Visas for Al Qaeda - CIA Handouts that Rocked the World by J. Springmann

Author:J. Springmann
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Daena Publications LLC
Published: 2015-02-07T23:00:00+00:00

Plausible (?) Deniability

More to the point, the foreign fighters got to Iraq because they had been recruited as terrorists. In a July 24, 2013, telephone call with Bob Baer, former CIA case officer in the Middle East and South Asia, he told me the Arab-Afghans had not been directly recruited by the Agency, but that their gathering had been “outsourced” for “plausible deniability.” Milt Bearden, former Pakistan station chief and field officer in Afghanistan; Vince Cannistraro, former case officer and chief of operations and analysis at the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center; and Larry Johnson, former CIA analyst and State Department official had all told the author that the CIA only recruited Afghans. All omitted any discussion of their instruction. Baer told me that US policy was to have the Saudis handle the recruitment program. They were the ones who located the Palestinians, Pakistanis, etc. 248 The Saudi official in charge was Ahmed Badeeb, chief of staff to Prince Turki al-Faisal, head of the Saudi Intelligence Presidency. Badeeb had also been a teacher to Osama bin Laden.249

Badeeb was also a well-connected bagman. To support operations in Pakistan, he once arrived in Karachi aboard a Saudia Airlines flight with “a little extra.” Besides his personal baggage, he was carrying $1.8 million in freshly printed currency, imported directly from the United States. Badeeb conveyed this money in person to Pakistan’s president, Zia Ul Haq, and a group of his generals in Rawalpindi. It was part of a payment for Chinese-made, rocket-propelled grenade launchers.250 The Saudis also channeled funds delivered by Badeeb and others through religious charities to support their intelligence functions. Ultimately, the money went to Afghan commanders outside of ISI or CIA control. Badeeb also set up safe houses for himself and other Saudi intelligence officials with the aid of these charities.

Saudi involvement also kept the beneficiaries of this aid from learning how closely the Americans were involved, the reasoning being that the fighters objected to direct contact with Westerners.251 The watchword was plausible deniability. Baer added that outsourcing in all this plausible deniability was so effective that everyone concerned was unaware of US involvement, including American intelligence involvement. They believed that this was a do-it-yourself jihad. Besides the Saudis, recruitment was also handled by the ISI, who worked with the Haqqanis (a US-designated terrorist group) and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

Training was outsourced as well. ISI could do this because its “military and intelligence officers, bureaucrats, undercover agents and informers” were thought to total about one hundred and fifty thousand men.252

According to a January 7, 2008, Christian Science Monitor article, “the bulk of foreign fighters [operating in Iraq] originate from countries with whom the United States is allied…”253 Citing a report produced by the Combating Terrorism Center at the US Military Academy at West Point, the article noted, however, that the individuals fighting in Iraq come also from Libya, Algeria, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen. They entered Iraq through Egypt, Syria, Germany, and Turkey (with the exception of Syria, all countries involved in helping to destabilize the Middle East).

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