How does this not make noise? http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/08/2011831151258728747.html Secret files: US officials aided Gaddafi Al Jazeera uncovers evidence that influential Americans tried to help the now-deposed Libyan leader cling to power. The destruction by NATO airstrikes of Libya's intelligence headquarters at the heart of Tripoli has transformed the once-feared building into a symbol of how Gaddafi's regime has been all but toppled. Guarding the compound are dozens of armed rebel fighters, some of them told me their friends and families went missing as a direct result of "intelligence" gathered by those who worked in the building. It's fair to assume that among the rubble and ransacked offices, are some of the darkest, deepest secrets of Gaddafi's regime. I'm looking for files entitled "Lockerbie" or "IRA", but the place is a mess. I'm taken to the office of Abdullah Alsinnousi, head of Libya's intelligence service and one of the Gaddafi regime's most notorious and feared strong men. Scattered on his desk are dozens of documents branded "top secret", but the rebels accompanying me aren't keen on me taking anything away. I find a folder titled "Moussa Al Sadr", who was the founder of the Amal movement, a Shia party in Lebanon, who went missing in Libya over 30 years ago. Within seconds, the folder is taken by my minder who said none of these documents can leave the compound. In the room adjacent to Sinnousi's office is a bedroom with an ensuite bathroom kitted with a plush jacuzzi, an indication of the lush lifestyle led by the heads of the former regime. Sprawled on the bed a rebel fighter was taking an afternoon nap. The scene is almost surreal. "Gosh, how times change," I whispered. Communication with US officials I managed to smuggle away some documents, among them some that indicate the Gaddafi regime, despite its constant anti-American rhetoric – maintained direct communications with influential figures in the US. I found what appeared to be the minutes of a meeting between senior Libyan officials – Abubakr Alzleitny and Mohammed Ahmed Ismail – and David Welch, former assistant secretary of state under George W Bush. Welch was the man who brokered the deal to restore diplomatic relations between the US and Libya in 2008. Welch now works for Bechtel, a multinational American company with billion-dollar construction deals across the Middle East. The documents record that, on August 2, 2011, David Welch met with Gaddafi's officials at the Four Seasons Hotel in Cairo, just a few blocks from the US embassy. During that meeting Welch advised Gaddafi's team on how to win the propaganda war, suggesting several "confidence-building measures", according to the documents. The documents appear to indicate that an influential US political personality was advising Gaddafi on how to beat the US and NATO. Minutes of this meeting record his advice on how to undermine Libya's rebel movement, with the potential assistance of foreign intelligence agencies, including Israel. The documents read: "Any information related to al-Qaeda or other terrorist extremist organisations should be found and given to the American administration but only via the intelligence agencies of either Israel, Egypt, Morroco, or Jordan… America will listen to them… It's better to receive this information as if it originated from those countries...". The papers also document Welch advising the Gaddafi's regime to take advantage of the current unrest in Syria. The documents held this passage: "The importance of taking advantage of the Syrian situation particularly regarding the double-standard policy adopted by Washington… the Syrians were never your friends and you would loose nothing from exploiting the situation there in order to embarrass the West." 'Encouragement to Gaddafi' Despite this apparent encouragement to Gaddafi to pursue a propaganda campaign at the expense of Syria, the documents claim Welch attacked Qatar, describing Doha's actions as "cynical" and an attempt to divert attention from the unrest in Bahrain. The documents allege that Welch went on to propose the following solution to the crisis which he said many would support in the US administration: "[Gaddafi] should step aside" but "not necessarily relinquish all his powers". This advice is a clear contradiction of public demands from the White House that Gaddafi must be removed. According to the document, as the meeting closed, Welch promised: "To convey everything to the American administration, the congress and other influential figures." It appears Welch was not the only prominent American giving help to Gaddafi as NATO and the rebel army were locked in battle with his regime. On the floor of the intelligence chief's office lay an envelope addressed to Gaddafi's son Saif Al-Islam. Inside, I found what appears to be a summary of a conversation between US congressman Denis Kucinich, who publicly opposed US policy on Libya, and an intermediary for the Libyan leader's son. It details a request by the congressman for information he needed to lobby US lawmakers to suspend their support for the Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC) and to put an end to NATO airstrikes. According to the document, Kucinich wanted evidence of corruption within the NTC and, like Welch, any possible links within rebel ranks to al-Qaeda. The document also lists specific information needed to defend Saif Al-Islam, who is currently on the International Criminal Court's most-wanted list. Scattered across the headquarters were smashed frames holding "the brother leader's" pictures, powerful images which depict Gaddafi's sudden fall from grace. It took six months to topple Gaddafi's regime, but the colonel did rule for over forty years. During his reign thousands of people went missing, planes were blown up, and billion-dollar deals were struck in the most dubious of circumstances. Finding out the true story behind all this will take a long time, and even then there are some things that will never be known. A spokesperson for the US state department said that David Welch is "a private citizen" who was on a "private trip" and that he did not carry "any messages from the US government". Welch has not responded to Al Jazeera's requests for comment. Dennis Kucinich issued a statement to the Atlantic Wire stating: "Al Jazeera found a document written by a Libyan bureaucrat to other Libyan bureaucrats. All it proves is that the Libyans were reading the Washington Post... I can't help what the Libyans put in their files... Any implication I was doing anything other than trying to bring an end to an unauthorised war is fiction."
Yeah, it made me do a double-take when I saw it in the bottom half of an article about the Gadhafi whereabouts. I assume Welch was hoping to curry some favor so his company could get Libyan contracts if Gadhafi prevailed and gambled that no one would find out if the rebels won. His company probably won't be getting any contracts now. Tough luck. WH saying he's a private citizen now kinda skirts the issue though. This has got be seriously illegal, even for a private citizen. As for Kucinich, knowing him, he probably is only interested in ending the war. But, if he really did write to the old regime, that's a problem.
I agree with JV. Welch sounds like lobbyist trying to curry favor but the Kucinich stuff is problematic. Its one thing to oppose the Libyan intervention in Congress but another to secretly be in contact with the Gadafi's regime. At the moment though there isn't much there yet to determine if Kucinich was aiding the Gadafi's regime in any way.
awful lot of ".... what appears to be" and "appears to indicate" in there. That said, if true, I can't imagine labeling him as a "private citizen" would fly if it really were just a "private citizen" doing all this, not sure how it flies now other than money, connections and power.... sprinkled with potential for more embarrassment.
True. A real private citizen would already by on the FBI Wanted list, complete with a clever nickname. Traitor Dave, maybe?
IF you were the US government and you wanted to play the double game, how would you do it? To me it is impossible that some branch in the US government did not know about this. More likely they orchestrated it.
The government interests are intertwined with the corporate interests. Rebuilding Libya is good business for both parties.
If I were the US government, I wouldn't want to play a double game. We've hated Gadhafi for 4 decades and this was our chance to knock him out. And why would you want to undermine your own sanctions-and-bombing campaign and have your domestic political enemies call your failed efforts a boondoggle or a quagmire or some other ridiculous-sounding word and get your ass booted out of office next year? Would you really sacrifice your political fortunes so you can hedge the risks your friends at Marathon are taking? I don't think I can believe that one.
Yet John McCain was doing a sales pitch to Gudaffi a few weeks before the revolution. Money knows no hate. The greater the destruction the more foreign contracts to rebuild, prolonging the war means more $$$. The choice of sides was already chosen but playing both sides is never a bad thing. There are no domestic political enemies, they all know each other and squabble in public. It's part of the game that must be played, behind the scenes they are enjoying their fancy dinner parties.
Well things aren't always as black and white as you want them to be. No great power in the history of this planet has ever stayed peaceful, they have ALL taken advantage of the weak to maintain their position. Especially at times when their rule has been threatened. Just look at the invasion of Iraq and the claims of WMD, when it was instead about oil and regional strategy. Makes what I said less likely to be "tin foil" fodder. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14774533 Libya: Gaddafi regime's US-UK spy links revealed US and UK spy agencies built close ties with their Libyan counterparts during the so-called War on Terror, according to documents discovered at the office of Col Gaddafi's former spy chief. The papers suggest the CIA abducted several suspected militants from 2002 to 2004 and handed them to Tripoli. The UK's MI6 also apparently gave the Gaddafi regime details of dissidents. The documents have not been seen by the BBC and have not been independently verified. Meanwhile, the head of Libya's interim governing body, the National Transitional Council, said its soldiers were laying siege to towns still held by Col Gaddafi's forces. Mustafa Abdel Jalil said Sirte, Bani Walid, Jufrah and Sabha were being given humanitarian aid, but had one week to surrender. 'Protecting Americans' Thousands of pieces of correspondence from US and UK officials were uncovered by reporters and activists in an office apparently used by Moussa Koussa, who served for years as Col Gaddafi's spy chief before becoming foreign minister. UK officials were apparently keen for Tony Blair to meet Col Gaddafi in a tent He defected in the early part of the rebellion, flying to the UK and then on to Qatar. Rights groups have long accused him of involvement in atrocities, and had called on the UK to arrest him at the time. Human Rights Watch, whose workers helped to discover the papers, accused the CIA of condoning torture. "It wasn't just abducting suspected Islamic militants and handing them over to the Libyan intelligence," said Peter Bouckaert of HRW. "The CIA also sent the questions they wanted Libyan intelligence to ask and, from the files, it's very clear they were present in some of the interrogations themselves," he said. The papers outline the rendition of several suspects, including one that Human Rights Watch has identified as Abdel Hakim Belhaj, known in the documents as Abdullah al-Sadiq, who is now the military commander of the anti-Gaddafi forces in Tripoli.The Americans snatched him in South East Asia before flying him to Tripoli in 2004, the documents claim. Mr Belhaj, who was involved in an Islamist group attempting to overthrow Col Gaddafi in the early 2000s, had told the Associated Press news agency earlier this week that he had been rendered by the Americans, but held no grudge. The CIA would not comment on the specifics of the allegations. Spokeswoman Jennifer Youngblood said: "It can't come as a surprise that the Central Intelligence Agency works with foreign governments to help protect our country from terrorism and other deadly threats." The documents also reveal details about the UK's relationship with the Gaddafi regime. The UK intelligence agency apparently helped to write a speech for Col Gaddafi in 2004, when the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair was encouraging the colonel to give up his weapons programme. And British officials also insisted that Mr Blair's famous 2004 meeting with Col Gaddafi should be in his Bedouin tent, according to the UK's Independent newspaper, whose journalists also discovered the documents. "[The prime minister's office is] keen that the prime minister meet the leader in his tent," the paper quotes a memo from an MI6 agent as saying. "I don't know why the English are fascinated by tents. The plain fact is the journalists would love it." In another memo, also seen by the Independent, UK intelligence appeared to give Tripoli details of a Libyan dissident who had been freed from jail in Britain. UK Foreign Secretary William Hague played down the revelations, telling Sky News that they "relate to a period under the previous government so I have no knowledge of those, of what was happening behind the scenes at that time". Mr Blair and US President George W Bush lobbied hard to bring Col Gaddafi out of international isolation in the years after the 9/11 attacks, as Libya moved to normalise relations with former enemies in the West. Bani Walid In a press conference in Benghazi, Mr Jalil said four Gaddafi-held towns had one week to surrender "to avoid further bloodshed".However, one anti-Gaddafi commander, Abdulrazzak Naduri, told AFP that Bani Walid had until just 08:00 on Sunday or face military action. The Tripoli commander, Mr Belhaj, said there were few loyalists in Bani Walid and that one civilian group approaching it had found checkpoints unmanned. Col Gaddafi's whereabouts remain unconfirmed. Mr Naduri said Col Gaddafi's son Saadi was still believed to be in Bani Walid but that another, Saif al-Islam, had left. The NTC is stepping up its efforts at reconstruction, setting up a supreme security council to protect Tripoli. Ian Martin, a special envoy to the UN secretary general, arrived in Libya's capital on Saturday to try to boost international efforts in the country's redevelopment. Mr Jalil also announced tough measures to crack down on corruption in Libya's institutions. But he said the leadership would not now move from Benghazi to Tripoli until next week.
The US government was working with Qadafi as part of the War on Terror. Hasn't this been common knowledge since 2004, when we started a process of normalizing relations?
Hmm Bush never got a reaction like this in Iraq. (for that matter he couldnt even walk around Baghdad) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...arkozy-receive-heroes-welcome-in-Tripoli.html
