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CLINTON’S PHONY WAR ON TERRORISM - Part 2
By Reed Irvine and Cliff Kincaid
The perpetrators of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon seemed to operate freely in the U.S., without interference from law enforcement or intelligence agencies. In his book, Dollars for Terror, Swiss journalist Richard Labeviere argues that this international Islamic network and its protector, the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, were viewed as serving U.S. foreign policy interests. He quotes a former CIA analyst as saying, "The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam and of helping them against our adversaries worked marvelously well in Afghanistan against the Red Army. The same doctrines can still be used to destabilize what remains of Russian power, and especially to counter the Chinese influence in Central Asia." It was believed that Sunni Islam could be used to undermine Russia in Chechnya and China in its southern region. It also was present in all the Muslim republics of the former Soviet Union. Labeviere says, "with the active support of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other oil monarchies and with the benevolence of the American [intelligence] services engaged in these areas, we can expect a ‘Talebanization’ of Central Asia, particularly in Chechnya." But that network has now turned against us. This view sounds shocking, but helps us understand some questionable U.S. foreign policy decisions, such as the Clinton Administration’s backing of Muslim movements in Bosnia and Kosovo, where the CIA supported the Kosovo Liberation Army, a group linked to bin Laden that was engaged in drug trafficking. The Clinton Administration intervened in Yugoslavia on behalf of the Muslims while ignoring more serious human rights problems in other parts of the world. The Clinton Administration remained largely indifferent to the persecution of Christians in such countries as Sudan, where almost 2 million people have died. Sudan was once a home to bin Laden. Central to Labeviere’s thesis is that one of America’s strongest allies, Saudi Arabia, is actually helping to bankroll Osama Bin Laden’s networks as a way to further its own brand of Sunni Islam. This runs counter to the conventional wisdom that bin Laden, whose family runs the largest construction firm in Saudi Arabia, is a dissident and renegade. On October 29th, 1999, Jack Kelley wrote a story for USA Today that "prominent businessmen in Saudi Arabia continue to transfer tens of million of dollars to bank accounts linked to Osama Bin Laden…" Citing senior U.S. intelligence officials and a Saudi government document, Kelley said the money transfers had begun five years before that. Kelly said one of the businessmen under investigation, Mohammad Hussein al-Amoudi, runs the largest bank in Saudi Arabia, as well as the Capitol Trust Bank in New York and London. Amoudi’s lawyer was Clinton friend Vernon Jordan. After bin Laden was blamed for the bombings of our embassies in Africa, the Clinton Administration launched a completely ineffective missile strike on a tent city in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan. The owner of the plant was actually an opponent of the Sudanese regime.
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