I don't want to get into a pissing match, again, over Milo. Just a few points, though. I take the imperial maneuvers of the Big Powers, their military and intelligence apparatuses, esp. What, Herman and the others on that sector of the left, continue to refuse to do, is critique the Milosevic regime, or others that under cover of a demogogic anti-NWO "anti-imperialism", that stand mostly for corruption, repression and war.
I think, what I said was, "extremely dubious, " was high-level, KLA involvement in drug running, not that I doubted, German and US intelligence support for the KLA. The story from the London Times- old news. William Walker, scum in El Savador, scum in Pristina.
As for the CIA controlling them, read the CIA Inspector General report on CIA/Contra drug running, and see the bit more complicated situation for an example of how irregular forces that get US financing and other forms of support, carry out their own policies as much, as they carry out orders from Langley, Virginia. (Perhaps, what I resent about these kinda flame wars, is the insinuation that those that dissent from the unqualified opposition to NATO, are somehow dupes of imperialism. If the "deTollenaereites" refrain from calling folks like me that, I'll try not to call them Stalinists or apologists for bureaucratic, nationalist thieves!)
Anyway, as a general principle I think it wise not to ascribe all powerful, all knowing motives, means and ends to political forces, like the State Dept. and the CIA, that any study of policy making with archival docs, like the inumerable books on the Vietnam War and LBJ, show tons of internal fractures among the ruling elites. Structuralist theories that deny the influence of intra-elite divisions, or that minimize the impact that protest movements can make from the outside, seem more akin to religious or moral arguments in the realm of good vs. evil, rather than the more secular realm that involves argumentation and strategic thought.
Michael Pugliese, Social Imperialist Running Dog, "Woof, Woof!"
----- Original Message ----- From: Herman de Tollenaere To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com ; marxist at egroups.com ; dwalls at igc.org ; dsanet at quantum.sdsu.edu ; Discussion of right-wing influences on the left Sent: Wednesday, May 17, 2000 1:36 PM Subject: dsanet: KLA/CIA [was: Re ... MICHEL CHOSSUDOVSKY]
At 10:11 17-5-2000 -0700, Michael Pugliese wrote/quoted [at least for the right-left list, for at least the second time]:
Some on the left claim that the KLA was already [in 1998] being armed by U.S. and German intelligence,
A KLA officer, interviewed for the recent BBC documentary film "Moral Combat": the KLA was "controlled" by the CIA already since 1996 [two years earlier]
but the evidence is extremely dubious
Is it really? See below, from: March 12 2000, Sunday Times [why they did not publish this DURING the 1999 war? Dumb question. Why are European secret services not mentioned? Just theoretically: might there be any distant connection with Tony Blair's very recent shift from buying US to buying European weapons (Dutch NRC daily, 17 May 2000)?]:
CIA aided Kosovo guerrilla army Tom Walker and Aidan Laverty AMERICAN intelligence agents have admitted they helped to train the Kosovo Liberation Army before Nato's bombing of Yugoslavia. The disclosure angered some European diplomats, who said this had undermined moves for a political solution to the conflict between Serbs and Albanians. Central Intelligence Agency officers were ceasefire monitors in Kosovo in 1998 and 1999, developing ties with the KLA and giving American military training manuals and field advice on fighting the Yugoslav army and Serbian police. When the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which co-ordinated the monitoring, left Kosovo a week before airstrikes began a year ago, many of its satellite telephones and global positioning systems were secretly handed to the KLA, ensuring that guerrilla commanders could stay in touch with Nato and Washington. Several KLA leaders had the mobile phone number of General Wesley Clark, the Nato commander. European diplomats then working for the OSCE claim it was betrayed by an American policy that made airstrikes inevitable. Some have questioned the motives and loyalties of William Walker, the American OSCE head of mission. "The American agenda consisted of their diplomatic observers, aka the CIA, operating on completely different terms to the rest of Europe and the OSCE," said a European envoy. Several Americans who were directly involved in CIA activities or close to them have spoken to the makers of Moral Combat, a documentary to be broadcast on BBC2 tonight, and to The Sunday Times about their clandestine roles. Walker dismissed suggestions that he had wanted war in Kosovo, but admitted the CIA was almost certainly involved in the countdown to airstrikes. Initially some "diplomatic observers" arrived, followed in October by a much larger group that was eventually swallowed up into the OSCE's "Kosovo Verification Mission". Walker said: "Overnight we went from having a handful of people to 130 or more. Could the agency have put them in at that point? Sure they could. It's their job. But nobody told me." Walker, who was nominated by Madeleine Albright, the American secretary of state, was intensely disliked by Belgrade. He had worked briefly for the United Nations in Croatia. Ten years earlier he was the American ambassador to El Salvador when Washington was helping the government there to suppress leftist rebels while supporting the contra guerrillas against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Some European diplomats in Pristina, Kosovo's capital, concluded from Walker's background that he was inextricably linked with the CIA. The picture was muddied by the continued separation of American "diplomatic observers" from the mission. The CIA sources who have now broken their silence say the diplomatic observers were more closely connected to the agency. "It was a CIA front, gathering intelligence on the KLA's arms and leadership," said one. Another agent, who said he felt he had been "suckered in" by an organisation that has run amok in post-war Kosovo, said: "I'd tell them which hill to avoid, which wood to go behind, that sort of thing." The KLA has admitted its long-standing links with American and European intelligence organisations. Shaban Shala, a KLA commander now involved in attempts to destabilise majority Albanian villages beyond Kosovo's border in Serbia proper, claimed he had met British, American and Swiss agents in northern Albania in 1996. Belgrade has alleged the CIA also helped to arm the KLA, but this was denied by the guerrillas and agency sources. "It was purely the Albanian diaspora helping their brothers," said Florin Krasniqi, a New York builder and one of the KLA's biggest financiers. He described how sniper rifles were exported from America using a loophole in federal law that allowed them to be shipped to "hunting clubs". Armour-piercing Barratt rifles made their way to the KLA's "hunting club" in Albania. Agim Ceku, the KLA commander in the latter stages of the conflict, had established American contacts through his work in the Croatian army, which had been modernised with the help of Military Professional Resources Inc, an American [CIA linked] company specialising in military training and procurement. This company's personnel were in Kosovo, along with others from a similar company, Dyncorps, that helped in the American-backed programme for the Bosnian army.
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