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A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
by Judith Mann
November 7, 2001
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Greens, Airports
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Ayatollah
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C.G. Estabrook
Our Torturers
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Nearing on War
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Underwriting
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The
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Evan Ravitz
Stop the War
Through
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Steve
Perry
Hunger
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November 5, 2001
Patrick Cockburn
Living
in the Minefields
David Price
Terror
and Indigenous People
November 3, 2001
Declan McCullagh
Nancy Oden Interview
Daniel
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The
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Mark Weisbrot
War on Civilians
Dave Marsh
How
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Robert Jensen
Speaking
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November 2, 2001
CounterPunch
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FBI Eyes
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November 1, 2001
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Dying
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Sami Amarah
US Attempts
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Russian Vets of Afghan War
Molly Secours
Where
Are the Voices of Reason? Let the Women
Be Heard
William Blum
Unleashing the
CIA
October 31, 2001
Tom Turnipseed
Terrorize
the Poor,
Subsidize the Rich
Chris Clarke
Thank God
for Berkeley
Steve
Perry
The
Silent Genocide
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November 8,
2001
Homeland
Insecurity by Douglas Valentine
Part Six
The Counter-Terror Network
The CIA's counter-terror network, as established
by William Casey, was a direct descendant of the counter-intelligence
special operations unit, CHAOS, formed by James Angleton in August
1967, specifically to spy on the New Left and other radical political
groups in the anti-war and civil rights movements. From its earliest
beginnings, Chaos was distinguished from other CIA operations
by its secure communications system, its super inaccessibility
and "compartmentalization," it's inter-connected domestic
and international mandate, and its essentially political nature.
All of this was permissible in so far as Chaos was a "special"
counter-intelligence function designed to ferret out the plans
and strategies of foreign intelligence services.
As we know, the CIA underwent a major
reorganization in 1974 after William Colby fired counter-intelligence
chief James Angleton, and exposed the CIA's "family jewels"
at a Congressional Hearing conducted by Representative Otis Pike
(D-NY). Chaos became the International Terrorism Group, and the
repository of some of the "hip pocket" operations that
forced Angleton from the Agency. The ITG remained buried in the
bowels of the CIA until it was resurrected as Howard Bane's Office
of Terrorism in late 1977. The Iran hostage crisis and the disaster
of Desert One enabled Ronald Reagan to steal the presidency,
denounce Carter's Human Rights crusade, and initiate a new foreign
policy based on combating terrorism.
In 1981, Reagan's Director of Central
Intelligence, William Casey, saw the political possibilities
of turning Buckley's Office of Domestic Terrorism into a "back-channel"
mechanism, like Chaos under Angleton and Ober, for conducting
secret "hip pocket" operations outside the normal chain
of command. And thus was born the Counter-Terror Network that
exists until today, as the official manifestation of the off-the-shelf
Enterprise formed by Bush and Shackley back in 1976. 13
The ultimate object of Reagan Administration
policy was the destruction of the Soviet Union through the application
of "low-intensity warfare" in Afghanistan; counter-terror
in the Middle East, and pro-active terror in Latin America. Effecting
this policy involved a number of illegal covert actions, and
so Casey had to run his Counter-Terror Network outside of the
CIA itself, through a cabal of secret agents throughout the government,
acting under his direction through a group of veteran CIA officers
who embrace the same essentially fascist world view. Like Chaos,
the Counter-Terror Network had a secure communications system,
as Peter Dale Scott observed, "that excluded other bureaucrats
with opposing viewpoints."
As Scott notes, "The counter-terrorism
network even had its own special worldwide antiterrorist computer
network, codenamed Flashboard, by which members could communicate
exclusively with each other and their collaborators abroad."
Casey laid the groundwork for this Counter-Terror
Network in 1981, when he appointed David Whipple as the CIA's
National Intelligence Officer (NIO) for counter-terrorism. A
veteran CIA officer with extensive service in the Far East, Whipple
had been serving as the CIA's station chief in Switzerland, where
he'd conducted successful counter-terror operations, before being
summoned back to headquarters to take on the job as Casey's NIO
for counter-terrorism.
According to Whipple, Casey's staff consisted
of 16 NIOs, eight of whom were responsible for geographical divisions,
while the other eight were responsible for issues, such as narcotics,
counter-intelligence, nuclear weapons, economics, and in Whipple's
case, counter-terror. Under Casey's direction, every government
agency established a counter-terror office as part of this secret
apparatus. Whipple as NIO coordinated them all, collating all
the information they provided at CIA headquarters. In consultation
with Casey, Whipple assisted the CIA's division chiefs, making
sure their station chiefs were properly handling counter-terror
issues in their designated areas.
Whipple maintained the Office of Domestic
Terrorism after Buckley departed, through a staff that included
an operations chief, intelligence analysts, photo interpreters,
and several case officers. Because it had the authority to access
any division's files and to co-opt its most precious penetration
agents, the ODT was resisted by the divisions--especially by
the Near East Division, which was on the front lines of the war
against terrorism. Thus in 1983 Casey sent Buckley to Beirut
to personally oversee counter-intelligence operations there.
And he conscripted Oliver North, a doe-eyed Marine lieutenant
colonel assigned to the National Security Council, as his penetration
agent inside the NSC. Notably, Whipple served as North's case
officer in this monumental misadventure.
A Vietnam veteran, cut from the same
erratic mold as Liddy and Buckley, North came from nowhere and
in 1982 was the NSC staff coordinator for crisis management.
According to Scott, Vice President Bush was in overall charge
as chair of the Cabinet-level Crisis Management Committee. Starting
in February 1983, North, according to Scott, developed a secret
Crisis Management Center, and REX 84, "a plan to suspend
the Constitution in the event of a national crisis such as nuclear
war, violent and widespread internal dissent, or national opposition
to a U.S. military invasion abroad."
Sound familiar? In light of the recent
national emergency, it is not surprising that North's plan called
for "the round-up and internment of large numbers of both
domestic dissidents (some twenty-six thousand) and aliens (perhaps
as many as from three to four thousand), in camps such as the
one in Oakdale, Louisiana." And just as the vast majority
of Congresspersons went along with the draconian anti-terror
legislation passed on 29 October, Senator Daniel Inouye in 1986
cut-off all debate about North's plan to suspend the Constitution
when Congressman Jack Brooks raised the issue during the televised
Iran-Contra Hearings.
North next formed a personal relationship
with Vice President Bush in the winter of 1983, when they inspected
El Salvador's death squad commanders. After that North's stock
soared, and in April 1984 he created the Terrorist Incident Working
Group (TWIG) specifically to rescue several American hostages,
including Buckley, held in Lebanon. North became TWIG's chairman,
and in October 1985 he managed its first successful operation--the
capture of the hijackers of the Achille Lauro.
A few months earlier, in June, after
the hijacking of a TWA Flight 847 to Beirut, Bush created the
Vice President's Task Force on Combating Terrorism. According
to Scott, as the NSC's liaison to the Task Force, "North
drafted a secret annex for its report which institutionalized
and expanded his counter-terrorist powers, making himself the
NSC coordinator of all counter-terrorist actions."
On 20 January 1986, North's efforts were
crowned with National Security Decision Directive 207, making
him chief coordinator of the Administration's counter-terror
program, and providing him with a secret office and staff known
as the Office To Combat Terrorism. Working through the inter-agency
Operations Sub-Group (OSG), North coordinated the secret Counter-Terror
Network and Secord's Enterprise in a series of mind-boggling
illegal operations, including illegal arms sales to Iran through
Israel's counter-terrorism expert Amiram Nir; illegal Contra
drug smuggling by through CIA asset Manuel Noriega in Panama,
by a group of anti-Castro Cubans, all of whom were directly connected
to Bush through his chief of operations, Donald Gregg, via Rudy
Enders and Felix Rodriguez (all Phoenix Program veterans); illegal
arms supply operations to the Contras through right wing domestic
terror groups; and the repression of domestic dissent on a massive
scale unmatched until the recent assaults mounted on the civil
liberties of American citizens by fundamentalist Attorney General
John Ashcroft and the U.S. Congress.
As Scott notes, "the Office to Combat
Terrorism became the means whereby North could coordinatethe
propaganda activities of Carl "Spitz" Channel and Richard
Miller (and) the closing of potential embarrassing investigations
by other government agencies."
The ranking members of this Counter-Terror
Network included: Donald Gregg (Bush's National Security Advisor);
CIA officer Charles Allen (Whipple's replacement as Casey's Counter-Terror
National Intelligence Officer in 1985); Robert Oakley at the
State Department's Office of Counter-Terrorism (a former CIA
officer with experience in political operations in Vietnam, Oakley
co-chair of North's Operations Sub-Group until mid-1986); Richard
Armitage (a member of the Enterprise) at the Defense Department,
Lt. Gen. John Moellering at the Joint Chiefs of Staff, FBI Counter-Terror
Chief, Oliver Revell, and, wonder of wonders, Michael Ledeen
at the National Security Council.
The lynchpin between the Israelis and
the Americans, Ledeen had proposed illegal arms sales to Iran
in 1984 through Mossad double agent Manucher Ghorbanifar. The
CIA's Deputy Director for Operations, Clair George, considered
Ghorbanifar totally unreliable, and as having only his personal
financial interests, and Israel's security, at heart. But George's
objections were neutralized in June 1985, when Bush formed the
Terrorism Task Force, at which point the illegal arms sales went
forward. And to assure that no one else in the CIA would obstruct
Reagan's secret policy, Casey in January 1986 conscripted veteran
CIA officer Duane Clarridge into the Counter-Terror Network,
as its de-facto security chief, and directed Clarridge to form
the CIA's Counter-Terror Center, which exists until today. 14
Terror Central
Under the current "unpresident"
Bush, counter-terrorism is a mechanism to conduct illegal operations
on behalf of his economic patrons, to circumvent Congress, and
to his harass domestic critics. Counter-terrorism is the preferred
political and psychological weapon of the radical right wing,
and it was perfected in 1986 with the creation of the CIA's Counter-Terror
center
Duane "Dewey" Clarridge, a
man with an extensive background in terror, was well equipped
for managing this job. A rabid right wing ideologue, he was chief
of the CIA's station in Turkey in the late 1960s and 1970s, when
the fascist Grey Wolves went on a terror rampage, bombing, shooting
and killing thousands of officials, journalists, students, lawyers,
labor organizers, social democrats, left-wing activists and Kurds.
Since then, Turkey' military dictatorship has been one of America's
strongest allies.
A body-builder and certified member of
the Old Boy clique that runs the CIA, Clarridge in August 1976
helped ADDO Ted Shackley recruit Albert Hakim, later a member
of Secord's Enterprise, to spy in Iran.15 (Shackley was soon
thereafter forced into retirement due to his association with
"rogue elephant" Ed Wilson, the CIA officer who sold
tons of explosives to Libya.) Clarridge was serving as the CIA's
station chief in Rome when the Pope was shot, and was chief of
Latin America Division from 1981 until 1984, when Nicaraguan
harbors were mined and the psyops "murder manual" was
distributed to the Contras, with his approval. In this capacity
Clarridge helped Richard Secord move PLO weapons captured by
Israeli forces during their bloody invasion of Lebanon, through
Noriega in Panama, to the Contras.
Clarridge, as chief of the Europe Division,
next played a pivotal role in the illegal Iran-Contra operation,
by providing the back channel, through his station chief in Lisbon,
that allowed North and Secord's Enterprise to sell HAWK and TOW
missiles to the Iranians, at a huge profit for Secord and his
Israeli counterparts, in exchange for the release of several
American hostages. The operation, which subverted the U.S. Constitution
and the Bolland Amendments passed by Congress, made Ronald Reagan
into the world's biggest, but most adorable, liar.
According to Scott, "The intrigues
of North, Secord, Clarridge and Oakley at this point showed a
concern for politics rather than security."
In that case, the political imperative
was to gain the release of hostages, so that Reagan, who had
sworn "never" to negotiate with terrorists, would not
be unfavorably compared to Carter, or exposed as bold-faced liar,
and so Bush would not lose the up-coming election. Gaining the
release of the hostages, of course, involved the illegal arms
sales to Iran, which itself was a flagrant flimflam by the Israelis
and their agents in the U.S. Government. One of those Israeli
agents, Michael Ledeen, while serving as a special assistant
on terrorism at the State Department, made the original proposal
in 1982 to divert money from arms sales to fund covert counter-terror
operations. Ledeen also was responsible, while employed at the
National Security Council in 1984, for convincing North and Secord
to employ Mossad double agent and world-class swindler Manucher
Ghorbanifar as the middleman between the Iranians, the Israelis,
and the Americans. As the record shows, it was Ghorbanifar's
duplicity and avarice that led the entire misadventure to its
ignoble conclusion.
The homeland thanks you, Michael Ledeen.
You're exactly the sort of corrupt public official we need advising
the Bush regime on how to wage its counter-terror campaign against
the Moslem world.
In an interview with this writer, Clarridge
described the Counter-Terror Center, which has coordinated the
CIA's back-channel activities since its formation in 1986, as
a central unit with members from the four directorates, operating
under a committee at the National Security Council. With input
from the different divisions, the Counter-Terror Center "divines"
anti-terrorism policy, and then constructs entities that can
conduct operations. It is not function of the U.S. Army Special
Forces, according to Clarridge, but pieces together counter-terrorism
"action teams"--commando squads trained to capture
suspected terrorists and bring them to the United States to stand
trial.
During his tenure from 1986 to 1988,
Clarridge oversaw a massive increase in intelligence gathering
on suspected terrorists, and developed new weapons for use against
them. He worked especially closely with George W. H. Bush, much
to his advantage. Indeed, after it was revealed that Clarridge
had assisted North in the transfer of surface-to-air missiles
to Iran, he was forced to resign from the CIA. He lied about
it when called before Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh, and
was indicted on seven counts of perjury. But he never went to
trial, thanks to a last minute pardon issued by Bush on December
24, 1992. Bush's pardon provided blanket amnesty to Clarridge,
Reagan's Secretary of Defense Casper Weinburger, Elliott Abrams,
a former assistant secretary of state for Inter-American affairs,
former National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, CIA officer
Alan Fiers, and CIA officer Clair George.
Unlike Clinton, Bush received no criticism
for his pardons, though they were far worse than anything Clinton
ever did. For with those pardons, Bush assured that his role
in the October Surprise, and the Iran-Contra Scandal, and many
other crimes, would never be revealed.
The moral to this story is crystal clear:
Presidents Nixon, Reagan and Bush created secret "counter-terror"
cabals within their administrations to conduct illegal operations
and harass their domestic political opponents. Under the aegis
of counter-terrorism, the FBI since then has conducted extensive
surveillance against every peace group that opposes any right
wing Administration's blatant terrorism.
Oliver North blamed Washington for losing
the Vietnam War. His hatred of the peace movement was and is
palpable, and it's no coincidence that he exploited his power
as chief of counter-terrorism to terrorize his domestic opponents.
As Scott notes, North believes that "the most pressing problem
is not in the Third World, but here at home in the struggle for
the minds of the people."
Thus, when Jack Terrell informed the
Justice Department that North was involved in drug smuggling,
North labeled Terrell a terrorist and sicced the FBI's counter-terror
unit on him. Like all the other rabid right wing ideologues presented
in this essay, Oliver North was mostly concerned about his own
personal power. But none of his abuses, or those of the Reagan
and Bush regime were ever exposed, because, as McClintock notes,
"the very notion of counter-terror as terrorism was forbidden,
while circumlocution was the norm." 16
Homeland Insecurity Continued in Part Seven:
The Last Decade
Douglas Valentine writes frequently for CounterPunch. He is the
author of The Phoenix
Program, the only comprehensive account of the CIA's torture
and assassination operation in Vietnam, as well as TDY
a chilling novel about the CIA and the drug trade.
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