Obama boasts of assassinating American citizen in Yemen

By Bill Van Auken, WSWS.ORG, a socialist organization
1 October 2011

In a speech before a military audience in Virginia Friday, President Barack Obama boasted of the role of the CIA and US special operations units in the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, a 40-year-old, New Mexico-born Muslim cleric. It marked the first time in history that an American president has publicly applauded the government’s assassination of a US citizen, who in Awlaki’s case has never been charged or indicted for any crime, much less tried and convicted in a court of law.

“The death of Awlaki is a major blow to Al Qaeda’s most active operational affiliate,” Obama said during a ceremony for the outgoing chief of US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, at Joint Base Myer Henderson Hall in Virginia.

According to witnesses in Yemen as well as officials in Washington, Awlaki was killed by a Hellfire missile fired from a US pilotless drone as he was traveling in a convoy between Marib and al-Jawf provinces in northern Yemen.

Also killed in the strike was another US citizen, Samir Khan, a Pakistani-American who was identified as an editor of the Internet magazine, Inspire, which has been linked to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Several others also died in the missile strike.

US sources indicated that the operation was directed by the CIA, utilizing assets of the Pentagon’s Special Operations Command, implicating both the main US intelligence agency and the military in the extra-judicial killing of an American citizen.

In his remarks Friday, Obama charged that Awlaki “took the lead in planning and directing efforts to murder innocent Americans” and had “repeatedly called on individuals in the United States and around the globe to kill innocent men, women and children to advance a murderous agenda.”

US officials have called attention to Awlaki’s alleged email exchanges with Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who is accused of killing 13 people in a mass shooting at Fort Hood, Texas in 2009. They have also claimed that he was involved in two abortive terrorist attempts: that of the so-called “underwear bomber,” the former Nigerian student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, accused of trying to detonate explosives aboard Northwest Flight 253 as it was landing in Detroit, Michigan on December 25, 2009, and an attempt to mail bombs to Chicago-area synagogues.

While Awlaki has made numerous videotapes advocating armed attacks on American targets both within the US and abroad, the government has presented no evidence of his alleged role in actual terrorist operations.

An earlier attempt to carry out the targeted assassination of Awlaki was made last May, just five days after the US commando raid in which Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was shot to death. As in his killing on Friday morning, the failed attempt last May was carried out with a drone missile strike.

Obama placed Awlaki on a “kill or capture” list of people targeted for assassination in January 2010 after his administration asserted a right not even claimed by the Bush White House: to carry out the summary execution of any US citizen deemed by the president to be a “specially designated global terrorist,” without presenting any evidence or securing any judicial sanction.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations issued a cautiously worded statement on the killing, repudiating Awlaki’s “incitement to violence” while calling on “our nation’s leaders to address the constitutional issues raised by the assassination of US citizens without due process of the law.”

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights both condemned the killing. The two organizations had joined in a federal court case challenging on constitutional grounds the White House’s claim that it had the right to target US citizens for assassination. They sought to represent Awlaki’s father, a former agriculture minister and prominent member of Yemen’s ruling party, who claimed that his son was not a terrorist.

The government sought the dismissal of the suit on the grounds that it would expose state secrets and that the president had the unreviewable power to kill any American that he deemed a threat. A federal judge threw the case out last December, ruling that Awlaki’s father had no standing to bring such a claim and that the court was not qualified to question the government’s decisions on national security.

In response to Friday’s killing of Awlaki, ACLU deputy legal director Jameel Jaffer said that the “targeted killing program violates both US and international law.” He charged that under this program, “American citizens far from any battlefield can be executed by their own government without judicial process, and on the basis of standards and evidence that are kept secret not just from the public but from the courts.”

Jaffer warned, “It is a mistake to invest the President—any President—with the unreviewable power to kill any American whom he deems to present a threat to the country.”

Vince Warren, the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said in response to Awlaki’s assassination: “The targeted assassination program that started under President Bush and expanded under the Obama administration essentially grants the executive the power to kill any US citizen deemed a threat, without any judicial oversight, or any of the rights afforded by our Constitution. If we allow such gross overreaches of power to continue, we are setting the stage for increasing erosions of civil liberties and the rule of law.”

Calling the death of Awlaki “another significant milestone” in the campaign to eliminate Al Qaeda, Obama declared in his speech Friday, “Furthermore, the success is a tribute to our intelligence community and to the efforts of Yemen and its security forces, who have worked closely with the United States over the course of several years.”

Obama further praised “the government and the people of Yemen” for having “joined the international community in a common effort against Al Qaeda.”

These statements were echoed by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. The Pentagon’s press agency quoted Panetta as saying that the murder of Awlaki was a “testament to the close cooperation between the United States and Yemen.”

On the same day that the Yemeni regime and the Obama administration announced the killing of Awlaki, over 100,000 demonstrators were in the streets of the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, calling for the downfall of the country’s US-backed dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh. Hundreds if not thousands of Yemenis have died over the last eight months, fighting for the ouster of the three-decade old regime.

President Saleh returned to Yemen just a week before the killing of Awlaki, after spending three months in Saudi Arabia recovering from wounds suffered in a rocket attack on his presidential palace.

There is mounting speculation in Yemen that the link between his return and Awlaki’s death was more than coincidental; that the regime provided assistance in the killing of the US-born cleric in return for Washington’s aid in suppressing the mass popular upheavals that have shaken the country. Last year, the Obama administration doubled US military aid to the Saleh regime.

Many in Yemen dismissed the significance of the killing. “It will not be a blow to Al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula from any perspective,” Hakim al Masmari, editor in chief of theYemeni Post told the Al Jazeera network. “We don’t feel they will suffer, because [Awlaki] did not have any real role in [AQAP].”

The assassination of Awlaki in Yemen, together with the celebratory reaction of the American political establishment and the media, demonstrate once again that there exists no constituency within the American ruling elite and two major parties for the defense of the most basic democratic and constitutional rights, including the Fifth Amendment’s protection against being “deprived of life … without due process of law.”

The Bush administration held that such rights could be suspended in the name of a “global war on terrorism,” and now the Obama administration has taken the crimes of its predecessor a significant step further with the extra-judicial murder of a US citizen.

Having crossed this line, the precedent has been set for the White House, the Pentagon and the CIA using military violence and assassination not only as instruments of US imperialist policy abroad, but as the means of dealing with those deemed “enemies of the state” at home.

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Saudi Royal Ties to 9/11 Hijackers Via Florida Saudi Family?

WhoWhatWhy – http://whowhatwhy.com –

Saudi Royal Ties to 9/11 Hijackers Via Florida Saudi Family?

The official 9/11 hijackers. Who was behind them?

WhoWhatWhy has found evidence linking the Saudi royal family to Saudis in South Florida who reportedly had direct contact with the 9/11 hijackers before fleeing the United States just prior to the attacks. Our report connects some of the dots first laid out by investigative author Anthony Summers and Florida-based journalist Dan Christensen in articles jointly published in the Miami Herald and on the nonprofit news site BrowardBulldog.org ^[2].

In early September of this year, Summers and Christensen reported that a secret FBI probe, never shared with Congressional investigators or the presidential 9/11 commission, had uncovered information indicating the possibility of support for the hijackers from previously unknown confederates in the United States during 2001.

Now WhoWhatWhy reveals that those alleged confederates were closely tied to influential members of the Saudi ruling elite.

The House. Posh but not glaringly conspicuous.

As reported in the Herald, phone records documented communication, dating back more than a year, that connected a Saudi family then living in a house near Sarasota, Florida, with the alleged plot leader, Mohammed Atta, and his hijack pilots—as well as to eleven of the other hijackers. In addition, records from the guard house at the gated community tied Atta’s vehicle and his accomplice Ziad Jarrah to actual visits to the house. Although requiring further investigation, this information suggests that the house may have functioned as an operational base for the hijackers.

According to interviews and records examined by The Herald, Anoud and Abdulazzi al-Hiijjii and their young twins abruptly departed their home in Sarasota only days before September 11, 2001 and traveled to Arlington, Virginia, where they stayed briefly at another house owned by Anoud’s father, Esam Ghazzawi.

Then, still well before 9/11, the entire group, now including the father, flew to London and on to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The Sarasota house was sold in 2003, as was a penthouse apartment ^[4] in another DC, suburb, Rosslyn, Virginia. The Ghazzawis do not seem to have set foot again in the United States.

New Revelations

Building on these revelations, WhoWhatWhy has found documents laying out the Ghazzawis’ royal connections through a nest of Saudi corporations that share the name EIRAD. Esam Ghazzawi is director of EIRAD Management Company, the UK division of EIRAD Trading and Contracting Co. Ltd., which among other things holds the Saudi franchise for many multinational brands, including UPS. Esam’s brother Mamdouh, whose name shows up on public records associated with family properties in the U.S., is the Executive Managing Director of the parent firm, EIRAD Holding Co. Ltd. EIRAD has connections to the US government via contracts. In 2008, records show, the State Department paid EIRAD $11,733 ^[5] for rental of facilities, presumably in Saudi Arabia.

There is no indication that the company itself, or any of its officers or employees, have any connection to the 9/11 incident, or knowledge of anything regarding Mr. Ghazzawi’s activities in the United States. Calls for comment to the company’s main switchboard went unanswered during normal business hours; its website was not functioning properly and Saudi trade officials in the United States had not furnished alternative contact information at publication time.

But the now-revealed link between the Ghazzawis and the highest ranks of the Saudi establishment reopens questions about the White House’s controversial approval for multiple charter flights allowing Saudi nationals to depart the U.S., beginning about 48 hours after the attacks, without the passengers being interviewed by law enforcement—despite the identification of the majority of the hijackers as Saudis.

In addition, the new revelations draw further attention to a web of relationships that include the long and close business, personal and political ties between the Bush family and the Saudi royal family.

Saudi money is woven throughout business ventures connected to the Bushes. Saudi funds even helped bail out George W. Bush’s failing oil company early in his life. Jim Bath, a close friend of Bush in the Texas Air National Guard, went on to start a business in conjunction with two sons of powerful Saudi families—Khalid bin Mahfouz, whose family provides banking services to the Saudi royals, and Salem bin Laden, heir to the bin Laden family’s global construction empire and a half brother to Osama bin Laden. (For a detailed probe of the Bush family’s dealings with the Saudis, including substantial previously unreported material, see my book, Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America’s Invisible Government and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years ^[6].)

Details of The Herald’s Revelations

The Ghazzawi presence in the Sunshine State predated 9/11 by at least six years. In 1995 a young Saudi woman named Anoud Ghazzawi living in South Florida married a fellow Saudi native, Abdulazzi al-Hiijjii (English spellings of his first name and surname vary, as is typical of Arabic names.) Anoud’s father, Esam, and his American-born wife Deborah bought the couple a stylish, three-bedroom house in a gated community in Sarasota. The house remained in the elder Ghazzawis’ names while the young couple lived there and began a family.

Six years later, less than two weeks before the 9/11 attacks, Anoud, Abdulazzi and their children left their home on or about August 30, 2001 in great haste, taking off in a white van. This was about the same time that the hijackers were purchasing their tickets for the targeted flights.

The family apparently left with no advance planning, leaving behind almost all their possessions, abandoning three recently registered vehicles, including a brand-new Chrysler PT Cruiser, in the garage and driveway. As the Herald article ^[7] explained:

“there was mail on the table, dirty diapers in one of the bathrooms … all the toiletries still in place … all their clothes hanging in the closet … opulent furniture, equal or greater in value than the house … the pool running, with toys in it….The beds were made … fruit on the counter … the refrigerator full of food. … It was like they went grocery shopping. Like they went out to a movie … [But] the safe was open in the master bedroom, with nothing in it, not a paper clip. … A computer was still there. A computer plug in another room, and the line still there. Looked like they’d taken [another] computer and left the cord.”

After public disclosure of Saudi involvement in the 9/11 attacks, people in the gated community took note of the rushed departure and disappearance of the Ghazzawi-al-Hiijjiis. After all, the attackers were not just overwhelmingly of Saudi nationality, but three out of four of the future hijackers had lived and trained to fly in Venice, Florida, just 10 miles away from the house.

The complex’s security officer alerted the FBI, which began an investigation into the house at 4224 Escondito Circle. (In addition, a suspicious neighbor alerted the FBI by email on the day of the attacks.)

The Justice Department declined to give the Herald a statement, but, according to an unnamed senior counterterrorism officer who was one of two people who got into the house first and served as a key source for the paper, the investigation bore stunning fruit.

Ziad Jarrah

Phone records showed communication, dating back more than a year, that connected those in the house with the alleged plot leader, Mohammed Atta and his accomplices, including eleven of the other hijackers. Other records, kept by guards at the gated community, documented numerous visits to the house by a vehicle known to have been used by Atta, and indicated the physical presence in the car of Atta’s purported accomplice Ziad Jarrah. It appeared as if the Ghazzawi house was some kind of nerve center for the entire operation.

According to the senior counterterrorism officer, both Esam Ghazzawi and his son-in-law al-Hiijjii had been on a watch list at the FBI predating 9/11. An unnamed U.S. agency tracking terror funds had also taken an interest in them. “464 was Ghazzawi’s number,” the officer said. “I don’t remember the other man’s number.”

Continue to Page 2 of 3 ^[9]

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Please click here to donate ^[10]; it’s tax deductible. And it packs a punch.

Secrecy Reveals Little Official Curiosity—or Coverup?

These stunning revelations—said to be based on the work of the swarm of FBI agents who descended on the gated community in the fall of 2001—would surely have generated headlines worldwide if they had become known after 9/11. But the FBI, for reasons unknown, failed to provide the information to Congressional 9/11 investigators or to the presidential 9/11 commission, and thus it has remained a secret for the past decade.

In response to the Herald article, the FBI has issued a statement ^[11] saying that the occupants of the house had been tracked down and interrogated, and were found to have no connections to the hijackers. It is not clear when these interrogations are supposed to have taken place, or whether they were conducted by the FBI or by Saudi intelligence. But given the FBI’s poor track record for candor in the matter, the statement is being viewed with some skepticism.

Adding to these doubts is an ineffective effort by the Bureau to woo the house owners back to Florida. According to Scott McKay, a lawyer for homeowners’ association of the gated community, known as Prestancia, the FBI attempted to convince the Ghazzawis they needed to come back in person to sign documents related to unpaid back dues to the association. This attempt proved unsuccessful when the Ghazzawis simply arranged to sign the documents elsewhere. These facts, reported by The Herald, raise questions about the U.S. government’s determination to interview the couple: Esam Ghazzawi’s signature was notarized in Lebanon—by a U.S. official no less—the vice consul at the US embassy in Beirut. His wife’s signature was also notarized—elsewhere in the United States, in Riverside County, California.

The emergence of this information chagrined Bob Graham, the former Florida U.S. Senator. Graham was Senate Intelligence Committee chair (and a 2004 candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination) and served as co-chair of the congressional joint inquiry into 9/11. “At the beginning of the investigation,” he told The Herald, “each of the intelligence agencies, including the FBI, was asked to provide all information that agency possessed in relation to 9/11.” Graham noted that the Bureau also failed to turn over information connecting the hijackers to other Saudis living in California, which his own investigators later discovered on their own.

Just as strange, when Graham’s congressional investigators turned over a large body of information on the hijackers they had assembled to the presidential 9/11 Commission, it seemed uninterested. “They did very little with it,” Graham said, “and their reference to Saudi Arabia is almost cryptic sometimes. … I never got a good answer as to why they did not pursue that.”

About the new discovery in Sarasota, Graham said it “opens the door to a new chapter of investigation as to the depth of the Saudi role in 9/11.”

All Eyes on Prince Sultan

: Prince Sultan bin Salman

Of special interest is the Ghazzawis’ boss, the chairman of EIRAD Holding Co. Ltd., Prince Sultan bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud ^[13]. He is a prominent and powerful member of the ruling Saudi royal family who is expected to become crown prince, and thereby in line to become king. Born in 1956, which makes him approximately the same age as the Ghazzawi brothers, Prince Sultan bin Salman is a grandson of King Abdul Aziz (commonly referred to as Ibn Saud), founder of modern Saudi Arabia.[1] ^[14]

1. Saudi lineages are complicated due to men being named for their ancestors. For example, Prince Sultan (Prince Sultan bin Salman) should not be confused with his uncle, also known as Prince Sultan (Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud), who is Defense Minister and Crown Prince, or his late cousin Prince Sultan bin Faisal.

Prince Sultan’s family is of enormous importance in today’s Saudi Arabia. His father, Prince Salman, has been the governor of the province of Riyadh (the city of Riyadh is the Saudi capital) since 1962, and is considered an arbitrator among the frequently warring members of the Saudi royal family, with its 4000 princes. Salman is the second youngest of the so-called Sudairi Seven, an extremely powerful alliance of full brothers jockeying for power in the country.

A leading advocate of teaching Saudis to fly, Prince Sultan is the founder and Chairman of the Board of the Saudi Aviation Club, and Chairman of the King Khaled International Airport ^[16] (KKIA) Supervisory Committee. Since 2000, he has also headed Saudi Arabia’s tourism commission ^[17], placing him among a handful of the King’s grandsons to hold ministerial rank. One of his missions as head of the tourism commission is to repair the damage to Saudi Arabia’s image caused by the 9/11 attacks.

In a document ^[18] released by Wikileaks, the U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, James B. Smith, characterizes Prince Sultan this way: “With a powerful father who is the Governor of Riyadh and a strong candidate to be the next crown-prince, Sultan is well positioned to move up the Saudi government ranks… Sultan has visited almost every state [in the U.S.]. He joked with the Ambassador that ‘perhaps the only states he has not yet visited are the Dakotas.’ ” (He is extra well connected, with one brother serving as the deputy oil minister)

Prince Sultan is closely allied with Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, the former longtime ambassador to the United States, who is often called “Bandar Bush” for his friendly relationship with the Bush family. Sultan and Bandar have worked together for years to promote Saudi interest in aviation.

The Bushes and the Royals

The Bush family have long been regarded as friendly with the prince’s family and their associates. Prince Sultan’s NASA mission is perceived as having been orchestrated ^[19] by George HW Bush as a favor to the Saudis. Associates of the Bush family have many connections with the Prince’s family. Prince Sultan’s father’s legal counsel is William Jeffress Jr, of Houston-based Baker Botts LLP ^[20], where James A. Baker III, longstanding advisor to the Bush family, including both Presidents Bush, is a senior partner. At the time of the 9/11 attacks, Baker held the post of Senior Counselor for the Carlyle Group ^[21], a global asset management firm which is heavily invested in military contracting stocks ^[22]; among Carlyle’s large investors were the bin Ladens. (In a curious coincidence, Baker watched the live television coverage of the attacks from the Ritz-Carlton Hotel ^[23] in Washington, where he and representatives of Osama bin Laden ^[24]‘s extended family ^[25] were attending the Carlyle Group’s annual conference. In another odd coincidence, President George W. Bush himself was in Sarasota, reading to schoolchildren, at the very time the Sarasota-area-based terrorists were hijacking the planes. Indeed, he was a short distance from the home the Ghazzawis had recently abandoned.)

President Bush’s actions in the aftermath of the World Trade Center and Pentagon assaults with regard to the Saudi royal family have long been known but have yet to be fully explored. Shortly after the attacks, President Bush permitted an exception to the ban on air traffic so that planes could take prominent Saudis out of the country. One of those leaving on the flights was the late Prince Ahmed bin Salman, brother of Prince Sultan.

In a 2004 letter ^[26] to the New York Times, Prince Sultan responded to allegations surrounding those flights, and pointed to a conclusion in the 9/11 commission report: ”Our own independent review of the Saudi nationals involved confirms that no one with known links to terrorism departed on these flights.” (Another Saudi who left the US after 9/11 was the architect Abdel Wahed El-Wakil, ^[27] who had a base in Miami and serves as an advisor to Prince Sultan.)

Allegations of Saudi Royal Complicity

Sultan’s brother Prince Ahmed was the most westernized of the Saudi set. He raised racehorses in Kentucky and was the owner of the 2001 Kentucky Derby winner, with the perhaps unfortunate name “War Emblem.” Allegations concerning Prince Ahmed emerged in the 2003 book, Why America Slept, by the bestselling author Gerald Posner. Posner says that intelligence sources told him how in March, 2002, under interrogation (but before he was waterboarded 83 times in August ^[29]), Al Qaeda’s purported chief of operations, Abu Zubaydah, relaxed and began cooperating. Tricked into thinking he was in Saudi custody, Zubaydah asked his interrogators to call a senior member of the Saudi Royal family, who he said was his contact. He provided, from memory, the man’s private home and cell phones. This contact, according to Posner, was Prince Ahmed.

Zubaydah is alleged to have said that Osama bin Laden had cut a deal with a top Pakistani military official, Air Marshal Mushaf Ali Mir, who was close to Islamist elements in Pakistani intelligence. According to this account, the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Turki, signed off on this, and agreed to provide aid to the Taliban in Afghanistan and not to go after Al Qaeda so long as the terrorist group kept its gun sights trained away from the Saudi royals.

In this version of events, Zubaydah is said to have also implicated Prince Sultan, along with another cousin, Prince Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir, as Al Qaeda backers, and to have claimed that the Pakistani Air Marshal Mushaf Ali Mir and Saudi Prince Ahmed knew in advance about the 9/11 attacks.

Though the interrogators were skeptical of these claims, Zubaydah often proved credible. Information he provided led to the capture of a senior al-Qaeda operative in Southeast Asia. Zubaydah would only talk when he thought he was in Saudi hands. When U.S. personnel, no longer posing as Saudis, confronted him, Zubaydah said he had made up his earlier statements. But investigators found no basis for believing the information to be false—and even found material that corroborated his claimed ties to high level Saudis. Not surprisingly, the Saudi and Pakistani governments insisted his claims were false in all respects.

One of the key figures named by Zubaydah, Prince Turki, had been removed from his position as Saudi intelligence chief on September 1, 2001, ten days before the attacks. Thus, he was apparently not in that post on the critical day. Yet, his removal was a temporary absence from the highest levels of Saudi leadership, and not necessarily an indication that he had fallen into serious disfavor. The next year, he was named Saudi ambassador to Great Britain, just as a shift in focus from Al Qaeda to Iraq was being pitched to the British. If Zubaydah’s claims are at all credible, the removal of Turki from an official position shortly before the attacks surely warrants additional analysis— as does the Ghazzawis’ hasty flight from the U.S. right in the same time frame.

According to the book The Eleventh Day ^[30], by Summers and his co-author Robbyn Swan, Zubaydah is not alone in asserting a Saudi-Al Qaeda deal:

In sworn statements after 9/11, former Taliban intelligence chief Mohammed Khaksar said that in 1998 Prince Turki, chief of Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence Department (G.I.D.), sealed a deal under which bin Laden agreed not to attack Saudi targets. In return, Saudi Arabia would provide funds and material assistance to the Taliban, not demand bin Laden’s extradition, and not bring pressure to close down al-Qaeda training camps. Saudi businesses, meanwhile, would ensure that money also flowed directly to bin Laden.

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BRIAN WILLSON: Counter Terrorism Under Reagan-Bush I

August 23, 2011
ARCHIVES: Counter Terrorism Under Reagan-Bush I

Reagan Launches Explicit Policy Using “Terror“ as Pretext for Repression

By S. Brian Willson*

S.B. Willson

**July 22, 1982, NSSD-47, “Emergency Mobilization Preparedness,” authorized “relocation of large numbers of people” [detention] and an “intensified counterintelligence effort” during major domestic or national security emergencies.

**July 28, 1983, NSSD-100, “Enhanced U.S. Military Activity and Assistance For the Central America Region”, ordering U.S. military operations in the area “significantly increased.”

San Francisco Examiner, October 5, 1988, “Reagan Loosened CIA Leash, Order Could Have OK’d Assassinations”).

**January 20, 1986, NSDD 207, “The National Program for Combating Terrorism,” created a National Security Council (NSC) coordinator of counterterrorism, also chaired by Oliver North, to develop more effective measures for apprehending, extraditing, and prosecuting terrorists.

**July 18, 1986, FBI presents “counter intelligence/counter-terrorism operations plan” at a meeting of the OSG-TIWG (see above) to initiate active FBI domestic surveillance.

The following evidence suggest how intensely President Reagan pursued surveillance, especially under the new rationale of investigating and preempting “terrorist” incidents.

Professional anti-communist and smug phony Ronald Reagan: One of the vilest figures in American history, and faithful servitor of the superrich. You can gauge a man's lucidity and moral compass from his attitudes toward Reagan.

1. Reagan Executive Order 12333, signed December 4, 1981. This Order allows the CIA to collect foreign intelligence and counter-intelligence within the U.S., to conduct covert operations in the U.S., and allows physical surveillance by the CIA of a person abroad to obtain foreign intelligence. The Order allows warrantless, unconsented physical searches, mail surveillance, monitoring, and similar techniques if “there is probable cause to believe that the technique is directed against a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power.” (The 1947 National Security Act that created the CIA prohibits the CIA from “internal security functions.”)

2. National Security Decision Directive #2 was signed by President Reagan on January 12, 1982. This NSDD reorganized the National Security Council (NSC) and set up interagency groups on (1) foreign policy, (2) defense policy, and (3) intelligence to “undertake such other activities as may be assigned to the NSC.” NOTE: In effect, this Directive states that the NSC will set policy, and will participate in operational roles. It shifts NSC from adviser to the actual running of covert campaigns.

3. National Security Decision Directive #22 was signed by President Reagan on January 29, 1982. This NSDD authorized the CIA Director to request the FBI to collect information for the CIA in the United States. (The 1947 National Security Act prohibits the CIA from “internal security functions.”)

4. National Security Decision Directive #47 was signed by President Reagan on July 22, 1982. This NSDD was entitled “Emergency Mobilization Preparedness” and provided for wage and price controls, the “relocation of large numbers of people” and an “intensified counterintelligence effort” during major domestic or national security emergencies.

5. National Security Decision Directive #100 was signed by President Reagan on July 28, 1983. This NSDD was entitled “Enhanced U.S. Military Activity and Assistance for the Central America Region” and it ordered U.S. military operations in the area “significantly increased.”

7. There was (and is) a FBI Anti-Terrorist Task Force (Ref. Agents George Kiszynski and Kevin Currier relating to Jack Terrell).

8. A July 28, 1986, memorandum from Poindexter of the NSC (memo prepared by Col. North) addressed to President Reagan identifies the Operations Sub-Group (OSG) of the Terrorist Incident Working Group (TIWG) of the NSC. This Group made available to the FBI all information from other U.S. agencies relating to Terrell in early 1986.

October 31, 1986, a four-page FBI message addressed to the Director and All Offices of the Bureau from the Chicago office, SUBJECT: “Domestic Security/Terrorism Sabotage”, including the launching of an October 30 investigation of the “Plowshare” group, and group called the Veterans Fast For Life, as part of “an organized conspiracy to use force/violence to coerce the United States Government into modifying its direction“.

Ron Kovic (l) and Willson

December 14, 1987, FBI Director William Sessions sends 3-page response letter to Congressman Don Edwards’ (D-CA) inquiry of October 6, 1987, admitting that six individuals from two organizations, “Silo Plowshares”, and “Veterans fast For Life”, “were developed as suspects“, and that the FBI conducted a “preliminary inquiry….under the domestic security/terrorism caption“. From the pattern of conduct “it was reasonable to conclude a political motive, by two or more persons engaged in activities in violation of Federal law…..Such investigations are initiated when the facts or circumstances reasonably indicate that two or more persons are engaged in an enterprise for the purpose of furthering political or social goals, wholly or in part, through activities that involve force or violence and a violation of the criminal laws of the United State”. The letter indicated that the preliminary inquiry was closed on April 28, 1987.

Brian Note #1: The FBI response does not indicate whether there have been any other investigations, official or unofficial, for any other reasons, and whether the initial inquiry remains part of the historical record or whether it has been physically eliminated. A wave of break-ins (see Brian Note #3 below) at offices of political opponents to Reagan’s foreign policies suggest government behavior has systematically been involved directly or indirectly in violation of the law and civil liberties, going far beyond surveillance and investigations.

Brian Note #3: As of January 1988, the Movement Support Network of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York had recorded 90 burglaries and break-ins with apparent Central American-related political motives since 1983. From November 1984 through June 1986, the offices sharing space in the basement of the Old Cambridge Baptist Church in Cambridge, MA were broken into eight times. The targets included: The New England Central American Network (NECAN), Central American Solidarity Association, Central American Information Office, Educators in Support of ANDES (the Salvadoran teachers union) and New Institute of Central America (NICA), the latter of which sent Brian to their language school in Esteli, Nicaragua on a scholarship as a military veteran, Jan.-Feb. 1986. The Church itself had become a sanctuary for Central American refugees the week before the first break-in. On May 15, 1987, the NICA office experienced another break-in. Burglars poured muriatic acid on computer discs. NECAN was broken into again on May 3, 1988. (Sklar, pp. 351-52).

Break-Ins at Sanctuary Churches and Organizations Opposed to Administration Policy in Central America: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights, 100th Congress, 1st Session, February 19-20, 1987].

In addition, the VFFL Christic house was broken into in early October 1986 in Wash., DC. And Daniel Sheehan, director of Christic was investigated by the FBI as well.

BW Note #1: In former CIA officer John Stockwell’s book, The Praetorian Guard, The U.S. Role in the New World Order. Cambridge, MA: South End Press. (1991), pp. 105-106, he reports that in September 1988, FBI Director William Sessions announced the disciplining of FBI officers who had improperly targeted the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) and 160 other civic organizations, many of which were critical of the Reagan administration’s policy in Central America. During the summer of 1989, Congress discovered that a total of 1,600 groups had been improperly targeted by the FBI.

August 31, 1988, The San Francisco Bay Guardian, “Political Break-ins: A Disturbing Whodunit”: Citing a Knight-Ridder story by their Washington, D.C. reporter, Alfonso Chardy, “The CIA, the FBI and the National Security Agency have cooperated in a three year operation aimed at monitoring the activities of U.S.-based opponents of Reagan’s Central America policies.”

F.B.I. Is Willing To Erase Names From Its Records,” by Philip Shenon: “The Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, William S. Sessions, indicated today that the bureau was willing to expunge the names of people and organizations identified in files of a bureau surveillance campaign aimed at opponents of the Reagan Administration’s policies in Central America.

Brian Note #1: Brian’s name?

Brian Note #2: Reagan’s Office of Public Diplomacy had applied techniques from the Public Relations industry as well as utilizing intelligence shenanigans, coordinating its efforts with Western Goals, a private intelligence computerized data gathering agency closely connected to the John Birch Society, to create a data-base cataloguing the names and personal information of activists in the nuclear freeze and Central American solidarity movement. The information was turned over to the FBI. The OPD worked hand-in-glove with the State Dept., the Defense Dept., the CIA, the NSC, and a vast private network of right-wing individuals and organizations. Retired General John Singlaub was on the Western Goals board [The New Right Humanitarians, The Resource Center, Albuquerque, NM, 1986, pp. 39-40].

, Washington: Center for national Security Studies, 1988, p. 2].

Boston Globe, June 18, 1988].

NOTE: In 1988, FBI director William Sessions finally admitted to the Library Awareness Program in which librarians were asked to report on the reading habits of people with foreign accents or funny sounding names (Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover, p. 759). The Washington Monthly published a January 1989 article, “Ma’m, What You Need Is a New, Improved Hoover,” by Mathew Miller, in which he humorously points out that if this standard were applied, “Zbigniew Brzenski could be busted any day in the Columbia stacks.” Actually the Library Awareness Program predated Sessions by many years, having been established by J. Edgar Hoover in 1962 in efforts to solicit librarians as informants (Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover, p. 760).

September 1990, “International Terrorism, FBI Investigates Domestic Activities To Identify Terrorists,” prepared by the U.S. General Accounting Office, Report to the Chairman, Subcommittee On Civil and Constitutional Rights, Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives (Rep. Don Edwards), that reveals between January 1982 and June 1988, the FBI opened 18,144 cases because of suspicion that individuals or group were involved in terrorist activities, of whom 6,895 were “U.S. Persons” (U.S. citizens and permanent resident aliens). Congressman Don Edwards (D-10th Congr Distr/San Jose) initiated the inquiry. William Webster had been director of the FBI, February 23, 1978 – May 25, 1987. He was succeeded by William S. Sessions, director from November 2, 1987 – July 19, 1993. John E. Otto was the Acting Director, May 26, 1987 – November 2, 1987 at the time Brian was struck.

GAO Report: “The FBI redacted the closed files before we reviewed them…We were limited in our ability to develop overall conclusions regarding the FBI’s international terrorism program. The questionnaire and case file data clearly demonstrated that the FBI did engage in monitoring of First Amendment-type activities during its international terrorist investigations”.

Brian Note #1: There is no way of knowing the veracity of any FBI statements. Information is blacked out (redacted) preventing any accountability as to who was investigated, and whether their names are still on a watch list.

Brian Note #2: See: Ross Gelbspan. (1991). Break-ins, Death Threats and the FBI, The Covert War Against the Central America Movement. Boston: South End Press, p. 150: The “hook” in the FBI Guidelines that permitted investigations of various individual U.S. citizens, including Congress people, was because of their “contacts with representatives of foreign governments”.

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*A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR (Thank you, WiKipedia)

S. Brian Willson (born July 4, 1941) is a prominent American anti-war activist.

U.S. Constitutional and international laws prohibiting aggression and war crimes,” Willson has been an educator and activist, teaching about the dangers of these policies. He has participated in lengthy fasts, actions of nonviolent civil disobedience, and tax refusal along with voluntary simplicity.

Reagan‘s anti-terrorist task force provisions and that the train crew that day had been ordered not to stop the train to prevent any Hijacking attempts. Willson filed a law suit contending that the Navy and individual supervisors were given ample warning of their plan to block the tracks, and that the train crew had time to stop—which the subsequent official Navy report confirmed. The train crew filed a law suit against Willson, requesting punitive damages for the “humiliation, mental anguish, and physical stress” they suffered as a result of the incident, which was dismissed. Willson later agreed to settle his lawsuit against the Government and train crew for $920,000. Willson now walks with prostheses.

Willson’s blog is at http://www.brianwillson.com/. His site, in his words, packs essays, “describing the incredible historic pattern of U.S. arrogance, ethnocentrism, violence and lawlessness in domestic and global affairs, and the severe danger this pattern poses for the future health of Homo sapiens and Mother Earth. Other essays discuss revolutionary, nonviolent alternative approaches based on the principle of radical relational mutuality. This is a term increasingly used by physicists, mathematicians and cosmologists to describe the nature of the omnicentric*, ever-unfolding universe. Every being, every aspect of life energy in the cosmos, is intrinsically interconnected with and affects every other being and aspect of life energy at every moment.”

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How the world changed after 9/11

From: The Guardian (UK) News Blog

People attending the conference.

On the day of September 11, Charlie Skelton attends a symposium of critical thinkers in New York.

The heavy syllables of the victims’ names boomed out along the streets around Ground Zero. The public were patted down, then allowed up a cramped side road to peer at a distant video screen of the memorial. They filmed the video screen on their mobile phones, filmed each other filming, and film crews filmed them filming.

It was hardly fertile ground for grief, you’d think. And yet, the weird detachment of the moment was severed by the chanting of the names and the brief tributes of the readers. It was the daughter who said her father’s friends tell her that she reminds them of him that did it for me. That, and the list of victims called Jones. Jones after Jones after Jones. Too many Joneses. I took my sniffles back up the street to Starbucks.

And from Starbucks, I went down the rabbit hole. I found myself at a conference on Walker Street called ‘How The World Changed After 9/11’. It was packed, but I managed to slide in at the back, to hear a guy called Webster Tarpley chant his own list of names. The names of the 46 military exercises and hijack drills (called things like ‘Vigilant Guardian’) that were actually taking place on the morning of September 11. “The greatest density of drills in US military history,” Tarpley said.

Fake radar blips, dummy hijacks, dummy attacks, fighter jets sent off to Turkey, the skies left unprotected, with the FBI’s top anti-terror experts stuck on a training exercise in California. The drills, said Tarpley, were important, because not only did they weaken and confuse US air defence, but there was also a military drill for each major component of the 9/11 attacks. The drills were cover, and the dummy threats were made real.

September 11, he argues, was a coup carried out by a rogue network within the US military and government. A cabal of fascists, working with (and for) a banking oligarchy, “the old boys of Wall Street”.

Webster Tarpley

“You want to blame Saudi Arabia, or Israel, or Pakistan? You can’t. There isn’t the evidence.” The evidence, Tarpley says, points towards 9/11 as a false flag attack, carried out by a high level clique, that forced a shocked and awestruck US public into a vast and still ongoing war. It was America’s very own Reichstag fire. And the official version of the event? “A racist, militaristic, and fascist myth that we must reject.”

What I heard, from speaker after speaker, was a heartfelt desire to turn away from the path of destruction, militarism and lies that America has been set upon after 9/11. Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst, mourned for Iraq: “One million dead, 4m displaced, and that’s a victory?” He sees the failure of Americans to comprehend the scale of the destruction wrought under their flag as nothing less than racist. “In America, we are very good at segregating our tears. Racism is our original sin.”

Ray McGovern

McGovern quoted from Martin Luther King’s letter from Birmingham jail: “Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up, but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.” And 9/11, for McGovern, is a “big boil” that needs lancing.

He drew attention to an extraordinary story, barely touched by the mainstream press, that Richard Clarke, who was the White House counter-terrorism czar at the time of the attacks, has recently accused the CIA of deliberately suppressing information before 9/11, information that might have prevented the attacks. Clarke claimed: “There was a high-level decision in the CIA ordering people not to share information.” And who made this decision? “I would think it would have been made by the director”.

So that would be George Tenet. Director of the CIA from 1997-2004, now a managing director of an investment bank. The former CIA man, McGovern, ends his speech by saying: “Of all the people who should be put in prison, he’d be top of my list.”

Another speaker, Mike Rivero, addressed the outrage, which he often felt when the “false flag” analysis of 9/11 is presented. The idea that “we would never do such a thing” or “it’s not the sort of thing governments do.” He gave a whistlestop tour of state-sponsored attacks and hoodwinkings: the Lusitania, the Maine, the Dodgy Dossier, Saddam’s nuclear weapons, the staged burning of the Reichstag, and the notorious Gleiwitz incident in which the Nazis faked an attack on a German radio station to justify the invasion of Poland. His point being that 9/11 was “not unique”. There’s a historical context.

History, documentation, facts. A respect for life, and a respect for truth. This is what I heard, over and over again, at this remarkable conference. Wayne Madsen – a former naval officer and NSA operative – spoke of the atmosphere of “hype and fear” that still grips America, 10 years after 9/11. A fear that’s pumped into us, relentlessly, through our flatscreen HD Orwellian “telescreens”.

Madsen called for the release of the commission findings that Ludkowski told me about last night: “Let’s get those documents out of the National Archives!” But he noted that the man whose job it is to decide what gets released, the administrator of the White House office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, is one Cass Sunstein. The same Cass Sunstein that in 2008 urged the government to “cognitively infiltrate” alternative groups like the 9/11 Truth Movement. So releasing those documents probably isn’t top of his to-do list.

He’s also the same Cass Sunstein that wrote the first op-ed about Julian Assange – the CIA asset and “child of MK Ultra”, as Tarpley dubs him. But that’s a whole other can of worms …

I found myself blinking back tears for the second time when McGovern read out a poem – in his polished CIA Russian – about a mother mourning the loss of her child. This thread of grieving ran throughout the conference. Wayne Madsen grieved for the loss of “shoeleather journalism”, McGovern mourned the death of the fourth estate, while Tarpley spoke of the hollow memorial at Ground Zero – the two “abysses”: the reflecting pools, or “voids”, as they’re often called. He sees these memorials as an appropriately empty vision of “nothingness. Nihil. No ideals, nothing.” A nothingness at the heart of America. “But we have to do something.”

We have to do something. Even if that something is simply to Google ‘Cass Sunstein’ and start from there. Begin your own cognitive infiltration. Google ‘Vigilant Guardian’ or ‘Able Danger’. Crosscheck ‘Abdel Hakim Belhadj’ and ‘Al-Qaida’. Begin digging. Begin thinking. And stop believing.

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Ben Bella: Revolutionary Internationalist

ARCHIVES: In Remembrance of the Algerian Struggle for Independence

A. Ben Bella: 92, but still vibrant.

In the interview below, conducted three decades ago by our senior editor and European correspondent, Gaither Stewart, Ahmed Ben Bella, legendary leader of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN), speaks at length about his personal experiences . There are lessons here that Americans should take to heart.—PG

By Gaither Stewart

PRECIS

Ahmed Ben Bella is one of the great figures of Arab nationalism. He was one of the nine members of the Committee of Algerian Revolutionaries that gave birth to the National Liberation Front (NLF). Arrested by the French occupiers in 1952, he managed to escape. Once again arrested in 1956, along with seven colleagues, he was detained in the la Santé prison until 1962. After the signing of the Evian Accord, he became the first elected president of independent Algeria. On the domestic front, he initiated a Socialist policy characterised by a vast program of Agrarian reform. (Silvia Cattori)

(Rome) When decades ago I interviewed the legendary Ahmed Ben Bella, the man who ignited the Algerian War of Liberation against French colonial rule in 1954, was also chairman and animator of the FLN (Front de Liberation Nationale), and subsequently became the first post-colonial President of liberated and independent Algeria, 1962-1965, he repeatedly described himself as a revolutionary, not a theoretician, a man of action, not an intellectual, an internationalist, an Islamic progressive fundamentalist, an Arab Moslem and man of the Third World.

The interview took place in 1983 in a small hotel in the countryside outside Geneva where Ben Bella was in hiding from both the French and the Algerian governments. I was especially excited about this interview because Ben Bella had long been one of my heroes: a true revolutionary internationalist. He seemed to have a powerful mystique about him which he himself however denied. Nonetheless it was the opinion of his friends and comrades that he was a charismatic leader who dreamed of changing the world in which he lived.

After his revolutionary government was overthrown in a coup d’ètat organized by his former Interior Minister, Houari Boumedienne, he was held in secret arrest in Algeria until 1980 when he was granted full freedom. Fearful for his life he fled to Paris in 1981, like jumping from the frying pan into the fire. There he promptly irritated the French government when through his Committees For Democracy in Algeria and his magazine, El Badil –The Alternative, he agitated among Algerian workers in the Renault factory, distributing fiery magazines and pamphlets in favor of what he called “real democracy in Algeria”. His program was based on political pluralism, Islamic fundamentalism and a call for retour, the return home of the one million Algerians in France at the time. In general he stirred up trouble among Algerians in France and between a France dreaming of huge economic contracts with a more stable Algeria, its ex-colony, without the presence of troublemaker, Ben Bella. Add to that mixing pot rumors that Gadaffi and/or Khomeni (the latter also in exile at the time) were financing Ben Bella (which he did not deny), then interweave the ire of various occult powers eager to exploit the situation in Algeria for other ends, and the usual machinations of the CIA and French secret services, rogue or not, and you get the picture: Ben Bella was a general pain in the ass. French police organs raided his home in Montmorency near Paris, arrested his body guards and effectively expelled him from France.

Ben Bella with Che.

Vivid in Ben Bella’s memory also were two assassinations attempts against him in 1956 and in the same year his daring mid-air abduction by the French, and another six years in prisons. This was a tragic irony because he had served in the French army in World War II and was decorated with the Croix de Guerre by General DeGaulle after the battle of Cassino in Italy. After the war he militated in the Parti Populaire Algerien and chief of the O.S. the Organisation Speciale. Arrested and imprisoned by the French the first time in 1949, he escaped and ended up in Cairo where he became one the nine historic chiefs of CHUA, the Comité revolutionnaire d’unité et d’action. As such, he organized the uprisings in Algeria of Novemeber 1, 1954, All Saints Day, for which he acquired the sobriquet, Le fils de la Toutsaints. In the year 1956 the French army arrested him again when the Moroccan plane carrying him from Rabat to Tunis was intercepted by French planes in international skies. He was freed six years later after the signing of the Evian Accords of March 18, 1962. He returned to Algeria and that August became President of the new government and Secretary General of the FLN. On September 15, 1962 he was elected first president of the Republic of Algeria. During his presidency he pushed through education and agricultural reforms and in 1964 he was named Hero of the Soviet Union, although he was not a Communist.

After I made contact with Ben Bella’s group, a telephone caller instructed me to wait at a certain time in front of a hotel opposite the Geneva rail station. A BMW with Paris plates arrived and an Algerian driver and an ex-Algerian chief of police escorted me to a secret meeting place deep in the Geneva countryside; a maze of narrow roads, many turns and back-tracking, to a small village and the hotel, Auberge Guillaume Tell, and three flights up to a small room on the top floor. Shortly after, he arrived: Monsieur le President, tall, dark, crisp black hair, elegant, the movements of the ex-soccer player, of a man of action, a man capable of exciting the masses and swaying minds.

Surprisingly, despite 22 years in prisons, Ben Bella [like Mandela?] was not a bitter man. On the contrary. He said that “prisons are important in the life of a militant, not a setback, but a test. A time to mature and to forge a political will and a militant personality. Prison is nearly a necessity.”

In reconstructing these notes today, I find points of relevance to the situation among Leftists in the USA where the word revolution is no longer taboo. I find especially enlightening his explanation of how and why he, among other militants, came to assume power in post-colonial Algeria. “Well, first someone had to do it, and I was ready. Revolutions are very complex. Nothing is easy. Few people want to risk their necks. In 1962, Algeria was on its knees, a country that had lost 1,600,000 of its sons, masses of wounded and sick, 300,000 widows, 250,000 orphans, 120,000 returnees from Morocco and 500,000 persons from prisons, plus four million people who had fought against us and lost. People everywhere were armed and accustomed to fighting. At the same time, there was little money, chiefly a small amount donated by de Gaulle. There were few volunteers for this job and my friends were happy when I took it.”

Ben Bella formed a one-party state, an error which he attributed to the times and to his lack of government experience. The FLN, he recalled was an instrument of struggle during the war. “The one-party state is a marvelous instrument for a war of liberation but as a government system, in every country at every latitude, it has revealed the same defects; it represents only one point of view.”

He noted that he had no real models to go by. Neither Cuba nor Yugoslavia, he said, could be models for Islamic Algeria. “Yet we tried to correct the defects of the one-party system by the introduction of Yugoslavia’s self-management system thus becoming the only Third World country to adopt that system. Still, Libya has something similar in its ‘people’s power’, an interesting experience which has produced some interesting ideas, as has Algeria’s self-management. In fact, Communist Yugoslavia was of great import in our history. I loved Tito, that great revolutionary leader, and he loved me. Tito was not a leader installed by the Red Army after WWII, but a great man who crystallized popular will. I was young when he was doing those great things but I realized he was special. I was attracted to Yugoslavia also because of the similarity of the guerilla wars we fought. I assure you that ours was a people’s regime.”

Nearly three decades ago, Ben Bella was still crying ‘Nous sommes des Arabes, nous sommes des Arabes,’ we are Arabs, to stress the explosion of Islam in the world and the desire of Arabs for independence. His words of then are echoed by growing numbers of Arabs today demanding change as one has seen in Tunisia and Egypt and Syria—whether or not America plays a role—and which can now can spill over into Algeria, a country of over 35 million people and landwise the biggest country of Africa.

“Islam as an idea,” he stressed then, “has exploded on the world scene. But I don’t have in mind Islam for non-Moslems! I do not believe in the extension of Islam. But Islam will soon be the world’s biggest religion. The demographic aspect alone is impressive. Moslems want to lead a Moslem way of life. Youth too wants to express its own vision of life within its day-to-day life, where every act is important, where dress is important, for Islam is a totality. Our orientation today toward a consumer society with Western ways is dangerous for us because it does not correspond to our philosophy that teaches us less consumption. Less consumption does not have to mean unhappiness. Since, the reality is that there is not enough to go around; consumption must be limited in the whole world. Algeria, for example, has the potential of escaping consumer society. Once it was an extraordinary agricultural country, with the best wheat and the best cereals in the world. Now the fields have not only been abandoned; they have been assassinated by heavy industry. One wonders why we have heavy industry. We have it because of corruption, because of the lucrative contracts it offered. Our return to agriculture would help not only Algeria but also Europe. Our society in North Africa must be able to say ‘no’ to certain projects from the north.” (I see now in my notes how he often referred to Europe simply as ‘the north’) Of course we need also industry and it has brought some advantages to Algeria. However the West has paid an enormous price for industrialization, and I would like to see it thrive in a more sane way in the Third World. Though we in Algeria do not want to retreat into the Arab world, we oppose capitalism that demands and takes over everything. It was a great error to abandon our agriculture. Our peasants who made our revolution were the first victims of industrialization; they were betrayed.”

Ben Bella no longer believed in Pan Arab solutions such as the creation of a market of 300,000 people of the Arab world. “The world,” he insisted, “is one great whole. The world is one. Enough of ‘this is mine’ and ‘that is yours.’ Private property must end. The world must change. We need world solidarity. The enormous amounts of petroleum money in the banks must be used for the world, without interest. The mission of Islam is to break the capitalist logic and end the subordination to the power of money. In that respect, Islam can help overcome differences, for Islam is tolerant. I propose that we immediately eliminate borders and passports in the Maghreb. I oppose closed borders. Nationalism is contrary to Islam. Islam unites.

“I was always religious but I feel it more today because our epoch demands it. Keep in mind that Islam played a big role in the liberation of Algeria. I’m no Mullah, but I am a progressive Moslem. In that respect I am two times of the Left. Progressive Moslem culture offers a solution to many problems of the Third World. For example, it forbids usury and the hoarding of supplies and favors the circulation of surplus. That basic aspect of Islamic economics responds to the situation in the Third World. Even reactionary Islamic countries give much aid to needy countries. Europe does not understand this. Kuwait, the Emirates, Iraq, Algeria, give more aid than the West. Moslem aid reaches the corners of the Islamic world. Islam is the reason.”

Ben Bella’s analysis of that Islamic world of the 1980s rings quite contemporary. He noted that “Iran is no flower garden; but Western evaluation of Saudi Arabia is hardly disinterested. Iran is aggressive because of the retrograde part of the Arab world, because of the USA and the USSR. A revolution is defensive but a revolution that spills too much blood is dangerous. Still, the West judges Iran more harshly than it does Saudi Arabia. For obvious reasons.”

During these many years since I met him I had forgotten revolutionary, leftwing, Ben Bella’s emphasis on Islamic fundamentalism. He seemed to foresee that fundamentalism was destined to become a major factor governing relations between Islam and the West. His leftist background, his progressive stance and close relations with Cuba and Communist Yugoslavia, his love for Che Guevara would seem belie his evaluations of fundamentalism. He instead found the fact that fundamentalism worries some Arab governments positive. He said proudly that fundamentalism was a hard expression of Islam, of an Islam without complexes, often a fanatic expression.

“Youth at first rejected fundamentalism but now has begun to understand and accept it. In Algeria people witnessed the breakdown of agriculture, decades of bad habits, habits of egoism that have infected our society. People are now saying ‘no’. Sometimes they speak with violence.

“Still, I don’t share fears of fundamentalism. It is youth’s search for purity.

One problem has been our inability to create a post-colonial culture of our own. Technology has meanwhile installed a new order. Our schools and universities teach a culture and a vision of life that is foreign to ours. Our culture is still a dominated and shattered culture.

“With a renewed Islam the Arab world would exist immediately. We could then communicate better with France, with the world.

“Nationalism was useful during the liberation struggle but from the moment we voted freely, nationalism was no longer necessary. Unfortunately other forms of nationalism have been born there creating many disorders.

“Islam, I believe, can replace both capitalism and Socialism in the Islamic world. Both are cultural expressions. They are not even contradictory. They are like a drop of water, Socialism emerging from capitalism. I know the Socialist world. I knew Khruschev, Brezhnev, I knew and loved Che Guevara, a real revolutionary leader, finally broken by that form of Socialism.

“Yes, Islam can replace both. That is Islam’s mission in the Moslem world. I am always searching for a program to express that mission. Though I am a man of action, events have forced me to become also a theoretician. I am developing my ideas for a social-political program.”

Ben Bella summed up by stressing the necessity of change in the Islamic world but he stressed that one thing was clear: he did not want that world to depend on the United States of America.

BIO NOTE

Recent activities

Ben Bella was elected President of the International Campaign Against Aggression on Iraq at its Cairo Conference. Ben Bella has described himself numerous times in interviews as an Islamist of a mild and peace loving flavour. Despite his former one party state he now vocally advocates democracy in Algeria. He has described the militant voice rising in the Islamic world as having developed from an incorrect and faulty interpretation of Islam. He is a controversial figure, but widely respected for his role in the anti-colonial struggle, and seen by many Arab intellectuals as one of the last original Arab nationalists.

* In an interview with Sylvia Cattori.

¶

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