From Peter Dale Scott;
"The following is a footnoted extract from my book, The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America. It deals with the matter (and quotes from, among others, Peter Bergen). The book will be out next year from University of California Press." In 1981, Casey of the CIA, Prince Turki of Saudi intelligence, and the ISI worked together to create a Foreign Legion of jihadi Muslims or so-called "Arab Afghans" (who in fact were never Afghans and not always Arabs) in Afghanistan.<1> The foreigners were supported by the Services Center (Makhtab al-Khidmat, or MAK) of the Jordanian Palestinian Abdullah Azzam, in the offices of the World Muslim League and Muslim Brotherhood in Peshawar, Pakistan.<2>
This project did not emanate from the Afghan resistance but was imposed on it. According to the Spanish author Robert Montoya, the idea originated in the elite “Safari Club” created by French intelligence chief Alexandre de Marenches in 1976, bringing together other intelligence chiefs such as Gen. Akhtar Abdur Rahman of ISI in Pakistan, and Kamal Adham of Saudi Arabia.<3>
The relationship of the CIA to the Arab Afghans, the MAK, and bin Laden has been much debated. Jason Burke denies the frequently-made claim that “bin Laden was funded by the CIA.”<4> The 911 Commission Report goes further, and asserts that “Bin Ladin and his comrades had their own sources of support and training, and they received little or no assistance from the United States.”<5>
But as we shall explore in the next chapter, MAK Centers in America, such as the al Kifah Center in Brooklyn, were in the 1980s a major source of both recruitment and finance for the MAK, if only because America was one of the few countries in which such 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.<6>
In addition Jalaluddin Haqqani, the chief host in Afghanistan to the so-called “Arab Afghans,” “received bags of money each month from the
station in Islamabad.”<7> (This was an exception to the general rule that CIA aid was funneled through General Zia and the ISI in Pakistan, cited by Jason Burke as the reason why CIA funding “would have been impossible.”)<8>
Peter Bergen, in arguing that the CIA “had very limited dealings” with the Arab Afghans, concedes that “the CIA did help an important recruiter for the Arab Afghans, the Egyptian cleric Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman.” Sheikh Rahman, despite his known involvement with Egyptian terrorists, “was issued a visa for the United States in 1987 and a multiple-entry visa in 1990 at least one of the visas was issued by a CIA officer working undercover in the consular section of the American embassy in Sudan.”<9> (This was in addition to the visas reluctantly issued in Jeddah by Michael Springman, as noted earlier.)
John Cooley describes the Sheikh as “helpmate to the CIA in recruiting young zealots, especially among Arab-Americans in the United States, for the jihad in Afghanistan.”<10> Those recruited through the Al Kifah Center in Brooklyn were trained (as we shall see) by a former CIA contract agent, Ali Mohamed, another Egyptian with connections to the same terrorist group as Sheikh Rahman. Eventually both Sheikh Rahman and Ali Mohamed would be convicted for their involvement in 1990s al Qaeda plots. But before that (as we shall see) both men had enjoyed a surprising degree of FBI protection, in Mohamed’s case because he was the FBI’s original informant on al Qaeda.
<1> Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (New York: Penguin Press, 2004), 156-57.
<2> Rashid, Taliban, 131.
<3> Roberto Montoya, El Mundo (Madrid), 2/16/03, http://www.el-mundo.es/cronica/2003/383/1045404347.html. For more on de Marenches, the Safari Club, and Afghanistan, see Doug Vaughan, Covert Action Quarterly, Fall 1993; John Cooley, Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America, and International Terrorism (London: Pluto, 1999), 25-28..
<4> Jason Burke, Al-Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam (London: I.B. Tauris, 2004), 59.
<5> 911 Commission Report, 56.
<6> Peter Lance, 1000 Years for Revenge (New York: Regan Books/ Harper Collins, 2003), 41-42.
<7> Coll, Ghost Wars, 157 (host); Crile, Charlie Wilson’s War, 521 (bags of money).
<8> Burke, Al-Qaeda, 59.
<9> Peter L. Bergen, Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden (New York: Free Press, 2001), 66-67.
<10> John K. Cooley, Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America, and International Terrorism (London: Pluto Press, 1999), 41.Ahmed's Rashid's "Taliban" is an oft-cited history of Afghanistan that chronicles the rise of the Taliban. Along the way, Rashid drops some useful information that he has gathered during his on-the-ground, on-the-scene journalism expeditions:
"...in 1986, CIA chief William Casey had stepped up the war against the Soviet Union by taking three significant, but at that time highly secret, measures. He had persuaded the U.S. Congress to provide the Mujaheddin with American-made Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to shoot down Soviet planes and provide U.S. advisers to train the guerrillas. Until then no US-made weapons or personnel had been used directly in the war effort. The CIA, Britain's MI6 and the ISI also agreed on a provocative plan to launch guerrilla attacks into the Soviet Socialist Republics of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, the soft Muslim underbelly of the Soviet state from where Soviet troops in Afghanistan received their supplies. The task was given to the ISI's favourite Mujaheddin leader Gulbuddin Hikmetyar. In March 1987, small units crossed the Amu Darya river from bases in northern Afghanistan and launched their first rocket attacks against villages in Tajikistan. Casey was delighted with the news, and on his next secret trip to Pakistan he crossed the border into Afghanistan with President Zia to review the Mujaheddin groups.
Thirdly, Casey committed CIA support to a long-standing ISI initiative to recruit Muslims from around the world to come to Pakistan and fight with the Afghan Mujaheddin. The ISI had encouraged this since 1982 and by now all the other players had their reasons for supporting the idea." p.129
--------------------------
"His father backed the Afghan struggle and helped fund it, so when Bin Laden decided to join up, his family responded enthusiastically. He first traveled to Peshawar in 1980 and met the Mujaheddin leaders, returning frequently with Saudi donations for the cause until 1982, when he decided to settle in Peshawar. He brought in his company engineers and heavy construction equipment to help build roads and depots for the Mujaheddin. In 1986, he helped build the Khost tunnel complex, which the CIA was funding as a major arms storage depot, training facility and medical center for the Mujaheddin, deep under the mountains close to the Pakistan border. For the first time in Khost he set up his own training camp for Arab Afghans, who now increasingly saw this lanky, wealthy and charismatic Saudi as their leader.
'To counter these atheist Russians, the Saudis chose me as their representative in Afghanistan,' Bin Laden said later. 'I settled in Pakistan in the Afghan border region. There I received volunteers who came from the Saudi Kingdom and from all over the Arab and Muslim countries. I set up my fist camp where these volunteers were trained by Pakistani and American officers. The weapons were supplied by the Americans, the money by the Saudis." p.132
Page numbers from the 2001 Yale Note Bene paperback reprint.
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DAN RATHER, CBS ANCHOR: As the United states and its allies in the war on terrorism press the hunt for Osama bin Laden, CBS News has exclusive information tonight about where bin Laden was and what he was doing in the last hours before his followers struck the United States September 11.
This is the result of hard-nosed investigative reporting by a team of CBS news journalists, and by one of the best foreign correspondents in the business, CBS`s Barry Petersen. Here is his report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) BARRY PETERSEN, CBS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Everyone remembers what happened on September 11. Here`s the story of what may have happened the night before. It is a tale as twisted as the hunt for Osama bin Laden.
CBS News has been told that the night before the September 11 terrorist attack, Osama bin Laden was in Pakistan. He was getting medical treatment with the support of the very military that days later pledged its backing for the U.S. war on terror in Afghanistan.
Pakistan intelligence sources tell CBS News that bin Laden was spirited into this military hospital in Rawalpindi for kidney dialysis treatment. On that night, says this medical worker who wanted her identity protected, they moved out all the regular staff in the urology department and sent in a secret team to replace them. She says it was treatment for a very special person. The special team was obviously up to no good.
"The military had him surrounded," says this hospital employee who also wanted his identity masked, "and I saw the mysterious patient helped out of a car. Since that time," he says, "I have seen many pictures of the man. He is the man we know as Osama bin Laden. I also heard two army officers talking to each other. They were saying that Osama bin Laden had to be watched carefully and looked after." Those who know bin Laden say he suffers from numerous ailments, back and stomach problems. Ahmed Rashid, who has written extensively on the Taliban, says the military was often there to help before 9/11.
AHMED RASHID, TALIBAN EXPERT: There were reports that Pakistani intelligence had helped the Taliban buy dialysis machines. And the rumor was that these were wanted for Osama bin Laden.
PETERSEN (on camera): Doctors at the hospital told CBS News there was nothing special about that night, but they refused our request to see any records. Government officials tonight denied that bin Laden had any medical treatment on that night.
(voice-over): But it was Pakistan`s President Musharraf who said in public what many suspected, that bin Laden suffers from kidney disease, saying he thinks bin Laden may be near death. His evidence, watching this most recent video, showing a pale and haggard bin Laden, his left hand never moving. Bush administration officials admit they don`t know if bin Laden is sick or even dead.
DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: With respect to the issue of Osama bin Laden`s health, I just am -- don`t have any knowledge.
PETERSEN: The United States has no way of knowing who in Pakistan`s military or intelligence supported the Taliban or Osama bin Laden maybe up to the night before 9/11 by arranging dialysis to keep him alive. So the United States may not know if those same people might help him again perhaps to freedom.
Barry Petersen, CBS News, Islamabad.
(END VIDEOTAPE) END
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO311A.html
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