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Francis Report 10-05 Dave Francis “Assignments where diarrhea is a way of life aren’t high on the list for people. Most duty officers live in Virginia.” Was the way one CIA official explained the lack of agents on the ground, in the region in and around Afghanistan. The fact that the intelligence community failed us all is obvious. What may not be obvious is why. The reasons, like the spy business is complicated. After Watergate, the US dismantled large parts of its spy networks, and made it more difficult to replace the ones leaving. American rules concerning who we would and wouldn’t deal with had more to do with morals and principles and less to do with being effective. We made a determination to not deal with people who had a history of violence and of violating other peoples rights. In general, we wanted to go to war with Boy Scouts. Now don’t get me wrong, I love the Boy Scouts, but there are times where something a little more earthy is needed. If you are going to go after terrorists and murderers, you are going to need to do business with some unsavory types of people. That is a decision we need to make. In the 70’s, we made the decision to keep the high moral ground, and it has led to us being without an effective network to infiltrate and stop these kinds of terrorist threats. It is time to realize that it is a dangerous world out there, and we are a target to a hell of a lot of people. Some of the things we need to do may be morally repugnant, but ultimately, the most important job of a government, any government, is to provide for the security of it’s citizens. According to published reports in Britain, in the spring of 1996, Sudan offered to serve us Osama bin Ladin’s head on a platter. They were going to expel him, and offered to hand him over to Saudi Arabia, then we could take him from there. In a meeting in a closed hotel room in Arlington Virginia in March, the Clinton administration tried to find some legal way to grab bin Ladin and bring him back to the USA. At the time, the US had no case in the US on which to indict bin Ladin, and since we were unwilling to do anything shady, like liquidating him, he left Sudan 10 weeks after the Arlington meeting, on May 18th. He went to Afghanistan. He has wreaked extensive damage on America since that lost opportunity. The Sudanese offer all started on Feb 6, 1996 at the Khartoum residence of the Sudanese foreign minister, Ali Othman Taha. It was to be the last day of business for the American embassy there, and Ambassador Carney had come to say goodbye. American interests had suffered an upsurge in violent behavior at the hands of the Sudanese in recent past, including the CIA station chief, Paul Quaglia being attacked once with a knife, and once with a claw hammer. During the going away dinner, Mr Taha asked what Sudan could do to convince the US that it was serious about wanting to help fight terrorism, and get back on a good track with America, regarding the two countries quickly deteriorating relationship. Ambassador Carney remembers that Mr. Taha listened to a long list of complaints, without interrupting. Osama bin Ladin’s expulsion was near the top of the list. The defense minister for Sudan, Major General Erwa came to Arlington and met Mr. Carney in a room at the Hyatt Arlington. The meeting was run by covert operations staff for the CIA’s Africa division. Carney presented General Erwa with a document titled, “Measures Sudan Can Take To Improve Relations With The United States.” On the document was a list where the US asked the government of Sudan to do 6 things. Second on the list was Osama bin Ladin. “Provide us with names, dates of arrival, departure, and destination and passport data on mujahidin that Osama bin Ladin has brought into Sudan.” The document demanded. General Erwa offered to do us one better. He offered that Sudan would certainly keep close track of bin Ladin, but if that weren’t enough, he offered to place him under arrest and hand him over. Different ideas were batted around, and eventually it was decided to try to convince the Saudis to take bin Ladin. It was remembered that after the bombing in Riyadh, the Saudis had quickly beheaded the four conspirators, and such a fate for bin Ladin would make everyone sleep a little better. Bin Ladin had issued a fatwa, or declaration of war against the ruling family of Saudi Arabia, so it was hoped that the Saudis would be willing to do in bin Ladin, in pursuit of their own interests. The Saudis in 1994 stripped bin Ladin of his citizenship, and had expelled him in 1991, but they demurred at the idea of jailing or executing him. The state department, it is reported, as usual didn’t push the Saudis very hard. When the Saudi option was exhausted, the US just sent word to General Erwa to have him leave the country, but ‘Just don’t let him go to Somalia.” Erwa said that Sudan offered to let bin Ladin go to Afghanistan, and the US agreed. Mr. Taha sent a fax to Ambassador Carney in Nairobi, informing him that Sudan was expelling bin Ladin, and Carney faxed back asking is bin Ladin would retain his assets he had in Sudan. No reply was forthcoming, and three days later, bin Ladin chartered a plane and left for Afghanistan. Intelligence sources indicate that bin Ladin has accessed his resources in Sudan. In 1999, it is now known that the Clinton administration trained a group of about 60 Pakistanis to go into Afghanistan, find and kill bin Ladin. The plan went astray when the government of Pakistan was toppled, and the current President of Pakistan, General Musharraf refused to go along. In other news: Crimean-Congo Haemorrhagic Fever has broken out on the Pakistani-Afghan border. Pakistani health officials in Quetta have identified at least 75 cases of CCHF, and more are almost certainly out there. It is coming with the refugees from Afghanistan, and it is a mystery where they got this Ebola-type disease. Rumors abound about a bio-terror experiment in Afghanistan gone bad, and while that can’t be confirmed, it is easy to verify that death from this disease is horrific. The victims ‘melt before your eyes’ as their blood vessels and veins deteriorate. It is highly contagious, and workers in the hospitals in the affected areas are required to wear full body bio-suits while in the ward with the patients. Garik Anovisian, an Armenian pilot close by saw it explode. A Russian airliner, with 77 passengers aboard, 51 of them Israeli citizens, was cruising 114 miles from the coastal city of Adler, near the Georgian/Russian border when the Tupolev 154 went up in flames before crashing into the sea. The flight, initiated in Israel, was bound for the Siberian city of Novosobirsk. Officials are tight lipped about the incident, but sources on the inside tell me that it was very likely that this plane was shot down with a missile, from the ground. They are not dismissing the idea that it was an accident, and the missile was a training missile, perhaps fired from Ukraine. Ukrainian officials have said the missile could not have come from them. The flight number was, ironically 1812, a year famous in Russian history for the bitter battles with Napoleon, later memorialized in Tolstoy’s epic, War and Peace. Israel has responded by banning all international carriers for the time being, as they investigate the tragedy. This is yet another in a strange wave of violence. We have had, in the last few days, an attempted hijacking in India, that later was described by Indian officials as an exercise. There was a terrible bombing in Kashmir, by Islamic radicals, the strange case of the Greyhound bus being attacked in Tennessee, by a man carrying a Croatian passport, and a few others. Has the second wave started, smaller, but more spread out? In addition to the above, we have seen others. In Israel, an Islamic radical, disguised as an Israeli soldier opened fire at a bus station in Afula Thursday, wounding 10 people and killing 2. He was shot dead by Israeli police at the scene. Earlier, in Tolouse France, there was an explosion at a chemical plant, used to make fertilizer. It now appears that it was no accident. Among the 29 dead at the site was 35 year old Hassan Jandoubi, and his body was discovered wrapped in several layers of clothing, ‘in the manner of a kamikaze fundamentalist’ according to French sources. (I didn’t make the mistaken allusion to kamikaze, the French did. I just quoted him…) Jandoubi had been hired to work at the plant 5 days before the fatal explosion. Paris police say it took five days to get permission to search Jandoubi’s apartment, and when they arrived, it had been thoroughly cleaned out. The world is waiting, but bin Ladin may not be. It was widely reported that when the Clinton administration fired cruise missiles at one of his camps in response to his acts of terror, the futility of the US attempt gave heart to the terrorists. Bin Ladin is telling anyone who will listen that America is afraid. Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban has assured his countries army that “America will not come to Afghanistan. They are afraid to come here.” DJF |