Why Does the FBI Orchestrate Fake Terror Plots?

Lumi

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Why Does the FBI Orchestrate Fake Terror Plots?

Paul Craig Roberts
Prisonplanet.com
Nov 30, 2010

Why does the FBI orchestrate fake terror plots?
The latest one snared Osman Mohamud, a Somali-American teenager in Portland, Oregon. The Associated Press report by William Mall and Nedra Pickler (11-27-10) is headlined in Yahoo News: ?Somali-born teen plotted car-bombing in Oregon <SUP>[1]</SUP>.?
This is a misleading headline as the report makes it clear that it was a plot orchestrated by federal agents. Two sentences into the news report we have this: ?The bomb was an elaborate fake supplied by the [FBI] agents and the public was never in danger, authorities said.?

The teenager was supplied with a fake bomb and a fake detonator.

Three sentences later the reporters contradict the quoted authorities with a quote from Arthur Balizan, special agent in charge of the FBI in Oregon: ?The threat was very real.?
The reporters then contradict Balizan: ?White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said Saturday that president Barack Obama was aware of the FBI operation before Friday?s arrest. Shapiro said Obama was assured that the FBI was in full control of the operation and that the public was not in danger.?

Then Shapiro contradicts himself by declaring: ?The events of the past 24 hours underscore the necessity of remaining vigilant against terrorism here and abroad.?

The story arrives at its Kafka highpoint when President Obama thanks the FBI for its diligence in saving us from the fake plot the FBI had fabricated.

After vacillating between whether they are reporting a real plot or a orchestrated one, the reporters finally come down on the side of orchestration. Documents released by US Attorney Dwight Holton ?show the sting operation began in June.? Obviously, the targeted Portland teenager was not hot to trot. The FBI had to work on him for six months. The reporters compare ?the Portland sting? to the recent arrest in Virginia of Faroque Ahmed who was ensnared in a ?bombing plot that was a ruse conducted over the past six months by federal officials.?

Think about this. The FBI did a year?s work in order to convince two people to participate in fake plots.

If you are not too bright and some tough looking guys accost you and tell you that they are Al Qaeda and expect your help in a terrorist operation, you might be afraid to say no, or you might be thrilled to be part of a blowback against an American population that is indifferent to their government?s slaughter of people of your ethnicity in your country of origin. Whichever way it falls, it is unlikely the ensnared person would ever have done anything beyond talk had the FBI not organized them into action. In other cases the FBI
entices people with money to participate in its fake plots.

Since 9/11, the only domestic ?terrorist plot? that I recall that was not obviously organized by the FBI is the ?Times Square plot? to which Faisal Shahzad pleaded guilty to trying to set off a car bomb in Manhattan. This plot, too, is suspicious. One would think that a real terrorist would have a real bomb, not a smoke bomb.
In the May 19, 2009, online site, sott.net (reprinted Nov. 27, 2010), Joe Quinn collects some of the fake plots, some of which were validated by torture confessions and others by ignorant and fearful juries. The-Tortured-and-Manipulated-Terrorist-Threat-Evidence <SUP>[2]</SUP> The US government comes up with a plot, an accused, and tortures him until he confesses, or the government fabricates a case and takes it to jurors who know that they cannot face their neighbors if they let off a media-declared ?terrorist.?

Perhaps the most obvious of these cases is ?the Miami seven,? a hapless group of Christian-Zionist-Muslims that called themselves the ?Sea of David? and were quietly living in a Florida warehouse awaiting biblical end times. Along came the FBI posing as Al Qaeda and offered them $50,000 and an Al Qaeda swearing in ceremony.

The FBI told them that they needed to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago and various government buildings. An honest reporter at Knight Ridder <SUP>[3]</SUP> revealed: ?The Justice (sic) Department unveiled the arrests with an orchestrated series of news conferences in two cities, but the severity of the charges compared with the seemingly amateurish nature of the group raised concerns among civil libertarians,? who noted that the group had ?no weapons, no explosives.?

The Justice (sic) Department and tamed media made a big show out of the ?militaristic boots? worn by the hapless ?plotters,? but the FBI had bought the boots for them.

The biggest piece of evidence against the hapless group was that they had taken photos of ?targets? in Florida, but the US government had equipped them with cameras.

The US government even rented cars for its dupes to drive to take the pictures.
It turns out that the group only wanted the $50,000, but an American jury convicted them anyhow.

When the US government has to go to such lengths to create ?terrorists? out of hapless people, an undeclared agenda is being served. What could this agenda be?

The answer is many agendas. One agenda is to justify wars of aggression that are war crimes under the Nuremberg standard created by the US government itself. One way to avoid war crimes charges is to create acts of terrorism that justify the naked aggressions against ?terrorist countries.?

Another agenda is to create a police state. A police state can control people who object to their impoverishment for the benefit of the superrich much more easily than can a democracy endowed with constitutional civil liberties.

Another agenda is to get rich. Terror plots, whether real or orchestrated, have created a market for security. Dual Israeli citizen Michael Chertoff, former head of US Homeland Security, is the lobbyist who represents Rapiscan, the company that manufactures the full body porno-scanners that, following the ?underwear bomber? event, are now filling up US airports. Homeland Security has announced that they are going to purchase the porno-scanners for trains, buses, subways, court houses, and sports events. How can shopping malls and roads escape? Recently on Interstate 20 west of Atlanta, trucks had to drive through a similar device. Everyone has forgotten that the underwear bomber lacked required documents and was escorted aboard the airliner by an official.

The ?war on terror? provides an opportunity for a few well-connected people to become very rich. If they leave Americans with a third world police state, they will be living it up in Gstaad.

This despite the fact that everyone on the planet knows that it is not lactating mothers, children, elderly people in walkers and wheelchairs, members of Congress, members of the military, nuns, and so on, who are members of Al Qaeda plotting to bring aboard a bomb in their underwear, their shoes, their shampoo and face creams.

Indeed, bombs aboard air liners are a rare event.

What is it really all about? Could it be that the US government needs terrorist events in order to completely destroy the US Constitution? On November 24, National Public Radio broadcast a report <SUP>[6]</SUP> by Dina Temple-Raston:

?Administration officials are looking at the possibility of codifying detention without trial and are awaiting legislation that is supposed to come out of Congress early next year.? Of course, the legislation will not come out of Congress. It will be written by Homeland Security and the Justice (sic) Department. The impotent Congress will merely rubber-stamp it.

The obliteration of habeas corpus, the most necessary and important protection of liberty ever institutionalized in law and governing constitution, has become necessary for the US government, because a jury might acquit an alleged or mock ?terrorist? or framed person whom the US government has declared prior to the trial will be held forever in indefinite detention even if acquitted in a US court of law. The attorney general of the United States has declared that any ?terrorist? that he puts on trial who is acquitted by a jury will remain in detention regardless of the verdict. Such an event would reveal the total lawlessness of American ?justice.?

The United States of America, ?the city upon the hill,? ?the light unto the world,? has become Nazi Germany. It was the practice of the Gestapo to ignore court verdicts and to execute or hold indefinitely the cleared defendant in the camps. The Obama regime is in the process of completing Dick Cheney?s dream by legislating the legality of indefinite detention. American law has collapsed to the dungeons of the Dark Ages.

This Nazi Gestapo policy is now the declared policy <SUP>[7]</SUP> of the US Department of Justice (sic).
Anyone who thinks the United States is a free society where people have liberty, ?freedom and democracy? is uninformed.
??????
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is the father of Reaganomics and the former head of policy at the Department of Treasury. He is a columnist and was previously an editor for the Wall Street Journal. His latest book, ?How the Economy Was Lost: The War of the Worlds <SUP>[8]</SUP>,? details why America is disintegrating.
<HR style="TEXT-ALIGN: center" class=Divider>

Article printed from Prison Planet.com: http://www.prisonplanet.com
URL to article: http://www.prisonplanet.com/why-does-the-fbi-orchestrate-fake-terror-plots.html

URLs in this post: [1] Somali-born teen plotted car-bombing in Oregon: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101127/ap_on_re_us/us_portland_car_bomb_plot
[2] The-Tortured-and-Manipulated-Terrorist-Threat-Evidence : http://www.sott.net/articles/show/184730-
[3] honest reporter at Knight Ridder: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2354167
[4] Having A Supply Of Healthy Foods That Last Just Makes Sense (AD): http://www.efoodsdirect.com//index.html?aid=14&adid=43
[5] Image: http://infowars-shop.stores.yahoo.net/post4rioffe.html
[6] a report: http://www.npr.org/2010/11/24/131574360/obama-administration-weighs-indefinite-detention
[7] declared policy: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26919.htm
[8] How the Economy Was Lost: The War of the Worlds: http://www.amazon.com/How-Economy-Was-Lost-Worlds/dp/1849350078
 

rusty

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FBI wins War on Terror.

FBI wins War on Terror.

FBI wins battle in War on Terror
The Lowell Sun
Updated: 12/05/2010 06:35:18 AM EST

He repeatedly insisted he wanted to kill Americans. Bloody carnage was his explicit goal, and a crowd of 12,000 Oregonians in downtown Portland provided the human targets.

His targets -- men, women and children -- gathered in the city's Pioneer Courthouse Square last Friday to light a public Christmas tree. Attacking this infidel ceremony, with its hint of pagan tree worship, would give his murderous act iconic stature. Militant Islamists around the globe would appreciate the religious symbolism.

He positioned the bomb for maximum casualties, slipped away, then called a cell phone rigged as a detonator.

He waited. No blast. No dead Americans. Moments later, 19-year-old Mohamed Osman Mohamud, nominally of Corvallis, Ore., was arrested by the FBI. The bomb was a fake, supplied by FBI agents who had been tracking the Wannabe Terrorist for months.

Of course, Mohamud's attorney now suggests he was "entrapped" by diabolically clever G-men. However, based on the FBI affidavit filed in federal court, entrapment will be tough to prove. Mohamud bragged to agents that he had been "thinking of committing some form of violent jihad since the age of 15." Like an experienced al-Qaida plotter, he saw his mass murder as global information warfare. The Portland bloodbath was "gonna be a fireworks show," and The "New York Times will give it two thumbs up."

Portland, with its oh-so-left-wing politics, and the Willamette Valley, with it wonderful wineries, do not
Advertisement
look like battlefields, but for al-Qaida terrorists they definitely are. Unfortunately, they will continue to be for four or five decades, as the global struggle between militant Islamists and practically everyone else on the planet continues.

I realize Global War on Terror (GWOT) is no longer the official name of this multi-dimensional struggle. One of the first things President Barack Obama did after he became president was dispense with the name GWOT, in favor of his preferred name, OCO -- overseas contingency operation. Since Obama declared OCO, the Christmas Terrorist tried to bring down a jetliner over Detroit, Maj. Nidal Hasan murdered fellow soldiers at Ft. Hood and a would-be terrorist tried to bomb New York's Times Square. Like Portland, none of these places is overseas.

America's terrorist enemies, despite our preferences and druthers, target American soil just as they target Americans wherever they may live or travel on the planet. These killers attempt to wage war Over There and Back Here and in between, and there is nothing contingent about it. The fight is global -- and local.

Which is why this particular FBI operation is not simply an example of outstanding police work, but an example of the FBI at war. In identifying and tracking the Wannabe Terrorist, the FBI ran a classic counter-intelligence and counter-terror operation.

Moreover, on the Willamette Valley battlefield, the FBI has won a psychological victory that will help blunt al-Qaida's attempts to encourage "self-organizing" terrorists.

Understand that al-Qaida is first and foremost a propaganda power. Its dark genius has been to connect the Muslim world's angry young men (including those living in Corvallis) with a utopian fantasy preaching the virtue of violence.

Al-Qaida wants the world to believe its psychological and ideological appeals are unstoppable. There will be a thousand self-organizing Hasans, there will be 10,000 Mahmouds, so go ahead and give up now, America.

But in the real world, putting together an attack leaves a trail. Personal behavior is also a marker. The Foundation for Defense of Democracy's "Homegrown Terrorists in the U.S. and U.K." examines the behavioral changes that occur during the radicalization process. Yes, this is profiling, based on experience with young men who decided to kill fellow citizens en masse.

In its Willamette Valley campaign, the FBI demonstrated it can detect the behavior, track it and co-opt it. Now domestic would-be terrorists cannot be certain that their angry compatriot isn't an agent running a sting operation. Doubt replaces theological certitude.

Let's hope the trial court produces a legal victory that reinforces the FBI's success. But the bureau's psychological victory stands.

To find out more about Austin Bay, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
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bleedingpurple

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FBI wins battle in War on Terror
The Lowell Sun
Updated: 12/05/2010 06:35:18 AM EST

He repeatedly insisted he wanted to kill Americans. Bloody carnage was his explicit goal, and a crowd of 12,000 Oregonians in downtown Portland provided the human targets.

His targets -- men, women and children -- gathered in the city's Pioneer Courthouse Square last Friday to light a public Christmas tree. Attacking this infidel ceremony, with its hint of pagan tree worship, would give his murderous act iconic stature. Militant Islamists around the globe would appreciate the religious symbolism.

He positioned the bomb for maximum casualties, slipped away, then called a cell phone rigged as a detonator.

He waited. No blast. No dead Americans. Moments later, 19-year-old Mohamed Osman Mohamud, nominally of Corvallis, Ore., was arrested by the FBI. The bomb was a fake, supplied by FBI agents who had been tracking the Wannabe Terrorist for months.

Of course, Mohamud's attorney now suggests he was "entrapped" by diabolically clever G-men. However, based on the FBI affidavit filed in federal court, entrapment will be tough to prove. Mohamud bragged to agents that he had been "thinking of committing some form of violent jihad since the age of 15." Like an experienced al-Qaida plotter, he saw his mass murder as global information warfare. The Portland bloodbath was "gonna be a fireworks show," and The "New York Times will give it two thumbs up."

Portland, with its oh-so-left-wing politics, and the Willamette Valley, with it wonderful wineries, do not
Advertisement
look like battlefields, but for al-Qaida terrorists they definitely are. Unfortunately, they will continue to be for four or five decades, as the global struggle between militant Islamists and practically everyone else on the planet continues.

I realize Global War on Terror (GWOT) is no longer the official name of this multi-dimensional struggle. One of the first things President Barack Obama did after he became president was dispense with the name GWOT, in favor of his preferred name, OCO -- overseas contingency operation. Since Obama declared OCO, the Christmas Terrorist tried to bring down a jetliner over Detroit, Maj. Nidal Hasan murdered fellow soldiers at Ft. Hood and a would-be terrorist tried to bomb New York's Times Square. Like Portland, none of these places is overseas.

America's terrorist enemies, despite our preferences and druthers, target American soil just as they target Americans wherever they may live or travel on the planet. These killers attempt to wage war Over There and Back Here and in between, and there is nothing contingent about it. The fight is global -- and local.

Which is why this particular FBI operation is not simply an example of outstanding police work, but an example of the FBI at war. In identifying and tracking the Wannabe Terrorist, the FBI ran a classic counter-intelligence and counter-terror operation.

Moreover, on the Willamette Valley battlefield, the FBI has won a psychological victory that will help blunt al-Qaida's attempts to encourage "self-organizing" terrorists.

Understand that al-Qaida is first and foremost a propaganda power. Its dark genius has been to connect the Muslim world's angry young men (including those living in Corvallis) with a utopian fantasy preaching the virtue of violence.

Al-Qaida wants the world to believe its psychological and ideological appeals are unstoppable. There will be a thousand self-organizing Hasans, there will be 10,000 Mahmouds, so go ahead and give up now, America.

But in the real world, putting together an attack leaves a trail. Personal behavior is also a marker. The Foundation for Defense of Democracy's "Homegrown Terrorists in the U.S. and U.K." examines the behavioral changes that occur during the radicalization process. Yes, this is profiling, based on experience with young men who decided to kill fellow citizens en masse.

In its Willamette Valley campaign, the FBI demonstrated it can detect the behavior, track it and co-opt it. Now domestic would-be terrorists cannot be certain that their angry compatriot isn't an agent running a sting operation. Doubt replaces theological certitude.

Let's hope the trial court produces a legal victory that reinforces the FBI's success. But the bureau's psychological victory stands.

To find out more about Austin Bay, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
Print Email Font ResizeReturn to Top

Please note by clicking on "Post Comment" you acknowledge that you have read the Terms of Service and the comment you are posting is in compliance with such terms. The host of this board reserves the right to remove posts with personal information or comments, personal attacks, foul language, and posts that are off-topic, spam or infringe on individual copyright. Repeated violation of these standards will result in banning from the board.

Yeah I don't know why people are defending this guy as he was "entrapped." The fucker was looking for trouble and he found it. He gets what he deserves. Kudos to the FBI on this one..

Why does the FBI do what they do?? How else are they going to catch some of these people?
 

Jaxx

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Yeah I don't know why people are defending this guy as he was "entrapped." The fucker was looking for trouble and he found it. He gets what he deserves. Kudos to the FBI on this one..

Why does the FBI do what they do?? How else are they going to catch some of these people?

Exactly!
 

Lumi

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It's awfully suspicious to me that the last four attempts on American Soil end up being less than a mouse fart.

The Christmas Eve Ball Bomber, completely drugged out idiot. The shoe bomber, same deal. The Time Square Clown, sets off a few firecrackers during Memorial Day Weekend, then this goof in Portland.

NOTHING HAPPENED BUT FEAR AND HYSTERIA !

Sure Michael Chertoff got his Naked Body Scanners implemented, now they are at bus stations, soon to be at malls and your kids schools.

Bubble..... Bubble... Bubble....
 

rusty

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It's awfully suspicious to me that the last four attempts on American Soil end up being less than a mouse fart.

The Christmas Eve Ball Bomber, completely drugged out idiot. The shoe bomber, same deal. The Time Square Clown, sets off a few firecrackers during Memorial Day Weekend, then this goof in Portland.

NOTHING HAPPENED BUT FEAR AND HYSTERIA !

Sure Michael Chertoff got his Naked Body Scanners implemented, now they are at bus stations, soon to be at malls and your kids schools.

Bubble..... Bubble... Bubble....

Funny what the enemy has been down-graded to.
If it turned out any differently ,it would be time to reassess the FBI's function.Funny how you missed the Ft. Hood disaster,but I'm sure you have a conspiracy explanation for that one.
Everything in your eyes is a cover-up:shrug: .
 

Lumi

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many of these Jack Asses commuincated with the same the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who Barry has authorized to whack.

By the way, the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, is an American.
 

Lumi

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Sorry for being so delusional.
It must be all the pschotropic
drugs the Army fed me while
on missions I was never at,
amd that never happened...

Tension grows between Calif. Muslims, FBI after informant infiltrates mosque


By Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 5, 2010; 12:47 AM

IRVINE, CALIF. - Before the sun rose, the informant donned a white Islamic robe. A tiny camera was sewn into a button, and a microphone was buried in a device attached to his keys.

 

Lumi

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Do you read in a foreign language?

Do your lips move when you read?

Do you even know who Hal Turner is?

Who is Tim Osman?

I must be nice living in such and idealistic world believing that none of this shit happens.

Right in front of you is a story posted about and FBI informant infiltrates a mosque.
 

rusty

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Do you read in a foreign language?

Do your lips move when you read?

Do you even know who Hal Turner is?

Who is Tim Osman?

I must be nice living in such and idealistic world believing that none of this shit happens.

Right in front of you is a story posted about and FBI informant infiltrates a mosque.

Lumi what's your point.They sold a guy down the river for vital information.I'm good with it.In fact I hope its being done in all fifty!!

There' s your answer to why the plot's have failed(minus Ft. Hood)imagine that ,you answered your own question...

If it keep's our country safe ,I'm all for it.Again,what's your point.
 

rusty

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Shot down in flames.

Shot down in flames.

Lumi,
I have some bad news for you.Not only the gov't.,but reporters have call the arming of Lading not only a myth ,but just makes no sense.

That's why they call it conspiracy,because its not facts.Not to mention that this happened over 25 years ago.I love when blowhards try to connect the dots to today...:mj07: :0corn CIA-Osama bin Laden controversy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search


In mid-1979, about the same time as the Soviet Union deployed troops into Afghanistan, the United States began giving several hundred million dollars a year in aid to the Afghan Mujahideen insurgents fighting the Afghan Marxist government and the Soviet Army in Operation Cyclone. Along with native Afghan mujahideen were Muslim volunteers from other countries, popularly known as Afghan Arabs. The most famous of the Afghan Arabs was Osama bin Laden, known at the time as a wealthy and pious Saudi who provided his own money and helped raise millions from other wealthy Gulf Arabs.

As the war neared its end, bin Laden organized the al-Qaeda organization to carry on armed jihad in other venues, primarily against the United States ? the country that had helped fund the mujahideen against the Soviets.

A number of commentators have described Al-Qaeda attacks as blowback or an unintended consequence of American aid to the mujahideen. In response, the American government, American and Pakistani intelligence officials involved in the operation, and at least one journalist (Peter Bergen) have denied this theory. They maintain the aid was given out by the Pakistan government, that it went to Afghan not foreign mujahideen, and that there was no contact between the Afghan Arabs and the CIA or other American officials, let alone arming, training, coaching or indoctrination.
Contents



The BBC, in an article published shortly after the 9/11 attacks, stated that bin Laden "received security training from the CIA itself, according to Middle Eastern analyst Hazhir Teimourian."[1]

In a 2003 article, Michael Powelson of the Russian journal Demokratizatsiya wrote:

It is difficult to believe that the United States played no role in the operations of the son of one of the wealthiest men in Saudi Arabia. Indeed, it is much more likely that the United States knew full-well of bin Laden's operation and gave it all the support they could.[2]

A 2004 BBC article entitled "Al-Qaeda's origins and links", the BBC wrote:

During the anti-Soviet jihad Bin Laden and his fighters received American and Saudi funding. Some analysts believe Bin Laden himself had security training from the CIA.[3]

In a 2006 InDepth piece on Osama Bin Laden, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation published that,[4]

Bin Laden apparently received training from the CIA, which was backing the Afghan holy warriors ? the mujahedeen ? who were tying down Soviet forces in Afghanistan.

An article in Der Spiegel, in 2007, entitled "Arming the Middle East", Siegesmund von Ilsemann called Bin Laden "one of the CIA's best weapons customers." [5]

According to author Steve Coll,

Overall, the U.S. government looked favorably on the Arab recruitment drives. ... Some of the most ardent cold warriors at [CIA headquarters at] Langley thought this program should be formally endorsed and extended. ... [T]he CIA "examined ways to increase their participation, perhaps in the form of some sort of international brigade" ... Robert Gates [then-head of the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence] recalled. ... At the [CIA's] Islamabad station [station chief] Milt Bearden felt that bin Laden himself "actually did some very good things" by putting money into Afghanistan.[6]

Robin Cook, Foreign Secretary in the UK from 1997?2001, and Leader of the House of Commons and Lord President of the Council from 2001-2003, believed the CIA had provided arms to the Arab Mujahideen, including Osama bin Laden, writing, "Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan."[7]

In conversation with former British Defence Secretary Michael Portillo, two-time Prime Minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto said Osama bin Laden was initially pro-American.[8] Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia, has also stated that bin Laden appreciated the United States help in Afghanistan. On CNN's Larry King program he said:[9]

Bandar bin Sultan: This is ironic. In the mid-'80s, if you remember, we and the United - Saudi Arabia and the United States were supporting the Mujahideen to liberate Afghanistan from the Soviets. He [Osama bin Laden] came to thank me for my efforts to bring the Americans, our friends, to help us against the atheists, he said the communists. Isn't it ironic?

Larry King: How ironic. In other words, he came to thank you for helping bring America to help him.

Bandar bin Sultan: Right.

According to Iranian state-owned Press TV, FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, who has been fired from the agency for disclosing sensitive information, has claimed the United States was on intimate terms with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, using them to further certain goals in Central Asia.[10]

According to author David N. Gibbs "a considerable body of circumstantial evidence suggests ... direct Agency support for Bin Laden?s activities."[11] Both Bin Laden and the CIA "held accounts in the Bank for Credit and Commerce International (BCCI)."[11] "Bin Laden worked especially closely with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar"[12] who Gibbs calls "the CIA?s favored Mujahiddin commander".[11] Gibbs quotes Le Monde as saying bin Laden was "recruited by the CIA" in 1979,[11][13] Associated Press as saying a former bin Laden aide told them that in 1989 the U.S. shipped high-powered sniper rifles to a Mujahiddin faction that included bin Laden,[11][14] and Jane?s Intelligence Review as stating Bin Laden "worked in close association with U.S. agents" in raising money for the Mujahiddin from "vast family connections" near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.[11][15]

In August 2010, Fidel Castro claimed that bin Laden was a spy, employed by the United States.[16]
[edit] Opposing View
United States Central Intelligence Agency
Ayman al Zawahiri
Peter Bergen

U.S. government officials and a number of other parties maintain that the U.S. supported only the indigenous Afghan mujahideen. They deny that the CIA or other American officials had contact with the Afghan Arabs (foreign mujahideen) or Bin Laden, let alone armed, trained, coached or indoctrinated them. Scholars and reporters have called the idea the CIA backed Afghan Arabs (foreign mujahideen) "nonsense",[17] "sheer fantasy",[18] and "simply a folk myth."[19]

They argue that:

* with a quarter of a million local Afghans willing to fight there was no need to recruit foreigners unfamiliar with the local language, customs or lay of the land
* that with several hundred million dollars a year in funding from non-American, Muslim sources, Arab Afghans themselves would have no need for American funds
* that Americans could not train mujahideen because Pakistani officials would not allow more than a handful of them to operate in Pakistan and none in Afghanistan;[20]
* that the Afghan Arabs were militant Islamists, reflexively hostile to Westerners, and prone to threaten or attack Westerners even though they knew the Westerners were helping the mujahideen.

Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri says much the same thing in his book Knights Under the Prophet's Banner.[21]

Bin Laden himself has said "the collapse of the Soviet Union ... goes to God and the mujahideen in Afghanistan ... the US had no mentionable role," but "collapse made the US more haughty and arrogant." [22]

According to CNN journalist Peter Bergen, known for conducting the first television interview with Osama bin Laden in 1997,

The story about bin Laden and the CIA ? that the CIA funded bin Laden or trained bin Laden ? is simply a folk myth. There's no evidence of this. In fact, there are very few things that bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and the U.S. government agree on. They all agree that they didn't have a relationship in the 1980s. And they wouldn't have needed to. Bin Laden had his own money, he was anti-American and he was operating secretly and independently. The real story here is the CIA did not understand who Osama was until 1996, when they set up a unit to really start tracking him.[19]

Bergen quotes Pakistani Brigadier Mohammad Yousaf, who ran the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Afghan operation between 1983 and 1987:

It was always galling to the Americans, and I can understand their point of view, that although they paid the piper they could not call the tune. The CIA supported the mujahideen by spending the taxpayers' money, billions of dollars of it over the years, on buying arms, ammunition, and equipment. It was their secret arms procurement branch that was kept busy. It was, however, a cardinal rule of Pakistan's policy that no Americans ever become involved with the distribution of funds or arms once they arrived in the country. No Americans ever trained or had direct contact with the mujahideen, and no American official ever went inside Afghanistan.[23]

Marc Sageman, a Foreign Service Officer who was based in Islamabad from 1987?1989, and worked closely with Afghanistan's Mujahideen, argues that no American money went to the foreign volunteers.

Sageman also says:[24]

Contemporaneous accounts of the war do not even mention [the Afghan Arabs]. Many were not serious about the war. ... Very few were involved in actual fighting. For most of the war, they were scattered among the Afghan groups associated with the four Afghan fundamentalist parties.

No U.S. official ever came in contact with the foreign volunteers. They simply traveled in different circles and never crossed U.S. radar screens. They had their own sources of money and their own contacts with the Pakistanis, official Saudis, and other Muslim supporters, and they made their own deals with the various Afghan resistance leaders."[25]

Vincent Cannistraro, who led the Reagan administration's Afghan Working Group from 1985 to 1987, puts it,

The CIA was very reluctant to be involved at all. They thought it would end up with them being blamed, like in Guatemala." So the Agency tried to avoid direct involvement in the war, ... the skittish CIA, Cannistraro estimates, had less than ten operatives acting as America's eyes and ears in the region. Milton Bearden, the Agency's chief field operative in the war effort, has insisted that "[T]he CIA had nothing to do with" bin Laden. Cannistraro says that when he coordinated Afghan policy from Washington, he never once heard bin Laden's name.[26]

Fox News reporter Richard Miniter wrote that in interviewes with the two men who "oversaw the disbursement for all American funds to the anti-Soviet resistance, Bill Peikney - CIA station chief in Islamabad from 1984 to 1986 - and Milt Bearden - CIA station chief from 1986 to 1989 - he found,

Both flatly denied that any CIA funds ever went to bin Laden. They felt so strongly about this point that they agreed to go on the record, an unusual move by normally reticent intelligence officers. Mr. Peikney added in an e-mail to me: ?I don?t even recall UBL [bin Laden] coming across my screen when I was there.[27]

Other reasons advanced for a lack of a CIA-Afghan Arab connection of "pivotal importance," (or even any connection at all), was that the Afghan Arabs themselves were not important in the war but were a "curious sideshow to the real fighting."[28]

One estimate of the number of combatants in the war is that 250,000 Afghans fought 125,000 Soviet troops, but only 2000 Arab Afghans fought "at any one time".[29]

According to Milton Bearden the CIA did not recruit Arabs because there were hundreds of thousands of Afghans all too willing to fight. The Arab Afghan were not only superfluous but "disruptive," angering local Afghan with their more-Muslim-than-thou attitude, according to Peter Jouvenal.[30] Veteran Afghan cameraman Peter Jouvenal quotes an Afghan mujahideen as saying "whenever we had a problem with one of them [foreign mujahideen], we just shot them. They thought they were kings."

Many who traveled in Afghanistan ? Olivier Roy,[31] Peter Jouvenal.[32] ? reported of the Arab Afghans' visceral hostility to Westerners in Afghanistan to aid Afghans or report on their plight. BBC reporter John Simpson tells the story of running into Osama bin Laden in 1989, and with neither knowing who the other was, bin Laden attempting to bribe Simpson's Afghan driver $500 ? a large sum in a poor country ? to kill the infidel Simpson. When the driver declined, Bin Laden retired to his "camp bed" and wept "in frustration." [33]
[edit] Agreements

One allegation[34] not denied by the US government is that the U.S. Army enlisted and trained a cashiered Egyptian soldier named Ali Mohamed, and that it knew Ali occasionally took trips to Afghanistan, where he claimed to fight Russians.[35][page needed] According to journalist Lawrence Wright who interviewed U.S. officials about Ali, the Egyptian did tell his Army superiors he was fighting in Afghanistan, but did not tell them he was training other Afghan Arabs or writing a manual from what he had learned from the US Army Special Forces. Wright also reports that the CIA failed to inform other US agencies that it had learned Ali, who was a member of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, was an anti-American spy.[35][page needed]

Bergen and Wright also agree it is noteworthy that Islamist Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman was allowed into the United States, although Wright suggests this lapse was incompetent rather than sinister.[36]
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