Posted on 03/15/2015 9:02:48 AM PDT by Theoria
In the spring of 2010, Afghan officials struck a deal to free an Afghan diplomat held hostage by Al Qaeda. But the price was steep — $5 million — and senior security officials were scrambling to come up with the money.
They first turned to a secret fund that the Central Intelligence Agency bankrolled with monthly cash deliveries to the presidential palace in Kabul, according to several Afghan officials involved in the episode. The Afghan government, they said, had already squirreled away about $1 million from that fund.
Within weeks, that money and $4 million more provided from other countries was handed over to Al Qaeda, replenishing its coffers after a relentless C.I.A. campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan had decimated the militant network’s upper ranks.
“God blessed us with a good amount of money this month,” Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, the group’s general manager, wrote in a letter to Osama bin Laden in June 2010, noting that the cash would be used for weapons and other operational needs.
Bin Laden urged caution, fearing the Americans knew about the payment and had laced the cash with radiation or poison, or were tracking it. “There is a possibility — not a very strong one — that the Americans are aware of the money delivery,” he wrote back, “and that they accepted the arrangement of the payment on the basis that the money will be moving under air surveillance.”
The C.I.A.’s contribution to Qaeda’s bottom line, though, was no well-laid trap. It was just another in a long list of examples of how the United States, largely because of poor oversight and loose financial controls, has sometimes inadvertently financed the very militants it is fighting.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
OBAMA’s CIA, OBAMA’s NSA, OBAMA’s FBI, DHS, TSA, ATF, DOS and DOJ.
Of course. The head of the CIA is a Muslim.
Everything is working the way it was intended to work.
Where did that $6,000,000,000 “missing” from the State Department go to? Hillary knows.
I wonder if the IRS has had some serious fraud? Actually, if you know about recent news, this should not be hard to answer at all.
At least with Bush “goof-ups,” they sometimes helped the US. This Regime only “goofs” in one direction - against the US. Maybe now we know why Osama was killed...
$5m may seem like a lot, but its nothing compared to $5 BILLION
Poorly written New York Times irrelevant diversion.
Generally the major papers have people who at least write their yellow journalism coherently and clearly.
But the NY Times, maybe not so much.
OMG!!!Most likely with Obama’s BLESSING!!
THAT needs to be on EVERY THREAD!!!
At the very least, Huma knows.
American foreign policy has been looting the American treasure for many decades.
You are saying Leon Payette is a Muslim? He was CIA- director in 2010.
$5 BILLION means there was more to the exchange than just an exchange. Not that we didn’t already suspect it but what exactly. Perhaps just an excuse for hussein to aid and abet our enemies.
The answers are on her server...oh, about the electrical fire last month in her basement...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.