9/11 in Historical Perspective: Flawed Assumptions

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9/11 in Historical Perspective: Flawed Assumptions
Deep Politics: Drugs, Oil, Covert Operations and Terrorism
Peter Dale Scott, Global Research


July 29, 2005



The American people have been seriously misled about the origins of the al Qaeda movement blamed for the 9/11 attacks, just as they have been seriously misled about the reasons for America’s invasion of Iraq.



The truth is that for at least two decades the United States has engaged in energetic covert programs to secure U.S. control over the Persian Gulf, and also to open up Central Asia for development by U.S. oil companies. Americans were eager to gain access to the petroleum reserves of the Caspian Basin, which at that time were still estimated to be “the largest known reserves of unexploited fuel in the planet.”[1]



To this end, time after time, U.S. covert operations in the region have used so-called “Arab Afghan” warriors as assets, the jihadis whom we loosely link with the name and leadership of al Qaeda.[2] In country after country these “Arab Afghans” have been involved in trafficking Afghan heroin.



America’s sponsorship of drug-trafficking Muslim warriors, including those now in Al Qaeda, dates back to the Afghan War of 1979-89, sponsored in part by the CIA’s links to the drug-laundering Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).[3] It was part of CIA Director Casey’s strategy for launching covert operations over and above those approved and financed by a Democratic-controlled Congress.



The most conspicuous example of this alliance with drug-traffickers in the 1980s was the Contra support operation. Here again foreign money and drug profits filled the gap after Congress denied funds through the so-called Boland amendments; in this case government funds were used to lie about the Contras to the American people.[4] This was followed by a massive cover-up, in which a dubious role was played by then-Congressman Lee Hamilton, later of the 9/11 Commission.[5]



The lying continues. The 9/11 Commission Report assures Americans that “Bin Ladin and his comrades had their own sources of support and training, and they received little or no assistance from the United States.”[6] This misleading statement fails to consider that:



1) Al Qaeda elements received considerable indirect U.S. Government assistance, first in Afghanistan until 1992, and thereafter in other countries such as Azerbaijan (1992-95). Before 1992, for example, the Afghan leader Jallaladin Haqqani organized and hosted the Arab Afghan volunteers known later as al Qaeda; and Haqqani “received bags of money each month from the [CIA] station in Islamabad.”[7] The Arab Afghans were also trained in urban terrorism, including car bombings, by Pakistani ISI operatives who were in turn trained by the CIA.[8]



2) Key members of the network which became al Qaeda, such as Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, Ali Mohamed, Mohamed Jamal Khalifa, and lead hijacker Mohammed Atta, were granted visas to enter the United States, despite being suspected of terrorism.[9] Al Qaeda foot soldiers were also admitted to the United States for training under a special visa program.[10]



3) At Fort Belvoir, Virginia, an al Qaeda operative was given a list of Muslim candidates for al Qaeda’s jihad.[11]

4) When al Qaeda personnel were trained in the United States by a key al Qaeda operative, Sergeant Ali Mohamed of the U.S. Army Special Forces, Mohamed was still on the U.S. Army payroll.[12]



5) Repeatedly al Qaeda terrorists were protected by FBI officials from investigation and prosecution.[13]



In part America’s limited covert assistance to al Qaeda after 1989 was in order not to offend al Qaeda’s two primary supporters which America needed as allies: the intelligence networks of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. But unquestionably the entry of United States oil companies into oil-rich Azerbaijan was achieved with the assistance of a U.S.-organized covert program using “Arab Afghan” operatives associated with bin Laden. Oil was the driving force of U.S. involvement in Central and South Asia, and oil led to U.S. coexistence with both al Qaeda and the world-dominating Afghan heroin trade.


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This brings us to another extraordinary distortion in the 9/11 Report:

While the drug trade was a source of income for the Taliban, it did not serve the same purpose for al Qaeda, and there is no reliable evidence that Bin Ladin was involved in or made his money through drug trafficking.[14]



That drug-trafficking does support al Qaeda-connected operations has been energetically asserted by the governments of Great Britain and many other European countries, as well as the head of the U.S. Congressional Task Force on Terrorism. Heroin-trafficking has been a source of income in particular for al Qaeda-related warriors in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Chechnya, and Kosovo. Most recently it has supported terrorist attacks in the Netherlands and Spain.



U.S. support for al Qaeda elements, particularly in Azerbaijan and Kosovo, has increased dramatically the flow of heroin to Western Europe and the United States.



The Example of Azerbaijan

In the former Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan, Arab Afghans clearly assisted this effort of U.S. oil companies to penetrate the region. In 1991-92, Richard Secord, Heinie Aderholt, and Ed Dearborn, three veterans of U.S. operations in Laos and Iran-Contra, turned up in Baku under the cover of an oil company, MEGA Oil.[15] MEGA never did find oil, but did contribute materially to the removal of Azerbaijan from the sphere of post-Soviet Russian influence.



As MEGA operatives in Azerbaijan, Secord, Aderholt, Dearborn, and their men engaged in military training, passed “brown bags filled with cash” to members of the government, and above all set up an airline on the model of Air America which soon was picking up hundreds of Mujahideen mercenaries in Afghanistan.[16] (Secord and Aderholt claim to have left Baku before the Mujahideen arrived.) Meanwhile, Mujahideen leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in Afghanistan, who at the time was still allied with bin Laden, was “observed recruiting Afghan mercenaries [i.e. Arab Afghans] to fight in Azerbaijan against Armenia and its Russian allies.”[17] At this time, heroin flooded from Afghanistan through Baku into Chechnya, Russia, and even North America.[18] It is difficult to believe that MEGA’s airline (so much like Air America) did not become involved.[19]



The triple pattern of drugs, oil, and al Qaeda was seen again in Kosovo in 1998, where the Al-Qaeda-backed Islamist jihadis of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) received overt American assistance from the U.S. Government.[20] Though unmentioned in mainstream books on the war, both the al Qaeda and drug backgrounds of the KLA are recognized by experts and to my knowledge never contested by them.[21]



Though the origins of the Kosovo tragedy were rooted in local enmities, oil and drugs were prominent in the outcome. At the time critics charged that US oil interests were interested in building a trans-Balkan pipeline with US Army protection; although initially ridiculed, these critics were eventually proven correct.[22] BBC News announced in December 2004 that a $1.2 billion pipeline, south of a huge new U.S. Army base in Kosovo, has been given a go-ahead by the governments of Albania, Bulgaria, and Macedonia.[23] Meanwhile by 2000, according to DEA statistics, Afghan heroin accounted for almost 20 percent of the heroin seized in the United States -- nearly double the percentage taken four years earlier. Much of it is now distributed by Kosovar Albanians.[24]



Sergeant Ali Mohamed and U.S. Intelligence Links to the Al Qaeda Leadership



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