I just saw this come through Google News this morning from less than 24 hours ago. It was an opinion column, but going to the regular link shows nothing (like it's already been censored).
It mentions Brent Wilkes and Dusty Foggo, the VERY weekend that Brent Wilkes has been given terms to be released on bail awaiting his appeal AFTER he'd been convicted and sentenced for his crimes, that prosecutors are already appealing are too lenient. Also tries to connect the dots between them, Hayden, Negroponte, and BCCI. There is something here I think that the powers that be don't want us to see. We should look at it carefully I think! Even postulates the possibility of a Bush assassination to keep Cheney in charge and put off the elections.
Mods, normally I'd respect the "news excerpt rule", but given that this article has been censored, unless we put a full copy of it here, it may get lost permanently with no way of accessing the contents. Please leave as is if you could.
Breathing space | The new game plan
We were taught in the theories of international relations that democracies do not go to war. That notion, however, somehow seems lost in the erratic behaviour of the US administration regarding Pakistan. During the eight year long dictatorship in this country, which also witnessed unprecedented assault on the American Twin Towers, the attitude of the US administration towards Musharraf and his regime was quite benign and full of trust. And now that the country finally has proven itself worthy of being called ‘democracy’, that patience is nowhere to be seen. First Condoleezza Rice made an uncalled for statement. Then Negroponte came rushing to Islamabad. And now Michael V Hayden, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has made similar rude remarks. All of them have now warned us against engaging the people of the tribal areas in peace talks.
The point is that while they have the right to choose with whom to negotiate in Iraq, Pakistan is not even allowed to talk to its own people for peace sake. But before I explore the full scope of the CIA’s remarks to NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ show (which I believe may startle you) I want to raise the question: why does every neo-con in Washington wants the tribal areas of Pakistan to be attacked relentlessly, and not only heartlessly but also mindlessly? It is common sense that even if Osama bin Laden (a man usually believed to be long dead) is hiding there, instead of turning the entire local population into his support base it would do great to dismantle his support bit by bit, pieces by pieces. Then why? Well, the answer lies in the economics.
It is in the interest of the neo-cons and their moles in the US intelligence community not to let peace prevail in the region or even to apprehend Osama. Not only does his being at large provides the US troops a ready excuse to stay there while protecting the interests of the multinationals there, but it offers tremendous opportunity to bank on the widespread fear among the American public. But if peace talks are allowed in the tribal areas of Pakistan, Kabul will be compelled to do the same in Afghanistan. It must be pointed out that while many think that the economic interests of the occupying forces are limited only to the civilised economic projects in the country, the most important factor of interest remains the poppy cultivation resulting in widespread opium trade. A relative peace would ensure increased UN activism in the country and hence decline in the poppy production. That is exactly why an infuriating use of force is so essential.
Let me quote a few paragraphs from the UNODC’s Afghanistan Opium Survey (August) 2007 to make my point. “In 2007, Afghanistan cultivated 193,000 hectares of opium poppies, an increase of 17 percent over the last year…Favourable weather conditions produced opium yields (42.5 kg per hectare) higher than the last year (37.0 kg/ha). As a result, in 2007, Afghanistan produced an extraordinary 8,200 tonnes of opium (34 percent more than in 2006)….Leaving aside 19th century China, that had a population at that time 15 times larger than today’s Afghanistan, no other country in the world has ever produced narcotics on such a deadly scale.” Fifty percent of the country’s crop is produced in the Helmand province, which incidentally is the place with the highest presence of British troops. While the province with 2.5 percent population has a presence of over 5,000 British soldiers, ironically the production of opium has increased three times since the occupation of the country.
Not only is the UK Washington’s only ally that has always stayed the course, the rise of the people with shady background to the top of the US intelligence community during a neo-con rule also explains quite a lot. John Negroponte is remembered by many as the butcher of Honduras. But when he was the Director of National Intelligence, his deputy was also somehow connected to a scandal that spreads from Honduras to the Iran Contra scandal in the 1980s. When General Hayden, the former head of the National Security Agency (NSA) and Deputy Director National Intelligence, was nominated for the post of the Director of the CIA, a senior office bearer of the agency Kyle Dustin ‘Dusty’ Foggo was forced to step down.
His stated reason for resigning was that a new director should be able to choose his own deputies. However, Foggo was charged on February 13, 2007, with fraud and other offenses in the bribery case of convicted US Congressman Randy Cunningham. This indictment was superseded and expanded with an indictment returned on May 10, 2007, charging fraud, conspiracy, and money-laundering in relation to his dealings with defence contractor Brent Wilkes. Incidentally, when Hayden was the director of NSA, he hired the services of a Lieutenant General James C. King an employee of MZM, one of the companies at the heart of the Cunningham scandal. King worked for the then NSA director at the same floor as his and his work was widely unknown even inside the agency. He is known to have also indulged in the same bizarre bribing activities.
Another key figure in the scandal is businessman Brent Wilkes who worked in Honduras during the 1980s for a company accused by federal prosecutors of deep involvement in cocaine trafficking. That company was also deeply embroiled in the Iran Contra scandal. Unfortunately, during those days a similar problem linked to money-laundering and drug trafficking arose in Pakistan when the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) was seized on the same charges. The bank was alleged to have been involved in money-laundering of the narco trade related fortunes earned by many, including some Pakistani military officers during the Soviet Afghan war. Since Hayden assumed the charge of Director for Defence Policy and Arms Control, National Security Council, immediately after the culmination of the Contra affair where he stayed till July 1991, and in 1992 President Bush senior pardoned many of the central characters, he is supposed to have taken active part in the cover up of the entire sordid episode. If he is party today to any similar guns and drugs project, he and Negroponte certainly do get to gain a lot from the instability in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
This might be why Hayden rushed to Pakistan after Benazir Bhutto’s assassination to testify that it were indeed the Taliban who had perpetrated the crime, upon flimsy proof. Likewise, immediately after the election of Pakistan’s new prime minister, Negroponte rushed to Pakistan for arm twisting and coercing the new leadership to adopt a conciliatory stance towards the president.
Hayden is a man who believes in total secrecy and after he became CIA’s director he tried to scramble the agency’s website, claiming that it was a clandestine service and hence should reduce its exposure to the general public. Why would such a man decide to come to give a relatively lengthy interview to a private news programme? Well, he seemed to be carrying some very important message. And quite a troubling message it was. What did he say? He said that al Qaeda has turned Pakistan’s remote tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan into a safe haven, and is using it to plot further attacks against the US.
“They are bringing operatives into that region for training operatives that would not attract your attention if they were going through the customs line at Dulles
with you when you were coming back from overseas, look Western would be able to come into this country without attracting the kinds of attention that others might.” Before I explain it further there is one anecdote I want to quote.
In February 2005 in Alexandria a 23-year-old Northern Virginia man of Saudi Arabian background named Ahmed Omar Abu Ali was charged with conspiring to assassinate President Bush. The man had escaped to Saudi Arabia where he was caught and had to spend many a month in jail before being extradited to Virginia. He was also charged for having assisted al Qaeda. This man along with many of his cult members had travelled to Pakistan from where he had gone to the Indian Kashmir with the jihadi group Lashkar-e-Tayyiba to practice warfare. So this plot was most certainly connected to Pakistan’s jihadi groups. These jihadi groups owe a lot to the intelligence agencies during Ziaul Haq’s era, hence the Afghan-Russia conflict.
Now the CIA’s director tells us to expect more terrorist acts from the Pakistani tribal areas. Then we are told that the people being trained are quite Western in appearance. And to top it all, the warning that they would not be recognised at Dulles. One needs to ask why Dulles, why not JFK or any other airport? Is it a subliminal training to expect the terrorists only in Washington or has Washington been chosen as the target? The director quite effectively drops hints here and there. We all know that after 9/11 it has become almost impossible to hijack a plane. It is far easier to assassinate the US president than to hijack a plane. And since in this scenario we find the terrorists to be present at an airport they cannot come with any explosive leave alone nukes or fissile material for dirty bombs. This rules out the possibility of any mass murder or big terror attack. Needless to say, this seems an assassination plot.
Why else would there be so much training and emphasis on looks? Now see again. Since George W Bush has become a lame duck president he is likely to also have become a liability for the neo-cons. Since the neo-cons and their cohorts in the intelligence community consider their own presence in the echelons of power quite essential and they find it that none of the main contenders for the presidential race are ready to align with them, less so accept a neo-con vice president their only excuse to stay in power can be the delay in elections caused by the assassination of the president. This can, under Bush’s successor Cheney, give them an excuse to consolidate the US military presence in the region by annexing Pakistan on this pretext. I can already smell a conspiracy in the air.
The writer is a television journalist and a commentator on political and security issues 
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