On August 20 [1998] the United States launched a
series of cruise missile attacks against alleged terrorist camps in
Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan, both of
which were said to be under the control of a rabid Islamic
fundamentalist leader and arch terrorist named Osama bin-Laden. I
did some checking on bin-Laden and what I found out leads me to
suspect that the CIA and the U.S. government would rather have this
evil terrorist hiding in the mountains of Afghanistan than answering
questions which might embarrass them.
Shortly after the Russians invaded Afghanistan, the
young and wealthy Saudi Arabian named bin-Laden rushed to Afghani
mountains to fight a Muslim holy war against Godless Communism.
Having inherited more than thirty million dollars from his father's
construction business he was in a position to lend immediate help to
the struggling Afghani freedom fighters. He formed quick alliances
among the half dozen or so major factions of the Mujahedeen led by
Afghani Sheik Hekmatyar.
US records indicate that we spent nearly $3 billion
dollars over the next eight years to train and equip the Afghan
rebels. We even supplied them with Stinger missiles, which caused
great concern in later years as we began to fear they would be
turned against us. The U.S. Congress appropriated ransom money to
buy them back in the early 90s. Few were recovered. In addition the
CIA, under Bill Casey, sponsored an explosion in the heroin trade to
finance the war. This was nothing new.
In 1979, when the Soviet invasion occurred,
virtually none of the heroin entering the US came from the so-called
Golden Crescent in Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. At the time it
was coming from Mexico and Southeast Asia. By 1982 the region was
producing exportable opium base equivalent to 20-30 tons of heroin a
year. Of that, at least 4.5 tons reached the U.S. By 1988 those
numbers had increased to 70 to 80 tons of heroin of which 15 to 20
tons reached the US.
According to Alfred McCoy, in his outstanding book
The Politics of Heroin (Lawrence Hill Books, 1972, 1991),
Hekmatyar controlled no less than six heroin refineries in the
Khyber District of Pakistan alone. At his side was Osama
bin-Laden.
Around the time that Osama bin-Laden moved to
Afghanistan in 1980 he was also curiously able to found a series of
investment companies under the umbrella SICO which he headquartered
in Geneva. Sources formerly in the intelligence community have
confirmed to me that, as bin-Laden established branches in the
Cayman islands and the Bahamas, he employed law firms and
consultants connected to Langley, Virginia and the CIA.
Throughout the Afghan war bin-Laden grew in
reputation as a fearless leader and devout Muslim. His wealth also
increased rapidly. I wonder why? By the end of the war and the
Soviet withdrawal he was known throughout Africa and the Middle East
as a radical fundamentalist leader who had turned his sights against
the U.S. But this was not without creating enemies both in
Afghanistan and his home country of Saudi Arabia, which drew ever
more securely into the U.S. sphere - especially during and after the
Gulf War.
In the early 1990s bin-Laden took up sanctuary in
the Sudan and was afforded a kind of safe haven. He threw himself
into massive construction projects including road building. The
Sudanese government has admitted that it had an agreement with the
U.S. to monitor bin-Laden and to curtail his terrorist activities.
In exchange for this Sudan received unspecified rewards. It is,
therefore, mystifying as to why, with bin-Laden under scrutiny in
the reasonably accessible and penetrable Sudan, the U.S. government
forced the Sudanese government to expel him in 1995. This drove him
back into the arms of the increasingly hostile Taliban militia in
Afghanistan. There, he re-established relations with Afghani drug
lords in the towns of Jhost and Jalalabad.
When the U.S. cruise missiles struck the El-Shifa
pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, a host of conflicting stories
appeared as to who owned the plant and when it was built. The
British turned up a man named Tom Carnaffin who claimed to have
helped build the plant and manage it from 1992 through 1996. Other
records and sources indicated, however, that the plant was not built
until 1996. Carnaffin claimed that he was intimately familiar with
the plant and that it could not have produced nerve agents as the
U.S. claimed. Later the U.S. backed down and said that it didn’t
have proof that bin-Laden owned the plant. In the meantime about
four other people were named who reportedly did. Some of them didn’t
know each other.
What really got my attention was the fact that the
French Internet publication, Indigo, reported that bin-Laden had
been a London guest of British Intelligence as recently as 1996 and
his treasurer, last year, defected to the Saudis as different
factions shifted alliances for new campaigns in the Middle East. If
the guy travels to London and has businesses in the Caymans and
Geneva, how difficult can he be to find? Why did the British stand
so resolutely behind the American attacks?
Murky? You bet. Fishy? Absolutely. It may be
entirely possible that the plant in the Sudan was storing databases
for Iraqi chem and biowar agents. It may well be that the plant even
had silent investors connected to Sadam Hussein and thence, back
here in the States.
Maybe when I have a couple of thousand subscribers
and a staff I'll be able to spend the time digging into stories like
this one. But one thing's for sure, Osama bin-Laden is in a place
where CIA can't reach him right now and I bet they want it that way.
Like so many other terrorists, from the World Trade Center, to Pan
Am 103, he is one of their own creations.
As my good friend, Producer Marc Levin, points out,
the CIA has a term for it when one of their operations goes awry and
turns ugly, "It's called 'Blowback'." Levin produced an outstanding
1997 six hour documentary on CIA for PBS entitled, "CIA -
America's Secret Warriors " If you haven't seen it I highly
recommend it as not only basic reference but great
entertainment.
[Special thanks to Ralph McGehee's CIA BASE
Program, Alfred McCoy's, The Politics of Heroin and various
unnamed sources who prefer it that-a-way.]