Posted on 10/19/2001 1:07:53 PM PDT by freedomnews
How Clinton Turned U.S. Intelligence Into a Cash Cow
Charles R. Smith
Thursday, Oct. 18, 2001
In 1993, terrorists linked to Osama bin Laden bombed the World Trade Center in New York City. In response, Bill Clinton turned the massive resources of the U.S.
intelligence community away from national security and instead focused on commercial espionage.
The Clinton administration did not consider Russia, China or Osama bin Laden to be a threat against the United States. Instead, Bill Clinton considered the economic threat of losing global contracts to our allies in Europe to be the greatest evil.
The Clinton emphasis on commercial espionage became public in 1994 when then CIA Director John Deutch announced that electronic intercepts of a Saudi prince gave Boeing a major contract.
According to Deutch, the National Security Agency had recorded phone calls between a Saudi prince and European aircraft manufacturer Airbus. The NSA intercepts suggested the Saudi prince was being bribed by Airbus over a multibillion-dollar airliner contract.
Deutch revealed to NBC news that the NSA recordings were provided to the Saudi government, which then promptly arrested the prince and awarded the billion-dollar contract to Boeing.
Boeing was not the only U.S. firm to take advantage of commercial espionage data provided by the Clinton administration. Another heavily documented case involves U.S. electronics maker Motorola and exports to China. This case, however, points directly at Bill Clinton.
USA v. UK -- The Battle of Bucks
In 1993, Motorola hired Clinton national security advisor Dr. Richard Barth to be a lobbyist inside Washington. Barth, who then worked alongside now CIA Director George Tenet, was a key member of the Clinton NSC White House staff. Barth was so important that Tenet wrote to him personally, trying to convince Barth to stay inside the White House.
"Barthman. Why are you leaving me?" asked Tenet in a 1993 White House e-mail. "Do you want my job? My wife? My 1974 Camaro? This place will suck eggs without you to keep me sane."
Despite the emotional appeal by George Tenet, Barth left the White House to take a six-figure job with Motorola. In 1994, Barth returned to the White House, this time as a Motorola employee. Interestingly, Barth now sought to export sophisticated electronic scrambling devices to China.
"European firms have for a number of months been able to market and sell encryption in China as a result of a decision taken by the UK intelligence agency, GCHQ," wrote Barth in a 1994 letter directed to the White House.
"I understand that our National Security Agency is aware of this change in GCHQ's position and would support our request for a change in US requirements for export licenses for China. The NSA has agreed that there should be a 'level playing field' in regard to China."
The Barth letter clearly illustrates that the Clinton administration was involved in an intelligence food fight with our allies in Europe. The UK intelligence agency GCHQ was now pitted against its U.S. counterpart, the NSA, in an export battle for bucks. Instead of cooperation in tracking known terrorists and global threats, the two agencies were now fighting each other at the behest of corporate profiteers.
NSA v. GCHQ
Most Americans do not even know of the National Security Agency, much less the super-secret British GCHQ. I find it interesting indeed that the National Security Agency, well known for keeping its mouth shut, would spill its guts to an ex-NSC member employed in the commercial sector.
How did Barth know British GCHQ had changed its position? Who in the NSA told him there should be a "level playing field" for Motorola exports to China? How did Barth obtain this data for his company? No one in the NSA, GCHQ or Motorola will say, and Barth has so far declined to be interviewed.
The battle between Atlantic allies continued through 1994 and well into 1995. The documents from Barth clearly show that Motorola sought to export more than just scrambled radios to communist China. Barth's request included radiation-hardened electronics that are quite useful in nuclear combat.
Barth's correspondence also shows that President Clinton was directly involved.
"This is to request that your office initiate action to obtain a waiver from requirements for individual export license notifications to Congress for wireless mobile communications systems containing encryption for China," wrote Barth in a letter addressed to the State Department, dated Nov. 23, 1994.
"Such a waiver was issued by the President in September of this year for civilian satellite systems and encrypted products for use by American firms operating in China. Finally, while we now are not yet applying for licenses for encrypted systems for satellite positioning, we may within months be applying for such licenses for our IRIDIUM systems," noted Barth in his letter.
Barth's letter noteed that Motorola sought to export sophisticated scrambled satellite control systems to Beijing, the same kind of hardened electronics that are now installed inside Chinese nuclear bombs aimed at America.
Yet, Motorola had far more than Barth and the NSA inside the Clinton White House.
Motorola's CEO flew with Ron Brown on a Far East trade mission in 1994. Motorola's Hong Kong VP had coffee in the White House in 1996 with President Clinton.
In fact, Motorola's CEO had dinner with Chinese President Jiang Zemin and President Clinton inside the White House.
No small company could match the high-paying lobby jobs, the Commerce trips to China, the inside information from U.S. and British intelligence, the White House coffees or the state dinners.
Motorola played a game of musical chairs, with the players occasionally changing titles on six-figure jobs as they rotated from industry to bureaucracy to political staff and back again.
Presidential Waiver
Yet, there is final proof that corporate profits overrode global national security inside the previous administration. The Motorola story ends on a classic Clinton note, with a single letter written to Commerce Secretary Ron Brown.
"Dear Ron," wrote Motorola CEO Gary Tooker in July 1995. "I am writing to thank you and some key members of the Commerce Department for your assistance in obtaining the Presidential waiver for encryption export sales to China."
The 1995 Motorola letter is proof positive that Bill Clinton is directly responsible for the present-day U.S. intelligence disaster. Bill Clinton turned America's spy network into a personal cash cow, aimed at pleasing big-dollar contributors instead of protecting the free world.
If any single person is responsible for the sad state of our NSA and CIA today, it is Bill Clinton.
Surely you forgot the "sarcasm off" -- if not, then get serious.
News/Current Events
Source: The Conservative Majority
Published: Oct. 18, 2001 Author: Republican_Strategist
Posted on 10/18/01 11:30 PM Pacific by
Republican_Strategist
Now I wanted to bring something to your attention something that I think hasn’t received any real coverage by the media.
I don’t want to sound too presumptuous, but it would seem that Bill Clinton authorized and created the terrorist Taliban group and backed them from 1994 to 1997. It seems he and his administration had a sympathetic view of the Taliban seizing power in Afghanistan.
A certain book coincidentally called ‘Taliban’ may have some information on the Clinton administration’s support of the Taliban.
The author is one Ahmed Rashid. The primary source was Dana Rohrabacher, a representative and a republican in California has been very vocal about this very thing and has been critical of this long before the Sept. 11th attacks.
According to Rohrabacher, the Clinton administration played a role in creating the Taliban by giving a ‘green light’ to Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and other gulf states to fund, direct, and organize the Taliban. Rohrabacher said at one point on the house floor in a Sept. 17th [1999] speech that the Clinton administration promised Pakistan and Saudi Arabia that it wouldn’t overthrow the Taliban.
The UPI reported it.
Also he made all to familiar accusations during the past eight years. He accused a department; the state department to be exact, of key withholding documents that would show the Clinton administration supported the terrorist Taliban movement and its seizure of power in Afghanistan.
The official he blamed specifically was assistant secretary at that time, one Karl Inderfurth.
Furthermore it seems one Robin Raphel, Clinton’s assistant secretary of state for south Asia affairs until mid-1997, is believed to be instrumental in the rise of the Taliban. She lived in Pakistan for a number of years and her husband was U.S. ambassador to that country.
He was killed in a bombing that also removed a Pakistani dictator.
One report suggested that several Islamic states expressed the belief that Raphel and other U.S. officials along with Afghans in the U.S. were on the payroll of Unocal’s payroll. They cite that she provided a fiery defense of Unocal and especially the Taliban in negotiations with the Afghanistan government.
During such an encounter, Raphel's words -- in effect asking the government to "give it up" -- were so insulting that Ahmad Shah Masood, Afghanistan's two-decade national resistance leader, threw down his trademark pakol cap, pointed to it and said, "I will continue to defend Afghanistan even if I control no more land than the size of this cap!"
It seems this teeth-shattering reply and unexpected blow to Raphel was the last straw. According to Afghan government intelligence sources, soon after this heated negotiation session the Taliban -- newly supplied with night-vision instruments, satellite maps, and other sophisticated gear -- aided by hundreds of Arab militants, Pakistani extremists and camouflaged Pakistan Army regulars stormed into Jalalabad and then into the Afghan capital.
Suffice it to say that during both terms in office, Clinton and his State Department were pulling for a Taliban military victory.
Clinton administration jubilation at such a victory was mainly rooted in its support of oil and gas pipelines. Dana Rohrabacher in his 19 May 2000 interview with Omaid Weekly accused the Clinton administration of providing covert support to the Taliban.
FYI***Hidy***
Those people who are just infatuated with Clinton know they can’t defend such a thing and with that they merely seek to counter balance it with Reagan’s support of Afghan fighters in their fight with the Soviets. If anything they in some way feel they can balance a Clinton failure with a brilliant Reagan success.
Reagan took an action that crippled our worst enemy, the Soviet Union, and that played a crucial role in the downfall of the Soviet Union.
As for Bin Laden, he worked closely with Pakistani military officials and Saudi intelligence officials, but he did not have a relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency, which also supported the Afghan resistance. Milt Bearden, the CIA station chief in Pakistan from 1986 to 1989, denied cooperating with bin Laden, but he knew of his efforts.
Bin Laden was there using his family’s 5 billion dollar fortune and construction business.
It seems Bin Laden served primarily as a fund-raiser and recruiter who publicized the jihad and helped transport Arab volunteers to Afghanistan. He became more involved in the logistics of supporting the jihad, bringing earth-moving equipment from his family’s construction company to carve out roads and bunkers in the rugged terrain of eastern Afghanistan along the border with Pakistan.
It is important to point out he became a terrorist threat during the Clinton administration, which missed at least two key opportunities to get him.
As for the stinger missiles we supplied to Afghanistan, the U.S. had a buyback program. It was estimated that we supplied them with over a thousand.
Out of that we managed to by some 450 of them, plus you have to minus the ones used and it would seem that there were very few left. Then factoring in time and deterioration, it would seem unlikely that there are any operable stingers left supplied by the U.S.
So as we now began to introduce troops in Afghanistan, we must be keenly aware of the Clinton administration’s support of the terrorist Taliban, we must be aware of the Clinton administration’s failure to capture or ‘take out’ Bin Laden on two occasions, and we must stand for people deflecting from these facts by dredging up Reagan’s overwhelming success in the region.
1 posted on 10/18/01 11:30 PM Pacific by Republican_Strategist
The Clinton administration did not consider Russia, China or Osama bin Laden to be a threat against the United States. Instead, Bill Clinton considered the economic threat of losing global contracts to our allies in Europe to be the greatest evil.This article is a joke. Bush is treating Russia and China as allies and has given the Taliban tens of millions of dollars in his own administration. So, can the same accusation be made of him?
Tenet certainly has a way with words. Perhaps he could write for MTV.
The money that went to the Taliban from Bush was given under the stipulation that the Taliban stop the growth of poppy in Afghanistan. See, any Faustian deal is ok, so long as the drug wars provide the semblance of a rational foreign policy.
BTW, the money given to the Taliban under the Bush administration was done so with the blessing, if not with outright political leverage, of esteemed members of the Senate (including Leahey, Clinton, and Schumer) who drafted and letter to Colin Powell pressurign the State Dept. to send the money. Powell supposedly would only send the money upon destruction of the poppy crop. A couple of threads on FR went over these details in the immediate aftermath of the 9-11 attacks. Still, doesn't make the support of the Taliban anymore palatable, even though it was clearly a "bipartisan" effort.
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.