Excerpt from Crossing the Rubicon

From Crossing The Rubicon by Michael C. Ruppert
Page 111
“A colorful Congressional figure who publicly criticized “Rick” Inderfurth and who spent a great deal of time in Congress attempting to blame the Clinton administration and the Democratic Party for the ascendancy and seeming invulnerability of the Taliban is Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher of Orange County, California…
Perhaps one of the greatest post-9/11 research discoveries is reported by Nafeez Ahmed in The war on Freedom ...
From Hearings on Global Terrorism and South Asia, held in the House Committee on International Relations, Washington, DC, July 12, 2000
‘REP. DANA ROHROABACHER: After a year of requesting to see State Department documents on Afghan policy-and I would remind the committee that I have- I have stated that I believe that there is a covert policy by this administration, a shameful covert policy of supporting the Taliban- the State Department, after many, many months- actually, years- of prodding, finally began giving me documents. Mr. Chairman. And I have, in the assessment of those documents, I have found nothing to persuade me that I was wrong in my criticism. And I might add, however, that there has been no documents provided to me, even after all these years of requesting it, there habe been no documents concerning the time period of the forming of the Taliban. And I would again, I would hope that the State Department gets the message that I expect to see all thsoe documents…And although the administration has denied supporting the Taliban, it is clear that they discouraged all of the anti-Taliban suppporters from supporting the efforts in Afghanistan, to defeat the Taliban. Even so much as when the Taliban was ripe fro bing defeated on the ground in Afghanistan, Bill Richardson and “Rick” Inderfurth, high-ranking members of thisa dministration, personally visited the region in order to discourage the Taliban’s opposition from attacking the Taliban…and then going to neighboring countries to cut off any type of military assistance to the [opponents of the] Taliban. This at a time when Pakistan was heavily resupplyinng and rearming the Taliban. What did theis lead to? It led to the defeat of all the Taliban’s major enemies except for one, Commander Massoud, in the north, and left the Taliban the supreme power in Afghanistan…[Massoud was assasinated by al Qaeda operatives posing as TV cameramen two days before the attacks on New York and Washington.]One last note. Many people here understand that I have been in Afghanistan on numerous occasions and have close ties to peple there. And let me just say that some of my sources of information informed me of where bin Laden was, they told me they knew and could tell people where bin Laden could be located. And it took me three times before this administration responded to someone who obviously had personal contacts in Afghanistan, to even investigate that there might be someone who could give them the information. And when my contact was actually contacted, they said that the people who contacted them were half-hearted, did not follow through, did not appear to be all that interested…’
Later the subject of discussion between committee members turned to who had been supplying the Taliban with weapons.
‘REP ROhRABACHER: (Laughing) This is a joke! I mean, you have to go to closed session to tell us where the weapons are coming from? Well, how about let’s make a choice. There’s Pakistan or Pakistan or Pakistan.(Laughs) Where do you think the Taliban- Right as we speak- I haven’t read any classified documents. Everybody in the region knows that Pakistan is involved with a massive supply of military weapons and has been since the beginning of the Taliban. Let me just state for the record, here, before I get into my questions, that I think there’s – and it’s not just you, Mr. Ambassador (Michael Sheehan, State Department Coordinator For Counterterrorism], but it is this administration and, perhaps, other administrations as well, I do not believe that terrorism flows from a lack of state control…Only the United States has given – and I again make this charge – the United States has been part and parcel to supporting the Taliban all along, and still is let me add…We have been supporting the Taliban, because all our aid goes to the Taliban areas. And when people from the outside try to put aid into areas not controlled by the Taliban, they are thwarted by our own State Department…Again, let me just – I am sorry Mr. Inderfurth is not here to defend himself – but let me state for the record: at at time when the Taliban were vulnerable, the top person of this administration, Mr. Inderfurth and Bill Richardson [Clinton Energy Secretary and now Governor of New Mexico] went to Afghanistan and convinced the anti-Taliban forces not to go on the offensive and, furthermore convinced all of the anti-Taliban forces, their supporters, to disarm them and to cease their flow of support for anti-Taliban forces.’
Rohrabacher’s Pique continued during an exchange with Deputy Assistant Secretary of State (Inderfurth’s assistant) Alan Eastham.
‘REP. ROHRABACHER: But the Taliban were included; except when happened right after all of thsoe other support systes that had been dismantled because of Mr. Inderfurth’s and Mr. Richardson’s appeal, and the State Department’s appeal? What happened immediately – not only immediately after, even while you were making that appeal what happened in Pakistan? Was there an airlift of supplies, military supplies, between Pakistan and Kabul and the forward elements of the Taliban forcecs?REP. ROHRABACHER: [answering his own question]: The answer is yes, I know. MR. EASTHAM: The answer is-REP. ROCHRABACHER: You can’t tell me because-MR. EASTHAM: The answer is-REP. ROHRABACHER: -it’s secret information.MR. EASTHAM: The answer is closed session. If you would like to dredge up that record. REP. ROHRABACHER: Well, I don’t have to go into closed session because I didn’t get aht information from any classified document… Mr. Inderfurth, Mr. Bill Richardson, a good freind of mine, doing the bidding of this administration, basically convinced the anti-Taliban mentors to quit providing them the weapons they needed, with some scheme the Taliban were then going to lay down their arms. And immediately thereafter, Pakistan started a massive shift of military supplies that resulted in the total defeat of the anti-Taliban forces… Why haven’t I been provided any documents about State Department analysis of- durin the formation period of the Taliban, about whehter or not the taliban was a good force or a bad force? Why have none of those documents reached my desk after two years?MR EASTHAM: The effort was to stop the support for all the factions.REP ROHRABACHER: That’s correct. You didn’t deny that we disarmed their opponents, you just said we were doing it with the Taliban as well, But as I pointed out, which you did not deny, the Taliban were immediately resupplied. Which means that we are part and parcel of disarming the victim, thinking htat hte aggressor was going to be disarmed as well, but it just didn’t work out- at the moment when Paksitan was arming them I might add.’”
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“Although his death was not announced until 15 September, Massood is believed to have died in the explosion of a bomb hidden in a camera held by one of the bogus “reporters.” His interpreter and personal assistant, Assem Suhail, was also killed. For nearly a week afterward, Massood’s aides managed to keep his death a secret, maintaining that he had merely been wounded, but that his condition was worsening. Meanwhile, they worked frantically to hold the alliance together while they chose his successor. There has been speculation that the timing of the assassination-<>two days before the catastrophic terror attacks in New York and Washington-was no accident. Shah’s death considerably weakened the Northern Alliance at a time when the Taliban was facing the prospect of American retaliatory strikes. The assassination of the Alliance’s best military mind thus helped to “level the playing field” between the two sides.”
cite
nada @ 05/27/06 14:54:01
“An August 27, 1997 cable in which U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Thomas Simons comments on Pakistan’s claim that its total aid to the Taliban through the end of 1996 had been only 20 million rupees (approximately one-half million dollars). Simons notes that this amount “did not include access to Pak wheat and POL (Note 1), or the trucks and buses full of adolescent mujahid crossing the frontier shouting ‘Allahu Akbar,’ and going into the line with a day or two of weapons training.” “That,” Simons’ noted, “was Pakistan’s real aid”
cite from GWU-NSA
POL=Petroleum, Oil, Lubricants
nada @ 05/27/06 14:55:23
”(REDACTERED PORTION) told me this AM that he is concerned that the GOP (ISI) is deeply involved in the Taleban take over in Kandahar and Qalat.”
“An Afghan contact in Dushanbe told me this AM that there is a Rabbani-ISI deal according to which Rabbani has agreed to an ISI move in to southern and western Afghanistan so long as it does not extend to a challenge of Ismail Khan in Herat. The thinking of this source is that Rabbani is exploiting the widening gulf between Gulbuddin and ISI -Growing out of ISI impression that Gulbuddin will be unable to move beyond the Kabul stalemate”
“One afghan asserts as fact involvement of Pak military with the Taleban and that old Khalqis are serving as enforcers in Kandahar. While many/most Afghan commanders would be contrained in condeming this alleged GOP intervention by virtue of their own dependence on Pakistan, there appears to be significant sentiment within the disapora against the GOP move”
Cite
GOP=Government of Pakistan(so it is important to note when it says GOP at the top of the document it quickly defines GOP as ISI in quotes, could be a fuck up, or it could imply whos truly running the country), or who their liason is.
And Khalqis are former members of one of the old parties pre-taleban Afghanistan.
nada @ 05/27/06 15:09:27