altogether, more than one million tons of
Libyan weapons were looted by insurgents after Gaddafi’s murder.
Worse, according to Akhbar Alaan TV, Libyan extremists had been
shipping these weapons to Syrian terrorists for more than a year.
Turkey was the middle man in this deal. Qatari C-17 cargo planes
(sold by the United States) used their seventy-ton payloads to fly
armaments from eastern Libya and deliver them to the Turkish-
Syrian frontier and the savages waiting for them. Some of the arms
were also flown to Jordan, whose former king, Hussein I, had long
been in the pay of the CIA. From there, they were then, presumably,
trucked across the line to Syria.286
The British-Libyan merchant of death, Abdul Basit Haroun,
asserted that not all the arms to Syria went by air. He claimed, in a
statement to the Reuters news service, that a great deal of weaponry
was off-loaded from ships that had sailed from Libya. True to their
clandestine nature, “guns for the death of Syria” were hidden in the
midst of humanitarian aid. Except, there wasn’t much stealth to the
nature of these deliveries. Haroun, a brigade commander during the
insurgency, declared that the authorities knew and that “everybody
knows” about the shipments.287

It’s All about Control

 The real US goal was controlling and directing the “Arab Spring”
in such a way as to derail and destroy the people’s legitimate
aspirations for justice and democracy. As Forte puts it:

US strategy became one of steering events towards

the preservation of hierarchies in allied states which
were critical to the US either for their oil resources
(Saudi Arabia), their provision of military bases
(Bahrain), or their subservience to US
“counterterrorism” strategy (Yemen). At the same time
it encouraged rebellion in “adversary” states,
especially those with friendly or close ties to Iran
(Libya, Syria), while controlling rebellion and
maintaining military dominance in others (Egypt).288

In Slouching Toward Sirte, Maximilian C. Forte states that the

British government had previously tried to murder Moammar
Gaddafi. In March 1996, when Gaddafi was traveling in a motorcade
through Sirte, MI6, used and paid an al-Qaeda cell, the Libyan
Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) to place a bomb under what they
believed was his car. Abd al-Muhaymen, in charge of the attack, had
trained and fought in Afghanistan with the mujahideen against the
Soviets, making full use of his access to CIA and British intelligence
officials, who had helped create the “muj.”289 Shayler told the court
at his trial for violating the Official Secrets Act that MI6 had also
backed the assassination plot and had worked with the LIFG. MI6
officers Richard Bartlett and David Watson had overall responsibility
for the action.290 Continuing, Forte refers to “credible reports” from
“French intelligence” (which I presume was DGSE, Directorate
General for External Security) that not only al-Qaeda and LIFG were
connected at that time but also that MI6 turned over large sums of
money to an al-Qaeda cell.291 The United Kingdom also granted
asylum to “Libyan Afghans” who then issued propaganda statements
from their refuge in Blighty,292 declaring Gaddafi’s government “an
apostate regime that has blasphemed against God” and asserting
that it must be overthrown.293 One leader of the LIFG named al-
Hasidi admitted that he had fought in Afghanistan. Additionally, he
noted that his guerrillas had ties to al-Qaeda.294
Egypt also helped arm the Libyan “insurgents.” The Wall Street
Journal of March 17, 2011, (after Mubarak’s overthrow) reported that
the Egyptian military, according to US and Libyan sources, was
sending weapons to arm Gaddafi’s enemies, who at that time were
losing ground to government forces. According to Hani Souflakis, a
Libyan businessman, the Egyptian military council wanted to keep a
low profile on its weapons shipments. “Americans have given the
green light to the Egyptians to help. The Americans don’t want to be
involved in a direct level, but the Egyptians wouldn’t do it if they
didn’t get the green light,” he said. Unnamed “Western” and Libyan
officials apparently asserted that the United States wanted to stay
out of the limelight because its past disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan
had created such anger and suspicion.
Further, unlike the United States, Moammar Gaddafi obtained a
March 1998 International Criminal Police (INTERPOL) warrant for
CIA asset Osama bin Laden’s arrest.295 Forte quite rightly
questioned US plans for the overthrow of Gaddafi, noting that, if the
fake uprising, against a “dictator” whom “all Libyans hated,” was
really “popular” and “national,” how was it that there was such
unflagging resistance in Sirte and elsewhere?296
LIFG’s origins are not surprising. Mujahideen veterans who had
fought the Soviets in Afghanistan founded it in 1995. Although the
group had first organized in Afghanistan, its members, upon their
return to the Jamahiriya “reasoned” that Libya had become corrupt
and impious. They believed “regime change” was needed. They
began with a series of assassinations of policemen and soldiers, a
tactic now much used in Iraq, with many suicide bombers there
coming from the Libyan city of Derna.297
Go back an additional ten years and you will find more of
Gaddafi’s antagonists. In Peter Dale Scott’s previously cited article,
the same old snakes then crawled out of the ground.298 As noted in
the Paris-based African Confidential newsletter (January 5, 1989,
edition), Israel and the United States had established bases in
neighboring Chad and other “nearby” but unnamed countries to train
two thousand Libyan rebels.299
There were others gunning for Gaddafi. US records demonstrate
that Saudi, Egyptian, Moroccan, and Israeli money fueled the Chad-
based clandestine attack on Libya. The Saudis kicked in $7 million to
one opposition group, “the National Front for the Salvation of Libya”
(also backed by French intelligence and the CIA). The United States
tried and failed to involve the Egyptians. However, after the military
overthrew President Hosni Mubarak, Egypt became more helpful.300

Impenetrable Transparency

Demonstrating that Gaddafi was no longer in favor, the US

government refused all requests from the Libyan government to
send a high-level delegation there in 2009 to help celebrate the 1969
revolution’s fortieth anniversary. Although Gaddafi had personally
extended an invitation to the new American president, Obama “for
some reason could not come.” Obama also did not meet with
Gaddafi at the 2009 UN General Assembly meeting.301
“Regime change,” the tired mantra of the Bush administration,
“was one of the actual, immediate goals to which Obama himself
admitted” of his administration’s policy toward Libya. “Later,
according to the New York Times, Hillary Clinton publicly revealed
that the former CDA [Chargé d’Affaires] in Tripoli, Christopher
Stevens, was sent back to Libya in the early days of the 2011
‘revolution’ to covertly work with the insurgents in order to overthrow
Gaddafi.”302 Moreover, at the time, the CIA had been “interrogating,
recruiting, and/or imprisoning suspected radicals.”303 Kreig further
noted that Stevens, an Arabist (but, as I understand the term, not in
the sense of one who favors Arab interests and positions), “was
engaged in dangerous, ultrasecret efforts to facilitate radical Muslim
armed support for the rebel insurrection in Syria, a violation of public
US policy.”304
Moreover, Kreig observed that “The CIA [and] Brennan’s
counterterrorism office in the White House were engaged in
especially dangerous outreach to jihadists.” He cited World Net Daily
(WND), for additional details:

WND has filed numerous reports, quoting Middle East

security officials who describe the [US] mission in
Benghazi as a meeting place to coordinate aid for the
rebel-led insurgencies in the Middle East. Middle
Eastern security sources further described both the
US mission and nearby CIA annex in Benghazi as the
main intelligence and planning center for US aid to the
rebels that was being coordinated with Turkey, Saudi
Arabia and Qatar.

Many rebel fighters are openly members of terrorist

organizations, including al-Qaida. [sic]

Among the tasks performed inside the building was

collaborating with countries, most notably Turkey, on
the recruitment of fighters ‘including jihadists’ to target
Assad’s regime, the security officials said.305

Additionally, Forte, in Slouching Towards Sirte, commented that

Gaddafi often admonished the United States and Saudi Arabia for
supporting extremists. Forte added that the United States and the
United Kingdom had previously collaborated with Islamic radicals,
first in Afghanistan, then Bosnia and Kosovo. Many of them
subsequently targeted Gaddafi for assassination.306 Quoting the late
US Ambassador Christopher Stevens, killed at the CIA’s Benghazi
consulate in 2012, Forte said that Syria, demonstrating its opposition
to terrorism, had transferred over one hundred foreign fighters to
Libyan government custody in a two-year period, thus diminishing
the ranks of jihadists. The stream of these men from Libya to Iraq
and the blooded, trained veterans back to Libya diminished due to
Gaddafi’s cooperation with other states. “Worried that the fighters
returning from Afghanistan and Iraq could destabilize the regime, the
GOL [Government of Libya] has aggressively pursued operations to
disrupt foreign fighter flows, including more stringent monitoring of
air/land ports of entry, and blunt the ideological appeal of radical
Islam.”307
Obviously, Gaddafi had to die and Libya be destroyed because
he was creating problems for the Arab-Afghan Legion. He was
pulling them back from other countries, “disrupting their flow,” and
urging the United States to rein in Saudi Wahhabi fanaticism. He
warned Tom Lantos (D-CA), one of Israel’s strongest supporters in
Congress, about the threat to US interests posed by Saudi
Wahhabi/Salafi extremism.308
NATO’s bombing of Libya ended the day Gaddhafi was
murdered. Moreover, the speedy transfer of military and other
personnel to Libya since February 2011 underscored the intent of
Western states to use local protests as a smokescreen for
overthrowing Gaddafi and the al-Fateh revolution (the 1969 coup
against the King). As Forte wrote, the New York Times had reported
that, by the end of March 2011, CIA officials had been operating
inside Libya for “several weeks,” that is, it’s apparent that Agency
men landed in the Socialist Arab People’s Republic around February
2011, the time the so-called protests began. Dozens of British
special forces and MI6 officers joined them. Simultaneously, Barack
Obama secretly authorized the CIA to give weapons and “other
support,” that is, covert actions, to the Libyan insurgents. USAID (US
Agency for International Development, often viewed as a front for
CIA activities) had sent a team to Libya in early March.309
Martin Iqbal, writing in Global Research reported that NATO
admitted to bombing the Gaddafi’s convoy as it was moving near
Sirte the morning of October 20. American government sources
claimed that a US Predator drone had fired on the column as did
French warplanes. Iqbal also cited the Israeli intelligence news
organization, DEBKA, as recounting that its military contacts said
NATO Special Forces had located, captured, and shot Gaddafi. 310

Summary
 Central Asia, the Balkans, and Iraq were not the only places the
Arab-Afghan Legion was employed. The North African street
protests provided an opportunity to overthrow Libya’s longtime
director, Moammar Gaddafi. Players included his opponents, such as
radical militants, as well as Gulf monarchies and NATO allies. A
leader in the plot was Anas al-Liby, who was later given political
asylum in Great Britain despite suspicions that he was a high-level
al-Qaeda operative. He was trained in terrorism by the triple agent
Ali Mohamed while Mohamed was still on the payroll of the US Army.
The United States of America had been providing more than two
thousand al-Qaeda fighters with arms and other support in parts of
eastern Libya. These guerillas were “Salafists.” The anti-Gaddafi
combatants came from Afghanistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Egypt,
Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia, as reliable Libyan journalists stated.
These were the same origins and fit the same pattern as the warriors
who had fought in Afghanistan and Bosnia and Iraq.
“Justification” for American and European misadventures in
Libya came down to cock and bull stories concocted for the “fawning
corporate media,” such as

We were told that Muammar Gaddafi threatened mass

atrocities, even “genocide” against Benghazi. We
were told that he fueled his troops with Viagra, so they
could go on a systematic spree of mass rape. We
were told that he used the air force against unarmed,
peaceful protesters. We were told that he imported
African mercenaries to butcher his opposition. And we
were told that our military intervention would save
lives and was designed to protect civilians.

The problem was that none of that was true.311

A quick, successful war would help to heavily overpaint the
distasteful image of American aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan.
There would be no time for Congressional debate, awkward
questions, or criticism.
 The aim was to move against Libya as an apparent way station
on the road to Damascus. In 2011, it was overthrow Gaddafi. In 2012
and later, it was recruit soldiers and supply weapons to Muslim
fanatics trying to overthrow the government of Syria. The World
Socialist Web Site stated that Libyan extremists comprised the
largest part of the combatants active in Syria, making up twelve
hundred to fifteen hundred of about thirty-five hundred men sent to
Syria from great distances, such as Chechnya and Pakistan.
Essentially, they were more Arab-Afghans, in many instances
“veterans of guerrilla fighting in Afghanistan, either as part of the US-
backed war against the Soviet army in the 1980s, or in the ongoing
war against the US-NATO occupation regime established in 2001.”
The CIA had mobilized Islamic fundamentalists, including veterans of
the al-Qaeda and Taliban war in Afghanistan, to overthrow Gaddafi,
and then was recruiting them for a new war against Assad.
The flow into Libya of “terrorists” and weapons came as the
direct result of US government actions. The “El Salvador” option has
also been used in Libya. Al-Qaeda irregulars, drawn from Iraq,
Afghanistan, and Yemen, had been carrying out murders of Libyan
civilians, especially black Libyans and African guest workers, on
behalf of the Libyan rebel government. Some of the murders of
civilians have been blamed on pro-Gaddafi forces but they have, in
fact, been carried out by al-Qaeda units fighting with the rebels and
are being directed by Agency and MI6 advisers. Robert S. Ford (then
US Ambassador to Syria) had been providing advice to the Libyan
rebels on how to carry out their death squad attacks.
There was Capitol Hill speculation that US agencies working in
Benghazi were aiding the movement of surface-to-air missiles out of
Libya, through Turkey, and into the possession of Syrian extremists.
According to Akhbar Alaan TV, Libyan extremists had been shipping
these weapons to Syrian terrorists for more than a year. Turkey was
the middle man in this deal.
In May 2012, Syria’s UN envoy Bashar Ja’afari declared that
dozens of foreign fighters from Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Britain,
France [and] elsewhere had been captured or killed, and urged
Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey to stop their sponsorship of the
armed rebellion.[Yacoub, Khaled (May 9, 2012)].
Syria rebels kill 7, bomb explodes near UN monitors. (Reuters).
Syria’s UN ambassador says two Britons killed in Idlib. (BBC
News, May 17, 2012.)
Jihadist leaders and intelligence sources said foreign fighters
had begun to enter Syria only in February 2012. (Macleod,
Hugh; Flamand, Annasofie, May 13, 2012).
Iraq-style chaos looms as foreign jihadists pour into Syria. (The
Sunday New York Times.)
In June, it was reported that hundreds of foreign fighters, many
linked to al-Qaeda, had gone to Syria to fight against Assad.
(Jaber, Hala. June 17, 2012).
Jihadists pour into Syrian slaughter. (The Sunday New York
Times.)
In July, Iraq’s foreign minister again warned that members of al-
Qaeda in Iraq were seeking refuge in Syria and moving there to
fight. (Peel, Michael; Fielding-Smith, Abigail, July 5, 2012).
Iraq warns over al-Qaeda flux to Syria. (FT.com)
 According to the Associated Press, Foreign weapons sent to
rebels in Syria worry Iraq, September 26, 2013; Lara James.
Iraq’s Foreign Minister, Hoshyar Zebari, asserted that “foreign
intelligence” had confirmed that 10,000 foreigners were fighting
against the Syrian government.

Y
et, this was not the beginning. First in Egypt, then in Syria, American
and British intelligence services worked to overthrow men and
governments they didn’t like. First, there was that “socialist” Nasser,
president of Egypt, whom they tried to get rid of in 1956 and 1958.
When that failed, they took aim in the late 1950s at Syria for not
being anti-communist enough. Their means? They did what they do
so well—buying potential revolutionaries (as is being done today in
Thailand, the Ukraine, and Venezuela). Unfortunately for the plotters,
the Syrian intelligence officers didn’t stay bought and the coup failed.
(See the end of this book: “Let’s Wrap This Up, If We Can”).
Still, practice makes perfect. If, at first you don’t succeed, try, try
again.
Building on extensive experience, successful practice, and
perfected propaganda, used and refined in Afghanistan, the Balkans,
Iraq, and Libya, the United States, aided by repressive governments
in the region, again moved against the Syrian Arab Republic, using
its favorite cat’s paw, the Arab-Afghan Legion. The attack began, if
not in concert with the alleged “spontaneous” uprising in March 2011,
then not long afterward.
Indeed, in George Will’s Washington Post column of June 19,
2014, he flatly said, “The [NATO] intervention [in Libya] encouraged
peaceful protesters in Syria to use violence in the hope of attracting
an intervention. This increased the rate of killing there tenfold. And
since Gaddafi fell, sophisticated weapons from Gadhafi’s arsenal—
including up to fifteen thousand man-portable, surface-to-air missiles
unaccounted for as of 2012—leaked to radical Islamists throughout
the region.”

Train Those Terrorists!

 According to a News Pakistan Online article, the CIA had been
secretly training Syrian “rebels” since November 2012. Citing an
undated Los Angeles Times report, the account noted that the
Agency, along with US Special Operations forces, began instructing
Assad’s enemies in late 2012, just days after President Barack
Obama declared he would arm those opposing the Syrian
government. Preparing these terrorists for action included education
in the use of antitank and antiaircraft weapons at locations in Turkey
and at a US base in southwest Jordan. US Special Forces soldiers
chose the fighters to be trained while Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other
unnamed Arab states supplied the heavy weapons.312 The
Washington Post claimed that the Agency “has organized the
training effort.” Every month, the Post said, two hundred and fifty
fighters graduate from training programs supervised by the CIA’s
auxiliary army.313 As Reuters reported December 13, 2013,
American forces in Jordan now total at least fifteen hundred men.
Quoting the Obama White House, the news service said they “will
remain there until the security situation improves [and] they are no
longer needed.” The US military presence includes soldiers to
operate Patriot missile batteries and fly combat aircraft.
Conceivably, the Obama Administration had begun arms
shipments to the Syrian terrorist groups earlier than acknowledged.
CNN reported on August 1, 2013, that “Speculation on Capitol Hill
has included the possibility that US agencies operating in Benghazi
were secretly helping to move surface-to-air missiles out of Libya,
through Turkey, and into the hands of Syrian rebels [sic].”314 The
program further mentioned that the CIA was going to amazing
lengths to conceal its activities in Benghazi. Global Research, in a
piece by Brad Michelson, commented that the Benghazi “consulate”
was a secret CIA safehouse.315
Whatever the start date, the Legionnaires were marching.

And They Might Come Home!

 Citing a recent study, Global Research News reported May 22,
2013, that “between 2,000 and 5,500 foreign nationals are active in
Syria.” European Union (EU) counterterrorism officials asserted that
at least five hundred of these come from European countries,
including twenty from Germany. According to an interview with the
German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, German Interior Minister Hans-
Peter Friedrich claimed that some of these had even brought their
families to the Syrian war zone. Gilles de Kerchove, EU antiterror
head, further noted that Britain, France, and Ireland had the greatest
number of “militants” fighting the government of President Bashar al-
Assad. European government officials, Global Research went on to
say, are now worrying about the consequences of these foreign
legionnaires returning home.316 To misquote the post-World War I
song: How Ya Gonna Keep’em Down on the Farm, Once They’ve
Learned How to Bomb Paree?
On April 12, 2013, Global Research quoted a much higher figure
for “soldiers of fortune.” It reported the Russian Federal Drug Control
Service Director Viktor Ivanov as saying that 20,000 foreign
mercenaries were active in Syria and they were financed by
organized crime groups. Ivanov stated that they, and not the Taliban,
pose the greatest threat. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman
Alexander Lukashevich asserted earlier in April 2013 “that Syria was
turning into a ‘center of attraction’ for international terrorists.”317
According to the Washington Post, the US government also
shares this view. Unnamed “senior US intelligence officials said” that
thousands of combatants from outside Syria are streaming into the
country and that they will eventually go home, spreading their belief
systems and targeting Western institutions.318 The unidentified
sources also noted that the majority of the fighters came from the
Middle East and North Africa, with about seven hundred arriving
from Europe with “Western” passports. These same contacts went
on to relate that the volunteers (recruited, they claimed, through
Twitter and YouTube) would gain combat experience and
“indoctrination” and would then form “future terrorist cells and threats
much the way Afghanistan did in the 1980s.” More surprisingly, in the
light of fifty-two recruiting offices in the United States set up during
the Afghan war in the 1980s (see footnote 18, above), the
anonymous officials believed that there are no Syrian recruiting
efforts taking place in America because “of the distance between the
two countries.”
Later, the Washington Post reported more on the story of foreign
fighters in Syria.
Griff Witte, in a dispatch from London, asserted that “returnees
from the Syrian war, hardened and trained by their experiences in
battle, will seek to carry out terrorist attacks.” Citing the head of
Scotland Yard’s counterterrorism command, he wrote such strikes
are “almost inevitable.”319
Witte went on to quote unnamed sources (a Post specialty) as
claiming that there were more Britons fighting in Syria than had
fought in either Afghanistan or Iraq. These were “two other conflicts
that attracted [sic] radicalized young fighters from the West…”
According to the Post story, security officials in Washington and
Europe are “distressed.” James R. Clapper (Lt. General, USAF, ret.),
Director of National Intelligence, is reported as saying that the
[American] war in Syria had “attracted” approximately seven
thousand combatants from fifty countries and that one of the main
groups there [which the United States has been supporting] “aspires
to carry out an attack in the United States.”
Witte’s piece, apparently intended to keep the fear alive, noted
that the British were still anxious following the July 2005 London
transit bombings and were afraid that the radicals would return and
seek regime change at home. French Minister of the Interior Manuel
Valls was cited as saying that foreign fighters coming home
represented “the biggest threat that the country faces in the coming
years.” However, in an odd twist in the article, Margaret Gilmore, a
terrorism analyst with the Royal United Services Institute, was
quoted as saying the British government knows little about what is
actually happening in Syria.
Put in context and shorn of the propaganda needed to keep
people accepting increased limits on their freedom, Americans and
Europeans appear to be having second or third or fourth thoughts
about the wisdom of recruiting and training terrorists assigned to the
Arab-Afghan Legion. The Arab states apparently had the same fears
after the people they helped enlist for Afghanistan started to return
home. Governments, such as Saudi Arabia, had blocked them from
coming back, thus helping provide more “saddle tramps” for the
Legion. If the Americans and Europeans fear history repeating itself,
what will they do? Keep them out? Intern them? Or add them to
another division of the Legion?

Garbage about Garbage Trucks, Nonlethal Bombs, and

“Intelligence” Services

On the page opposite from Witte’s story was an article

headlined, “US resumes sending nonlethal aid to rebel-held areas in
Syria.” Anne Gearan wrote that, following radical “rebel” attacks on a
US warehouse, “ambulances, garbage trucks, generators, school
supplies and office equipment…are being delivered to civilian local
governments and charity groups…” According to State Department
spokesman Jen Psaki, “These deliveries are helping those local
groups provide essential services for the Syrian people and counter
violent extremists.” No explanation was given (or can be conceived
of) for needing garbage trucks and office materials in rebel-held
areas. Curiously, while talking about “nonlethal” provisions, Psaki
would not respond to questions about “ammunition, body armor, and
other direct battlefield supplies.”
Like those already seen in Afghanistan, the Muslim republics of
the USSR, the Balkans, Iraq, and Libya, the “insurgency” in Syria is
maintained by the “financial, logistical, and military support of
external players…[with] most of the…deaths…caused by foreign
terrorists from outside Syria…rebellion ‘leaders’ have been supplied
by recruiting programs run by the CIA, Britain’s MI6 [the Secret
Intelligence Service], Israel’s Mossad [external intelligence service],
and the French DGSE [external] intelligence service.” As is clear,
“The CIA has dusted off its old playbook from the Afghan
mujhaheddin [sic] war against the Soviet Union and is, once again,
relying on the Saudi ‘Al Qaeda’ database run jointly by Langley and
the Saudi Mukhbarat General Intelligence Directorate to drum up
personnel, money laundering facilities, and other logistics support for
Jihadists, including veterans of insurrections in Iraq, Libya,
Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, Chechnya, and Algeria, to enter and
fight in Syria.”320

The Ottoman Empire Strikes Back

Echoing Wayne Madsen’s remarks, the FARS News Agency

reported on March 26, 2013, that thousands of tons of arms and
ammunition have already been provided to Syrian “rebels.”321
Beginning in early 2012, the news agency related that Qatar, Saudi
Arabia, and Jordan flew weapons acquired in Croatia to Turkey,
which then delivered them by the truckload to insurgents attempting
to overthrow the legitimate Syrian government. The news service
quoted Hugh Griffiths of the Stockholm International Peace
Research Institute as saying that the enterprise is a “well-planned
and coordinated clandestine military logistics operation.” This is not
unsurprising since FARS stated that former CIA Director and retired
army general David H. Petraeus played a central role in setting up
this program, with additional input from other CIA officials as alleged
“consultants.” Commenting on the hundreds of weapons flights into
Turkey, Attila Kart, a member of the Turkish CHP (Republican
People’s Party), forming the main opposition to Prime Minister
Erdogan’s government, said “The use of Turkish airspace at such a
critical time, with the conflict in Syria across our borders, and by
foreign planes from foreign countries that are known to be central to
the conflict, defines Turkey as a party in the conflict.” Kart, according
to an Abu Dhabi English-language paper, the National, asserted that
sixteen Saudi Air Force planes delivered military goods or fighting
men to Ankara during the first four months of this year. The Saudis
had also sent an unknown number of aircraft making additional
deliveries in mid-August.322
On June 15, 2013, SANA (Syrian Arab News Agency) reported
Bulent Esinoglu, Deputy Chairman of Turkey’s Labor Party, as
saying that the CIA had recruited six thousand Arabs, Afghans, and
Turks to commit terrorist acts in Syria. Esinoglu added, it was said,
that Black Water [sic] had been paying extremely well for its
operatives to engage in murder and destruction in the Syrian Arab
Republic. [Erik Prince’s Blackwater, a US corporation notorious for
employing former American Special Forces and providing them as
mercenaries to foreign governments, changed its name to Xe
Services, then to Academi, and now Constellis. The name changes
came after repeated charges of murder, war crimes, and human
rights violation were laid at its door. It’s also an infamous private
security contractor providing mercenaries for use as security forces
by the US Department of State.] The Deputy Chairman continued,
saying that Turkey’s war against Syria is controlled by the United
States and Israel, thus transforming the Turkish armed forces into
mercenaries.
Hundreds more combatants came from the Agency’s war in the
Balkans. Eldar Kundakovic was one. A Bosnian Muslim from
Sandzak, he died fighting to break out Syrian insurgents from prison.
According to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, both covertly-
organized and funded CIA radio stations, he was one of many
individuals recruited from Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina,
Macedonia, Kosovo, and Albania. Pawns being used in a campaign
to overthrow the legitimate government of Syria, many had no idea
of the country’s location or how to get there. Often engaged by
Salafists, including some through intermediaries in Vienna, many
joined the al-Nusra Front, listed as a “terrorist” group by Washington.
The Salafists were seen as Saudi-funded “leftovers” who had
established themselves in Bosnia-Herzegovina during the 1992–
1995 US war against Serb and Bosnian-Serb forces.323
The status of some of these combatants may now have been
altered by changes in American foreign policy. On April 12, 2007,
BBC News announced that Bosnia was stripping about four hundred
former combatants of their citizenship. The piece’s author, Nicholas
Walton, wrote that Bosnian news media viewed the crackdown as
compliance with a US request to fight terrorism. Bosnia asserted it
was investigating their origins and how they came to settle in the
country. Their origins were clear enough. The Turks, Egyptians,
Syrians, Algerians, Tunisians, Sudanese, and Russians had all come
to Bosnia-Herzegovina after fighting in Afghanistan. The Arab-
Afghans joined the war in Bosnia, seeing it as a defense against a
Serbian attack on Islam. Their leaders stated that their actions had
“the tacit support of the international community.” Their settling in the
area was no mystery: after the war, many of them married local
women and took up residence throughout the country.

Balkan Links

On March 8, 2013, Richard Spencer, Middle East

Correspondent for the British paper Telegraph, filed a story sourced
by Jutarnji List [Morning Gazette], a Croat journal. In it, he said that
the British Foreign Secretary, William Hague, had provided more
support than previously thought for the terrorists fighting the Syrian
government. Despite politicians claiming that Britain was providing
only “nonlethal” assistance and training, the article recorded that
weapons came from Britain, as well as several other European
countries. British military advisors, along with American and French
ones, were also operating in lands neighboring Syria, instructing
rebel leaders. In addition, Americans were offering aid in securing
chemical weapons inside Syria. (Perhaps this aid guaranteed rebel
control of the poison gas that America, the United Kingdom, France,
and Israel insisted was used by the legitimate government.) First
spotted by arms expert Eliot Higgins, the “nonlethal” aid consisted of
rocket launchers, recoilless guns, and M79 antitank weapons. The
article included unattributed statements from Western officials to the
New York Times that Saudi Arabia supplied the funds to buy the
arms and that Turkish and Jordanian International Air Cargo planes
delivered them.324
Patrick Henningsen, a 21st Century Wire writer, added more
information. On March 10, 2013, in “Open War Crimes: US and
British-Backed Weapons Airlift from Croatia to Terrorists in Syria,” he
noted that “NATO and the Gulf States initial destabilization plans for
overturning the government of Syria” were behind schedule.325
Failing in their attempt to duplicate their previous Libyan success,
they apparently became committed to a long, drawn-out ground war.
Because arming insurgents directly doesn’t look good to the public,
Henningsen suspected that the British were transferring chemical
weapons stocks from Libya to terrorists in Syria, with Qatar footing
the bill. The idea was that the alleged rebels would use them and
blame the action on Bashar al-Assad. The next step was war
matériel—seventy-five planeloads of military weapons. Three
thousand tons of rifles, bullets, and hand grenades, paid for by Saudi
money, was a major windfall for the alleged “Free Syrian Army,” or
the “Syrian Rebels,” or the “Syrian Opposition.” These were not just
war surplus, but UK and other European arms, whose supply the
United States organized.
Croatia, one of the participants in the war against Serbia, had
worked with the Americans to bring this about, meeting with US
officials in 2012 and suggesting that arms be moved into Syria from
and through its territory. (Henningsen cited the New York Times of
Feb. 25, 2013, which based its story on “anonymous” interviews with
US officials.) The details were somewhat embarrassing. Ignoring and
violating the European Union Arms Embargo, the United Kingdom
used its soldiers and support staff in Jordan to distribute these
weapons over the Hashemite frontier to Deraa (in southern Syria,
near the Jordan border), to Aleppo [Halab], and Idlib. This began in
the autumn of 2012.
Foreign Policy, on March 29, 2013, carried an article by John
Reed, providing additional information on Jordan’s involvement with
Croatia in supplying heavy weapons to anti-Assad “insurgents” in
Syria. According to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting
Project (OCCRP), a nonprofit association of investigative centers
and investigative media, the Croats sold two hundred and thirty tons
of rocket and grenade launchers, field artillery, mortars and
ammunition in December 2012 to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
That sale, set forth in UN trade statistics, was the largest in Croatian
history. Although Croatia denied participation in what the article
asserted was a New York Times–reported CIA pipeline to Syrian
“rebels” (March 2012), the OCCRP said that a variety of Yugoslav-
designed weapons began appearing in pictures of rebel fighters not
long after the transaction. Foreign Policy noted Croatian denials of
its arms sales. Using specious reasoning, the Republic of Croatia
claimed that the weapons transactions didn’t violate the European
Union’s embargo on providing arms to combatants. It had simply
peddled the weaponry to Jordan, not a belligerent power in Syria.
Besides, the Croats argued, the armaments were simply surplus, left
over from the 1990s Balkan wars.

Extra Help

Henningsen added that the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel

was reporting uniformed Americans engaged in training Syrian
insurgents and Jordanian intelligence officers at unnamed locations
in the Hashemite Kingdom. Additionally, Henningsen cited Real
Syrian News (no date) as stating large cargo planes were traveling
from France to Jordan, supposedly carrying “aid and medical
supplies” for refugees. What eighty-five French military staff were
doing on-board one of those flights has yet to be clarified. It was also
unclear if the “aid and medical supplies” were just that or if they
included something a bit more dangerous than sharp needles.
Continuing, Henningsen opined that it is still unknown what Jordan
has been given or been promised for its help in fomenting a regional
war.
Henningsen also quoted Izzat al-Shahbandar, an aide to Iraqi
premier Nuri al-Maliki, as saying that the same terrorists still
engaged in murder in his country are also fighting the Syrian
government. Al-Shahbandar had been speaking to the New York
Times and had said that these al-Qaeda operatives, whose names
they knew through coordination with al-Assad’s government, were
engaged in crimes in both countries.326
Investigative journalist Wayne Madsen reported in September
2011, at the beginning of the effort to overthrow the Syrian
government, that the US Ambassador to Syria, Robert S. Ford, “is
the key State Department official who has been responsible for
recruiting Arab ‘death squads’ from al-Qaeda-affiliated units in
Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and Chechnya to fight against Syrian
military and police forces in embattled Syria.”327 Earlier, Ford had
learned his trade as Political Counselor at the American embassy in
Baghdad when John Negroponte was ambassador. Negroponte had
been a principal figure in the secret program to arm the Nicaraguan
Contras and back brutal paramilitary units in Honduras during the
1980s. Madsen’s narrative continued, recounting how Negroponte
had ordered Ford to follow Central American death squad practice,
this time using Iraqi Shii irregulars and Kurdish Peshmerga
paramilitary forces, to assassinate, kidnap, and torture Iraqi freedom
fighter leaders in both Iraq and in Syria.
Furthermore, Madsen stated that Ford’s terrorists not only
“carried out attacks on Syrian security forces but have also
massacred civilians in ‘false flag’ operations later blamed on Syrian
government forces. WMR [Wayne Madsen Report] has been
informed that Ford’s operations in Syria are being carried out with
the assistance of Israel’s Mossad.” According to the US Department
of State and other sources,328 Ford’s deputy in Baghdad was my old
“colleague” from the Jeddah consulate, Henry S. Ensher, who once
demanded I give visas to rather peculiar people. Henry has been
well rewarded for his services: in May 2011, he was appointed US
ambassador to Algeria by Barack Obama.
Michel Chossudovsky, president and director of the Centre for
Research on Globalization (CRG) and editor of GlobalResearch. ca,
has declared that Israel is deeply involved in the destruction of
Syria.329 Writing in Global Research, he stated that Israel has
proposed a “buffer zone” reaching ten miles into Syria along its forty-
six-mile border with that country. Characterizing this plan as a
“pretext to channel Israeli support to the terrorists in liaison with
Washington,” Chossudovsky referred to a May 8, 2013, report by
DEBKA, the Israeli intelligence news agency, that al-Nusra
casualties are being given “medical care in an Israeli hospital facility
in the Golan Heights,” the Syrian territory seized by Israel in 1967’s
Six-Day War and annexed by Israel in 1981. To rescue the wounded,
Israeli military vehicles travel into Syria proper, with the assistance of
Israeli special forces, operating covertly in battle zones. In the piece,
Chossudovsky notes that al-Nusra, on the US State Department’s
terrorist list since December 2012, is sustained by the United States
“and its allies, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and Israel.” He
stated that “al-Nusra is largely made up of mercenaries recruited in
Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. Covert (Western) special forces
and military advisors have also integrated their ranks…Confirmed by
CNN, the al-Nusra terrorists have also been trained in the use of
chemical weapons by special forces on contract to the Pentagon.”
That training, CNN’s December 9, 2012, story said, was taking place
in Jordan and Turkey and not all of the trainers were US citizens.
“Why would the Israelis aid a ‘rebel’ army made up almost
exclusively of hardened jihadists…?” asked Justin Raimondo,
editorial director of Antiwar.com.330. Most simply, because it helps
fulfill Israel’s long-term goals: “by weakening, containing, and even
rolling back Syria…[and] as a means of foiling Syria’s regional
ambitions.”331
In a June 19, 2013, article, Wayne Madsen noted that Israel has
been operating a clandestine base for an air fleet in eastern Algeria,
near the Libyan frontier. Zimex Aviation, Ltd., a Mossad-owned front
company with close ties to Langley, evidently helped destabilize
countries such as Libya, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, at one point shuttling
Mossad operatives between Iraq and Iran.332
According to the Beijing Review’s August 6, 2012, interview of
Imad Moustapha, former Syrian ambassador to the United States
(and, at that time, ambassador to China), America is the chief
destabilizing agent in Syria. He charged that the United States is
doing “anything possible to introduce death and destruction to Syria,”
in the hope of triggering a civil war or a United Nations–backed war
of aggression against his country. Ambassador Moustapha also
noted that the belligerence now directed at the Syrian Arab Republic
is intended to destroy its cities and “dismantle its social fabric,”
exactly what had previously been done to Iraq and Libya. Moustapha
continued, adding that the terrorism, to date, had been also directed
at “infrastructure, like electricity plants, water supply units, dams,
bridges, hospitals, and schools.”

Plans for the New Syrian Disorder

 American actions in Syria, in concert with Britain, France, Saudi
Arabia, the Gulf States, and, likely, Israel, were and are intended to
dehouse, deculturalize, destabilize, and destroy the country. In other
words, to break it into pieces, to “Balkanize it.” According to the
Jerusalem Post (May 16, 2012), Kurdish leader Sherkoh Abbas,
speaking in Washington, DC, called for Israel to splinter Syria,
turning it into ethnic enclaves for Kurds, Druze, Alawite, and Sunni.
He made no mention of where to put the 10 percent of the population
that is Christian. The Strategic Culture Foundation of September 9,
2013, carried a Wayne Madsen article on the consequences of this
policy.333 Madsen concluded, “The al-Qaeda and al-Nusra Front
Salafist Forces being unleashed by Bandar [Prince Bandar bin
Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz, former Chief of Saudi General Intelligence]
and Brennan [John O. Brennan, CIA Director] are setting the stage
for the worst sectarian genocide in the Middle East since the
Christian Crusades.” On November 6, 2013, the FARS News Agency
reported that Kevin Barrett, PhD, a critic of the questionable GWOT,
Global War on Terror, termed Saudi Prince Bandar “the operations
chief of al-Qaeda, the Arab legion of mujahideen fighters, ever since
the Afghan war of the 1980s. It is these CIA-supported, Mossad-
supported al-Qaeda fighters that Bandar commands in Syria.”
Global Research (January 31, 2013), carried a reprint of a June
2012 piece describing plans for the balkanization of Syria: to foster
sectarian divisions, leading to internal war. “Opposition militants” had
been sent to Kosovo to participate in terrorist training sessions given
by the US-supported Kosovo Liberation Army. The article described
closed-door meetings at the State Department involving then-
Ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, the Kurdish National Council,
and Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, Jeffrey
Feltman. Given Abbas’s preceding statement, it might be possible to
conclude that dividing Syria was one of the topics on the agenda.
According to Tony Cartalucci, writing in Global Research, the US
government confirmed that “al-Qaeda” is running the Syrian alleged
rebellion. In the article334, Cartalucci cites the Wall Street Journal335
as stating that the al-Nusra Front is moving fighters through Turkey
and Iraq to overthrow the Syrian government. As Cartalucci affirmed,
this “undercuts the West’s year and a half-long narrative that Syria’s
violence was the result of a so-called ‘uprising’ by the people of
Syria.” Referring to a New York Times article,336 Cartalucci
continued, the CIA and other US government agencies have
organized and directed this pipeline of weapons and militants.
Deciding which opposition fighters would get the largesse, the
Americans used the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood to distribute rifles,
rocket-propelled grenades, and antitank weapons, bought and paid
for by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.
Raimondo clarified the reason for this action:

Bin Laden’s legions fought in the Kosovo war on the

side of their Kosovar Muslim brothers and NATO:
many present-day jihadists are veterans of that
conflict, just as they are veterans of Afghanistan,
Libya, and Chechnya—all regions where the jihadists
and the Americans are de facto allies. In the Balkans,
we used them to block Russian influence in Europe, in
Syria, we are using them to run interference with the
Iranians.337

Noting that hundreds of “Libyan militants” had been traveling to

Syria (six hundred in 2011 alone), Cartalucci expanded on the topic
by saying that they had brought with them weapons and funds
provided by NATO during its effort to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi.
Indeed, one of the leaders in that was Abdul Hakim Belhadj, onetime
commander of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), an entity
listed by the US State Department as a Foreign Terrorist
Organization. Belhadj, involved in fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq,
brought fighters, funds, and firearms to Syria once he had helped
NATO dispose of Gaddafi.
In a similar vein, Global Research noted that these six hundred
militants were really soldiers in the post-Gaddafi army and that they
joined the “Free Syria[n] Army.” According to the Egyptian news
website, Al Ray Al Arabi, the terrorists entered Syria through Turkey.
Citing British media, the invasion was likely the outcome of a secret
Istanbul meeting between the Libyan National Transitional Council
envoys and Syrian rebels pledging “arms, money, and fighters to the
Syrians.”338
In one of Epitoma Rei Militaris’ (“Summary of Military Matters”)
“Phantom Reports,” a Libyan General National Council advisor
heading its disarmament program said the country’s principal goal is
shipping radical Muslims and their weapons out of the country and
into Syria.339 Based on an undated report carried by the Media Line,
the gist of the story was that foreign fighters numbering in the tens of
thousands, if not more, are leaving Libya for the Syrian Republic,
intending to topple Bashar al-Assad’s government. Non-Syrians
engaged in the three-year “civil” war are Americans, Bosnians,
Egyptians, Libyans, Moroccans, and assorted other nationalities.
According to one source for the report, Libya has been providing
weapons and training for these Arab-Afghans in secret desert
camps.
The number of combatants with outside backing ranges from a
low of ten thousand (PRESSTV) to one hundred fifty thousand,
attributed to a “Syrian military source” not permitted to speak on the
record. Noting the increase from October 2012, the Syrian said that
there were, then, about seventy thousand foreign fighters, hailing
mainly from Afghanistan, Libya, and Tunisia. One of the “insurgents”
interviewed noted that he, Basel, a Syrian, had been trained in
various antiaircraft weapons, such as SAM-7 missiles, in the early
days of the Libyan uprising.
In a Guardian article dated September 23, 2012, the
“insurgents” were said to need a variety of frontline interpreters
speaking “Chechen, Tajik, Turkish, French, Saudi dialect, Urdu.”340
After all, the men were “jihadi veterans of Iraq, Yemen, and
Afghanistan.” Just as the non-Afghan recruits for the war against the
USSR were called “Arab-Afghans,” the Syrian terrorists fighting
Bashar al-Assad now have the sobriquet “Turkish brothers.” Of
course, there are some problems with truthfulness among the
brothers, according to the Guardian. “When the Syrians [from the
“Free Syrian Army”] asked them where they were from, a blond
French speaker said they were Moroccans, the Chechens said they
were Turks, and the Tajiks said they were Afghans.” In response to
criticism that their behavior endangered NATO supplies reaching the
“Free Syrian Army,” unidentified jihadis replied that they were there
to “stop NATO.” Lies and thievery often go together. In Abdul-Ahad’s
piece, “The jihadis had looted and stolen from the local people and
demanded protection money from local businesses in order not to
steal their merchandise.”

A Lose-Lose Situation

US policy, according to the Washington Post, is directed at

ensuring victory by neither side in the terrorist war against Bashar al-
Assad (American journalist Barbra Nimri Aziz noted this first in her
September 3, 2013, blog on Radio Tahrir.).341 In a Greg Miller–
authored front-page article, the CIA has been enlarging a
“clandestine” effort to instruct opponents of the Assad government in
the ways of war.342 Citing unnamed US government officials (a forte
of the Post), the recruits trained are so few they will make no
difference in the conflict. In fact, Langley’s aim, defined by the White
House, is to seek a “political settlement” through stalemate.
American backing for “its” insurgents will “provide enough support to
help ensure that politically moderate militias don’t lose but [won’t]
win.” Nevertheless, Miller asserted that the Agency has been
sending “additional paramilitary teams” to double the number of
insurgents being trained and armed at secret locations in Jordan.
Apparently, according to another “unnamed source,” Langley has
been redoubling its efforts because “its” side is losing, both tactically
and strategically.
Jordan, the Post said, was chosen because of its intelligence
services’ long-standing ties to the Agency. The CIA’s access to
military bases guarded by Jordanian soldiers was also a benefit.
Trainers come from Langley’s paramilitary branch, the Special
Activities Division, an organization reliant on contractors and former
US Special Forces members.
In an earlier article, the Washington Post noted that American
weapons have been flowing to the Syrian insurgents.343 Quoting
more unnamed US officials, the paper did not specify the types,
amounts, or value of the arms, other than to note that they were
“light weapons and other munitions.” The paper did allow that “The
CIA shipments are to flow through a network of clandestine bases in
Turkey and Jordan that were expanded over the past year as the
agency sought to help Middle Eastern allies including Saudi Arabia
and Qatar, direct weapons to moderate [sic] Syrian rebel forces.”

A Myriad of Myrmidons

Despite the rattling fusillade of media reports about American,

European, and Israeli involvement in overthrowing the legitimate
Syrian government, the Washington Post reported in its article
“Foreign extremists’ footprint in Syria growing:”344

Foreign fighters from across the Arab world and

beyond are playing an increasingly dominant role in
the battle for control of Syria, which has emerged as
an even more powerful magnet for jihadist volunteers
than Iraq and Afghanistan were in the past decade.345

The number of Syrians battling to overcome the

regime led by President Bashar al-Assad outstrips by
a large margin the thousands of Arabs and other non-
Syrian Muslims who have streamed into Syria over the
past two years to join in the fight.346

But the flow of jihadist volunteers has accelerated,

and non-Syrians have begun taking the lead in a
variety of roles as the al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State
of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) attempts to assert control over
large areas of the rebel-held north.

Foreign fighters man checkpoints, serve as

commanders on the battlefield and have become the
 de facto rulers of towns and cities in areas under rebel
control, giving them a visible and much-feared
presence across large swaths of territory, according to
[unnamed] Syrians living in the north as well as
[unnamed] analysts.

Saudis, Tunisians and Libyans are among the most

frequently encountered nationalities, the residents and
analysts say but men from Chechnya, Kuwait, Jordan,
Iraq, and the United Arab Emirates also are present.

In this article, the Post relied on Brian Fishman (who had

declined to speak with the author) to frame the issue of “foreign
fighters.”347 “There’s a lot more foreigners [in Syria] than we ever
saw in Iraq, and there’s going to be a lot more,” Fishman was quoted
as saying. He continued, articulating “They control territory, they’ve
established governance, and you see these foreigners playing more
dynamic roles. They’re getting trained and leading people and
illustrating a level of ability we didn’t see in Iraq.”
Another expert quoted by the Post for Sly’s article was Nada
Bakos, “who tracked al-Qaeda for the US government.” Omitted was
her background as a CIA “targeting officer” in Iraq, who, according to
CNN, “used to go to work with a Glock [a plastic-framed pistol]
strapped to her thigh.”348 In Bakos’s view, the “insurgents” now
control more real estate in Syria than they did in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Yet, this Washington Post story defies reality. Despite credible
reports that Britain and France provide “advisors,” weapons, and
training to the Arab-Afghan Legion, it claimed that “the United States’
partners in Europe have long expressed reluctance to intervene in
Syria without a mandate from the United Nations or NATO.”349 In
another bit of remarkable obfuscation, the Post asserted in the same
story that “a parallel operation independent of US efforts is being
discussed by the Saudis with other countries in the region, according
to officials from several governments that have been involved in the
talks.”
 Months later, the Post continued its misinformation. In a front-
page article above the fold, the paper “discovered” that President
Barack Obama had asked Congress for $500 million “in direct US
military training and equipment for Syrian opposition fighters, a move
that could significantly escalate US involvement in Syria’s civil [sic]
war.”350 The funds (see the parallel with my account of the
Afghanistan war’s beginning under “Asleep At The Switch,” supra)
would enlarge an existing and furtive CIA training agenda. According
to DeYoung, the aid would be going to “moderate” groups fighting
the government of Syria. No mention was made of Jabhat al-Nusra,
a “moderate” group that had previously received funding, even
though it was on a State Department terrorist list.
The Post added, incredibly, that this tidal wave of money would
be “the first direct US military participation in the Syrian conflict.”351
Additionally, DeYoung noted that these monies resulted from the
recent strides that ISIS has been making in the region, which,
apparently, helped in concentrating Obama’s mind on “terrorism.”
Iran’s PRESSTV had a slightly different slant on that. It quoted
investigative journalist Wayne Madsen as saying that John Brennan,
the Agency’s Director, is playing a significant part “in the creation
and rise of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL),”
sometimes known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).352
Observing that the United States had been behind the creation of al-
Qaeda to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, Madsen stated that
“we’ve once again supported and trained and given cash to the
same elements and now we’ve got the rise of ISIL in Iraq and
Syria…”
PRESSTV added that Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) had declared
that the United States had been providing weapons to ISIL in Syria.
On CNN’s “State of the Union” program, Rand said, “I think we have
to understand first how we got here. We have been arming ISIS in
Syria.”353
Confirming the foregoing, on October 8, 2014, the Australian
journalist John Pilger wrote:
 ISIS is the progeny of those in Washington and
London who, in destroying Iraq as both a state and a
society, conspired to commit an epic crime against
humanity. Like Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, ISIS are
the mutations of a western state terror dispensed by a
venal imperial elite undeterred by the consequences
of actions taken at great remove in distance and
culture. Their culpabilities is unmentionable in “our”
societies.354

Madsen’s conclusion was that there is “a terrorist threat against

the United States and that [it] is the CIA director” who is training and
financing terrorists.
According to Washington Post journalist, David Ignatius (who
often writes favorably about U.S. intelligence services), American
spooks “are working with their counterparts in the Middle East and
Europe to track ISIS and al-Nusra Front operatives and to monitor
foreign fighters who have traveled to Syria to join the jihad.”355.
Although Ignatius omitted mentioning continued US support for
Jabhat al-Nusra, he wrote that there were about one hundred and
ten thousand “opposition fighters in Syria…[Bilad al-Sham]” ISIS
men, many with experience in guerrilla war in Iraq, numbered
between five thousand and ten thousand, he said, while al-Nusra
totaled five thousand to six thousand combatants. Furthermore,
another Sunni group, Ahrar al-Sham, according to Ignatius, claims to
have ten thousand to fifteen thousand soldiers. He went on to
declare that ten thousand to fifteen thousand foreigners have already
made their way to Bilad al-Sham from “Chechnya, Australia [an
American “ally”], Libya [where they had been recruited to overthrow
Gaddafi], Belgium [a NATO member], and the United States.”
The United States and its repressive confederates, if the
Washington Post’s numbers are correct, have already turned Syria
into another Iraq.356 In a December 15, 2013, front-page story
written by Kevin Sullivan and filed from Kilis, Turkey, the Post
claimed that, according to UN and regional governments, “between
2.3 million and 2.8 million Syrians have fled their homeland.”357 That
number is rising, with three thousand people a day leaving the
country. Before the Americans and their associates began their work
on Syria, the paper said that there were already twelve million
refugees in the area, traceable to the Zionists’ ethnic cleansing of
Palestine in 1948 (and, presumably, to the two million who fled for
their lives from Iraq after 2003). Besides the 6.5 million (40 percent
of the population) now internally displaced, most Syrian exiles “live”
(if that is a proper word for their condition) in Lebanon, Turkey, and
Jordan. With one million Syrians sharing space with 4.4 million
Lebanese and three hundred thousand Palestinians, things are tight
there.358 The Turkish government, one of the states that fomented
the war, estimates that seven hundred thousand people have fled
the Syrian Arab Republic for the country of its former colonial master.
As for Jordan, with a population of 6.5 million, it now hosts 2.6 million
refugees of which nearly six hundred thousand are Syrian.
Sullivan’s story quotes Helen Clark, head of the UN
development program in the region, as saying “These places will
never be the same. Many of these people will never go home.” As
happened with Iraq, “The massive influx of refugees is crippling
fragile economies and damaging delicate political and religious
balances in the region.” By way of comparison, Clark noted that the
million Syrian exiles living in Lebanon is “the equivalent of the entire
population of Mexico taking refuge in the United States.”
A World Bank report, the article claimed, described multiple
disasters resulting from neocon policy: Lebanon’s gross domestic
product will likely be cut by nearly three percentage points annually
between 2012 and 2014. Billions of dollars’ worth of economic
activity will disappear, with wages, due to increased competition for
the remaining jobs, being cut. The jobless rate, currently 10 percent,
may well double and the number of those below the poverty line
(now one million people) may rise nearly 20 percent.
Essential services in the region such as sewage, electricity, and
garbage collection are collapsing. Water is becoming scarcer. With
its water already directed to Israel in disproportionate amounts, the
per capita volume of the life-giving fluid in Jordan is being reduced
by the influx of refugees. In Jordan, nearly $2 billion will be needed
to provide housing and services to the six hundred thousand
refugees from Syria.
What hope is there for the future of these refugees? In sixty-six
years, the United States, which helped create the Palestinian
refugees in their millions, has only added to the number of exiles in
the area. It has not resolved the Palestinian problem, and it will not
settle those of the Iraqis and Syrians.

Summary

Beginning in the 1950s, first in Egypt, then in Syria, American

and British intelligence services have worked to overthrow men and
governments they didn’t like. With past attempts unsuccessful, the
United States, aided by repressive governments in the region,
moved against the Syrian Arab Republic in the new century, using its
favorite cat’s paw, the Arab-Afghan Legion. The attack began, if not
in concert with the alleged “spontaneous” uprising in March 2011,
then not long afterward. Conceivably, the Obama Administration had
begun arms shipments to the Syrian terrorist groups earlier than
acknowledged. Reports surfaced in May 2013 that between two
thousand and fifty-five hundred foreign nationals were active in
Syria, including hundreds from countries such as Britain, France,
and Ireland. European government officials are now worrying about
the consequences of these foreign legionnaires returning home.
In later stories, the numbers changed. The war in Syria had
allegedly attracted approximately seven thousand combatants from
fifty countries and that one of the main US-sponsored groups there
“aspires to carry out an attack in the United States.” US Special
Forces are preparing these terrorists for action at locations in Turkey
and at an American base in southwest Jordan. Rebellion leaders
have been supplied by recruiting programs run by the CIA, Britain’s
MI6 [the Secret Intelligence Service], Israel’s Mossad [external
intelligence service], and the French DGSE [external] intelligence
service.” Beginning in early 2012, the FARS News Agency related
that Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan flew weapons acquired in
Croatia to Turkey, which then delivered them by the truckload to
“insurgents” committed to overthrowing the Syrian government.
Hundreds of combatants came from Langley’s war in the Balkans.
Other things came from the Balkans, too. As part of a deal
worked out with the Americans, Croatia sold two hundred and thirty
tons of rocket and grenade launchers, field artillery, mortars, and
ammunition in December 2012 to Jordan, which were fed into a CIA
pipeline to opponents of the legitimate Syrian government.
At the beginning of the anti-Assad rebellion, the US Ambassador
to Syria, Robert S. Ford, was the key State Department official
recruiting Arab death squads. They were brought in from al-Qaeda-
affiliated units in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and Chechnya to fight
military and police units.
American actions in Syria, in concert with Britain, France, Saudi
Arabia, the Gulf States, and, probably, Israel, were and are intended
to dehouse, deculturalize, destabilize, and destroy the country.359 To
further this aim, American policy is now to prevent victory by either
side in the terrorist war against Bashar al-Assad. Therefore, the fact
that, according to one CIA official, the “insurgents” now control more
territory in Syria than they even did in Iraq or Afghanistan is a matter
of concern to US policymakers.
The United States and its associates, if the Washington Post’s
numbers are correct, have already turned Syria into another Iraq.
Between 2.3 and 2.5 million Syrians have already fled the country
(roughly 10 percent of the 2010 population, according to UN figures).
Forty percent of the inhabitants (6.5 million people) are “internally
displaced.” The World Bank reported that Syrian refugees, just like
Iraqi ones, have stretched the resources of the countries absorbing
them to dangerous limits.
The Origins of the Train Wrecks Go Back to the Establishment
of the National Security State and its Central Intelligence
Agency during the Administration of Harry S. Truman (D-MO).

T
he man from Missouri created the CIA and the NSA, organizations
that believe they have carte blanche to overthrow governments and
spy on American citizens and others. They operate without
executive, legislative, or judicial control.
The current foreign policy train wrecks are nothing new.
American international relations was a disaster in the first half of the
twentieth century. Following the so-called professionalization of the
State Department’s Foreign Service and its merger with the CIA’s
not-very Clandestine Service in the late 1940s, it then became an
unmitigated disaster. Consider just a few operations in the past that
I’ve earlier mentioned and draw the ties to, and the parallels with, the
present. Think of the progressives who say, “Why do we need to talk
about the past? There is no link to the present.” Recall:

The overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh, prime minister of

Iran—and current US hostility toward that country.
The overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, president of
Guatemala—and waves of illegal aliens flooding across the
 US border, attempting to escape the consequences of
America’s policy of revolution and repression in the region.

The Security State’s Reach—Why Limit Things to Just One

Continent, Or Region?

Congress passed the National Security Act in July 1947.

Included in the Act was the CIA’s creation. Truman, who signed the
Act, ignored the opposition of his Secretary of State, George C.
Marshall, a former career U.S. Army officer. Marshall opposed the
law, saying it “abridged the constitutional authority of the president
and secretary of state.” Yet, in making the Act law, Truman himself
“feared that the CIA could turn into a ‘Gestapo’ or ‘military
dictatorship.’”360 Seizing on a vaguely worded portion of the
legislation empowering it to engage in “other functions and duties
relating to intelligence affecting the national security,” the Agency
began directing hundreds of clandestine acts abroad, including
eighty-one during Truman’s second term alone.
In 1947, George F. Kennan, then head of the State Department’s
Policy Planning Staff, pushed the Secretary of Defense and anti-
Soviet, hard-liner James Forrestal to create a “guerrilla warfare
corps,” something opposed by the general staff. [Now, it’s called the
Arab-Afghan Legion, or, al Qaeda, or ISIL and the entire government
embraces it.] Then, at the end of that year, Truman approved a
secret national security council memorandum, NSC 4-A, authorizing
Langley to engage in “covert” operations. The next year, 1948, he
approved another such, NSC 10/2, providing for “propaganda,
economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage,
antisabotage, demolition and evacuation measures; subversion
against hostile states, including assistance to underground
resistance movements, guerillas, and refugee liberation groups, and
support of indigenous anti-Communist elements in threatened
countries of the free world.”361
Money was secretly diverted from the Marshall Plan, designed
to revitalize the European economy, devastated by six years of war,
to the Agency. As Stone and Kuznick write, the Agency used the
funds to set up “phony front organizations that recruited foreign
agents as frontline warriors in the propaganda wars that ensued.
Sometimes they went beyond propaganda, infiltrating unions and
other existing organizations and establishing underground groups.
Forrestal and the Pentagon wanted the programs to go further,
including ‘guerrilla movements…underground armies…sabotage and
assassination.’”362
It seems that the CIA had problems distinguishing between
underground groups and above-ground armies. Langley used
Marshall Plan money to support a guerrilla force in the Ukraine,
called “Nightingale.” Originally established in 1941 by Nazi
Germany’s occupation forces, and working on their behalf,
“Nightingale” and its terrorist arm (made up of ultranationalist
Ukrainians as well as Nazi collaborators) murdered thousands of
Jews, Soviet Union supporters, and Poles. Allen Dulles brought
Mikola Lebed, its leader, to the United States in 1949. The CIA head
successfully resisted Justice Department attempts to deport Lebed
as a war criminal, asserting that the terrorist chief was of
“inestimable value to this Agency ‘and was assisting in’ operations of
the first importance.”363
These were precedents for US actions taking place in the
Balkans, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and elsewhere, much closer to the
present than the 1940s. (Don’t forget current events in the Ukraine).
Sergei Lavrov, Russian Foreign Minister, certainly sees them as
such. On May 30, 2014, Russia’s Interfax news service quoted him
as believing the Ukrainian coup is very similar to recent events in
Iraq and Libya. Lavrov said, “What we see at the forefront today is
the crises that were created by similar methods and appeared as a
result of policies aimed at changing the regimes in North Africa and
the Middle East—Iraq and Libya. And [the crisis] in Ukraine was
motivated by the same causes.”

Arbenz Was Not a One-Time Intervention

 Ronald Reagan picked up where Eisenhower left off, creating a
greater nightmare for the people of Central America and the United
States.
Ronald Reagan, the fortieth president of the United States,
worked with Bill Casey, his presidential campaign manager, whom
he named head of the CIA, to fund destabilizing forces in Central
America. Aided by Israeli arms dealers and Latin drug merchants,
Langley and its politicians sold weapons to Iran and illegal narcotics
to American citizens. They used the enormous profits therefrom to
finance the attempted overthrow of the legitimate Sandinista
government of Nicaragua by reactionary forces (the Contras). Some
of them were homegrown, while others were mercenaries recruited
from Guatemala and El Salvador.364 Casey also collaborated with
another repressive but close ally of the United States, the Kingdom
of Saudi Arabia, to attempt the murder of an Arab Muslim, Sheikh
Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah. A Lebanese citizen born in Iraq,
Fadlallah’s writings and sermons inspired Hezbollah (Party of God).
On March 8, 1985, in an action eerily similar to the 2005 killing of
Rafik Hariri, Lebanese prime minister, CIA operatives—with alleged
Saudi help—exploded nearly five hundred pounds of dynamite in a
car bomb near the sheikh’s home in Beirut. Although failing to slay
him, the US attack slaughtered eighty other people, wounding
another 256, mostly girls and women, who had been leaving a
nearby mosque. The ferocity of the blast “burned babies in their
beds,” “killed a bride buying her trousseau,” and “blew away three
children as they walked home from the mosque.”365

Fallout, Blowback, Whatever—It’s A Continuing Train Wreck

The international terrorists the United States recruited for the

wars in Afghanistan and Bosnia thirty-odd years ago are still involved
in the fighting elsewhere today. Bosnia wasn’t the only place those
saddle tramps and gunslingers were employed. The visas the State
Department issued to them then are now tied to the current
administration’s continuing wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and
Syria. The fanatics I saw get travel papers during my time at Jeddah
are either directly involved in or trained those directly involved in
fighting US forces today.366 Former Senator Mike Gravel (D-AK), told
me last year that those originally recruited for the anti-Soviet
operation in Afghanistan are still being used to destabilize
governments the United States doesn’t like. Now they’ve got the
assistance of mercenary armies enlisted by US firms closely tied to
American agencies, such as the infamous, name-changing
Blackwater/Xe Services/Academi/Constellis that performs “security”
for the State Department.367
CIA excesses, propaganda, and other illegal actions have never
been restricted to the few events mentioned earlier. While Langley
insists that its primary mission is the collection and analysis of
foreign intelligence information for use by our nation’s leadership and
that the Agency has no police, subpoena, law enforcement, or
internal security functions, its primary activity is the conduct of covert
operations.
While at INR, I attended an Agency briefing at Langley. Of the
Agency’s four chief divisions (Intelligence, Operations, Science and
Technology, Administration), the largest portion of its invisible budget
goes to Operations (clandestine activity). The CIA refuses to obey
one of the most basic tenets of the Constitution: No Money shall be
drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations
made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts
and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to
time. Article I, Section 9. Its budget is never published and its funds
are, for the most part, hidden in the accounts of allegedly legitimate
agencies. This voodoo bookkeeping helps deceive the American
people and their representatives in Congress about the Agency’s
real activities. No numbers are ever available for its “front”
companies’ resources.
Langley has traditionally distorted “intelligence,” most notably in
the “justification” for America’s illegal and unconstitutional attacks on
Iraq in 1991 and 2003. The Agency is deeply involved with domestic
law enforcement through participation in “Fusion Centers’ that
involve cooperation and information sharing with all levels of federal,
State, and local police forces, particularly in New York City. There,
the CIA had “embedded” at least four of its officers to help the New
York Police Department spy on Muslims. New York also had
substantial help from Langley in revolutionizing its police
department’s intelligence division. Naturally enough, anything picked
up by Agency officials goes into DC databanks.368
Moreover, despite the Congressional ban on domestic spying,
Langley has large, essentially ineffective, stations in New York City,
Miami, and elsewhere. James Risen, the journalist now an Agency
target, wrote this in the New York Times (November 4, 2001):

The Central Intelligence Agency’s clandestine New

York station was destroyed in the Sept. 11 attack on
the World Trade Center…

The agency’s New York station was behind the false

front of another federal organization, which
intelligence officials requested that the Times not
identify. The station was, among other things, a base
of operations to spy on and recruit foreign diplomats
stationed at the United Nations, while debriefing
selected American business executives and others
willing to talk to the C.I.A. after returning from
overseas…

The agency’s New York officers have been deeply

involved in counterterrorism efforts in the New York
area, working jointly with the Federal Bureau of
Investigation and other agencies…

The agency is prohibited from conducting domestic

espionage operations against Americans, but the
agency maintains stations in a number of major US
cities, where C.I.A. case officers try to meet and
recruit students and other foreigners to return to their
countries and spy for the United States.
 As activist Rich Ray has suggested, Tax Fraud is another
charge that could be laid, but never is, at Langley’s door. Here are
interesting excerpts from the US Attorney’s Manual, Title 9, Section
109 and 18 US Code § 1961 that should be applicable to CIA front
company or commercial cover operations that generate a substantial
amount of income for the Agency, enabling it to do more with its
secret subventions. Think what taxes on gunrunning, drug dealing,
and money laundering could do for the Internal Revenue Service and
the average American’s tax burden.
The Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act369 says:

It is unlawful for anyone employed by or associated

with any enterprise engaged in, or the activities of
which affect, interstate or foreign commerce, to
conduct or participate, directly or indirectly, in the
conduct of such enterprise’s affairs through a pattern
of racketeering activity or collection of unlawful
debt.370

A violation of Section 1962(c), requires (1) conduct (2)

of an enterprise (3) through a pattern (4) of
racketeering activity.371

Noam Chomsky said, “Propaganda is to a democracy what the

bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.”

As can be imagined, Langley was and is adept at manipulating

the public through the mass media. According to Alexander
Cockburn writing in the Free Press:372

Later that year [1948], Wisner [Frank G. Wisner Sr.]

set [up] an operation codenamed “Mockingbird” to
influence the domestic American press. He recruited
 Philip Graham of the Washington Post to run the
project within the industry.

[Joe] Trento writes that “One of the most important

journalists under the control of Operation Mockingbird
was Joseph Alsop, whose articles appeared in over
300 different newspapers.” Other journalists willing to
promote the views of the CIA, included Stewart Alsop
(New York Herald Tribune), Ben Bradlee (Newsweek),
James Reston (New York Times), Charles Douglas
Jackson (Time Magazine), Walter Pincus (Washington
Post), William C. Baggs (Miami News), Herb Gold
(Miami News) and Charles Bartlett (Chattanooga
Times).

“By 1953, Operation Mockingbird had a major

influence over 25 newspapers and wire agencies,
including the New York Times, Time and CBS.
Wisner’s operations were funded by siphoning of
funds intended for the Marshall Plan. Some of this
money was used to bribe journalists and publishers.”
In his book “Mockingbird: The Subversion of the Free
Press by the CIA,” Alex Constantine writes that in the
1950s, “some 3,000 salaried and contract CIA
employees were eventually engaged in propaganda
efforts.”

Now, given the tall tales told by the news media, particularly the
Washington Post about the Arab-Afghan Legion, and the Fourth
Estate’s vicious attacks on gallant, courageous men such as Edward
Snowden, John Kiriakou, and Thomas Drake, we should not be
surprised. Operation Mockingbird is obviously still alive and flying
high, dropping its guano on Americans and others. Certainly, the
cold shoulder by journalists I have approached about my dismissal
from the Foreign Service supports that.
 The extent of Langley’s ability to control the federal government
(and organizations outside it) can best be seen in Alyssa Röhricht’s
article about John Kiriakou in the January 6, 2014, edition of
CounterPunch.373 Kiriakou, a former CIA analyst, revealed to ABC
News in 2007 that the Agency used torture as official policy. After
investigating and hounding him for years, the US government
prosecuted and convicted him, sentencing him to jail for thirty
months in federal prison in February 2013. (The torturers
themselves, who were “just following orders” have been ignored, if
not rewarded, for their actions.)
According to Röhricht, the Agency’s aim is to “either dismiss
[any] leaks and their importance…[then] discount the heroic efforts of
the leakers [like Kiriakou or Snowden, turning] them into crazed
homosexuals…a hacker without a cause…or a tool for the enemy.”
The charge of “aiding the enemy” is most effective since it helps
keep fear alive among citizens. This provides a semblance of “peace
of mind” to those who dread imaginary terrors and “happily ignore”
illegal governmental activities carried out “to protect them.” As a
result, the sheeple “fall into line and cry traitor” when prompted.
Besides being impoverished by loss of his pension and
staggering legal bills, Kiriakou, Röhricht said, has been blocked from
seeing his family. The United Services Automobile Association
(USAA) also cancelled his car and home insurance, asserting that
they insure neither felons nor their families. (USAA, which insures
mainly military and diplomatic personnel, has as its motto: We Know
What It Means To Serve.)
Americans, even educated ones, readily believe the lies, half-
truths, and evasions of fact put out to support the existence and the
excesses of the Arab-Afghan Legion. Frank Zapatka, a retired
professor at American University in Washington, DC told me June 1,
2013, that Syria’s hands are not clean because it is being helped by
Hezbollah. By implication, there is nothing wrong, then, with the
United States, France, Britain, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the Legion
aiding the alleged “Free” Syrian Army in its effort to overthrow
Bashar al-Assad’s government. Of course, Americans sometimes
have help in reaching their beliefs. On September 15, 2013, while
attending a program at WHUT (Howard University Television), I
heard American University’s Mohamed Abu Nimer, a professor of
International Peace and Conflict Resolution, spout the government
line on Syria, urging Arabs to join the fight against Bashar al-Assad.
Nimer holds two degrees from Hebrew University in occupied al-
Quds (Jerusalem).374 (N.B. The sesquicentennial of the War
Between the States is under way. In the 1860s, the Union was
vehemently opposed to Britain and France backing the Confederate
States’ struggle to free themselves from what they saw as an overly
centrist and controlling government in Washington.)
The propaganda put forth in support of “regime change” in Syria
even comes from supposedly knowledgeable, trustworthy sources,
such as The Washington Report On Middle East Affairs, a magazine
that asserts on its masthead: Telling the Truth for More Than 30
Years. In the June/July 2013 issue, one author, Pat McDonnell Twair,
wrote about a university panel discussing what she termed the
“Crisis.” In it, she noted the need for “diplomatic engagement” in
Syria, using Yemen as an example. She quoted a university
professor from Buenos Aires, Ricardo Arredondo, who seemed to
argue for an invasion of Syria. The academic compared Syria to
Yugoslavia, saying that, in a state that won’t protect its people, such
as Kosovo, the UN approved the intervention of other governments.
In the same issue, Assistant Editor Dale Sprusansky reported on an
event hosted by the Middle East Institute (MEI), “Syria at the
Crossroads.” Former American Ambassador to Syria, Edward
Djerejian, a speaker there, stated that Bashar al-Assad, unlike his
father, can’t be trusted and that the United States should furnish
more military aid to al-Assad’s opponents. Explaining this, an expert
source on the region told me that the Middle East Report receives
substantial financial contributions from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,
one of the financiers of the Syrian revolt.
(By way of background, MEI is composed of a number of former
State Department and other US government officials. Its president is
Wendy J. Chamberlin, past US Ambassador to Pakistan. The
chairman is Richard A. Clarke, previous holder of high “national
security” positions in the Defense Department, the State
Department, and the White House. Michael Ryan, an adjunct scholar
at MEI is also a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, a group
closely connected to the Central Intelligence Agency. Ned Walker,
once Deputy Chief of Mission in Saudi Arabia when the Legion was
being recruited there, had been MEI president from 2001 to 2006.
Allan Keiswetter, Political Counselor in Riyadh when I was in
Jeddah, is another MEI scholar. Both Walker and Keiswetter did not
reply to letters asking about the Jeddah visas for the Legion’s
terrorist recruits from the kingdom. Perhaps, I should have asked
Walker in my letter about his appearance on a Fox News TV
program in Florida several years ago. He and Jay Freres had been
interviewed on terrorism. On the broadcast, both conveniently left out
any mention of the United States’ role in creating the Legion. (The
link to the show no longer exists on Google.)

Afghanistan, Serbia, Iraq, Libya, and Syria

Until the creation of the Arab-Afghan Legion, usually referred to

as Al Qaeda, the United States worked to overthrow governments it
didn’t like on an ad hoc basis. Remember what was done to
Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran and Jacobo Arbenz Guzman in
Guatemala. Additionally, the United States did its best to overthrow
Fidel Castro in Cuba (who had dared to nationalize foreign-
ownedproperty) and the socialist Sandinistas in Nicaragua. “The City
Upon A Hill,” that professes American values, (whatever they might
be), currently has destabilizing operations underway in Venezuela,
the Ukraine, and Russia, but without any group more organized than
“Pussy Riot.”
But, as noted in The War On Truth,

…the CIA had always seen vast potential to use the

terrorist network, established by bin Laden during the
Cold War in an international framework in the post–
Cold War era against Russian and Chinese power
(i.e., in Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and Central
Asia). From the beginning of US policy in Afghanistan,
the CIA had hoped that the network of terrorists being
 spawned by Osama bin Laden, with assistance from
Saudi Arabia and Pakistan would continue to be used
after the Afghan war against Soviet occupation.
Indeed, US intelligence maintained its co-optation of
al-Qaeda by proxy as a means of expanding US
power in the Balkans wars.375

The degree to which al-Qaeda provides an often

convenient—if highly dangerous—instrument of
Western statecraft for the orchestration of illegal and
corrupt covert operations can be understood in this
context…al-Qaeda…[is] not an “enemy” to be fought
and eliminated, but rather an unpredictable
intelligence asset to be controlled, manipulated, and
co-opted as much as possible to secure covert
strategic ends.376

On the other hand, there has been the long-term involvement of

the United States with Islam.
Over the years, the United States had been working diligently
(but, before Afghanistan, without a blueprint) to use extremist
elements from the Muslim world. The goal was expanding the
American empire and its control over the lands stretching east from
the Pillars of Hercules to the Sutlej, if not as far as Indonesia.

The US proxy war in Afghanistan, which cost $3 billion

and several hundred thousand lives [conservatively],
took America’s decades-long alliance with
ultraconservative political Islam to a new, more
aggressive level.

Until Afghanistan, the dominant idea was Islam-as-

bulwark, that is, that political Islam was a barrier
against Soviet expansion. But in Afghanistan, the
paradigm was Islam-as-sword. The Islamic Right
 became an offensive weapon, signaling a significant
escalation in the policy of cooperating with the Islamic
brotherhood in Egypt, the Saudi Arabia–led Islamic
bloc, and other elements of political Islam.377

The Afghan “jihad,” based on the master plan, had “empowered

its most violent fringe,” created a cadre of combatants skilled in
guerrilla war, intelligence “trade craft,” assassination, and bomb
making. It multiplied the connections and ties among fighters from
North Africa, Egypt, the Gulf States, Central Asia, and Pakistan.378
The “jihad” got the United States control of lands previously outside
its area of influence: the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, and Central
Asia. Further, it used its new power to establish bases encircling
Russia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the remainder of the core of Asia,
“assembl[ing] a proto-occupation force for the Gulf and surrounding
real estate.”379
However, before the arrangement with the Arab-Afghan Legion,
spontaneous, erratic American interference in the region’s internal
affairs, as noted, was the norm.
Back in the mid-1970s, Henry Kissinger, the infamous National
Security Advisor and Secretary of State in the Nixon Administration
had an absolutely lunatic idea. He thought of seizing Arabian oil and
having Texans and Oklahomans run the extraction facilities. Henry
the K wanted to show the Saudis “who’s boss” and suggested that
the Agency overthrow a sheikhdom or two in the region, presumably
as a way of concentrating their minds.380
Even before Kissinger’s proposal, American and British efforts to
effect “regime change” in the Arab world went back farther to the
1950s and 1960s. According to Robert Dreyfuss, in his book Devil’s
Game, the Anglo-American intelligence services sought to overthrow
Gamal Abdel Nasser, president of Egypt and the first Arab to
challenge European colonialism in the region. Their tool of choice
was the Muslim Brotherhood.381
However, in Syria, plans to remove the country’s left-leaning
government, with the assistance of Saudi Arabia, appeared to aim at
a “twofer.” In 1958, Yusuf Yasin, an adviser to the Saudi King, was
implicated in a conspiracy to assassinate Nasser on a visit to
Damascus. The project fell apart after the Saudis offered a 1.9
million Syrian pound bribe (about US $575,000) to the Syrian chief of
intelligence to help with the murder (and, presumably, the
subsequent destabilization of Syria). Earlier, in 1956–1957, Langley
tried to overthrow the Syrian government single-handed.382 Bill Blum
elaborated on this attempt, as reported in his book, Killing Hope,
U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II.383 Wilbur
Crane Eveland, from the US National Security Council, and old
Agency hands Archibald and Kermit Roosevelt, planned a repeat in
Syria of Langley’s actions in Iran. They planned a coup using senior
Syrian army colonels. Blum noted that the operation disintegrated
after the money had changed hands because Israel had attacked
Egypt in the Suez Canal Crisis of 1956. The would-be revolutionaries
said they couldn’t attack their own government when another Arab
state was embroiled in war with the Zionists.
Kermit Roosevelt tried again in 1957, Blum asserted. Teddy’s
grandson lost once more because the Syrian army officers assigned
key roles in the plot turned in their pay to the country’s chief of
intelligence, Col. Sarraj, and named the American spooks who had
hired them. Col. Robert Molloy, US Army attaché, and Francis Jeton,
a career CIA official, whose diplomatic cover was second secretary
for political affairs, were declared persona non grata and kicked out
of the country.384
After this failure, the Americans began to plan and to organize.
Dreyfuss asserted that George W. Bush and his allies used
fearsome descriptions of the dangers of the “Islamist Threat” to
develop a pretext for expanding US imperialism in the Middle
East.385 Following this statement, Dreyfuss goes on to propose that
there were other American goals in the Middle East, ones that had
little to do with combating terrorism. Examples were: two-thirds of the
world’s oil supply being located in Saudi Arabia and Iraq as well as
Bush’s close ties to Ariel Sharon and the Israeli right wing. After all, if
the real enemy is Islamist terrorism, why fight Iraq, Syria, and the
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)? Bashar al-Assad, Syrian
president; Yasser Arafat, PLO Chairman; and Saddam Hussein, Iraqi
president, were all opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood. Saddam
was no friend of the “Islamists,” Shiite and otherwise, while the
Ba’ath Party in both Syria and Iraq was a socialist, secular entity.386
But, maybe, it was Saudi money going into Bush pockets?
Citing Craig Unger’s book, House of Bush, House of Saud,
Andrew Kreig noted that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia crossed the
palms of George H.W. and George W. Bush, James Baker, family
advisor and Secretary of State, as well as Vice President Dick
Cheney with nearly $1.5 billion. (To be sure, some of this money
went to companies affiliated with the foregoing individuals.)387
The real threat, not the imaginary one the United States was
hyping, was “right-wing Islamic groups, institutions, and political
parties in the Muslim world.” They reflected a constellation that
represented a significant menace “to governments, intellectuals, and
progressives, and other free thinkers, from Morocco to Indonesia.”388
That is, these were the instruments to change regimes, economic
value systems, and ideas successive American administrations
opposed. They did not endanger the United States because the
United States was allied with them and used them for its own ends.
While the United States ceaselessly proclaimed the need for
democracy, self-determination, and noninvolvement by outside
forces in the Middle East, the United States did not withdraw from
the region. Nor did it end its support for Israel. Instead, the American
government embraced the Neocon ideas espoused by the American
Enterprise Institute, the Hudson Institute, and the Project for a New
American Century, that is, that wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were the
beginning of an effort to control Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and the
Gulf states.389 Geopolitics seemed to rule foreign policy and control
regional destinies: Syria lies between Israel and American-occupied
Iraq while Iran is wedged between occupied Iraq and NATO-
controlled Afghanistan. It’s always easiest to move against your
“enemies” from two directions.390
As Ahmed says in The War On Truth:

…the Western strategic alliance with al-Qaeda [the

Arab-Afghans] never ceased. Rather it merely shifted
to a new theater of military operations—from
 Afghanistan to Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the
Balkans. The strategic objective of the policy is the
destabilization of the last remaining vestiges of
Russian power in this region and the consolidation of
Anglo-American hegemony in Eurasia.

Al-Qaeda terrorism through the post–Cold War period

is therefore not merely a form of “blowback” from past
Western military intelligence operations supporting the
mujahideen during the Cold War…391

However, people and nations in control never want to relinquish

that control. Rather, they seek to maintain, if not expand it. Listen to
Walter Pincus.
Walter Pincus, one of the Agency’s men at the Washington
Post,392 reported December 12, 2013, in that paper, the United
States was not leaving the Middle East. In fact, he said, Secretary of
Defense Hagel had confirmed this view in a December 6, 2013,
speech in Bahrain. Hagel reassured his listeners at a news
conference that the United States intended to upgrade and increase
its already extensive military presence in Southwest Asia. Some of
what Hagel did not say, and what Pincus emphasized, was: the siting
of X-band radar directed against Iran and located atop Mt. Keren in
the Israeli Negev desert as well as at Turkey’s Kurecik Air Force
Base, 240 miles (about 386 km) from Iran. Pincus cited the Wall
Street Journal’s report that a similar radar would be placed in a
secret location in Qatar. Qatar already houses the Combined Air
Operations Center at the Al-Udeid air base, a hub for US, UK and
Australian air strikes against Afghanistan. Pincus added more detail,
noting, inter alia, that the US Army Corps of Engineers, along with a
contractor, Stanley Consultants, “will replace an existing temporary
camp at the United Arab Emirates’ al-Dhafra air base and provide
force protection to [US Air Force] personnel.” This means, according
to Pincus, “housing, dining, recreation, administrative, medical, fire,
communications, security, post office, and morale facilities.”
 Pincus’s story included a chilling quote from Hagel: “The US
military is building a new strategic agility in the Middle East.” The “
journalist’s” narrative went on to say that he believed Hagel meant
these regional actions were for “enhancing programs and facilities
that proved useful for the Iraq and Afghan wars and would provide
the security necessity for any future fighting.” [Syria? Iran?] Pincus’s
commentary also included Hagel’s statement that there were already
thirty-five thousand American soldiers, sailors, and airmen in the
region. Expanding on America’s imperialist presence, he asserted
that the United States has “prepositioned,” that is, already shipped,
weapons, ammunition, and other combat matériel to Kuwait and
Qatar “for immediate contingency challenges.” Also, according to
Pincus, there is $1.2 billion in US military equipment, including
missiles, armored vehicles and artillery ammunition currently stored
in Israel, for use by American or Israeli forces.393
There are some people willing to speak on the record about the
United States and efforts to destabilize governments around the
world. One of them is Hamid Karzai, president of the Islamic
Republic of Afghanistan.
As stated by Kevin Sieff in the Washington Post, the president of
Afghanistan, a former fighter against the Soviets and Deputy Foreign
Minister in the Mujahideen Government of 1992, “has been
building…a case against the Americans…” Karzai, “according to
senior Afghanistan officials” is said to have accused the United
States of working with “insurgents” to undercut and weaken his
government. Compiling a list of “dozens of attacks” organized by or
involving the Americans occupying his country, Karzai included the
most recent and spectacular: the assault on the Lebanese restaurant
in Kabul (La Taverna du Liban) that killed twenty-one people.
Besides trying to weaken his position (from which he has demanded
peace talks with the Taliban and the removal of foreign forces from
his country), Karzai claimed that the Americans “planned…to foment
instability in Afghanistan…” Presumably, this would either give the
United States another reason to keep control of the Islamic Republic
or ensure that the country will remain a fragmented, dysfunctional
Muslim land, just like Iraq, Libya, and Syria.
The American response?
 The Post quoted the US Ambassador James B. Cunningham as
saying “It’s a deeply conspiratorial view that’s divorced from
reality.”394

Some Talkers Talk

Cunningham’s quote is simply one example of a remarkably vast

cover-up. Washington’s policy is to fire or marginalize anyone in
government who questions the official story. Additionally, the
policymakers ensure that the official story is heard and heard, time
and again. To do that, the United States keeps its propaganda
machine going, using CIA official Frank Wisner’s “Mighty Wurlitzer”
to drown out any counterarguments. Going beyond propaganda are
the clandestine efforts to destabilize and overthrow legitimate
governments to justify the official story. That’s the role of the Arab-
Afghan Legion.
The Legion and its operations, as has been seen throughout this
work, have been shrouded in secrecy. This includes and is linked to
actions by Barack Obama. Whether it’s the man’s school records,
family history, work experience, or foreign and domestic policy, the
New Wizard of Oz and his Witches operate from hiding. This is a
pattern and practice long associated with the CIA, and goes a great
way toward explaining the steady march of the Legionnaires. They
have, and have long had, cover from the top:

The president and his staff have successfully hidden

or kept unavailable his significant school and
university records in a manner that is unprecedented
in modern times. His and his family’s passport and
similar records are unavailable…The vast bulk of
Dunham-Obama family records from a variety of
institutional archives are reported as lost or sealed…
In general, however, declassified CIA records and
other authoritative sources illustrate a long-standing
pattern of Cold War recruitment of personnel from
 precisely the schools Obama and his family favored:
the East-West Center at the University of Hawaii,
Occidental College, Columbia University, and Harvard
Law School…Was [Elliott] Haynes… [correct] in
describing Barack Obama’s future employer [Business
International Corp.] as a CIA front? Probably.395

The Agency’s “Stealth” president Obama has worked hand in

glove with Agency man John Brennan. Former assistant to the
president for homeland security and counterterrorism, as well as a
twenty-five-year career man at Langley, Brennan is now director of
his old employer, the CIA. As Andy Kreig put it, Brennan’s prior
experience as station chief in Riyadh396 led to his involvement in
other Middle East policies that would prove disastrous:

Brennan, drawing on his extensive Saudi experience,

fostered a recruitment strategy for ground troops in
Libyan and Syrian battlefields that was popular with
the president. This strategy involved recruiting local
fighters, in cooperation with monarchies, dictatorships,
and other forces friendly to the United States. This
seemingly adroit “solution” developed the same
problems as a similar US technique used three
decades previously against Russian troops in
Afghanistan: the most committed rebel freedom
fighters were likely to be Muslims so radical as to
become difficult for the United States to control in the
long run. Visible help to those who might seem like
Taliban or al-Qaeda counterparts would not be good
public relations for US voters.397

Additionally, Kreig noted that

…the liaison role of Brennan between the Saudis,

Bush Family, and Obama administration, and the
 ‘Intelligence-Industrial Complex’ cannot be
overestimated [sic]…Significant evidence exists that
the CIA’s operation in Benghazi during 2012 included
the smuggling of arms and fighters to rebels in Syria,
as I told CBS radio affiliate WWL AM/FM in New
Orleans during an interview. Any such operations
would have been part of Brennan’s responsibility at
the White House in coordination with CIA Director
David Petraeus.”398 [It was also Brennan, as CIA chief
during a secret April 2014 visit to Kiev, who apparently
directed the putschists to send the army against
dissidents in the Eastern Ukraine.399]

Presidential Puppetry also offers an explanation for why the

United States and its repressive allies opposed some “Muslim
firebrands,” murdering them through waves of drones but supported
others. Moammar Gaddafi and Bashar al-Assad “had flirted with
Russia through the years.” The kingdom and other states dependent
on oil “had their own reasons to sponsor rebellions. They are highly
undemocratic, and thus fear rebellion…” evidently hoping to promote
it elsewhere, and far away. One example is among the Alawites in
Syria, who profess a variant on Shia Islam, and are thus anathema
to the Wahhabi and Salafi radical Sunni.400
American experts had long been involved in planning war and
making war in the Middle East. (These were two of the charges
against the Nazi defendants at the Nürnberg war crimes trials.)
Andrew Kreig, citing Tony Blair, former British prime minister and
unindicted war criminal, added that Dick Cheney, vice president
under George W. Bush, had planned a series of wars against secular
states East of Gibraltar. Targets were Iraq, Libya, Syria, Lebanon,
the Sudan, Somalia, and Iran.401 If you count internal instability
created by American efforts, notably in Lebanon and Somalia, all of
Cheney’s conflicts have succeeded. One possible exception is Iran.
And there, assassinations, computer viruses, and mysterious
explosions point to a covert US war in full operation.
Everything the American Government Does Is Shrouded in
Secrecy—to Its Detriment

Throughout the preceding pages, the reader has seen how the
American government has operated amid great secrecy. Not only did
the left hand not know what the right hand was doing, but each of the
fingers thereon did not know what was happening.
The attorney Pat Frascogna, a man with FOIA expertise, once
wrote about secrecy and its purpose: “Thus whether it be learning
the dirty and unethical business practices of a company or the
secrets of our government, the same deployment of denials and
feigning ignorance about what is really going on are the all-too-
common methods used to keep the truth from the light of day.”402
Langley recruited the Arab-Afghans so clandestinely that the
terrorists didn’t know they had been recruited. They thought that they
had found a battlefield on their own, or through the Internet or
through Twitter or through television. The Agency didn’t even bother
to tell the non-CIA Americans involved in giving them US visas about
they were doing, either out of sheer stupidity, an excess of caution,
or the bureaucratic mindset.
The secrecy was so pervasive it even covered religious rituals.
Jay Freres used the Holy Church of the Consulate for spiritual
services. Not only did he hide that from the Saudis (supposedly), he
hid it from the Americans. He also concealed the reasons why some
Americans at the consulate could buy liquor but not others. Freres
obscured consulate liquor sales to US firms, such as Mobil,
operating in the Hejaz. He camouflaged the real reason that the
University of Maryland could not teach college-level courses for
credit at the consulate. (He insisted that a “State Department”
employee, that is, a CIA employee, had to monitor each and every
course. This was entirely unacceptable to the school and the
prospective teacher, Jackie Black.) Additionally, the consulate had a
boat available for rent. However, it really belonged to the CIA Base
and the vessel was never free for use by nonspooks due to
“mysterious” problems: the engine needed work, the propeller had
lost a blade, etc. Even years later, the federal government wouldn’t
own up to what had happened, because, in one knowledgeable
contact’s phrase, “it’s still going on.” Ali Ahmad Jalali, the former
Afghan Interior Minister, army officer, and resistance planner, simply
wouldn’t talk. (As a likely CIA asset, that might offend his masters.)
The Iraqi puppet government and its embassy in Washington, DC
never replied to my questions about terrorist activity in that unhappy
country. Anes Shallal (who allowed his Busboys and Poets
restaurant to be used for arguing for greater US intervention in Syria)
didn’t respond to my earlier questions about the Legion in Iraq.403
Milt Bearden and Marc Sageman, Agency company men, wouldn’t
talk and kept telling me that the CIA hadn’t been involved in
recruiting the Arab-Afghans. Houeida Saad, who nursed them, and
Phyllis Bennis who knew or should have known of them, claimed
they didn’t exist. The well-informed Clovis Maksoud and the
Albannas, with their ties to the United States and other governments,
either professed unbelievable ignorance or said nothing. Yet they
were and are willing to speak on almost any subject regarding the
Middle East.
Somehow, there was always a “responsibility to protect,” either
secrecy or people, in Agency jargon, “R2P,” yet, somehow, the US
government hid what it was doing and concealed the real results.
This resulted in almost no “protection.”
In Libya, for example, more people died and more infrastructure
was destroyed by attacks from American, British, and French
warplanes than would have died or been destroyed if the new
colonialists had stayed home. Yet, America’s tame press never
published this information.
“Secrecy” harms everyone. I once had a client on an entirely
different matter, persecuted by the FBI and Justice Department for
seeking information on the welfare and whereabouts of a close
relative. The Justice Department, specifically Assistant US Attorneys
Harvey E. Eisenberg and Jason Weinstein, along with their FBI
friends, relentlessly harassed the client, her husband, and her
mother, eventually driving them out of the country. According to what
journalist Scott Armstrong told me at the time, one branch of the
government likely had the client’s relative for whom they were
searching, but hadn’t bothered to tell the rest of the alphabet soup
about its prisoner.404
 “Secrecy” certainly harmed me. The federal government never
told me why it fired me. It never told me why I, despite my
qualifications, could not find a job for three years. It never told me
why my attempts to learn what had happened got classed as a threat
to “national security,” a concept used, more often than not, to hide
corruption, mismanagement, and abuse of authority, if not murder,
war crimes, and human rights violations.
“Secrecy” certainly covered how so-called progressives ignored
me and my writing. (I was, on occasion, told that some people
actually believed I worked for the CIA, despite the harm Langley did
to my career at State and my utter contempt for its activities.)
Although personally known to people opposing the out-of-control
intelligence services, I learn about their activities, meetings, and
receptions only from the daily newspaper. Initially able to publish
articles with ease on the Internet, I suddenly found that few, if any,
organizations had an interest in what I wrote. (Paul Craig Roberts, a
far more accomplished individual than I, once noted that he had
been almost completely frozen out of the mainstream media.)
In the past, CIA “Secrecy” was not seen as a good thing. Mel
Goodman wrote a glowing article for CounterPunch about the history
of the Pike and Church Committees investigating CIA assassinations
of Third World leaders and the Agency’s engaging in “regime
change.”405 The committees looked deeply into COINTELPRO. (This
was an FBI and CIA program to monitor, manipulate, and disrupt
domestic social and political activities in the 1960s, much like what
was recently done to the Occupy Movement). At one point, the
Committees noted that such actions, even if directed at known
criminals, would have been intolerable in a democratic society.
However, despite his experience as CIA division chief and
senior analyst in the Office of Soviet Affairs from 1976 to 1986,
Goodman professed to me no knowledge of what went on in
Afghanistan and the Middle East during and after Carter’s Proxy War
against the Soviet Union. Given his position, he should have had a
wealth of pertinent knowledge and contacts. He certainly used some
of that to draft another CounterPunch article. I In it, he remarked that
“CIA’s support for the anti-Soviet mujahideen in the 1980s proved
particularly damaging because the mujahideen provided weaponry to
fuel conflicts in the Balkans and the Sudan and trained the terrorists
who would attack us at home, including the bombing of the World
Trade Center in 1993.”406
The US Department of State and the CIA, while greatly prizing
such individuals as Kathy Hennessey, Andy Weber, Karen Sasahara,
Henry Ensher, and Greta Holtz, had no regard for people such as
myself—those of us who thought, who analyzed, who questioned,
and who engaged other cultures. Indeed, any employee who showed
initiative at State somehow didn’t make it. The kind of mentoring,
training, and tutelage that well-run organizations normally use to
improve their workforce is not found at State or in its consulates and
embassies around the world.
The Department of State, the intelligence services and the
politicians who allegedly control them, certainly have a remarkably
poor track record. Spooks manipulating foreign policy is a guarantee
of disaster. Look at Afghanistan, the Balkans, Iraq, Libya, and Syria
(if not Pakistan and Yemen). America, a country of supposed
“democratic values” seems to have a history of supporting repressive
governments and overthrowing those of nontotalitarian states. Yet,
the clearly biased propaganda that supports these policies always
depicts the despots as “allies” who are “Western oriented” with
“democratic” or, at least, “representative” governments. Somehow,
these “allies” oppose variously oriented “Axes of Evil” without
permitting any sort of free and open societies at home, viz. Saudi
Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, and Israel. In America’s lexicon, persecution,
religious fanaticism, and violence are the hallmarks of countries and
governments, usually Arab and/or Muslim, that need regime change.
The fawning corporate mainstream media happily repeat the lines
given them, such as “the Free Syrian Army” or the “Kosovo
Liberation Army” who are battling the “insurgents” engaged in mass
atrocities and uncountable Viagra-fueled rapes. America and its
allies have a “clear responsibility to protect (R2P)” those resisting the
“freedom fighters.”
As journalist Wayne Madsen mentioned, to achieve this, the
United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New
Zealand have combined psychological operations with their
electronic deception programs, particularly on the World Wide Web.
 These include alias development and masquerading
(which includes the employment of “sock puppet”
personae already in use by the US military to disrupt
and influence the Internet), mass messaging (or
spamming) and “call bombing” [jamming a phone with
myriad calls], propaganda, and “pushing stories.”
These tactics have been refined since the CIA and its
George Soros-financed nongovernmental organization
activist allies brought about the “Arab Spring”
overthrow of governments in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya,
and Yemen, as well as the bloody civil war in Syria.407

H. G. Wells wrote War of the Worlds. No one, beyond George

Soros (Hungarian-born multibillionaire) and Victoria Nuland (former
career FSO, now Assistant Secretary of State for European and
Eurasian Affairs), seem to know who is writing War of the Words.

Political Costs

The War of the Words hasn’t been too favorable to the United
States. It’s not hard to see why. In a 2013 Pew Research poll on
global attitudes toward America, countries receiving Uncle Sam’s
money (but not the business end of his weapons) love the United
States. Israel, the Philippines, Ghana, Kenya, Senegal, and South
Korea rate America highly (above 75 percent). While Iraq,
Afghanistan, Serbia, and Syria were not covered, some Arab and
Muslim states were. At the bottom of the pile, Pakistan, target of
drones, had an 11 percent favorable view of the United States.
Egypt, and the Palestinian Prison Camp, along with Jordan, had
ratings approving the United States ranging only from 14 percent to
16 percent. In a 2009 Gallup poll of Syria, just 15 percent of the
population held a positive opinion of America. In that same
questionnaire, Serbia clocked in at 14 percent, but Libyans were not
polled. According to an undated BBC online survey:
 United Arab Emirates: Views of the United States in
the UAE are quite unfavorable, with a solid majority
(57 percent) saying they have a mostly negative view
of US influence in the world, and just one in four (25
percent) says they have a mainly positive view.
Emirates have largely negative views of the United
States on its foreign policy issues, though they are
somewhat less negative than other publics in the
region. Four in five disapprove of US handling of the
Israel-Hezbollah conflict (81 percent), the war in Iraq
(80 percent)…Emirates clearly see the US military
presence as a destabilizing factor in the Middle East:
66 percent says the United States is provoking more
conflict than it prevents, and only 17 percent says it is
a stabilizing force.

Lebanon: Lebanese views of the United States

remain largely negative. A majority (58 percent) sees
the US influence in the world as mainly negative, while
about one-third (34 percent) sees it as mainly positive.
Attitudes about US foreign policy are unfavourable
across most areas and mirror those of neighbouring
Arab republics. Overwhelming majorities disapprove
of the US handling of the war in Iraq (90 percent), the
Israel-Hezbollah war (82 percent)…Respondents in
Lebanon decidedly see the US military presence in
the Middle East as provoking more conflict than it
prevents, with more than three-quarters (77 percent)
holding this view.

Syrians and Libyans were not surveyed. Neither were Iraqis or

Afghans. Kevin Drum clearly explains negative assessments of
America: “We’ve launched a significant overseas assault every 40
months since 1963.”408 This means:
 …if you’re wondering why people all over the
world view the United States as an arrogant bully,
reserving for itself the right to rain down death
from above on anyone it pleases whenever it
pleases, well there you go. [Emphasis in original.] It
doesn’t matter whether you think some or even all of
those actions were completely justified and morally
defensible. From here, we tend to look at each of
these engagements in isolation, asking whether there
are good reasons to go in and whether we can
accomplish important goals for ourselves and others.
But when a new American military campaign begins,
people in the rest of the world see it in this broader
historical context.

This is a perspective that’s sorely missing from most

mainstream discourse. Too many Americans have a
seriously blinkered view of our interventions overseas,
viewing them as one-offs to be evaluated on their
individual merits. But when these things happen once
every three years, against a backdrop of almost
continuous smaller-scale military action (drone
attacks, the odd cruise missile here and there,
sending “advisers” over to help an ally, etc.), the rest
of the world just doesn’t see it that way. They don’t
see a peaceful country that struggles mightily with its
conscience and only occasionally makes a decision to
drop a bunch of bombs. They see a country that views
dropping bombs as its primary means of dealing with
any country weaker than we are.

Add to Mr. Drum’s remarks the effects of the Arab-Afghan

Legion, and you will better put justifiable hatred of America in the
proper perspective.
American politicians in their arrogance and American voters in
their ignorance have destroyed not only major portions of the world
and the peoples therein, they have cost the United States its ability
to accomplish any goal without the use of force. America does not
have any concept of its own interests or those of other countries and
cannot figure out any way to reconcile them. This is largely because
the Department of State itself does not know what these interests
are or how to reconcile them. Diplomacy is not “the art of letting the
other fellow have your way” (written on a brass plaque in the Henry
Lawson Bar at the Australian High Commission in New Delhi). Nor is
it “saying the nastiest things in the most pleasant way possible,” as a
Frenchwoman, Irène Goyeau-Laurens, remarked. It is, rather, “the
conduct of relations between states based on tact and common
sense.” 409 No democracy can conduct worldwide terrorism
campaigns using a war budget greater than any country on earth.
(The “peace-loving” United States accounts for almost half, 39
percent of all military expenditures by all countries on the globe).410
According to the Washington Post’s story about data released by
Edward Snowden, the alleged total budget for espionage was $52.6
billion for fiscal 2013.411 (The Post said it withheld an unknown
amount of information from the story at the US government’s
request).
One contact, an Arab American attorney, suggested that US
citizens reexamine the federal Constitution and the concept of
democracy. He advised that, in light of an out-of-control government
that goes to war around the world justified solely by lies, false
pretenses, and politicized “intelligence,” democracy is in peril. If
government actions are grounded on information supplied by an
alphabet soup of supersecretive spy agencies, a dictatorship is
clearly in the offing. Unchecked, unexamined power, ignored by the
US corporate-controlled mainstream media as well as by the
citizenry itself, permits disasters to flourish, criminals to hide, and
fraud, mismanagement, and abuse of authority to go unpunished.
The woefully abused American concept of secrecy appears designed
to hide, “gover-up,” and condone illegal and unconstitutional
behavior, such as the recruitment, training, and implementation of
the Arab-Afghan Legion.
If the federal Constitution had not been abolished by Barack
Obama and his predecessors, and if the Congress were not so
corrupt, incompetent, and illegitimate, the solution would be simple.
Implement Article II, Section 4 of America’s Basic Law:

The President, Vice President and all civil officers of

the United States, shall be removed from office on
impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery,
or other high crimes and misdemeanors.

Material Costs

According to the News Pakistan,412 Sabir Shah wrote a

summary of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government analysis of
what happens when the US imperial wars are costed out.

The decade-long American wars in Afghanistan and

Iraq would end up costing as much as $6 trillion, the
equivalent of $75,000 for every American
household…

The Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, taken together, will

be the most expensive wars in US history—totaling
somewhere between $4 trillion and $6 trillion. This
includes long-term medical care and disability
compensation for service members, veterans and
families, military replenishment and social and
economic costs. The largest portion of that bill is yet to
be paid.

Another major share of the long-term costs of the wars

comes from paying off trillions of dollars in debt
incurred as the US government failed to include their
cost in annual budgets and simultaneously
implemented sweeping tax cuts for the rich. In
 addition, huge expenditures are being made to
replace military equipment used in the two wars.

Shah added: “The authors of this report have warned that the
legacy of decisions taken during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars
would dominate future federal budgets for decades to come.” What
was omitted from this report were the costs to the Afghans and Iraqis
of these wars. No words were directed toward the expenses of the
wars in the Balkans, Libya, and Syria, either. However, Libya was
“cheap” according to the Daily Beast, at “only” one billion dollars. 413
What is usually omitted from the puffery of the American
militarists, unchained spooks, neoconservatives, and their
supporters in the “fawning corporate media” is how far “only” one
billion would go toward rebuilding a failed United States.
First, there is health care for the forty-seven million uninsured or
underinsured Americans (2012 numbers. Obamacare deals only with
about seven million people, many already protected.). According to
the Kaiser Family Foundation, covering those forty-seven million at
an annual, individual cost of $5,884 would total nearly $277
billion.414 That’s a lot of money, but it’s still considerably less than
the price tag for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars plus the unknown
costs of continued fighting in Libya and Syria, and against the
allegedly “new” enemy, ISIS/ISIL/IS, in Iraq.
Next, here are some costs for refurbishing the United States’
collapsing infrastructure from an American Society of Civil Engineers
2013 estimate. Compare them with the money wasted on recruiting
training, and implementing the Arab-Afghan Legion in Afghanistan,
the Balkans, Iraq, Libya, and Syria:

The Association of State Dam Safety Officials

estimates that it will require an investment of $21
billion to repair…aging, yet critical, high-hazard dams.

There are an estimated 240,000 water main breaks

per year in the United States. Assuming every pipe
would need to be replaced, the cost over the coming
 decades could reach more than $1 trillion, according
to the American Water Works Association (AWWA).

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA)

estimates that to eliminate the nation’s bridge backlog
by 2028, we would need to invest $20.5 billion
annually, while only $12.8 billion is being spent
currently…

However, 42 percent of America’s major urban

highways remain congested, costing the economy an
estimated $101 billion in wasted time and fuel
annually…Currently, the Federal Highway
Administration estimates that $170 billion in capital
investment would be needed on an annual basis to
significantly improve conditions and performance.

What kind of mental process is needed to ignore the great funds

required to repair a crumbling or broken foundation in favor of
continual war in the Balkans and Middle East, using the Arab-Afghan
Legion as proxy?

It’s Curious, Is It Not?

For more than ten years, the United States of America, an

allegedly free and democratic country interested only in peace, has
been spending billions of dollars annually to destabilize and break up
weak, impoverished lands.
First, there was Afghanistan, used as a means of disintegrating
the Soviet Union. Jimmy Carter, who, according to his online
biography at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum
website, championed human rights throughout the world, and
Zbigniew Brzezinski, the would-be Polish “nobleman,” recruited and
trained terrorists. Subsequent administrations sent them across the
Amu Darya river to split the Muslim Socialist Republics from the
USSR—and thereby weakened a multiethnic state with its own
internal tensions. These men knew full well that the Soviet Union had
never fought the United States; it had only sought to thwart its
influence around the world. Russians today well remember American
efforts to destroy communism (and a weak, embattled USSR)
between 1918 and 1920. Nearly thirteen thousand US soldiers
fought the legitimate government of the Soviet Union near Archangel
and Murmansk and in Siberia at the behest of President Woodrow
Wilson (D-NJ). Moreover, some American history books fail to
recount the martyrdom of between twenty million and thirty million of
the USSR’s people during World War II.
The American government ignores the past, present, and future.
History appears to be something that happens somewhere else.
Realizing that the Afghan Legion engaged to fight the Soviets in
Central Asia could be profitably employed elsewhere, the United
States, supposedly a constitutionally based, federal republic with a
strong democratic tradition, deployed them in socialist Yugoslavia,
another weak state with internal ethnic and political tensions. Aiming
at undermining Soviet influence in Europe and gaining control over
oil and gas routes through the Balkans, the Americans, with the aid
of their client states Germany and Britain, successfully used the
Arab-Afghan Legion’s assassins and saboteurs to dismember
Yugoslavia, asserting that closer ties to Europe and the United
States would be beneficial. To successfully demolish the country,
turning it into wrecked statelets, they induced Slovenia and Croatia,
the more industrialized and economically advanced sections, to
break away and declare their independence. A provoked -war split
Bosnia into several pieces and Kosovo was removed through bloody
fighting.415
Seeing another “enemy” in Iraq, and correctly viewing the
possibilities of causing splits between and among the Kurds, the
Sunni, and the Shii, the United States, using dubious pretexts, twice
invaded the country, in 1991 and 2003. Although the Americans
successfully used the Legion to divide the three groups, Iraq still
remained more or less unified for another decade. Only after the
Legion’s second wave of bombings, murders, and destruction
beginning in the summer of 2014 has there been talk of the Kurdish
north declaring itself independent (with the aid of Turkish oil
purchases and Israeli influence). Now, after years of American-
stimulated uproar in Iraq, the UN High Commission for Refugees
(UNHCR) estimated in January 2014 that there are still one million
internally displaced Iraqis, as well as nearly five hundred thousand
asylees and refugees from Mesopotamia. Additionally, with conflict in
Syria, perhaps US-instigated, there are an additional three hundred
and fifty thousand refugees from there in Iraq, along with sixty
thousand or so returned Iraqi refugees, presumably from Syria and
other neighboring countries where conditions, because of American
actions, have gone from bad to worse.
US policy had caused most of the educated and middle-class,
the doctors, lawyers, and the Iraqi equivalent of Indian chiefs, to
leave Iraq—permanently. These are the individuals whom no country
can afford to lose and still progress. The American intent was to
ensure the complete destruction of both the material and immaterial
aspects of Iraq, to dehouse, deculturalize, destabilize, and destroy
the country. After all, which nation is stronger? And which nation,
with five thousand years of recorded history, invented the wheel and
writing?
As for Libya, while it was not riven by ethnic and/or religious
tensions, it was still a weak state. According to a State Department
orientation I had attended at FSI, the country’s principal export, prior
to the discovery and development of its oil resources, had been
scrap metal left over from military operations during World War II.
The country’s 2010 population of 6,351,112 (World Bank) was 97
percent Berber and Arab while its religion is 96.6 percent Sunni
Muslim.416 Far from having a mighty military, Libya, the fourth largest
country in Africa, had an army that seemed, at least on paper, to be
inadequate for even keeping order over its 1,759,540 square
kilometers (679,362 square miles, slightly larger than Alaska or
seven times the size of the United Kingdom; with a population
density of about 3.5 people per square kilometer):

By 2002 the Libyan Army numbered some 45,000

men, including 25,000–40,000 draftees. Recent years
saw the army undermined by the rise to power of the
 40,000-strong Revolutionary Guard. The army had
been further weakened by having been disorganized
into the “People’s Guard”…By 2010 the Libyan Army
numbered some 50,000 men, including 25,000
draftees. It also possesse[d] some 40,000 reserves
organized into a People’s Militia.417

So, Libya was a good country to attack and invade, using NATO
warplanes, spooks, and the Arab-Afghan Legion.
Syria was, too.
In 2010, the IMF estimated the Syrian population to be about
21,016,000, spread over 185,180 square kilometers, that is, 71,498
square miles (slightly larger than North Dakota; WorldAtlas. com),
with roughly 112 people per square kilometer (UN Data).
Indexmundi.com, citing the CIA World Factbook, added that there
were about nineteen thousand Israeli colonists in Syria’s Golan
Heights. With an armed forces paper strength of one hundred ten
thousand men, Syrian military strength does not really compare with
that of its enemies:418
1,369,000 USA
633,000 Israel
150,000 Saudi Arabia
130,000 France
127,000 United Kingdom
Nor does it compare with the estimated one hundred thousand
opposition fighters seeking the overthrow of Syria’s government.419
The largest sector of Syria’s economy has been agriculture,
followed by oil, industry, and tourism, sectors not really hard to
disrupt with modern weapons and strategy.420
In sum, then, the United States of America, backed by its
population of 318,500,000 (US Bureau of the Census), has waged
total war on the people of Afghanistan (15,300,000 in 1980, from
indexmundi.com); Yugoslavia (23,842,000 in 1990, from theodora.
com); Iraq (24,683,000 in 2003, from indexmundi.com); and Syria
(21,016,000 in 2010, from the IMF).
 There is definitely a disparity in power and influence, especially
given the resources provided to the Arab-Afghan Legion on top of
American arms, weapons, and funds. In 2009, the World Bank said
Afghanistan’s gross national income per capita was US$460;
Yugoslavia’s $3,600 (from kushnirs.org); Iraq’s US$4,030; Libya’s
US$12,930; and Syria’s US$4,600 (from indexmundi.com). GDP per
capita in the United States in 2009 was US$48,040 (World Bank).
The story of David and Goliath has been turned round and stood on
its head.

Quo vadimus? (Where Are We Going?)

In a July 23, 2014, conversation with a knowledgeable journalist,

we discussed where the United States is going next. Since
Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria are finished as nation-states for
the foreseeable future, the correspondent opined that there are still
targets of opportunity for America, particularly Tunisia and Algeria,
and, possibly, Jordan. That’s right. Tunisia, where the “Arab Spring”
started, has bountiful “militant Islamists”. Algeria is lumbered with its
problematic economy as well as absolute military and presidential
political control. Henry Ensher, who helped destroy Iraq, has been
US Ambassador to Algeria since 2011. Jordan, while profiting from
the American war against Syria and the destruction of Iraq, has a
large, discontented population of Palestinians who, now, at least,
contain their intense dislike of the monarchy. In my view, while
Morocco has been a staunch supporter of American policy, it does
not seem to have been harmed by that and, in the event of a
democratic movement, would likely be supported by the other
repressive monarchies to the east. Oman’s oil reserves, its main
economic prop, are declining while, politically, concentration of
power in the Sultan and an unwillingness to allow citizen
participation or dialogue play into the hands of the opposition.421
Additionally, Greta Holtz, American Ambassador since 2012, is there
to give the Omanis what she learned in Jeddah and practiced in Iraq,
where she was Minister-Counselor for Provincial Affairs and ran the
Provincial Reconstruction Teams. Yemen, of course, has been
successfully destabilized for years, and Egypt is firmly under the rule
of the US-backed military dictatorship.

And then, there is Iran.

Isaiah has the last word:

Derelinquit impius viam suam

et vir iniquus cogitationes suas…
(Let the wicked forsake his way and
the unrighteous man his thoughts…)
(Isaiah 55: 7. Third Responsory at
Matins for the First Sunday in Lent in
the Roman and Sarum Rites.)

The End
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1 Covert action is defined in US law as activity that is meant “to influence political,
economic, or military conditions abroad, where it is intended that the role of the US
Government will not be apparent or acknowledged publicly.” 50 USC § 413(b)(e).
2 http://www.state.gov/m/ds/investigat/
3 Robert Dreyfuss, Devil’s Game, How the U.S. Helped Unleash Fundamentalist
Islam (New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt, 2005) 290.
4 Ostensibly from the State Department for sustained excellence and initiative in
the substantive policy areas of the oceans, the environment, science; democracy,
human rights, and labor; population, refugees, and migration; and international
narcotics and crime. Greta Holtz, to my knowledge, never worked in any of these
areas.
5 Eric Qualkenbush’s biography is available at
http://www.tvworldwide.com/events/homelanddefense/040430/bush.cfm.
6 In “Our Man in Jeddah,” an article written in July 2004 by Margie Burns for
onlinejournal.com, Sasahara was linked to the CIA. Burns also noted Sasahara’s
undiplomatic behavior, yelling at a woman when she tried to get State’s assistance
in a parental kidnapping case. Sasahara’s husband, Michael Ratner, is listed as
consul general in Jerusalem at this writing.
7 This publication is now out of print and available only as a current issue online,
thus forestalling any such tracking of individuals.
8 The official residence for the consulate’s Marine Security Guard.
9 The million dollar figure came from the author’s conversation with Tim Hunter, a
former consulate official.
10 Roman Catholic priests operated in Saudi Arabia like they did in the time of
Henry VIII in Britain. They concealed their identity and secretly provided religious
services to the faithful. If discovered, then as now, they would be arrested and
jailed.
11 A slab of metal duplicating the consular officer’s signature and authenticating
the stamped visa.
12 After assignments as an FSO to Bonn, Germany (with Eric Qualkenbush),
Kazakhstan, and Hong Kong, Andy became Assistant Secretary of Defense for
Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Defense Programs. His official biography
notably omits his assignment to Moscow as a bio-weapons inspector where he
had been interviewed on-camera by former New York Times journalist Judith Miller
for the PBS show Bio-Terror.
13 Joseph P. O’Neill was Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM) at Khartoum when
Rahman got his visa. He says a spook issued the visa but blames a Foreign
Service national (local hire), according to The Association for Diplomatic Studies
and Training; Foreign Affairs Oral History Project. O’Neill added that there had
been another CIA agent who was slipped a visa without any explanation or blame.
He said he got his job in Khartoum through Frank G. Wisner, a member of a well-
known CIA family.
14 The same O’Neill who had been DCM in Khartoum when Omar Abdel Rahman
got his visa.
15 Obituary, Washington Post, July 6, 2014.
16 Temporary Duty Tehran, January–March 1979. His position was unspecified.
O’Neill criticized political officers who had been telephoning Washington to suggest
evacuation. He also aided the escape of Israeli embassy staff. O’Neill had had his
own problems with the Inspection Corps. His career summary shows a series of
strange assignments for an FSO, including the one in Bosnia. The Association for
Diplomatic Studies and Training; Foreign Affairs Oral History Project; Georgetown
University, May 19, 1998.
17 A term from America’s Wild West for nomadic gunslingers who hired out to fight
range wars.
18 Peter L. Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know, (New York: Free Press, 2006)
25, 32, 33. NB: In an e-mail to me dated February 12, 2014, Bergen denied having
any more information than the above.
19 My conversation with Marc Sageman at his Rockville, Maryland, home, August
13, 2013; arranged by Matthew Hoh.
20 Arun Kundnani, The Muslims Are Coming (New York: Verso, 2014), 75, 76.
21 Ibid., 127. citing Elaine Sciolino and Eric Schmitt, “A Not Very Private Feud over
Terrorism,” New York Times, June 8, 2008.
22 Griffin was right about Jane. According to my contacts, Whitney used to steal
spoons from her staff and had taken paintings from the consulate. After Jane went
to Perth, Australia, as consul general, retired FSO Fred Galanto told me what he
had heard from Jim Gray, once in Jeddah, later one of the FSOs in Perth. Besides
misappropriating $40,000 in government funds to decorate her office and
residence, Gray said, Whitney had so outraged her staff, both American and
Australian, that they wrote the ambassador, threatening to resign en masse unless
he got rid of her. The State Department then let her retire on a full pension. When I
tried to learn the specifics of the matter through a Freedom of Information Act
request, State refused to provide any information because “it would violate
Whitney’s privacy.”
23 The Marine Security Guard told me Bryant placed classified documents on his
secretary’s desk after hours so that she would get a security violation. Enough
violations and you lose the clearance and can’t work. The secretary’s name was
Elizabeth Otey, a truly wonderful, helpful person.
24 Intelwire.com, citing a cable written by Albert Thibault, Deputy Chief of Mission,
Riyadh. I had known Al as political officer in Delhi. Also, in Dec. 2013, in response
to a letter to Griffin about Jeddah’s visa issues, “Steve,” a supposed son, called
and harangued me for fifteen minutes about my questions. While Steve said he
didn’t know the facts, he insisted that Jeddah was a State Department consulate
“with only a few” CIA employees. Steve asserted he was a GAO analyst and knew
the State Department and Langley through travel with his parents. Steve also
alleged that he had once applied to join the Agency but it did not accept him
because his scores on the written test were not high enough.
25 Jones moved on to become Counselor for Political Affairs in Bonn and then to
head the US Mission to Berlin. While there, in April 1994, he publicly criticized
German domestic policy as being racist, earning a rebuke from Donald Kursch,
Charge’ d’Affaires ad interim [Acting Ambassador]. Jones didn’t reply to my letter
asking about his involvement in my termination.
26 According to record-keepers, Schlierer and the “Reps” got fourteen seats and
nearly 10 percent of the vote for the Baden-Württemberg parliament in March
1996. “Baden-Württemberg. Results of the Elections from 1964–2011.”
Statistisches Landesamt Baden-Württemberg.
27 After Stuttgart’s closure, she took a position with the American consulate in
Munich.
28 Mount did not reply to my letter about his efforts to ensure I became
unemployed and stayed that way.
29 Miss Hennessey went on to become Counselor for Consular Affairs at the US
Embassy in Madrid.
30 An organization seemingly obsessed with using fear of increasing but vaguely
defined hate groups in America to generate greater donations for its work of
monitoring “extremists.” It has been said to equate anti-Zionism with “anti-
Semitism.” Muslim-American writers have tied the organization to the Jewish Anti-
Defamation League, both of which have a record of spying on private citizens, and
to the US Department of Homeland Security’s “fusion centers” that collect personal
data on Americans. Cf. SourceWatch.org.
31 We were shown what were called “happy snaps,” unusually good overhead
imagery (e.g., a photo of Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, apparently taken at an
altitude of several hundred feet and about half a mile’s distance). In reality, it was
from a satellite camera several hundred miles in space and three thousand miles
away. Another picture was of men and women walking down the steps of the US
Capitol building. Taken from hundreds of miles in the heavens, its detail could
distinguish between the two sexes. I also saw photographs of a Brazilian military
airfield on film a bit larger than the normal 2¼ x 2¼ format. The resolution was so
good that I could almost count the rivets on the parked aircraft. Being an on-again,
off-again photographer, I asked about image sharpness, something tied to the size
of the film and camera. I was told that it wasn’t an issue since the camera was the
size of a railroad boxcar.
32 In A-100, our orientation class, we had been told that only really bad apples
were tossed out because the selection process was so stringent. The comment
had been made by John Tkacik that the people whose appointments were
terminated knew it well in advance because it was perfectly clear to them that they
didn’t measure up.
33 William Claiborne, “Two Held in Visa Fraud Case,” March 20, 2000.
34 These records were never shared with me, then or since. Lindover never
responded to my April 13, 2014 letter about the foregoing, nor did she return a
May 12 telephone message about the correspondence.
35 Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker, former General Counsel at the CIA and NSA, once
told me at an American Bar Association meeting that the intelligence services have
a good relationship with Martin. Martin, in a class I attended at American
University’s Washington College of Law, told me that she believes the
government’s “theory” about September 11, 2001.
36 Nick Pope with John Burroughs, USAF (ret.) and Jim Penniston USAF (ret.),
Encounter in Rendlesham Forest (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2014), 226.
37 Audubon Society v. U.S. Forest Service, 104 F.3d 1201 (10th Cir. 1997).
38 There is a pattern to Walton’s behavior on the bench. On September 26, 2014,
the Washington Post carried an article written by Lisa Rein: “FDA whistleblowers’
lawsuit over surveillance dismissed.” Reggie B. Walton did not address the merits
of the scientists’ case, based on the government’s spying on their official and
personal e-mail accounts. Instead, Walton ruled that “the scientists failed to
exhaust [their] administrative remedies.”
39 According to varied Internet sources, including Linked-In, 9/11 Commission
Documents, History Commons, as well as Jon Gold, author and advocate for 9/11
Justice, Shayna Steinger issued most of these visas. Although she only had a
master’s degree, the State Department commissioned her as an FSO-4, a high
rank for someone hired just out of Columbia University with no prior experience.
The Congressional Record shows her name at her 1999 commissioning as
Shayna Steinger Singh. Despite her issuing visas to terrorists and giving equivocal
answers to the 9/11 Commission, Steinger is still an FSO.
40 Daniel Hopsicker, Welcome to Terrorland, Mohammed Atta & the 9/11 Cover-Up
in Florida (Venice, FL: The MadCow Press, 2004, 2007).
41 Ibid., 253.
42 Peter Lance, Triple Cross (New York: Harper Collins, 2006), xxiii.
43 2013 e-mail from Hunter to me.
44 Michael Parenti, The Sword And The Dollar, Imperialism, Revolution, and the
Arms Race, (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989) 195.
45 The Road to 9/11. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007) 154.
46 Triple Cross, 6.
47 Ibid., 68–69.
48 Ibid., 116, citing 9/11 Commission Staff Statement, 15.
49 Ibid., 146.
50 Ibid., 243, citing Matthew I. Wald, “Fate of Flight 800: The Overview: Jet’s
Landing Gear Is Said to Provide Evidence of a Bomb,” New York Times, July 31,
1996. Don Van Natta Jr., “More Traces of Explosives in Flight 800,” New York
Times, August 31, 1996. Sylvia Adcock and Knut Royce, “Two Traces Found,”
Newsday, August 31, 1996.
51 Triple Cross, 389.
52 Road to 9/11, 180–181, citing Daniele Ganser, NATO’s Secret Armies:
Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe (London: Frank Cass
Publishers, 2005), 63–83. Philip Willan, Puppetmasters: The Political Use of
Terrorism in Italy (London: Constable and Company, 1991), 122–131, 160–167,
26. William Scobie, Observer, August 11, 1990. “Italian General Alleges CIA Link
to Bombings,” Reuters, August 4, 2000.
53 James Bamford, Body of Secrets (New York: Doubleday, 2001), 82–83.
54 Cf. http://www.globalresearch.ca/hillary-clinton-we-created-al-qaeda/5337222.
55 Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, “Hillary Clinton: ‘We Created Al Qaeda,’” Global
Research, June 1, 2013.
56 Communicated in a 2013 e-mail to the author.
57 “For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all
people are upon us,” John Winthrop, Governor, Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1630.
58 Kevin Robert Ryan, Another 19, Investigating Legitimate 9/11 Suspects,
(Microbloom, 2013), 179–200.
59 Ibid., 179, citing John Glaser, “CIA Documents Drastically Overestimated Soviet
Capabilities,” Antiwar.com, September 28, 2011.
60 Ibid.
61 Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick; The Untold History of the United States (New
York: Gallery Books, 2012), 258; citing Foreign Relations of the United States,
1952-1954 Vol. 10, US Govt. Printing Office 1989, 80.
62 Ibid. 260, citing Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (New
York: Doubleday, 2007), 86.
63 Ibid.
64 Ibid., 259 and 260.
65 Ibid., 262, 263, citing Piero Gleijeses, Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan
Revolution and the United States, 1944-1954 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1991), 150. “The Guatemalan Cancer,” New York Times, June 8, 1951.
“Red Cell in Guatemala,” Washington Post, March 4, 1952.
66 Ibid., 262, 263, citing Stephen Kinzer, Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime
Change (New York: Times Books, 2006), 134–135.
67 Ibid., 262–263, citing Peter Chapman, Bananas; Richard H. Immerman, The
CIA in Guatemala; Stephen C. Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, Bitter Fruit: The
Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala.
68 Parenti, Sword And The Dollar, 198, citing Jeff McMahon, Reagan and the
World (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1985), 13. Also Stephen Kinzer and
Stephen Schlesinger, Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in
Guatemala (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1982).
69 Stone and Kuznick, 263–265, citing Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, 461; Young,
“Great Britain’s Latin America Dilemma,” 588.
70 William Blum, Killing Hope, U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War
II (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 2004), 77.
71 D. Armstrong and J. Trento, America and the Islamic Bomb (Hanover, NH:
Steerforth Press, 2007), chapter 5.
72 Ibid., 90.
73 “A man of legendary cruelty,” he “was known…to patrol the bazaars of Kabul
with vials of acid, which he would throw in the face of any woman who dared to
walk outdoors without a full burka covering her face.” He was also remembered for
skinning prisoners alive. See following note.
74 Stone and Kuznick, 459, citing James J. F. Forest, ed., Countering Terrorism

and Insurgency in the 21st Century; International Perspectives, vol. 2 (Westport,

CT: Greenwood Publishing Group), 468. Robert Dreyfuss, Devil’s Game: How the
United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (New York: Henry Holt,
2005), 267. Stephen Buttry and Jake Thompson, “UNO’s Connection to Taliban
Centers on Education, UNO Program,” Omaha World Herald, September 16,
2001, 1.
75 “Sleeping With The Devil,” www.globalresearch.ca, September 5, 2012.
76 A front organization—Washington’s blog, citing MSNBC, 1998.
77 Bill Moyers, “A Brief History of Al Qaeda,” PBS. com, July 27, 2007.
78 Global Research, September 12, 2001.
79 Ahmed Rashid, “The Taliban: Exporting Extremism,” Foreign Affairs,
November–December 1999.
80 Alfred McCoy, “Drug Fallout: the CIA’s Forty Year Complicity in the Narcotics
Trade,” The Progressive, August 1, 1997.
81 cf. Gary Webb, Dark Alliance (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1998).
82 Son of a toffee-nosed Polish aristocrat displaced by the Communists
83 The Road to 9/11, 70–71.
84 Ibid., citing Alexandre Benigsen and Marie Broxup, his daughter, The Islamic
Threat to the Soviet State (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983).
85 A ritual pilgrimage required of all Muslims at least once in their lifetime, if they
are able.
86 Road to 9/11, citing Robert Dreyfuss, Devil’s Game, How the United States
Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt,
2005), 254.
87 Ibid., 72, citing National Security Archive Interview with Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski,
June 13, 1997.
88 Ibid., citing Robert Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of
Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1996), 91–92.
89 Ibid., 127. Interesting. Unlike the Christian Bible, there is only one Quran.
90 Devil’s Game, 274.
91 After all, Brzezinski was reportedly one of Obama’s professors or advisors at
Columbia.
92 Devil’s Game, 275, citing John Cooley, Unholy Wars (London: Pluto Press,
1999), 32; and also Andrew Kreig, Presidential Puppetry, Obama, Romney, and
Their Masters (Washington, DC: Eagle View Books, 2013), 28.
93 Ibid., 277.
94 Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, The War On Truth (Northampton, MA: Olive Branch
Press, 2005), 11, citing Bedi, Rahul, “Why? An Attempt to Explain the
Unexplainable,” Jane’s Defence Weekly, September 14, 2001.
95 Road to 9/11, 74–75, citing Tim Weiner, “Blowback From the Afghan Battlefield,”
New York Times, March 13, 1994.
96 Ibid., 114, 115.
97 Bank of Credit and Commerce International, eventually shuttered for money
laundering and other financial crimes. It worked closely with Langley to arm and
finance the “Arab-Afghan Legion.” See following note.
98 Road to 9/11., 116, citing Peter Truell and Larry Gurwin, False Prophets: The
Inside Story of BCCI (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992); 133–134.
99 Ibid., 116–117.
100 Perle was among those who helped bring about the destruction of Iraq in
2003, a state whose five thousand years of history included inventing the wheel
and creating the written word.
101 Cf. Martin Schram, “The unintended unmaking of Afghan hearts and minds,”
Washington Post, March 23, 2002.
102 An academic at the University of Nebraska, Thomas Gouttiere, director of its
Center for Afghanistan Studies, took the money, which really came from the CIA,
and produced the propaganda. A Taliban delegation to the United States was so
taken with his efforts that they went out of their way to meet him in 1997. Devil’s
Game, 328.
103 Stone and Kuznick, 461, citing Dreyfuss, Devil’s Game, 290.
104 Ibid., 461.
105 Ibid., 117–118, citing M. Bowden, Black Hawk Down (New York: Atlantic
Monthly Press, 1999), 110.
106 Ibid., p. 118, citing George Crile, Charlie Wilson’s War; New York: Atlantic
Monthly Press 2003; p. 335.
107 Ibid., citing Triple Cross, 141–43, and L. Williams and E. T. McCormick, “Al
Qaeda Terrorist Worked with FBI,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 4, 2001.
108 Triple Cross, 19.
109 Road to 9/11, 118–119, citing “Has Someone Been Sitting On The FBI,” BBC
Newsnight, November 6, 2001.
110 Craig Unger, House of Bush, House of Saud, The Secret Relationship
Between the World’s Two Most Powerful Families (New York: Scribner, 2004),
109–110; citing M. Springmann, BBC interview as reported in the Sydney Morning
Herald, November 7, 2001.
111 Joe Trento, Prelude to Terror (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2005), and citing
interviews with me between 1993 and 2004, 342–344.
112 The War On Freedom (Joshua Tree, CA: Tree of Life Publications, 2002), 104–
106. War On Truth, 218–22.
113 House of Bush, 110.
114 Road to 9/11, 119.
115 Ibid., 120, citing Jason Burke, Al Qaeda (London: I. B. Tauris, 2004), 72–86.
116 As related in this publication, the Arab-Afghans have marched from
Afghanistan to Syria, by way of Bosnia, Iraq, and Libya. Not organized in a
hierarchical sense, nevertheless, they are cohesive enough to be used as a cadre
to destabilize governments the United States opposes.
117 Road to 9/11, 122.
118 Ibid., 123, citing John Pilger, “What Good Friends Left Behind,” Guardian,
September 20, 2003.
119 Road to 9/11, 136, citing Steve Coll, “Anatomy of a Victory: CIA’s Covert
Afghan War,” Washington Post, July 19, 1992.
120 J. Michael Springmann, “Boston Baked BS: It Goes So Good With Turkeys
When They’ve Come Home To Roost,” Foreign Policy Journal, May 19, 2013.
121 Road to 9/11, 123, citing Lance, 1,000 Years For Revenge, 41–42.
122 John Cooley, Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America, and International Terrorism
(London: Pluto Press, 1999), 41.
123 Road to 9/11, 123.
124 Ibid., 126, citing Ahmed Rashid, Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central
Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 43–44.
125 Road to 9/11, 131, citing Peter Dale Scott, Drugs, Oil, and War: The United
States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina (Lanham, MD: Rowman and
Littlefield, 2003), 7. Thomas Goltz, Azerbaijan Diary (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe,
1999), 274–275. Mark Irkali, Tengiz Kodarian, and Cali Ruchala, “God Save The
Shah: American Guns, Spies, and Oil in Azerbaijan,” Sobaka, May 22, 2003.
126 Ibid., 131, citing Peter Bergen, Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of
Osama bin Laden, (New York: Free Press, 2001), 136–137.
127 Ibid., 161.
128 Ibid., 163, citing Goltz, Azerbaijan Diary, 272–275.
129 Ibid., citing Irkali, Kodarian, and Ruchala, “God Save The Shah.”
130 John Prados, “Essay: 40th Anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident,” Posted
August 4, 2004, http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB132/essay.htm.
131 Ibid.
132 Road to 9/11, 148, citing Loretta Napoletani, Terra Incognita: Tracing the
Dollars Behind the Terror Networks, (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2005), 89.
133 Devil’s Game, 275, citing an unnamed CIA source.
134 Road to 9/11, 149, citing Andrew Marshall, “Terror ‘Blowback’ Burns CIA,”
Independent, November 1, 1998.
135 Stone and Kuznick, 468.
136 Michael Parenti, “The Rational Destruction of Yugoslavia,”
www.michaelparenti.org. Michel Chossudovsky, “Dismantling Former Yugoslavia,
Recolonizing Bosnia-Herzegovina,” globalresearch.ca, February 19, 2002.
137 Road to 9/11, 131, citing Ralf Mutschke, Assistant Director, Criminal
Intelligence Directorate, Interpol, “Threat Posed By the Convergence of Organized
Crime, Drugs Trafficking, and Terrorism,” before a hearing of the US House of
Representative’s Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Crime; December
13, 2000. Scott, “Oil, Drugs, and War,” Halifax Herald, October 29, 2001.
138 Ibid., 334, citing Yossef Bodansky, Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on
America (Roseville, Calif.: Prima, 2001), 298.
139 Ibid., 167–168, citing Tim Judah, Kosovo: War and Revenge (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2002), 120; and Michel Chossudovsky, “Macedonia:
Washington’s Military-Intelligence Ploy,” Transnational Foundation for Peace and
Future Research.
140 Ibid., 168, citing Isabel Vincent, “U.S. Supported al-Qaeda Cells During Balkan
Wars,” National Post, March 15, 2002.
141 John R. Schindler, Unholy Terror: Bosnia, Al-Qa’ida, and the Rise of Global
Jihad (St. Paul: Zenith Press, 2007).
142 Unholy Terror, 110.
143 Ibid., 118, citing James Bruce, “Arab Veterans of the Afghan War,” Jane’s
Intelligence Review, April 1995.
144 Ibid., 119.
145 Ibid., 121.
146 Ibid., 123, 124.
147 “Bosnia Seen as Hospitable Base and Sanctuary for Terrorists,” Nettime. org.
148 ICTY: Summary of the judgment for Enver Hadihasanovic’ and Amir Kubura.
149 Unholy Terror, 162, citing Vecernji List [Evening Gazette], Zagreb, April 10,
1996.
150 “Britons flock to fight in Bosnia,” The Independent.
151 “Bin Laden in Kosovo,” The Tribune (India), AFP, April 27, 2000.
152 War On Truth, 39, citing Richard Labévière, Dollars for Terror: The United
States and Islam (New York: Algora Publishing, 2000) and David Weiner, “Tangled
History Set Up Arab ‘Blowback,’” Progressive Populist, December 2002.
153 Ibid., 33.
154 Unholy Terror, 181.
155 Ibid., 182, 183.
156 Ibid., 183, citing Cees Wiebes, Intelligence and the War in Bosnia 1992–1995
(Muenster: LIT Verlag, 2003), 169.
157 Ibid., 184, citing Wiebes, 173–174, 192, 197.
158 Ibid, 185, citing Wiebes, 193–197.
159 Ibid., 186.
160 Ibid., 274.
161 The phrase comes from A. C. Grayling’s Among The Dead Cities (New York:
Walker & Co., 2006). Prof. Grayling makes an excellent case that the American
and British bombing of civilians constituted “war crimes.” The New Georgia
Encyclopedia termed Sherman’s 1864 March to the Sea, the most destructive
campaign against a civilian population during the War Between the States.
According to the US Army Logistics University, in 1864, Maj. Gen. Philip H.
Sheridan began a systematic destruction of the Shenandoah Valley’s bounty using
a cavalry force of nearly ten thousand men. They burned the Valley from end to
end.
162 Road to 9/11, 149, citing Evan F. Kohlmann, Al-Qaida’s Jihad in Europe: The
Afghan-Bosnian Network (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2004), 39, 40, 41; citing Steve
Coll and Steve LeVine, “Global Network Provides Money, Haven,” Washington
Post, August 3, 1993. Ramzi Yousef, lead World Trade Center bomber, had placed
many calls to Yugoslavia.
163 Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan, “The Kingdom and the Towers,” Vanity
Fair, August 2011. CIA official John Kiriakou said bin Laden associate Abu
Zubaydah fingered the prince as one of three princes who were Al Qaeda
members. Sultan died inexplicably in a car crash within a week of the other two
passing away under strange circumstances.
164 J. M. Berger, Intelwire.com.
165 Road to 9/11, 149, citing Clement Rodney Hampton-El testimony, United
States v. Omar Ahmad Ali Abdel Rahman et al., US District Court, Southern
District of New York, 1995; 15629–30, 15634–35, 15654,15667, 15671, 15673.
166 Unholy Terror, 122.
167 Ibid., 129, citing US News and World Report, December 15, 2003, and Dani
(Sarajevo news magazine), September 12, 2003.
168 Ibid., 130, citing Vecernji List [Evening Gazette] Zagreb, October 16, 2001.
169 Ibid., 131.
170 Ibid., 148.
171 Ibid., 149.
172 Ibid., 148.
173 Ibid., 154.
174 Ibid., 164.
175 “Former ‘Al Qaeda member’ poised to spill beans on Balkans operations,”
waynemadsenreport.com, Jan. 26, 2009.
176 Jack Shafer, “The CIA and Riggs Bank,” Slate, January 7, 2005. Timothy L.
O’Brien, “At Riggs Bank, A Tangled Path Led to Scandal,” New York Times, July
19, 2004.
177 “America’s financial support for ‘Al Qaeda,’” waynemadsenreport, July 5, 2007.
178 Ibid.
179 “Remembering the 1999 NATO led War on Yugoslavia: ‘Kosovo Freedom
Fighters’ Financed by Organized Crime,” (March 19, 2009, but written and
published April 1999).
180 “Who Is Osama Bin Laden?” September 12, 2001.
181 Michel Collon, “Poker Menteur,” Editions EPO, Brussels, 1997, 288.
182 “Kosovo in Crisis,” Truth in Media, Phoenix, April 2, 1999.
183 “Who Is Osama Bin Laden?” citing Roger Boyes and Eske Wright, “Drugs
Money Linked to the Kosovo Rebels,” The Times, London, March 24, 1999.
184 Unholy Terror, 177, 178, citing Cees Wiebes, Intelligence, 192.
185 Ibid., 178, citing The Daily Telegraph, April 20, 1997.
186 Ibid., 281–282.
187 Cf. the author’s interview with him, December 29, 1995. Published in
Unclassified, Spring 1996 issue.
188 War On Truth, 52.
189 Ibid., 32, citing Brendan O’Neill, “How We Trained al-Qaeda,” Spectator,
September 13, 2003.
190 Cf. citation to Noam Chomsky, “The Crucifixion of El Salvador,” zmag.org.
191 Stephen Shalom, “Phoenix Rising in Iraq?” zcommunications.org., February
11, 2005, and cited in Fuller’s article.
192 “For Iraq,” citing Peter Maass, “The Way of the Commando,” May 1, 2005, in
the New York Times and in psychoanalystsopposewar.com.
193 “New at the Top,” Washington Post, February 27, 2006.
194 “For Iraq,” citing Peter Maass.
195 Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant/Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
196 Citing http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1488096,00.html,
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id’760368.
197 “For Iraq,” citing www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-
0505170030may17,0,3795261.story?coll’chi-newsopinionperspective-utl.
198 “For Iraq,” citing www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?
articleid’238784&area’/breaking_news/breaking_news__international_news/.
199 Loveday Morris, “In Iraq, seeking a second awakening,” January 31, 2014.
200 Lara Jakes, “In Iraq, former militia program eyed for new fight.”
201 Col. Peter Mansoor, USA (ret.) helped create them. He spoke June 23, 2014
at a National Press Club panel organized by the American Task Force for
Palestine to promote more intervention in Iraq.
202 Michel Chossudovsky, “Terrorism with a ‘Human Face’: The History of
America’s Death Squads,” Global Research, January 4, 2013.
203 Undated article appearing originally at www.inmediares.dk.
204 “Terrorism with a ‘Human Face.’”
205 The Prospect, December 10, 2003.
206 “American Terror Strategy.”
207 Elias Akleh, “British Terrorism in Iraq,” Global Research, September 30, 2005.
208 Abigail Hauslohner and Loveday Morris, “President of Iraqi Kurdistan calls for
independence vote,” July 4, 2014.
209 “R2P architects helped form a new Middle East coalition,” waynemad
senreport.com.
210 “The Engineered Destruction and Political Fragmentation of Iraq—Towards the
Creation of a US Sponsored Caliphate,” July 1, 2014.
211 A point raised many times by Prof. Edmund A. Ghareeb, an internationally
recognized expert on the Kurds, Iraq, and media issues.
212 The Yezidi religion blends elements of monotheism from Christianity and
Islam, adding a bit of its own. They acknowledge an inactive, static, and
transcendental God who created, or “became,” Seven Great Angels, the leader of
which is Tawsi Melek, the Peacock “King” or Peacock “Angel.” Cf. yeziditruth. org.
They also seem to add elements of Zoroastrianism and Mithraism. They have a
caste system as well. Cf. Sean Thomas, “Death of a religion: Isis and the Yazidi,”
The Telegraph, August 6, 2014.
213 Cf. Cheryl Benard’s comments in Stone and Kuznick, 461, citing Dreyfuss,
Devil’s Game, 290.
214 “They’re back! The neocons,” waynemadsenreport.com, June 27–29, 2014.
215 Ibid.
216 Dan Williams, “Israel tells U.S. Kurdish independence is ‘foregone
conclusion.’”
217 “Israel: The Silent Stakeholder in Northern Iraq,” June 19, 2014.
218 Liz Sly, “ISIS widens control in Iraq,” June 23, 2014.
219 “US advisers likely to find broken army,” June 23, 3014.
220 cf. Scott Wilson, “White House grapples with borderless conflict,” Washington
Post, June 20, 2014.
221 Letters, Washington [DC] Lawyer, April 2014.
222 “US policy on Middle East ‘monumental failure,’” June 23, 2014.
223 “Inside Story: Iraq-Syria Rift Over Bombings,” Sept. 7, 2009.
224 “Syria says U.S. forces fired on troops.”
225 “Scores of ‘fighters’ held in Iraq,” Al Jazeera, September 6, 2005.
226 “Foreign fighters convicted in Iraq,” Al Jazeera, April 4, 2005.
227 “US Renews Warning to Syria on Iraq,” September 12, 2005.
228 Shaista Aziz, “Saudi fighters join resistance in Iraq,” Al Jazeera, October 29,
2003.
229 “US holding 250 foreign fighters in Iraq,” Al Jazeera, September 27, 2003.
230 Gregg Carlstrom, “The Secret Iraq Files: The War.”
231 Global Research, March 26, 2007.
232 Robert Kennedy, “Iraqi PM: Saudi has a ‘culture’ of terrorism,” September 9,
2011.
233 Elias Akleh, “British Terrorism in Iraq,” Global Research, September 30, 2005.
234 August 15, 2007.
235 July 20, 2013.
236 Jessica Stern, “Iraq: Where Terrorists Go to School,” March 19, 2013.
237 waynemadsenreport.com, June 24–25, 2009.
238 waynemadsenreport.com, November 14, 2005.
239 “Who is behind the ‘Terrorist Network’ in Northern Iraq, Baghdad or
Washington?” February 15, 2003.
240 Ibid.
241 “The Risk of Muslim Foreign Fighters—Islam and the Globalization of Jihad,”
International Security 35, no. 3 (2010/11): 53–94. Table 1.
242 Ibid., 56–57.
243 “The Risk of Muslim Foreign Fighters—Islam and the Globalization of Jihad,”
85, citing Thomas Hegghammer, Jihad in Saudi Arabia (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2010), 59–60.
244 Ibid., 72, citing Jihad in Saudi Arabia.
245 Liz Sly, “Foreign extremists’ footprint in Syria growing,” Washington Post,
October 2, 2013.
246 Unholy Terror, 306, citing Saff, an Islamic youth journal, Sarajevo. May 27,
2004.
247 Chris Kyle, American Gun: A History of the U.S. in Ten Firearms (New York:
William Morrow, 2013), 250.
248 In Prof. Chossudovsky’s article, “Who Is Osama Bin Laden,” he quotes Abdel
Monam Saidali, at Cairo’s Al Aram Center for Strategic Studies, as saying Bin
Laden and his Afghan Arabs had gotten extremely sophisticated training from the
CIA. Citing Eric Weiner and Ted Clark, “Weekend Edition Sunday,” NPR, August
16, 1998.
249 Steve Coll, Ghost Wars, (New York: Penguin Books, 2004), 72.
250 Ibid., 70, 72.
251 Ibid., 86, citing Coll’s interview with Badeeb, Feb. 1, 2002.
252 “Who Is Osama Bin Laden,” citing Dipankar Bannerjee, “Possible Connection
of ISI With Drug Industry,” India Abroad, December 2, 1994.
253 Gordon Lubold, “New look at foreign fighters in Iraq.”
254 Unholy Terror, 305.
255 Philip Rucker, “Obama, Maliki talk Iraqi security needs,” Washington Post,
November 2, 2013.
256 Presidential Puppetry, 190.
257 Road to 9/11, 130–131, citing Brisard and Dasquié, Forbidden Truth: U.S.-
Taliban Secret Diplomacy and the Failed Hunt for Bin Laden (New York: Thunder’s
Mouth Press/Nation Books, 2002), 97–102.
258 Triple Cross, 104. Ali Mohamed’s background is summarized on pp. xxiii–xxiv
in Triple Cross.
259 War On Truth, 113, citing FBI “Most Wanted Terrorists,”
www.fbi.gov/mostwant/terrorists/teralliby.htm.
260 Ibid., 116.
261 Ibid., 117.
262 Abigail Hauslohner and Sharif Abdel Kouddous, “Leader of Libya revolt spent
years in N. Va.,” Washington Post, May 20, 2014.
263 50 USC, Section 1541 et seq.
264 “A challenge for the GOP,” June 19, 2014.
265 “Analysis: CIA role in Benghazi underreported,” May 15, 2013.
266 “U.S., NATO supporting 2000 ‘Al Qaeda’ irregulars in Benghazi,”
waynemadsenreport.com, June 5–6, 2011.
267 “New York Times Report: CIA-Backed Militias Linked to Benghazi, Libya
Attack,” December 30, 2013.
268 “U.S. ambassador to Syria in charge of recruiting Arab/Muslim death squads,”
September 9–11, 2011.
269 “Destroying Libya: A War for ‘Human Rights’?” Global Research, December 9,
2012.
270 Philip Greaves, “CIA Gun-Running, Qatar-Libya-Syria,” Global Research,
August 9, 2013.
271 “Destroying Libya: A War for ‘Human Rights’?” Global Research, December 9,
2012.
272 Cf. Susan Jacoby, The Age of American Unreason (New York: Pantheon
Books, 2008). In this work, the author recounts, inter alia, that 50 percent of US
adults have not read a book in the past year, that 25 percent of Americans believe
the sun revolves around the earth, and that 25 percent of US high school biology
teachers think that dinosaurs and cavemen coexisted.
273 Maximilian C. Forte, Slouching Toward Sirte (Montreal: Baraka Books, 2012).
274 Ibid., 9, 10.
275 Ibid., 10.
276 Ibid., 12–13.
277 Ibid., 24, citing John Kerry, “We Must Not Wait for a Massacre,” Al Jazeera
English, March 14, 2011.
278 Headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany.
279 Ibid., 25–26.
280 Slouching Toward Sirte, 27.
281 Ibid., 31, citing Zarouk Abdullah, quoted in Associated Press, “Gaddafi
Hometown Pays Heavy Price in Libyan Battle,” Oct. 28, 2011.
282 “Over 2,000 killed in NATO airstrikes on Gaddafi’s hometown,” Global
Research, September 17, 2011.
283 “Mass Anger Builds in Libya After US Special Forces Raid,” October 9, 2013.
284 Slouching Toward Sirte, 52.
285 Jamahiriya can be translated as a state ruled by the people. Libya’s official
name was Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.
286 Global Research, “Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and now Syria: Cheer-leading
Another Blood Bath in the Name of Peace,” citing
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2342917/Don’t-turn-Syria-Tesco-terrorists-like-
Libya-generals-tell-Cameron; http://English.alakbar.com/node/16164; Felicity
Arbuthnot, June 23, 2013, and also http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/06/18/libya-
syria-idINDEE95H0CP20130618.
287 Ibid.
288 Slouching Toward Sirte, 258–259.
289 Ibid., 79–80, citing David Shayler, one-time MI5 officer, in Martin Bright’s “MI6
‘Halted Bid to Arrest Bin Laden’; Startling Revelations by French Intelligence
Experts Back David Shayler’s Alleged ‘Fantasy’ About Gadaffi Plot,” The
Observer, Nov. 10, 2002.
290 Ibid., 80, citing Bright, Nov. 10, 2002. Adel Darwish, “Did Britain Plot to Kill
This Man?” The Middle East, Sept. 4–6, 1998. Immigration and Refugee Board of
Canada [RBC], “Libya: Information on an Attempted Attack on President Gaddafi
by a Religious Group in 1996, Possibly Affiliated With A Group Called Al-Sahwa of
Islam,” 1998, Refworld [UNHCR], July 1.
291 Ibid., 80.
292 From the Hindi and the days of the Indian Empire, bulayati, “my country,” by
way of the Arabic, wulayati.
293 Peter Dale Scott, “Who are the Libyan Freedom Fighters and Their Patrons?”
Global Research, March 25, 2011, citing Dan Lieberman, “Muammar Al Gaddafi
Meets His Own Rebels,” CounterCurrents.org, March 9, 2011.
294 Ibid., quoting Daily Telegraph [London], March 25, 2011, “Libyan rebel
commander admits his fighters have al-Qaeda links.”
295 Slouching Toward Sirte, 80, citing Bright, Nov. 10, 2002.
296 Ibid., 80–81.
297 Pewter Dale Scott, “Who are the Libyan Freedom Fighters and Their
Patrons?,” Global Research, March 25, 2011, citing Center for Defense
Information, “In the Spotlight: The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group [LIFG],” January
18, 2005.
298 Ibid.
299 “Who are the Libyan Freedom Fighters and Their Patrons?,” citing Joel
Bainerman, Inside the Cover Operations of the CIA and Israel’s Mossad (New
York: S.P.I. Books, 1994), 14.
300 Ibid., citing Richard Keeble, The Secret War Against Libya (MediaLens, 2002).
301 Slouching Toward Sirte, 81.
302 Ibid., 83, citing Hillary Clinton, “Remarks on the Deaths of American Personnel
in Benghazi, Libya”; US Department of State, September 12, 2012.
303 Presidential Puppetry, 159, citing Eric Schmitt, Helene Cooper, and Michael S.
Schmidt, “Deadly Attack in Libya Was Major Blow to CIA Efforts,” New York Times,
September 23, 2012.
304 Ibid., 159.
305 Ibid., 263, citing Aaron Klein, “Media ignore Hillary’s bombshell Benghazi
claim; Secretary insists she did not know about gun-running at U.S. mission,”
January 24, 2013.
306 Slouching Toward Sirte, 293.
307 Ibid., 294, citing secret cable from Embassy Tripoli, August 28, 2008,
“Scenesetter for Secretary Rice’s Visit to Libya.”
308 Ibid., 294, citing Embassy Tripoli cable, August 15, 2005, “Libyans Pleased
with Saudi Decision,” and Embassy Tripoli cable August 31a[sic], 2006,
“Congressman Lantos Stresses Bilateral Achievements and Regional Challenges
With Libyan Leaders.”
309 Ibid., 119–120, citing M. Mazetti and E. Schmitt, “C.I.A. Agents in Libya Aid
Airstrikes and Meet Rebels,” New York Times, March 30, 2011. G. Thomas, “US
May Use Covert Action Against Gadhafi,” Voice of America, March 30, 2011. J.
Lee, “The President on Libya: ‘The Violence Must Stop; Muammar Gaddafi Has
Lost the Legitimacy to Lead and He Must Leave,’” The White House Blog, March
3, 2011. “Obama Signed Secret Libya Order Authorizing Support for Rebels,”
Reuters, March 30, 2011. DipNote (State Department Blog), “U.S. Announces
Additional Humanitarian Assistance in Response to Violence in Libya,” March 10,
2010.
310 “The ‘Rebel’ Assassination of Muammar Gaddafi: a NATO Operation from A to
Z,” October 22, 2011.
311 “Destroying Libya: A War for ‘Human Rights’?” Global Research, December 9,
2012.
312 Reprinted in Global Research News on June 22, 2013.
313 David Ignatius, “The spymasters tackle Syria,” February 20, 2014.
314 Jake Tapper, “Dozens of CIA operatives on the ground during Benghazi
attack,” The Lead.
315 “CIA Was Smuggling Weapons to Syrian Rebels During Benghazi Embassy
[sic] Attack,” August 5, 2013.
316 “Western Mercenaries Have Integrated the Ranks of Al Qaeda Rebels in
Syria,” Global Research News.
317 “America’s Undeclared War: Nearly 20,000 Foreign Mercenaries Fight in
Syria,” RTT News, April 11, 2013.
318 Greg Miller, “U.S. officials warn of fighters entering Syria,” November 21, 2013.
319 “European combatants in Syria war alarm West,” January 30, 2014.
320 “Sequestration does not impair U.S. support for Syrian rebels,” March 15–17,
2013, waynemadsenreport.com.
321 “CIA Aids Huge Arms Smuggling to Syria.”
322 Thomas Seibert, “Turkey being dragged into Syria’s war: opposition,”
September 4, 2013.
323 Teodorovic Milos and Ron Synovitz, “Balkan Militants Join Syria’s Rebel
Cause,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, June 8, 2013.
324 Richard Spencer, “US and Europe in ‘major airlift of arms to Syrian rebels
through Zagreb’“, The Telegraph, March 8, 2013.
325 Henningsen, “Open War Crimes: US and British-Backed Weapons Airlift from

Croatia to Terrorists in Syria”, 21st Century Wire, March 10, 2013.

326 Henningsen, “Open War Crimes: US and British-Backed Weapons Airlift from
Croatia to Terrorists in Syria”.
327 “U.S. ambassador to Syria in charge of recruiting Arab/Muslim death squads,”
September 9–11, 2011, waynemadsenreport.com.
328 Mideastwire Blog (Oct. 2, 2011), and Michel Chossudovsky (“Terrorism With a
Human Face”), Global Research Jan. 4, 2013.
329 “Israeli Army Vehicle Enters Syria, Israel Supports Al Nusra,” May 21, 2013.
[Al Nusra has been described as Syrian mujahideen, back from various jihad
fronts.]
330 Antiwar. com, May 6, 2013.
331 Ibid., citing Richard Perle, James Colbert, Charles Fairbanks Jr., Douglas
Feith, Robert Loewenberg, David Wurmser, Meyrav Wurmser, “A Clean Break: A
New Strategy for Securing the Realm.” [All US government officials and/or
members of right-wing think-tanks.]
332 “Mossad’s secret base in Algeria,” waynemadsenreport.com.
333 “Obama Administration Stoking Sunni Violence Against Alawites and Shi’as in
Syria.”
334 “U.S. Treasury Confirms that Al Qaeda Runs Syrian Rebellion,” July 27, 2012.
335 Seth G. Jones, “Al Qaeda’s War for Syria,” July 27, 2012.
336 Eric Schmitt, “CIA Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian Opposition,” June 21,
2012.
337 Antiwar. com, May 6, 2013.
338 “Report: New Libyan Regime Sends 600 Troops To Fight In Syria,” November
30, 2011.
339 “Libya transporting weapons and fighters to Syria: Americans, Moroccans,
Libyans, Bosnians fighting alongside rebel forces,” February 19, 2013.
340 Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, “Syria: the foreign fighters joining the war against Bashar
al-Assad.”
341 WBAI-FM, NYC, “Is the Confusion about Syria Manufactured or Real?”
342 “CIA steps up effort to train rebels,” Washington Post, October 3, 2013.
343 Ernesto Londoño and Greg Miller, “U.S. arms reach rebels,” Washington Post,
September 12, 2013.
344 Liz Sly, October 2, 2013.
345 Magnet? Overlooks recruitment!
346 No basis for this claim provided, and it seemingly flies in the face of other
reporting.
347 Fishman is now with the New America Foundation, a think-tank with,
SourceWatch.org says, ties to establishment figures such as Francis Fukuyama
and Steve Coll, the latter once refusing to talk with the author. New America also
receives funding from George Soros’s Open Society and the US Department of
State. As the Esteemed Reader should know, the establishment works hard to
control public dialogue and media access.
348 Suzanne Kelly, “Women in intelligence seek balance in life, value in work,”
CNN, May 11, 2012.
349 Karen DeYoung and Bob Woodward, “Gulf allies tire of waiting for U.S. to lead
on Syria,” November 3, 2013.
350 Karen DeYoung, “Obama seeks funds to train Syrian rebels,” June 27, 2014.
351 Granted the Post is not a paper of record, but you’d think their journalists
would read previously printed articles on the subject.
352 “Saudiphile CIA Director behind ISIL,” June 30, 2014
353 June 22, 2014.
354 “From Pol Pot to ISIS: ‘Anything that flies on everything that moves,”
johnpilger.com.
355 “A growing Syrian threat,” May 14, 2014.
356 Cf. J. Michael Springmann, “Caught Between Iraq and a Hard Place,” The
Public Record, March 21, 2009.
357 Kevin Sullivan, “Changing Regions Changing Lives,” Washington Post, Dec.
15, 2013.
358 Lebanon, once the Switzerland of the Middle East (as local businessman Paul
Garmirian once said), has been bled white by fifteen years of civil war (1975–
1990), two conflicts with Israel (1982 and 2006), and the strife following Prime
Minister Rafik Hariri’s assassination in 2005. The American-generated war in Syria
has, on occasion, spilled over into Lebanon since 2011.
359 Israel’s policy is to ensure that no country in the Middle East can have foreign
or domestic policies that Tel Aviv opposes. Statement by David MacMichael to
author, 2014.
360 Stone, Kuznick, 212–213, citing Arnold A. Offner, Another Such Victory:
President Truman and the Cold War, 1945-1953 (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 2002), 192.
361 Ibid., 213.
362 Ibid., 214, citing Col. R. Allan Griffin, recorded interview by James R. Fuchs,
staff interviewer, February 15, 1947, Harry S. Truman Library Oral History
Program. Garry Wills, Bomb Power, 78, 88–89. Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The
History of the CIA (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 249–253.
363 Ibid., 214, citing Norman J. W. Goda, “Nazi Collaborators in the United States,
What the FBI Knew,” in U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis, ed. Richard Breitman,
Norman J. W. Goda, Timothy Naftali, and Robert Wolfe, (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2005), 249–253.
364 Ibid., 431. NB: Many of the anti-Sandinistas had been veterans of the
Nicaraguan National Guard of US-supported dictator Anastasio Somoza.
365 Ibid., 436; Wikipedia citing Noam Chomsky. Elmandjra. February 26, 2008.
NB: Wikipedia is not a reliable source, and some journalists believe its information
is controlled by intelligence services and Zionists.
366 My conversation with Lt. Col. Anthony A. Shaffer USA (ret.), September 26,
2012, National Press Club (Washington, DC).
367 Response to my May 2, 2013, question posed to former US Senator Mike
Gravel (D-Alaska) at the National Press Club (Washington, DC).
368 NSA Government Surveillance Directorate: The National Counterterrorism
Center (NCTC) operates as a partnership of more than sixteen organizations,
including the CIA, FBI, State Department, Defense Department, Homeland
Security, and other agencies that provide unique expertise such as the
Departments of Energy, Treasury, Agriculture, Transportation, and Health and
Human Services.
The NCTC is the primary organization for analyzing and integrating all foreign
and domestic terrorism-related intelligence possessed or acquired by the United
States. It was also recently given the authority to examine the government files of
US citizens for possible criminal behavior, even if there is no reason to suspect
them.
369 The US Code (18 USC § 1961) defines “racketeering activity” as (A) any act or
threat involving murder, kidnapping, gambling, arson, robbery, bribery, extortion,
dealing in obscene matter, or dealing in a controlled substance; (B) bribery;
counterfeiting; and a myriad of other crimes including but not limited to visa fraud,
obstruction of justice, and retaliation against witnesses.
370 18 USCA § 1962(c).
371 Sedima, S.P.R.L. v. Imrex Co., 473 U.S. 479, 496, 105 S. Ct. 3275, 3285, 87 L.
Ed. 2d 346 (1985).
372 “All The News That’s Fit To Buy,” December 9, 2005, freepress.org.
373 “Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness Against Thy Government: John Kiriakou.”
374 Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies’ director,
Osama Abi-Mershed, PhD, refused to discuss this book’s topic with me. Others
connected to the CIA and teaching at the university on subjects relevant to this
work also never responded to requests for information. This shouldn’t be
surprising, since Georgetown has long had a reputation for being a home to many
right-wing, anti-communist “intellectuals” such as Jan Karski, Eleanor Lansing
Dulles, and Jeanne Kirkpatrick.
375 War on Truth, 31.
376 Ibid., 31.
377 Devil’s Game, 245.
378 Ibid., 245.
379 Ibid., 245–246.
380 Ibid., 247–248.
381 Ibid, 94–95.
382 Ibid, 124, citing Joel Gordon, Nasser’s Blessed Movement (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1992) 105.
383 Bill Blum, Killing Hope, U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II
(Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 2004), 86–87. Citing Dwight D.
Eisenhower, The White House Years: Waging Peace, 1956–1961; New York,
1965, 198.
384 Ibid., 88. Additional details on American efforts to control the region can be
found in Blum’s book at 13. The Middle East 1957-1958, 89–99.
385 Devil’s Game, 305.
386 Ibid., 305–306.
387 Presidential Puppetry, 104–105, and House of Bush, House of Saud, 308.
388 Devil’s Game, 306.
389 Ibid., 307.
390 Ibid., 309.
391 War On Truth, 53.
392 Cf. Angus MacKenzie, Secrets, The CIA’s War At Home (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1998).
393 Walter Pincus, “Hagel’s verbal assurances for continued U.S. presence in the
Middle East come with action,” Washington Post, December 12, 2013. Al-Dhafra is
currently home to KC-10 aerial refueling tankers and U-2 spy planes.
394 Kevin Sieff, “Karzai said to suspect U.S. in insurgent attacks,” Washington
Post, January 28, 2014.
395 Presidential Puppetry, 28–29. Elliot Haynes, with his father, Eldridge, founded
BIC. Cf. Wayne Madsen, The Manufacturing of a President (LuLu.com, 2014), 209.
396 North Bergen Record, December 5, 2009.
397 Presidential Puppetry, 278–279.
398 Ibid., 299.
399 Wayne Madsen, “Ukraine’s secret recipe: ‘Brennan Kiev’,” Strategic Culture
Foundation, April 15, 2014.
400 Presidential Puppetry, 279.
401 Ibid., 114, citing Tony Blair, A Journey: My Political Life (New York; Alfred A.
Knopf, 2010); citing Robert Parry, “Blair Reveals Cheney’s War Agenda,”
Consortium News, Sept. 6, 2010.
402 Encounter; 226.
403 Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, March/April 2014, 58.
404 J. Michael Springmann, “Email Spying and Attorney Client Privilege—US
Government Reads All About It,” CounterPunch, March 29, 2004.
405 “The Congressman Who Exposed Covert Crimes,” January 22, 2014.
406 “Blowback and the Cycle of Violence,” April 26, 2013.
407 Waynemadsenreport.com, “British GCHQ uses Tavistock mass mind control
techniques in cyberspace,” February 26–27, 2014.
408 Mother Jones Review, “How the Rest of the World Views the American
Military,” August 29, 2013.
409 I found this wonderful phrase written under the glass top of my desk in
Stuttgart.
410 Anup Shah, “World Military Spending,” June 30, 2013, globalissues.org.
411 Barton Gelman and Greg Miller, “U.S. spy networks’ successes, failures, and
objectives detailed in ‘black budget’ summary,” August 29, 2013.
412 September 20, 2013; reprinted in Global Research September 20, 2013.
413 John Barry, “America’s Secret Libya War,” August 30, 2011.
414 Confirmed by Jennifer Dornan, AFL-CIO, October 14, 2014.
415 Michael Parenti, “The Rational Destruction of Yugoslavia,”
www.michaelparenti.org.
Michel Chossudovsky, “Dismantling Former Yugoslavia, Recolonizing Bosnia-
Herzegovina,” Feb. 19, 2002, globalresearch.ca.
416 CIA World Factbook.
417 globalsecurity. org.
418 Ibid..
419 BBC Middle East News, December 13, 2013.
420 US Department of State, Background Notes (Syria).
421 Mark N. Katz, “Assessing the Political Stability of Oman,” George Mason
University, 2004.