So
evil are terrorists they will stop at nothing to destroy America. One
such example of this hatred for our TV-watching, mall-shopping way of
life surfaced recently in a plot uncovered by the FBI. A Minnesota man,
Ilyas Ali, stands accused of selling a whole lot of hashish and heroin so
he might buy Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and sell them to the dreaded
al-Qaeda who would, of course, take out 747s packed with kindergarten
children and grandmothers. Ali, a naturalized US citizen born in India,
and two Pakistanis will be sent to San Diego to face charges. Maybe a
layover at Camp X-Ray is in order? Or maybe a side trip to one of those
infamous interrogation dungeons in Jordan, Egypt, or Morocco?
Sarcasm aside, Ali says he was set-up by FBI agents. It was a good
old-fashioned American ethic that ensnared the hapless Ali -- a greedy
and unchecked desire for money. After $100,000 was stolen from his St.
Paul, Minnesota, grocery store, Ali was befriended by two men he later
identified as FBI agents; one claimed to be a drug dealer and the other a
weapons specialist. As the drugs-for-weapons plan matured, Ali told an AP
reporter from a jail, the FBI agents paid to fly him twice to Pakistan
and once to Hong Kong. The agents said they would finance the whole
sordid affair. "We just said OK, OK, because we wanted the
money," Ali told Dirk Beveridge of AP. He had no drug connections
and claims not to know anybody in al-Qaeda. Moreover, he says there is a
tape of his conversation with the FBI agents. "There is absolutely
nothing in that tape," Ali said. "We didn't mention the
Stingers. The only one who mentioned the Stingers was the federal
agent."
The case of Ali and the Pakistanis dovetails nicely with the propaganda
of the Bushites (since terrorism and drugs are twin evils threatening the
good people of America). John Ashcroft has characterized the case as a
reminder "of the toxic combination of drugs and terrorism and the
threats they can pose to our national security." It may eventually
turn out to be a "toxic combination" dreamed up by scheming FBI
agents and conniving bureaucrats in the Justice Department. Since there
seems to be little if any al-Qaeda activity threatening Our Way of Life
presently -- even though we are warned every few weeks of imminent (and
unsubstantiated) attack by tenebrous doers of evil -- the FBI may need to
"stimulate" threats in lieu of the real McCoy.
The FBI wouldn't do that, would they?
Sure they would. During the heyday of COINTELPRO, the FBI routinely used
entrapment against members of the civil rights and antiwar movements. In
a later and much publicized case known as Abscam, the FBI (at the behest
of the Justice Department) used agents posing as Arab businessmen to
contact various public officials for the purpose of offering bribes in
return for political favors. "Before the Abscam sting against
members of Congress in 1980," writes Alan Ehrenhalt, "the idea
of inventing crimes and using them to tempt public officials was
virtually unheard of in this country."
If the FBI and Justice Department have no problem using Gestapo-like
tactics in orchestrated witch hunts against public officials, what do you
think they would do to unknown Indian grocers from Minnesota, especially
now with USA PATROIT on the books and the courts rolling over like
trained dogs on writs of habeas corpus? The specter of terrorism
(especially terrorism created in CIA-funded Afghan camps) gives the FBI
and CIA a perfect excuse to return to the good old days of
COINTELPRO/Operation CHAOS-like operations.
In fact, with a spooky merging of CIA and FBI operations (increased
"cooperation" between the two agencies has resulted in at least
one CIA officer at each of the 56 FBI field offices, according to
Associated Press reporter John J. Lumpkin), we can likely expect more
spurious terror scams, entrapment scenarios, heavy-handed surveillance of
political "targets," and who knows what else (even
assassination attempts were permitted, or at least not punished, under
COINTELPRO [see Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, The COINTELPRO
Papers, South End Press).
But setting people up is not limited to John Ashcroft's Justice
Department and Robert Mueller's FBI -- the Pentagon wants to get in on
the action with something called P2OG, or Proactive, Preemptive
Operations Group. P2OG would roll together CIA and military covert ops
personnel (a "robust, global cadre of retirees, reservists and
others who are trained and qualified to serve on short notice, including
expatriates") who will work to "stimulate reactions" among
those deemed terrorists by the Bushites. After setting up so-called
terrorists the US military would "counterattack," i.e., kill
them (no messy extradition or legal procedures required; think Kamal
Derwish, a US citizen, killed in Yemen by the judge, jury, and
executioner of a CIA-launched Hellfire missile for the crime of riding in
a car with Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, supposedly the
"mastermind" behind the alleged al-Qaeda attack on the USS
Cole).
If you think P2OG would be confined to faraway lands where terrorists run
free, think again -- and take note of the above-mentioned integration of
the CIA and FBI currently underway across America. If Mossad can off its
enemies in America, why not the CIA? If onetime CIA director Bush Senior
can give a wink and a nod to Pinochet's Operation Condor -- which
resulted in the car bombing murders of Chilean dissident Orlando Letelier
and American co-worker Ronni Moffitt -- why not carte blanche for the
all-American P2OG from Maine to California?
Consider Operation CHAOS, the illegal snooping by the CIA on law-abiding
American citizens in the late 60s (in direct violation of their charter).
As Verne Lyon writes, "[i]n the classified document creating the DOD
[or the Domestic Operations Division, a super-secret branch of the CIA]
the scope of its activities was to 'exercise centralized responsibility
for the direction, support, and coordination of clandestine operational
activities within the United States,'" activities kept secret from
Congress and the hoodwinked American people. In other words, we have no
clear idea of the full extent of Operation CHAOS covert ops (if these
were anything like CIA ops elsewhere, people not only lost their jobs,
but often their lives).
Beyond the shores of America, the CIA financed and encouraged the
torture, disappearance, and murder of "socialists and
communists" (i.e., people who disagreed with US-supported ruling
elites and military dictatorships) in Guatemala, Indonesia, the Dominican
Republic, Greece, Bolivia, Chile, and elsewhere. Keep in mind that the
current crop of far right wing types in the Bush White House and Pentagon
sharpened their teeth on Iran-Contra, a covert op with CIA participation
(two CIA agents, Clair George and Duane Clarridge were indicted for lying
to Congress in the scandal).
Finally, it pays to remember REX 84, the CIA-inspired plan concocted by
the NSC's Oliver North and FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency)
calling for the suspension of the Constitution under a number of
scenarios (such as war) and included the establishment of 50 State
Defense Forces, to be composed of members of local law enforcement and
military reserve agencies, who would round up and detain political
dissenters (for more on REX 84, see Ross Gelbspan, Break-ins, Death
Threats, and the FBI, South End Press).
As the expeditious passage of the USA PATRIOT Act (USAPA) demonstrates,
the Bush administration is serious about the surveillance of those they
consider political enemies. Since not many phantom al-Qaeda terrorists
are using the internet (regardless of what "US officials" say
about internet cafes in Peshawar) or phones to plot their nefarious
deeds, the logical conclusion is the FBI and CIA will use USAPA primarily
against American citizens. As with COINTELPRO and Operation CHAOS, the
idea is to "disrupt, misdirect, discredit, and neutralize" (as
J. Edgar Hoover put it) the opposition with an onslaught of wiretaps,
undercover plants, agent provocateurs, poison pen letters, black bag
jobs, and other scurrilous tactics.
It's possible Ilyas Ali planned to sell Stinger missiles to al-Qaeda, but
then it is also possible he was set-up by the FBI. In its ambitious plan
to expand the US corporate and military imperium across the globe, the
Bush administration is determined to show the world that al-Qaeda (and
Saddam Hussein, who will be shortly merged with the mythical al-Qaeda
into a formidable Hydra) are shadowy, dogged, mercurial, homicidal, and
will never stop their pernicious war against the Good and the Brave (that
is, so long as there are profitable natural resources available for
plunder in "failed states" around the world). Thus the war on
terrorism is not only open-ended but interminable.
Will Bush unleash his own version of REX 84 as the much delayed but
obviously impending attack against Iraq explodes? War is always a good
excuse to go after political enemies, particularly when those enemies are
growing in strength (as the incipient antiwar movement, Rush Limbaugh and
Tom DeLay notwithstanding, has shown). As the US plunges into war, think
of the Espionage and Sedition Acts (1917), the anti-sedition section of
the Smith Act (1940), McCarthy's inquisitions during the Korean War, and
the ravages of COINTELPRO during the Vietnam War. Think of the FBI to
wanting to harm Martin Luther King's public reputation and destroy his
political influence. Think of the actress Jean Seberg, so smeared by the
FBI she committed suicide. Think of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, shot to
death by the Chicago police after the FBI told the cops the pair had
numerous guns and explosives and would shoot any police officer who
entered their building.
While throwing placard-waving grandmothers in FEMA camps may be the stuff
of paranoid fantasies, the very real and threatening potential of
increased surveillance and the undermining of popular political movements
by FBI-CIA collusion is something almost certain to happen. There will,
as well, be more than a spate of politically expedient frame-ups and
entrapments on the Bush engineered road to ultimate tyranny.
In the not too distant future, the victims of these dirty tricks will not
only be named Ali, but Smith, Robertson, and Adams as well.
http://www.counterpunch.org/nimmo02012003.html
Named David Hicks for over a year now,a Talibanner with no geneva
convention rights.
