“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.” And yet the CIA cash kept flowing to Afghanistan, and probably still does.
“C.I.A. Cash Ended Up in Coffers of Al Qaeda,” by Matthew Rosenberg, New York Times, March 14, 2015:
WASHINGTON — 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.
While refusing to pay ransoms for Americans kidnapped by Al Qaeda, the Taliban or, more recently, the Islamic State, the United States has spent hundreds of billions of dollars over the last decade at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, some of which has been siphoned off to enemy fighters.
The letters about the 2010 ransom were included in correspondence between Bin Laden and Mr. Rahman that was submitted as evidence by federal prosecutors at the Brooklyn trial of Abid Naseer, a Pakistani Qaeda operative who was convicted this month of supporting terrorism and conspiring to bomb a British shopping center.
The letters were unearthed from the cache of computers and documents seized by Navy SEALs during the 2011 raid in which Bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and had been classified until introduced as evidence at the trial.
Details of the C.I.A.’s previously unreported contribution to the ransom demanded by Al Qaeda were drawn from the letters and from interviews with Afghan and Western officials speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. The C.I.A. declined to comment….
mortimer says
Obama and Clinton have been funding the enemy. This is one of the greatest blunders in history.
Jerry says
It’s only fair because the Qatar Government was funding the election and re-election of HBO from Jihaddi funds.
Linde Barrera says
To add further insult to this disgusting issue, former congressman Ron Paul from Texas said last month, according to The Huff Post that “members of the Black Caucus in Congress opposed war because they wanted to spend money on food stamps instead.” Well Mr Paul, so would I. And given the idiots in the CIA carrying out the policies of the idiots in Congress to pay millions of US dollars for kidnapped leaders from Afghanistan and Iraq by those creepy radical, extremist Islamist terror groups, food stamps is the clear winner in my book over the other alternative. I am wondering if our lawmakers and the government agency employees like the CIA are made up of narcissistic low IQ individuals.
Vostro says
You would actually like to throw more millions into the food stamp program? It needs to be scaled back if anything. Granted, it is a safety net for many Americans that need it, but has turned a segment of our society into dependent leeches who make a career out of living off of hard working people. A job training program, perhaps?
katherine says
All those pitiful helpless Muslim immigrants that Obama is importing require sustenance while they prepare for the final war against America.
What better way is there other than tax-financed social benefits including universal medical insurance built-in ?
M S case says
Yes the food stamp program is not what it used to be…no stamps just credit cards….a useful tool in it’s time but much overworked…tools do wear out you know.
Lioness says
America: your tax dollars at work. Every time you see a deduction from your paycheque, know that it goes to a Muslim who wants to kill you. Doesn’t it make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside? But don’t worry: Obama just assured you that we are not at war with Islam, so it’s all good. He just neglected to mention that Islam is at war with us.
Darren says
The hits just keep on coming for the C.i.A. More proof that it isn’t just the DMV where the mantra is good enough for government work. I had to get something renewed and I forget exactly what it was but the paper work or something, maybe I wrote down something in the wrong box, anyway the guy says it’s good enough for government work and laughed. I was happy he did since I would have having to refill out the form, but this is the attitude of a large portion of the government. They know they can’t get fired and feel like they are untouchable, such attitudes breed laziness and incompetence.
Back to the original story, you think that’s bad it’s even worse than you imagine. We even give Al Qaeda and the Taliban military contracts, when trying to discontinue this practice, due process rights are stated. My theory is since the real unemployment rate is much higher than stated, we wanted to say we created more jobs than we did, so we can add the hard working members of the Taliban and Al Qaeda to Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report. Actually I wish government workers worked as hard as Al Qaeda and the Taliban, these guys put in lots of over time and don’t get many vacation days, can you say that about your average government worker? The most inefficient construct ever created by man was government.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-07-30/al-qaeda-backers-found-with-u-s-contracts-in-afghanistan
Darren says
Typo I meant to say I would have hated to fill out the form again.
Green Eggs & Ham says
I used to work for the top people in Dept of Anti-Social Services and you would not believe the shit that went on there, and I’m not talking about the clients. When I started pointing it out to county admins I was conveniently “laid off”, along with a few other “troublemakers”.
pongidae rex says
The issue really is not Islam. The issue is the unprecedented collapse of Western governance and leadership.