From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [R-G] Did bin Laden have help from U.S. friends? Toronto Star
The Toronto Star November 27, 2001
Did bin Laden have help from U.S. friends?
by Thomas Walkom
An intriguing new book, just published in France, details the curiously
amicable relationship between the regime of U.S. President George W. Bush
and Afghanistan's Taliban, a relationship that turned hostile only after the
terror attacks of Sept. 11.
Ben Laden: La Verit� Interdite (Bin Laden: The Forbidden Truth) is written
by former French spook Jean-Charles Brisard and journalist Guillaume
Dasquie. Both are said to be plugged into the murky world of intelligence.
During his time with French intelligence, Brisard was regarded as something
of an expert on bin Laden's finances.
The nub of their argument is that the Bush regime's attitude toward the
Taliban - and even to bin Laden - was driven by the new president's fixation
on energy. A stable regime in Afghanistan would allow construction of an oil
and gas pipeline from the former Soviet republics in Central Asia to
Pakistan and the sea. And initially, Washington's best bet for a stable
regime in Afghanistan was the Taliban.
>From February, when the Taliban first offered to extradite bin Laden in
exchange for U.S. recognition, until August when negotiations stalled, the
Bush administration and the government it later labelled a terrorist regime
got along just fine.
Indeed, the book quotes John O'Neill, a former director of anti-terrorism
for the Federal Bureau of Investigation as complaining that American and
Saudi oil interests acting through the U.S. State Department kept
interfering with efforts to track down bin Laden.
In particular, the authors say, O'Neill was irked after the State Department
refused to let his FBI team return to Yemen to investigate the terrorist
bombing of the USS Cole there last year. Frustrated, he quit to take a
private sector job. Unfortunately for him, that job was as head of security
in New York's World Trade Center. O'Neill was killed on Sept. 11.
Skeptics might argue that his death proved convenient for the authors. Now
there is no one to dispute their account of what he said. Certainly, Bin
Laden: The Forbidden Truth has the whiff of an old-fashioned conspiracy
theory starring the usual panoply of villains.
Still, the details that Brisard and Dasquie provide (including the fact that
the Taliban hired the niece of former CIA director Richard Helms to
orchestrate their publicity) do not contradict what was already known about
the relationship between Washington and its soon-to-be arch-enemy. In fact,
they support it.
Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid's well-regarded book Taliban: Islam, Oil
And The New Great Game in Central Asia outlines how oil politics has
affected U.S. policy in Afghanistan. The Taliban's unprecedented offer to
extradite bin Laden to a third country, well before the Sept. 11 attacks,
was reported by the Times of London in February. In September, this
newspaper (Toronto Star) reported on the often cozy relationship between
Washington and the Taliban.
Last month, the Washington Post reported that Sudan had offered in 1996 to
extradite bin Laden, who was wanted at that time for attacks on U.S.
servicemen in Saudi Arabia.
However, the U.S. declined that offer. Instead, it agreed with Sudan's
decision to deport bin Laden and his entourage to a place where he couldn't
do any damage - Afghanistan. The official reason for U.S. reluctance was
that it wasn't sure a case against him could stand up in court. Saudi
Arabia, the other extradition destination proposed by the Sudanese, refused
to take him
But there is a pattern. Earlier this month, the Guardian, a U.K. newspaper,
reported that FBI agents had been told by the Bush administration to back
off investigating members of the bin Laden clan living in the U.S. In
September, the Wall Street Journal documented the lucrative business
connections between the bin Laden family and senior U.S. Republicans,
including the president's father, George Bush Sr.
What are we to make of all of this? One possible conclusion is that the bin
Laden terror problem was allowed to get out of hand because bin Laden,
himself, had powerful protectors in both Washington and Saudi Arabia. If
that's true, no wonder the Bush administration prefers that he be killed
rather than allowed to testify in open court.
The other conclusions - questions really - have to do with the justification
for the war on Afghanistan. If the Taliban unilaterally offered in February
to extradite bin Laden (an offer they repeated after Sept. 11), were they
just kidding? If not, was the war necessary?
This question will become particularly important if the U.S. fails to find
the terrorist it says started this war, the man it allowed to go to
Afghanistan in the first place.
Thomas Walkom <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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