errorAccording to several articles and interviews, the recent French book "Bin Laden-The Forbidden Truth", by Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie makes some stunning revelations about U.S. corporate/government interests in the oil and gas rich regions of Central Asia. Also their significance to Afghanistan, 9.11 and other terrorist acts against the U.S.
Transporting the oil and gas from Central Asia to the U.S. was a major obstacle.The preferred route was a pipeline through Turkmenistan, across western Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Indian Ocean. Co-author Brisard spoke extensively with the former FBI deputy director John O'Neill who tragically died in the World Trade Center attacks. According to a review by Julio Godoy
"Brisard claim O'Neill told them that "the main obstacles to investigate Islamic terrorism were U.S. oil corporate interests and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it".
The two claim the U.S. government's main objective in Afghanistan was to consolidate the position of the Taliban regime to obtain access to the oil and gas reserves in Central Asia.
"They affirm that until August, the U.S. government saw the Taliban regime "as a source of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of an oil pipeline across Central Asia", from the rich oilfields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean.
"At one moment during the negotiations, the U.S. representatives told the Taliban, 'either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs'," Brisard said in an interview in Paris."
Below is the piece from "The Village Voice" and other quotes from articles found on the Internet about the staggering statements made by the authors.
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Thank you. Gavin Phillips.
The Irish Times
US efforts to make peacesummed up by 'oil'
Source
ANALYSIS: The fate of John O'Neill, the Irish-American FBI
agent who for years led US investigations into Osama bin
Laden's al-Qaeda network, is the most chilling revelation in the
book Bin Laden: The Hidden Truth, published in Paris this
week.
O'Neill investigated the bombings of the World Trade Centre in
1993, a US base in Saudi Arabia in 1996, the US embassies in
Nairobi and Dar-Es-Salaam in 1998, and the USS Cole last year.
Jean-Charles Brisard, who wrote a report on bin Laden's
finances for the French intelligence agency DST and is co-author
of Hidden Truth, met O'Neill several times last summer. He
complained bitterly that the US State Department - and behind it
the oil lobby who make up President Bush's entourage - blocked
attempts to prove bin Laden's guilt.
World Socialist Web Site
US planned war in Afghanistan long before
September 11
20 November 2001
Source
Further light on secret contacts between the Bush administration and the
Taliban regime is shed by a book released November 15 in France, entitled
Bin Laden, the Forbidden Truth, written by Jean-Charles Brisard and
Guillaume Dasquie. Brisard is a former French secret service agent, author
of a previous report on bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network, and former director
of strategy for the French corporation Vivendi, while Dasquie is an
investigative journalist.
The two French authors write that the Bush administration was willing to
accept the Taliban regime, despite the charges of sponsoring terrorism, if it
cooperated with plans for the development of the oil resources of Central
Asia.
By way of corroboration, one should note the curious fact that neither the
Clinton administration nor the Bush administration ever placed Afghanistan
on the official State Department list of states charged with sponsoring
terrorism, despite the acknowledged presence of Osama bin Laden as a guest
of the Taliban regime. Such a designation would have made it impossible for
an American oil or construction company to sign a deal with Kabul for a
pipeline to the Central Asian oil and gas fields.
New Book Details Bush/Big Oil Negotiations With Taliban Before WTC
By TOP VIEW
Source
Fact: The World Trade Center (WTC) was bombed right AFTER Bush-Taliban oil pipeline talks soured. The talks
soured right AFTER Bush/Big Oil threatened Taliban to take their offer or receive a "carpet of bombs."
Bush-Cheney/Big Oil and Afghanistan's Taliban negotiated for MONTHS over running a Caspian Sea oil pipeline
through Afghanistan. Talks began in February and continued right on until only one MONTH before New York City's
World Trade Center towers were demolished.
Knock me down with a feather, even CNN mentions it in an interview. Gavin.
AMERICAN MORNING WITH PAULA ZAHN
Source
Explosive New Book Published in France Alleges that U.S. Was in
Negotiations to Do a Deal with Taliban
Aired January 8, 2002 - 07:34 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS
FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL
FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Time to check in with ambassador-in-
residence, Richard Butler, this morning. An explosive new book published in
France alleges that the United States was in negotiations to do a deal with the
Taliban for an oil pipeline in Afghanistan.
The Village Voice
Mondo Washington
by James Ridgeway
Paris interviews and translation by Sandra Bisin
Source
Paris Reporters Say Bush Threatened War Last Summer
The French Connection
ar from the American media machine, two French
authors have released a report outlining U.S. attempts
to finesse the issue of Osama bin Laden long before Al
Qaeda struck on September 11. Based on extensive
firsthand reporting, Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume
Dasquié write in their book, Bin Laden: The Forbidden
Truth, that the Bush administration went so far as to
consider waging war against Afghanistan's ruling
Taliban last summer. Brisard and Dasquié argue the
U.S. cared more about getting access to the region's oil
than about getting the head of Osama bin Laden.
Now thousands of U.S. citizens are dead and Al Qaeda
is on the run. Dasquié tells the Voice he doubts the
group will last "more than a few weeks." The journalist
describes bin Laden's military leaders as mostly former
members of the Egyptian special forces who joined with
the Saudi exile in 1992 and 1993 during fighting in
Sudan. Al Qaeda commanders and troops are "the
military product of a religious deviance," he says,
warning that ending the network "won't solve anything
because the Saudi charities and other organizations tied
to the clerics will go on pumping out the money. The
problem is their fundamentalism."
Brisard, who has run Vivendi International's economic
intelligence service, prepared the West's first report on
Al Qaeda back in 1997, at the request of the French
government. Along with Dasquié, he now argues the
FBI's efforts to get to the bottom of bin Laden's terror
outfit—which bombed two American embassies in Africa
in 1998—were blocked by the Saudi royal family and
the big oil companies, which were hungry for the
region's crude reserves.
The FBI press office had no comment on the book, and
the State Department has steadily denied having any
negotiations with the Taliban, which had no diplomatic
standing in the U.S. But the two authors think highly of
the FBI agents who were working on counterterrorism,
saying they often had excellent informants.
That's not to say progress was great. When an FBI
agent would turn up to do an interview, the Saudis
would step in with their own bizarre behavior. "We
uncovered incredible things," Dasquié tells the Voice.
"Investigators would arrive to find that key witnesses
they were about to interrogate had been beheaded the
day before." In the end, he says, the West "always
considered Saudi Arabia as a partner that we absolutely
and systematically had to protect."
The book also reveals a portrait of U.S. policy toward
the Taliban that differs sharply from the one usually held up for the American public
but coincides with that of the Taliban's unofficial emissary in the U.S., Laili Helms,
the niece of the former CIA head (see "The Accidental Operative," Voice, June 19,
2001). Helms described one incident after another in which, she claimed, the
Taliban agreed to give up bin Laden to the U.S., only to be rebuffed by the State
Department. On one occasion, she said, the Taliban agreed to give the U.S.
coordinates for his campsite, leaving enough time so the Yanks could whack Al
Qaeda's leader with a missile before he moved. The proposal, she claims, was
nixed. The State Department denied receiving any such offer.
Helms also related an incident when Prince Turki, then the head of Saudi
intelligence, flew to Kabul to negotiate bin Laden's arrest. Turki, according to
Helms's account of the story, wanted bin Laden murdered on Afghan soil. If he were
killed there, then the Saudi royal family needn't face the embarrassment of airing
their dirty linen in an open trial. The Taliban refused, and Turki returned home
empty-handed.
Brisard and Dasquié characterize the U.S. as playing a clumsy footsie with the
Taliban, with diplomacy unfolding in a series of bizarre fits and starts. By the late
1990s, the writers claim, diplomacy was run on different levels. One channel went
from the UN Security Council to Kabul. Meanwhile, the State Department conducted
its own bilateral negotiations. From the start, the U.S. favored a sort of covert
support for the Taliban, in hopes that sooner or later the one-eyed Supreme Leader
Mullah Mohammed Omar could be prevailed upon to break ties with bin Laden so
the West could get on with its pipeline and other business interests.
However, this approach came to a screaming halt in September 1997, when
European Union commissioner Emma Bonino paid an official visit to Kabul, where
the Taliban arrested her for filming the conditions in a women's hospital. Their
outrageous actions made it difficult for the West to appear at all friendly with the
Taliban. In reality, since they had all the power in this Stalinized regime, nobody
ever stopped dealing with them. It's just that the trail became more submerged. Bin
Laden then began his potent offensives, attacking the diplomatic posts and the USS
Cole.
In general, according to the authors, the U.S. line on the Taliban had gone
something like this: "OK, they are officially a bit wild, but let's not go overboard.
Eventually we can make them acceptable." Under Clinton, few thought they could
ever deal with the Taliban, and some wanted to pile on sanctions. But under Bush,
talks started up once more. The purpose was legitimate at the start, Brisard notes.
"It was for the U.S. to negotiate that bin Laden be given to them," he says. "Then it
shifted to the point where advisers thought that the economic arguments would
make the difference with the Taliban and accelerate the negotiations. They started
to put the oil subsidies that would be given to the Taliban on the table. At the end of
July, the negotiations broke down, because the U.S. threatened to go to war with
the Taliban if they didn't accept the deal."
Dasquié, too, notes the role of the oil industry in this conflict. "Most of the big
names of the Bush administration have a political culture developed in Big
Oil—Cheney with Halliburton, Rice at Chevron," he says. "Donald Evans also came
from a big oil company." This shift from the Clinton era took effect quickly. In
March 2001, a personal representative of Supreme Leader Omar came to
Washington. In his mission to the nation's capital, he was accompanied by Helms.
It should be noted here that the Taliban, through a policy of coercion, had stopped
farmers from growing opium poppies—a major goal of both the Clinton and Bush
drug wars. In certain quarters this was taken as a sign of their coming around to
deal with the U.S. What nobody seemed to know, or at least appreciate at the time,
was that bin Laden had put so much money into Afghanistan that he virtually owned
the regime. "We must understand that Mullah Omar was a peasant and illiterate,"
says Brisard, "so the person giving substance to the religious message of the
Taliban regime is Osama bin Laden. He is the person who brings life to and finances
the Taliban economy."
The way the French writers see it, the most significant factor in Central Asia is not a
revived cold war between Russia and the U.S. over influence in the former Soviet
republics, but the rise of Iran. Here the irony is that the U.S. embraced Saudi
Arabia as a counterbalance against the Shiites in Iran. Now the tables are turned.
FBI investigations showed the connection between the Saudi clergy and the
September terrorist attacks. Gradually the U.S. has begun to distance itself from
the Saudis. And at the same time, it has begun to warm to Iran, whose help the
U.S. suddenly needs.
"During the dark years of Taliban power, their principal opponent in western
Afghanistan was Iran," Dasquié says. "It played a very important part in supporting
the Afghan resistance." Indeed, it was Shiite Iran that financed dissidents against
the Taliban. When the crisis started, the Swiss Embassy in Tehran organized
meetings between American State Department officials and Iranian president
Mohammed Khatami's government.
In the end, the authors say Al Qaeda was a special case in that it was set up to be a
nexus for other fundamentalist networks. Through bin Laden, it provides the
financing to attract such groups as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and the Ramata I
Islamya. "There are a lot of fundamentalist movements around the world, but no
one like Al Qaeda, because it was meant to be a kind of central point, a crossroads,
the focus of fundamentalist movements," says Dasquié. "But if tomorrow Al Qaeda
disappears, many little movements can replace it. All that is necessary is to get the
support and benediction of the Saudi clergy."