The other day our friend Metem brought to my attention a story that had made it to the Project Censored list, ‘US Funds & Supports Taliban.’ Here are two excerpts from the introduction which are related to our coverage of the mysterious helicopter activities in northern Afghanistan.

In a continuous flow of money, American tax dollars end up paying members of the Taliban and funding a volatile environment in Afghanistan. Private contractors pay insurgents with the hope of attaining the very safety they are contracted to provide. Concurrently, US soldiers pay at checkpoints run by suspected insurgents in order to get safe passage. In some cases, Afghan companies run by former Taliban members, like President Hamid Karzai’s cousin, are protecting the passage of American soldiers. The funding of the insurgents, along with rumors of American helicopters ferrying Taliban members in Afghanistan, has led to widespread distrust of American forces. In the meantime, the US taxpayer’s dollar continues to fund insurgents to protect American troops so they can fight insurgents.

Ahmad Rate Popal is a grand example of how those who controlled Afghanistan under Taliban rule are still controlling Afghanistan today and being paid by US tax dollars. Popal, who served as interpreter at one of the ruling Taliban’s last press conferences, is greatly increasing his wealth through the US war in Afghanistan. In 1988, he was charged with conspiring to import heroin into the United States. He was released from prison in 1997. Popal’s cousin is Afghanistan’s President Karzai. Popal and his brother Rashid (who pleaded guilty in 1996 to a separate heroin charge) control the Watan Group in Afghanistan, which is a consortium engaged in many different fields of business. One of Watan’s enterprises is to protect convoys of Afghan trucks heading from Kabul to Kandahar, carrying American supplies. Popal is one example of the virtual carnival of improbable characters and shady connections, with former CIA officials and ex-military officers in Afghanistan joining hands with former Taliban members and mujahideen to collect US government funds in the name of the war effort.

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Okay, that’s what the article is about but it isn’t what got my attention. Here is what I’m getting at:

An example of these contracts are those granted to the NCL Holdings in Afghanistan run by Hamed Wardak, the young American son of Afghanistan’s current defense minister, General Abdul Rahim Wardak. NCL is a small firm that was awarded a US military logistics contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Despite the fact that the firm only operates in Afghanistan, Wardak incorporated NCL in the United States early in 2007, due to his connections there.

On NCL’s advisory board is Milton Bearden, a well-known former CIA officer who in 2009 was introduced by Senator John Kerry as “a legendary former CIA case officer and a clearheaded thinker and writer.” Bearden is an incredible asset to a small defense contracting firm. Wardak was able to get a contract for Host Nation Trucking despite having no apparent trucking experience. The contract is aimed at handling the bulk of US trucking in Afghanistan, bringing supplies to bases and remote outposts throughout Afghanistan. At first the contract was small, but very quickly it expanded by 600 percent, making it a gargantuan contract worth $360 million. NCL had struck pure contracting gold. These profits, which only go to a very select and well-connected portion of the Afghan people, build a large amount of distrust from Afghan citizens toward American troops and those connected to them.

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And, this is the part where Project Censored for whatever reason didn’t go one step further:

Since our initial search of corporate media coverage on this issue in February 2010, finding zero coverage at that time, both the New York Times and the Washington Post have covered part of the story on their front pages. Both mentioned President Hamid Karzai’s cousin, and both acknowledged that in all likelihood money is making its way to the Taliban. Neither paper mentioned the US connection, Milton Bearden. The Washington Post covered the story on March 29, 2010, and mentioned the Nation magazine article. The New York Times story came out on June 6, 2010, acknowledging the corruption, but included the news that President Obama was addressing the issue with President Karzai. That the two stories came out two months apart, and that the US links are left out, led to the decision at Project Censored to keep this important story in the top censored stories list for the year.

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Way back when, I wrote a couple of pieces on a few of these personalities that have been totally, and intentionally, overlooked by the mainstream media and  the like. Do you remember our piece on General Wardak, his son Hamed Wardak, ex CIA operative with a fairly dubious history, and an ex- congressman in the ‘laundering’ business? Let me refresh your memory:

As the bodies in Afghanistan are piling up and the number of wounded keeps escalating, while Washington is buzzing with the long-known but selectively-buried corrupt and criminal past and present of our installed government officials there, some are cashing in on both sides, and some are paving the way to the next pot(s) of gold reserved for carpetbaggers and war-profiteers in every war or conflict. In this game there always are a few known names and faces who are publicized and who draw the spotlight, and there are those who enjoy operating and profiting quietly without drawing deserved attention and needed scrutiny. That’s how Washington’s war and conflict machine works, and that’s’ the way our foreign policy decisions are influenced and made. I am going to introduce one such character as an introduction to my upcoming longer story on this same topic. Ladies and gentlemen please meet our Neocon Ex Congressman, Don Ritter, and be informed of his new lucrative ‘Laundering Business’ in Afghanistan.

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Let’s go back to Mr. Ritter’s entrepreneurial ventures in Afghanistan. His self aggrandizing website has this to say:

“Don is the U.S. investor and Chairman of the U.S. – Afghan company that built and operates the most modern laundry and dry cleaning plant in the region to serve the population of Kabul and execute military and government contracts. He is also currently engaged in building a mountain lodge tourism industry in the Panjshir Valley, a mini-mill for steel products for the Afghan construction boom in Herat, a business development services company in Kabul and an Afghan-American prime contractor to compete for large construction contracts.”

For the real juice on Mr. Ritter’s business dealings, my highly informed sources point me to Afghanistan’s current Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak. The Afghan diaspora in DC name Wardak as one of the key figures in the highly lucrative Poppy & heroin market; albeit in hushed voices. I can’t fathom the feasibility and profitability of a laundry and dry-cleaning business in Afghanistan owned and operated by a Neocon former congressman. What is Mr. Ritter ‘laundering?’

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Please do me a favor and read the brief piece here

After that piece I wrote a much longer related piece (okay, much much longer; the usual ‘Sibel length’!) which introduced you further to General Wardak, his son-Hamed Wardak, and Ex CIA operative, Milton Bearden. Again, a few excerpts follow:

Once upon a time there was man named Milton Bearden, commonly referred to as Milt. He spent his early years in the state of Washington where his father worked on the Manhattan Project. After a few years with the US Air Force he joined the CIA in 1964.

Milt was CIA’s chosen man for their operations in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In fact, from 1986 to 1989, when our country was supporting the Mujahideen, he was one of their main men on the ground, working with this coalition of the Taliban, the Saudis and their main man Bin Laden, and the Pakistani ISI. The Director of the CIA, William Casey, was the one who appointed Milt Bearden for this task. Here is Milt’s own words describing his importance in a not very unusual ex-CIA conceited manner:

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Milt’s cushy CIA retirement and all those glowing medals must not have been enough, for he then engaged in frenzied marketing and self promotion to get himself entrenched in almost all major US networks and newspapers as a consultant, writer, advisor, and of course as a trusted source – a CIA source to provide quotes and information for scripts at the snap of a finger. He coauthored a book with New York Times reporter James Risen called The Main Enemy. Whether this kind of business arrangement, where a commonly used source partners up with a reporter, presents a conflict of interest or even could be called incestuous, is everyone else’s call.

Most interestingly Mr. Bearden seemed to have lured in the American mainstream media by presenting himself as an outspoken critique of the Bush White House Intelligence policies after the September 11 terrorists’ attack. He suddenly became a major spokesperson on ‘how we created this monster called Osama Bin Laden,’ and the nasty radical Taliban. And the mainstream media couldn’t get enough of him. Ironically, he happened to be the man after William Casey and Neocons’ Jeane Kirkpatrick’s own hearts in creating the Bin Laden monster, bolstering the radical Taliban brand of Islamism in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and kosherizing all dirty deeds as means to justify the end(s). He didn’t get those medals or promotions for nothing!

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Our General Wardak disappeared from the Afghan scene at the beginning of the civil war in the 1990s. He brought his family to the United States where he settled comfortably with enough wealth from undetermined sources, and he enrolled his son, Hamed, in Georgetown University.

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The Karzai brothers took a great interest in Wardak Junior, and he enjoyed the benefits of the Karzais’ flashy and high-flying friends. After the September 11 Terror Attacks, the Karzais made Hamed the Vice President of the Afghan-American Chamber of Commerce, which was founded by Mahmood Karzai. As I mentioned briefly in my piece, our Neocon Ex-Congressman Don Ritter happens to be the co-founder of this organization. Hamed was also appointed to an advisor’s post with President Karzai’s first Finance Minister, Ashraf Ghani. No small accomplishment for the barely 30 year old Hamed!

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Hamed Wardak’s most productive venture in tapping into the US Defense Sector Pot(s) of Gold began with joining a Washington DC contracting firm, Technologists Inc., founded by Aziz Azimi, who happened to be a very close buddy of Qayum Karzai. Here is a further detail on this by e-Ariana:

“Hamed Wardak’s new alliances proved extraordinarily advantageous as George W. Bush launched his “war on terror,” particularly with Khalilzad and Strmecki enjoying direct access to Vice-President Dick Cheney’s office.”

Do you want to check out the kind of contracts, the kind of millions, we are talking about with Technologists Inc.? Here is one for you:

Technologists, Inc., Rosslyn, Va., was awarded on Jan. 5, 2009, a $96,090,519 firm fixed price contract for the construction of an Afghanistan National Police National Training Center. Work will be performed in Maydan Wardak, Afghanistan, and is expected to be completed by Mar. 31, 2011. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. Web bids were solicited on Oct. 1, 2008, and 13 bids were received. U.S. Army Engineer District, Afghanistan, is the contracting activity (W917PM-09-C-0005).

That’s right. Just one of these contracts is worth nearly $100 million for connected Afghan carpetbaggers cashing in on wars suffered by ordinary American tax payers and US soldiers.

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Here is one of our characters who hasn’t made an appearance for several pages: Milt Bearden, the EX-CIA Rambo in Afghanistan in the 80s, the US media darling on Osama Bin Laden, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Taliban…you name it, the shrewd self promoter with books and movies:

Milt Bearden must have been pretty familiar with our General Wardak since he was on the ground in Afghanistan serving his masters at the CIA and the Whitehouse, including the great advocator of ‘use any means,’ our Godmother of Neocons, Jeane Kirkpatrick. Operation Cyclone must certainly have brought him in contact with involved Taliban Generals, including our General, Osama Bin Laden, and other key ISI operators, and his dealings must certainly have included the major heroin operations tapped into to further fund these ‘freedom fighters.’ In fact, our Spook dealt extensively with Hekmatyar, who is considered one of the biggest, if not the biggest, Heroin Operator in Afghanistan – which supplies 90% of the world’s Heroin:

“One U.S. official who had considerable dealings with Mr. Hekmatyar was Milt Bearden, who during the Soviet occupation ran the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s covert program in Afghanistan. He says Mr. Hekmatyar struck him as “quirky and paranoid.””

Thus, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that our Ex-Spook took an interest in our General’s son, and translated this interest into a close business partnership when our young and chubby Hamed Wardak got closer and closer to big Pots of Gold in Washington DC and his father made it to the Defense Minister position in Afghanistan.

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After Hamed Wardak left Technologists Inc. to go further in tapping the US Defense Contractor Gold Pots, and to set up various other front businesses in Afghanistan, many of which happen to be in security sectors, he formed a new front organization, Campaign for a US-Afghan Partnership. Guess who he appointed as the top man for the Board of this ambigious organization? That’s right, none other than our ex-spook, media supplier, Milton Bearden. Check out his glowing background listed on Hamed Wardak’s organization’s website: click here. What exactly this organization does, no one really knows, which should go as another credit to our Mr. Bearden’s CIA background in keeping things convoluted and secretive.

Rumors from the Ex-CIA community in the DC area point to another highly lucrative Wardak company paid by US tax payers, NCL, in Kabul, and hint that their buddy Milt may have been playing a major role there. Because of Mr. Bearden’s cozy relationships no one in the media has been looking for these deeper engagements and lucrative partnerships between him and Hamed Wardak.

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You can read the entire piece on Bearden-Wardak and more here. Come on Project Censored! Why not talk about this ex spook’s intimate relationship with the New York Times?! Not only has he been their revered source, but he is the partner of their top reporter. How could James Risen partner up with him (financially, in the publicity arena…), and still he and others use Bearden as their valued source and in many cases as their only source?! As for The Washington Post: this would fall within the coverage area of our infamous Walter Pincus. Yes, I’m talking about the long ago exposed Pincus from Operation Mockingbird, and the father of Pincus Junior who happens to be an attorney for the infamous Black Water (aka XE and several other nicknames).

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Operation Tajikistan

Last week I wrote a piece on the latest developments in Central Asia and the Caucasus which briefly covered the  Mysterious Helicopter Activities in Northern Afghanistan. Using a tad of common sense we checked out the strategically important neighbors in this region where these officially denied (vehemently, that is) mysterious activities took place, and one of the three countries of interest was Tajikistan. Here are a few related articles dealing with our topic and Tajikistan.

Also last week Asia Times ran the following convoluted piece on Tajikistan. The piece is filled with speculations, interpretations, and even wild guesses:

Tajikistan struggles to quell militants

As Tajik government forces continue a security sweep to crush armed groups in the eastern mountains after losing 25 soldiers in an ambush, analysts are divided on the reasons for this resurgence in militant activity.

Enquiries by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) indicate that the resistance is coming from local paramilitary forces led by guerrilla leaders from Tajikistan’s 1992-97 civil war.

Claims by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, IMU, a militant group allied with the Taliban, that it was behind the attack are probably not entirely accurate but may contain a grain of truth, as the IMU has contacts with the Tajik groups and may have sent emissaries to encourage them to rise up.

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And here is another opinion:

The Tajik Defense Ministry and the State Committee for National Security said the latest ambush was the work of a militant group led by Mirzohoja Ahmadov – a former police officer – also including the warlords Mullo Abdullo and Alloviddin Davlatov. This group, they added, had been recruiting young men for terrorist training.

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And here is another:

The story got more complicated when the IMU, believed to be based in Pakistan and Afghanistan, announced that it had carried out the attack.

This claim was made in a video recording sent to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Tajik service showing a man who identified himself as Abdufattoh Ahmadi, an IMU spokesman. In the recording, he said the attack was retaliation for Tajik government policies

such as closing mosques…

There are several other guesses and interpretations, and you can read them all here

And the following piece was written last year dealing with the same topic but a bit more ‘pure’ than the one above:

Chasing Phantoms in the Tajik Mountains

Speculation is rife that Islamic militants are once again active in the eastern mountains of Tajikistan. No one in government will confirm media reports that the military units deployed in force in the region are hunting a warlord from the 1992-97 civil war known as Mullo Abdullo, who has allegedly spent the last few years with Taleban allies in Afghanistan and more recently Pakistan.

The official version is that police are conducting a major sweep to stop the trade in opium and its derivative heroin in the Rasht valley, which cuts through inaccessible mountains and was a stronghold of opposition support throughout the civil war. According to interior ministry spokesman Mahmadullo Asadulloev, “The objective of this operation, which will continue until the end of November, is to tackle opium poppy cultivation and combat drug traffickers in the valley, 150 to 200 kilometers east of Dushanbe.”

CLASHES WITH “MUJAHEDIN”

For weeks, there was circumstantial evidence that the authorities were doing more than that – the sheer scale of the operation, reports that three policemen died in a firefight, and separately, the arrests of several former associates of the guerrilla leader now living in other parts of Tajikistan.

IWPR has spoken to a serviceman in an elite interior ministry unit that was among the first to be sent in, around May 21.

Now back in the capital Dushanbe after his unit was rotated out and replaced with fresh troops, he confirmed the government forces were in action against armed men. Officially, he said, they were indeed part of the Opium-2009 operation, but in fact their task was to patrol mountain tracks paths to intercept militants or as he called them, “mujahedin”.

This man said troops were deployed after the authorities got wind that a group of Islamic militants had infiltrated the area from Afghanistan, with which Tajikistan shares a long and in places porous border.

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Analysts in Tajikistan are now trying to figure out whether the armed men who have been sighted really are grouped around Mullo Abdullo, and if so, what they are up to in the Rasht valley.

Political expert Parviz Mullojonov explains how hard it is to establish facts out of the various reports and rumours.“The only things the majority of sources agree on are first, that a group led by Mullo Abdullo has appeared in the region from neighbouring Afghanistan,” he told IWPR. “Secondly, that the government’s opium operation is in some way connected with the appearance of this group of militants.”

One possibility, Mullojonov believes, is that Central Asian militants allied with the Taleban are finding life increasingly uncomfortable in Pakistan. The Taleban in Waziristan, where the IMU is also present, are under pressure from the Pakistani military and United States drone aircraft attacks.“It is more than likely that under these circumstances, a number of groups will be forced to return to Central Asia and become more active in the region – even they are not ready for large-scale operations,” said Mullojonov.

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Jakypbek Azizov, who heads the ministry’s public security department, told a press conference that the forces had been sent in because of a “complex situation in border areas”, which was a consequence of developments in Afghanistan and the possibility that militants had infiltrated neighbouring states. It was unclear whether he was referring to Uzbekistan or Tajikistan.

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Okay, since everyone is speculating we should go ahead and add ours into this pot. You firstJ

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Pepe Escobar on China’s Pipelineistan War

My favorite journalist, Pepe Escobar, had an excellent comprehensive piece on the China-Turkmenistan deal. I strongly encourage you to read it. Here are selected excerpts from the article titled China’s Pipelineistan War:

Future historians may well agree that the 21st century Silk Road first opened for business on Dec. 14, 2009. That was the day a crucial stretch of pipeline officially went into operation linking the fabulously energy-rich state of Turkmenistan (via Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan) to Xinjiang province in China’s far west. Hyperbole did not deter the spectacularly named Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, Turkmenistan’s president, from bragging, “This project has not only commercial or economic value. It is also political. China, through its wise and farsighted policy, has become one of the key guarantors of global security.”

The bottom line is that, by 2013, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong will be cruising to ever more dizzying economic heights courtesy of natural gas supplied by the 1,833-kilometer-long Central Asia Pipeline, then projected to be operating at full capacity. And to think that, in a few more years, China’s big cities will undoubtedly also be getting a taste of Iraq’s fabulous, barely tapped oil reserves, conservatively estimated at 115 billion barrels, but possibly closer to 143 billion barrels, which would put it ahead of Iran. When the Bush administration’s armchair generals launched their Global War on Terror, this was not exactly what they had in mind.

China’s economy is thirsty, and so it’s drinking deeper and planning deeper yet. It craves Iraq’s oil and Turkmenistan’s natural gas, as well as oil from Kazakhstan. Yet instead of spending more than a trillion dollars on an illegal war in Iraq or setting up military bases all over the Greater Middle East and Central Asia, China used its state oil companies to get some of the energy it needed simply by bidding for it in a perfectly legal Iraqi oil auction.

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Chinese companies have invested a staggering $120 billion in Iran’s energy sector over the past five years. Already Iran is China’s number two oil supplier, accounting for up to 14 percent of its imports; and the Chinese energy giant Sinopec has committed an additional $6.5 billion to building oil refineries there. Due to harsh U.N.-imposed and American sanctions and years of economic mismanagement, however, the country lacks the high-tech know-how to provide for itself, and its industrial structure is in a shambles. The head of the National Iranian Oil Company, Ahmad Ghalebani, has publicly admitted that machinery and parts used in Iran’s oil production still have to be imported from China.

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I’ll end with Pepe’s last paragraph…

For the moment, Beijing’s strategic priority has been to carefully develop a remarkably diverse set of energy-suppliers – a flow of energy that covers Russia, the South China Sea, Central Asia, the East China Sea, the Middle East, Africa, and South America. (China’s forays into Africa and South America will be dealt with in a future installment of our TomDispatch tour of the globe’s energy hotspots.) If China has so far proven masterly in the way it has played its cards in its Pipelineistan “war”, the U.S. hand – bypass Russia, elbow out China, isolate Iran – may soon be called for what it is: a bluff.

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…and encourage you again to go and read the entire informative piece here.

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Once Upon a Time a General…

Once upon a time there was an Afghani general named Abdul Rahim Wardak. He had studied in both US and Egyptian military schools before joining the army in Afghanistan. In the 1980s, a few years after he joined the army, he decided to defect and joined the Mujahideen movement. We don’t know exactly who in the United States gave him the order to defect, because no one is willing to go on record. However, we know very well that due to their fight against the Communist Soviet Union, the Mujahideen were significantly financed, armed, and trained by the CIA, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, along with several other not as significant nations. We also know that back then, when we were supporting, financing, training and cheering for the Mujahideen as ‘freedom fighters,’ those labeled today as terrorist evil-doer radicals, Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban, were viewed and treated as our allies and entourage. 

Now, back to our General. He joined the National Islamic Front of Afghanistan arm of the Mujahideen and fought against the Soviets. Interestingly, during those years, the mid to late 80s,  our general Wardak was brought to the United States and coached to testify before the US Congress; not once but several times. He was even flown to the US once to receive medical treatment for a wound he received from a scud missile. I am sure you are savvy enough to know that this was considered ‘highly special’ treatment for a Mujahideen fighter in Afghanistan. Our general was truly loved when it came to our CIA and certain high-level people within the Reagan Administration.

So how good of a military officer was Mr. Wardak? Not a good one – and this assessment seems to be pretty much unanimous. In fact, this is how he’s been known in that part of the world: “… in the 1980’s, he had garnered a reputation as one of the least accomplished commanders of the American-backed Mujahideen resistance to Soviet occupation forces.” If you enter the circles within the Washington DC Afghani diaspora, and if you get close enough to hear the hushed comments, you’d be able to make out words like ‘corrupt,’ ‘ties to drug-running warlords,’ or ‘Afghan mafia.’ But for some ‘mysterious’ reasons our Central Intelligence Agency and hard-core Neocons within our foreign policy arena had deemed this general ultra special and important…

*And the story continues…

Once Upon a Time a Godmother of Neocons…

Once Upon a time there was a woman named Jeane Kirkpatrick, who didn’t really look like a woman but it never mattered, in fact it may have helped her. Jeane was a Democrat, and then, later, she became a Republican. She was on President Reagan’s National Security Council, on the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, and of course the Defense Policy Review Board. She became the US Ambassador to the United Nations; appointed by President Reagan. Ms. Kirkpatrick was a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). She was a hard-core anti-communist, and she was a hawk. But most importantly, she was the woman whom people considered and labeled the Godmother of Neocons.

Ms. Kirkpatrick died in 2006, and here is a widely witnessed account of those who shed the most tears:

“Until the end, she was a cherished mentor to the neo-conservatives. John Bolton – Bush’s outgoing ambassador to the UN and of all her successors there the one who most closely resembled her – publicly wept as he paid tribute to her last week. Perhaps the tears were at the rubble of his President’s Iraq policy, but also for a remarkable woman.”

Before her death, her final ‘known’ government mission was to help pave the way for our preemptive attack on Iraq in 2002:

“…in a final mission, kept secret until her death, to meet Arab envoys in Geneva in 2003 to win them over to the impending invasion of Iraq. Her instructions were to argue that pre-emptive war was justified. But Kirkpatrick knew it wouldn’t work. Instead she made the case that Saddam Hussein had flouted the UN too long and too often.”

Jeane Kirkpatrick, true to her Grand Neocon title, was a strong believer of ‘the end justifies the means.’ She vehemently disagreed with Secretary of State George Schultz on the Iran-Contra affair, in which she supported skimming money off arms sales to fund the Contras. Everything was kosher to her, whether drugs or illegal arms sales, as long as these means served what she considered to be the goal; an imperial US.

Ms. Kirkpatrick similarly, in fact more vehemently, supported our operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the 80s where we backed and trained the Mujahideen against the Soviets.  Just like what we sanctioned in Nicaragua, in Afghanistan all deals, no matter how insane or unsavory, were means’ to justify the end. This was one of her mottos most cherished by the hawks and the neocons:

“Traditional authoritarian governments are less repressive than revolutionary autocracies.”

What went unsaid in that quote, but meant and practiced was: Radical Islam, the Taliban, their Madrasas, their terrorizing of women, their heroin business…are perfectly all right, as long as they are on our side, in our camp, on our payroll, instead of on the other side.

Following her ‘direct’ government career, she returned to academia at Georgetown University where for some reason many well-known Neocons, such as James Woolsey and Douglas Feith, chose to flock. And very characteristically our Jeane Patrick continued her contribution to the practice of Neocon-ism…

*And the story continues…

Once Upon a Time a spook…

Once upon a time there was man named Milton Bearden, commonly referred to as Milt. He spent his early years in the state of Washington where his father worked on the Manhattan Project. After a few years with the US Air Force he joined the CIA in 1964.

Milt was CIA’s chosen man for their operations in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In fact, from 1986 to 1989, when our country was supporting the Mujahideen, he was one of their main men on the ground, working with this coalition of the Taliban, the Saudis and their main man Bin Laden, and the Pakistani ISI. The Director of the CIA, William Casey, was the one who appointed Milt Bearden for this task. Here is Milt’s own words describing his importance in a not very unusual ex-CIA conceited manner:

“For Casey Afghanistan seemed to be possibly one of the keys and so he tapped me one day to go. he said ‘I want you to go to Afghanistan, I want you to go next month and I will give you what ever you need to Win.” To win, yeah he said: “I want you to go out there and win” As opposed to ‘let’s go there and bleed these guys and make it be a Vietnam’, I want you to go and win and whatever you need you can have. He gave me the Stinger Missiles and a billion Dollars!”

He must have done extremely well since he was promoted to CIA Station Chief in Pakistan. In fact he must have done exceedingly well since he was later appointed the chief of the Soviet/East European Division during the collapse of the Soviet Union, and received three glowing medals from the CIA for services rendered.

Milt’s cushy CIA retirement and all those glowing medals must not have been enough, for he then engaged in frenzied marketing and self promotion to get himself entrenched in almost all major US networks and newspapers as a consultant, writer, advisor, and of course as a trusted source – a CIA source to provide quotes and information for scripts at the snap of a finger. He coauthored a book with New York Times reporter James Risen called The Main Enemy. Whether this kind of business arrangement, where a commonly used source partners up with a reporter, presents a conflict of interest or even could be called incestuous, is everyone else’s call.

Most interestingly Mr. Bearden seemed to have lured in the American mainstream media by presenting himself as an outspoken critique of the Bush White House Intelligence policies after the September 11 terrorists’ attack. He suddenly became a major spokesperson on ‘how we created this monster called Osama Bin Laden,’ and the nasty radical Taliban.  And the mainstream media couldn’t get enough of him. Ironically, he happened to be the man after William Casey and Neocons’ Jeane Kirkpatrick’s own hearts in creating the Bin Laden monster, bolstering the radical Taliban brand of Islamism in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and kosherizing all dirty deeds as means to justify the end(s).  He didn’t get those medals or promotions for nothing!

Not only that, Mr. Bearden’s speeches and writings seemed to have received the approval of the CIA and the Bush administration. As we all know you don’t get to publish uncensored and unredacted books as an ex-CIA man unless they want you to. This didn’t seem to raise a single eyebrow in the US media or pseudo activist organizations and think tanks.

While cashing in on his CIA past and government approved public persona within the US media, he quietly began to court the Ex-Taliban carpetbagger crowd in Washington DC in order to tap in to the billions of dollars war market cookie jars…

*And the story continues…

The son, and then the circle all came together…

Our General Wardak disappeared from the Afghan scene at the beginning of the civil war in the 1990s. He brought his family to the United States where he settled comfortably with enough wealth from undetermined sources, and he enrolled his son, Hamed, in Georgetown University.

Hamed Wardak, a quite chubby and ambitious young man, arrived at Georgetown University, and by the time he got to his senior level he was taken under the wings of one of his professors as her protégé. That professor was none other than our Jeane Kirkpatrick, the proud Godmother of the Neocons. Our savvy readers will understand that this was not due to chance and Hamed’s stars being all aligned. After all, his General father had done his job well serving Kirkpatrick’s and other Neocons’ foreign policy objectives at all costs in Afghanistan and Pakistan. As mentioned earlier, his General father was flown to the US several times and coached by this crowd to give speeches before the US Congress to obtain funds for their overt and covert operations involving the Saudis, Pakistanis and Taliban. So no, these relationships don’t evaporate and disappear. Wardak and his family were accommodated quite well after they were brought to the US, and the Neocons’ future plans for Afghanistan would have plenty of roles for the Wardak family to fill.

Wardak Junior was a known figure among the radical pro-Taliban sympathizers in Washington DC circles. Here are a few quotes from an excellent piece written on the Wardak(s) and Karzai(s):

“During this period, he flirted with pro-Taliban sympathies, due both to his ethnic Pashtun fervor and peer pressure from young DC-area extremists.

Gradually, however, Hamed came under the influence of Kirkpatrick’s philosophical soul mates, notably Marin Strmecki, a Republican essayist and political facilitator with the Smith Richardson Foundation. Strmecki worked at the Pentagon under Dick Cheney in the first Bush administration, along with Lewis “Scooter” Libby – and Zalmay Khalilzad. It was during Hamed Wardak’s reappraisal of the world, via these American political heavyweights, that he came into contact with a group of upwardly-mobile players on Washington’s Afghan-American scene: the Karzais; specifically, two of the six Karzai boys – Qayum and Mahmood. Unlike their younger brother Hamid, who had spent much of his life in Pakistan, Mahmood and Qayum were accomplished US-based businessmen.”

The Karzai brothers took a great interest in Wardak Junior, and he enjoyed the benefits of the Karzais’ flashy and high-flying friends. After the September 11 Terror Attacks, the Karzais made Hamed the Vice President of the Afghan-American Chamber of Commerce, which was founded by Mahmood Karzai. As I mentioned briefly in my piece, our Neocon Ex-Congressman Don Ritter happens to be the co-founder of this organization. Hamed was also appointed to an advisor’s post with President Karzai’s first Finance Minister, Ashraf Ghani. No small accomplishment for the barely 30 year old Hamed!

Hamed Wardak’s most productive venture in tapping into the US Defense Sector Pot(s) of Gold began with joining a Washington DC contracting firm, Technologists Inc., founded by Aziz Azimi, who happened to be a very close buddy of Qayum Karzai. Here is a further detail on this by e-Ariana:

“Hamed Wardak’s new alliances proved extraordinarily advantageous as George W. Bush launched his “war on terror,” particularly with Khalilzad and Strmecki enjoying direct access to Vice-President Dick Cheney’s office.”

Do you want to check out the kind of contracts, the kind of millions, we are talking about with Technologists Inc.? Here is one for you:

Technologists, Inc., Rosslyn, Va., was awarded on Jan. 5, 2009, a $96,090,519 firm fixed price contract for the construction of an Afghanistan National Police National Training Center. Work will be performed in Maydan Wardak, Afghanistan, and is expected to be completed by Mar. 31, 2011. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. Web bids were solicited on Oct. 1, 2008, and 13 bids were received. U.S. Army Engineer District, Afghanistan, is the contracting activity (W917PM-09-C-0005).

That’s right. Just one of these contracts is worth nearly $100 million for connected Afghan carpetbaggers cashing in on wars suffered by ordinary American tax payers and US soldiers.

Back to the Wardaks and Karzais:

…

“By the time Khalilzad took up his ambassadorship to Kabul in Dec. 2004, Strmecki had been appointed Rumsfeld’s “Afghanistan Policy Co-ordinator.” That same month, Karzai removed his Minister of Defence, the Northern Alliance’s Mohammed Fahim, a Tajik. Faim’s replacement: Rahim Wardak.”

You heard it right. Our General Wardak was promoted and taken back to Afghanistan to serve in Karzai’s regime as the Minister of Defense. Was he given citizenship when he was brought back to the US to settle? No one is really talking. Did anyone in Afghanistan question having US citizens in their quasi democratic government posts? No one in the US media is reporting. If you are trusted within the Afghan diaspora in the DC area you’ll hear hushed comments about Wardak, his corrupt practices, and the rumors, fairly consistent rumors, of his close connections to the poppy world.

Back to Wardak Junior in Washington DC; With his dad now in Afghanistan as the Defense Minister, and with his Karzai partners and friends, he was busy running from one pot of gold to another:

“During this period, Hamed Wardak’s Washington DC-based firm, Technologists Inc. (Ti), benefited from several large contracts, some arranged directly with the US Defense Department, others via the Afghan Ministry of Defence. Ti’s website boasts that it was the first Afghan-American firm to be awarded a prime contract by the US government. Its portfolio has been fattened by a cornucopia of construction projects, including border crossing stations and the ANA’s Logistics and Command Headquarters, a counter-narcotics “campus” where the US Drug Enforcement Agency and its Afghan counterparts will be based [Emphasis Added] cell block renovations to Kabul’s huge Pul-i-Charkhi prison, and three industrial parks.”

Now recall the hushed voices about our General Wardak’s possible shady connections to heroin and mafia in Afghanistan among the Afghani diaspora in the Washington DC area. Now this same general happens to become the Minister of Defense, while his son runs companies with contracts for services rendered to our very own US Drug Enforcement Agency in Afghanistan, which is supposed to be fighting the heroin trade over there. Could it get more ridiculous and ironic than this?!

Of course it can. As I was working on this piece this New York Times headline popped up on my screen:

KABUL, Afghanistan — Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials.

The agency pays Mr. Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai’s home. The financial ties and close working relationship between the intelligence agency and Mr. Karzai raise significant questions about America’s war strategy, which is currently under review at the White House.

The ties to Mr. Karzai have created deep divisions within the Obama administration. The critics say the ties complicate America’s increasingly tense relationship with President Hamid Karzai, who has struggled to build sustained popularity among Afghans and has long been portrayed by the Taliban as an American puppet. The C.I.A.’s practices also suggest that the United States is not doing everything in its power to stamp out the lucrative Afghan drug trade, a major source of revenue for the Taliban.

I am not going to get side tracked and criticize this NY Times article and its timing. After all, Karzai’s heroin connection and mafia characters have been known for a long time. The New York Times piece is probably timed and written to serve a draft or new operation plan for Afghanistan where we’ll be installing another crook to replace Karzai, but this new crook will be handpicked by this administration and enrich their slate of contractors…

Okay, so now we have Hamed Wardak with his Defense Minister father’s rumored heroin past and present, we have his extremely close ties to the Karzais with their heroin and crime network and connections. In a good and just world this would mean the end of Wardak. But that’s not the kind of world we live in. Hamed and his companies and connections, both in Afghanistan and in the US, are still cashing in; big time.

Here is one of our characters who hasn’t made an appearance for several pages: Milt Bearden, the EX-CIA Rambo in Afghanistan in the 80s, the US media darling on Osama Bin Laden, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Taliban…you name it, the shrewd self promoter with books and movies:

Milt Bearden must have been pretty familiar with our General Wardak since he was on the ground in Afghanistan serving his masters at the CIA and the Whitehouse, including the great advocator of ‘use any means,’ our Godmother of Neocons, Jeane Kirkpatrick. Operation Cyclone must certainly have brought him in contact with involved Taliban Generals, including our General, Osama Bin Laden, and other key ISI operators, and his dealings must certainly have included the major heroin operations tapped into to further fund these ‘freedom fighters.’ In fact, our Spook dealt extensively with Hekmatyar, who is considered one of the biggest, if not the biggest, Heroin Operator in Afghanistan – which supplies 90% of the world’s Heroin:

“One U.S. official who had considerable dealings with Mr. Hekmatyar was Milt Bearden, who during the Soviet occupation ran the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s covert program in Afghanistan. He says Mr. Hekmatyar struck him as “quirky and paranoid.””

Thus, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that our Ex-Spook took an interest in our General’s son, and translated this interest into a close business partnership when our young and chubby Hamed Wardak got closer and closer to big Pots of Gold in Washington DC and his father made it to the Defense Minister position in Afghanistan.

After Hamed Wardak left Technologists Inc. to go further in tapping the US Defense Contractor Gold Pots, and to set up various other front businesses in Afghanistan, many of which happen to be in security sectors, he formed a new front organization, Campaign for a US-Afghan Partnership. Guess who he appointed as the top man for the Board of this ambigious organization? That’s right, none other than our ex-spook, media supplier, Milton Bearden. Check out his glowing background listed on Hamed Wardak’s organization’s website: click here. What exactly this organization does, no one really knows, which should go as another credit to our Mr. Bearden’s CIA background in keeping things convoluted and secretive.

Rumors from the Ex-CIA community in the DC area point to another highly lucrative Wardak company paid by US tax payers, NCL, in Kabul, and hint that their buddy Milt may have been playing a major role there. Because of Mr. Bearden’s cozy relationships no one in the media has been looking for these deeper engagements and lucrative partnerships between him and Hamed Wardak.

With their intimate relationship and close ties with the Bush Whitehouse, especially Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney’s quarters, the Wardaks and Karzais ran from one pot of gold to another, filled their pockets and probably Swiss accounts, while the conditions kept worsening in Afghanistan, resulting in more civilian deaths and injured, and more US troop casualties there. Then, the Bush-Cheney era came to an end…

If you are holding your breath for our New President to act differently than his predecessor in enriching Wardaks-like carpetbagger war profiteers, go ahead – inhale and exhale. Hamed Wardak has been a supporter of both Hillary Clinton and President Obama, who between them received a total of $20,000 from Mr. Wardak in 2008. A naïve out of Washington person would scratch his head and ask ‘With all these ties, close connections and friendship with Bush Neocons such as Rumsfeld and Khalilzad, why the heck would he support and pay the Obama camp?’ Washington circle people would never ask such questions. They know very well how things are, that each establishment-based administration has its own set of neocons, hawks, and war profiteers.

Soon we’ll know who our new administration has in mind to replace Karzai’s regime. Will it be an insider like our General Wardak? Certainly not impossible. He’s been the man for decades, and they’ve invested a lot in him and his son, and enriched him and his family tremendously. Will it be another puppet just like Karzai but with a new face? Certainly possible. That would mean another group of carpetbagger war profiteers entering the market to grab the pots of gold financed by us, while the Karzais and Wardaks go away and enjoy their hundreds of millions of dollars stashed somewhere.

No matter what, with this kind of foundation, nothing will change for us, the ordinary Americans. Our tax dollars will go to the Wardaks or Wardaks-like parasites. Our soldiers will lose arms and legs, or their lives. The Afghani civilians will continue to suffer death, destruction, and chaos. Because the story of the General, his son, a spook, and the Godmother of Neocons, is only one of hundreds out there, and as long as we sit on the sideline, watch, and do nothing, there will be hundreds, or thousands more in this story, albeit with different faces and names.