Oops - Charles Taylor 'worked' for CIA in Liberia

[malaise]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-16627628
<snip>
US authorities say former Liberian leader Charles Taylor worked for its intelligence agencies, including the CIA, the Boston Globe reports.

The revelation comes in response to a Freedom of Information request by the newspaper.

A Globe reporter told the BBC this is the first official confirmation of long-held reports of a relationship between US intelligence and Mr Taylor.

Mr Taylor is awaiting a verdict on his trial for alleged war crimes.

Rumours of CIA ties were fuelled in July 2009 when Mr Taylor himself told his trial, at the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone in the Hague, that US agents had helped him escape from a maximum security prison in Boston in 1985.

[gratuitous]

1. The United States does not negotiate with terrorists

It hires them.

[Solly Mack]

2. Go figure.

K&R

[orwell]

3. Wasn't he a BFF with...

...good old "christian conservative" Pat Robertson?

Curiouser and curiouser...

[Robb]

4. I know one man's terrorist is another man's war hero and all

...but Charles Taylor? Jesus.

I'm going to have to bone up on Liberia. Anyone have any notion what information Taylor might've had that we wanted badly enough to look the other way?

[azurnoir]

5. color me oh so surprised - not

in the '80's we were cozying up to all sorts in our 'cold war' efforts

[tabatha]

6. Gaddafi supported Charles Taylor.

Taylor managed to flee the United States and shortly thereafter it is assumed that he went to Libya, where he underwent guerrilla training under Muammar al-Gaddafi, becoming Gaddafi's protégé.[8] Eventually, he left Libya and traveled to Côte d'Ivoire, where he founded the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL).

In December 1989, Taylor launched a Libyan-funded armed uprising from Côte d'Ivoire into Liberia to overthrow the Doe regime, leading to the First Liberian Civil War.[9] By 1990, his forces soon controlled most of the country. That same year, Prince Johnson, a senior commander of Taylor's NPFL, broke away and formed the Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia (INPFL). In September 1990, Johnson captured Monrovia, depriving Taylor of outright victory. Doe was captured and tortured to death by Johnson and his forces, resulting in a violent political fragmentation of the country. The civil war turned into an ethnic conflict, with seven factions fighting for control of Liberia's resources (especially iron ore, diamonds, timber, and rubber).

According to a 2 June 1999, article in The Virginian-Pilot,[10] Taylor had extensive business dealings with American televangelist Pat Robertson during the civil war. According to the article, Taylor gave Robertson the rights to mine for diamonds in Liberia's mineral-rich countryside. According to two Operation Blessing pilots who reported this incident to the Commonwealth of Virginia for investigation in 1994, Robertson used his Operation Blessing planes to haul diamond-mining equipment to his new mines in Liberia, despite the fact that Robertson was telling his 700 Club viewers that the planes were sending relief supplies to the victims of the genocide in Rwanda. The subsequent investigation by the Commonwealth of Virginia concluded that Robertson diverted his ministry's donations to the Liberian diamond-mining operation, but Attorney General of Virginia Mark Earley blocked any potential prosecution against Robertson, as the relief supplies were also sent.[11]

[Bolo Boffin]

8. Oh, Jesus, if Pat Robertson is in bed with the CIA...

I will not be well.

[AngryAmish]

7. ?