CIA, President seek scapegoats and grandstanding opportunities, raise "treason" ruckus The Attorney General of the United $tates is conferring with Congress about having military tribunals for non-citizens, spying on U.$. citizens in churches and political organizations and now the possible "treason" case of one or more young men who joined the Taliban. Meanwhile, we find that the same CIA that created Osama bin Laden and met with him in July, 2001 is grandstanding for public support--by incurring the first U.$. war action casualty Johnny Spann and by talking tough in interrogations in Afghanistan. A videotape obtained by Newsweek shows two CIA agents threatening a Taliban prisoner of war with death shortly before the Qalai Janghi prison revolt. One is Johnny Spann, whom prisoners would beat to death in the uprising. The other is only known as "Dave." Both are armed. "[The prisoner] is brought over to a blanket covering the bare earth. His elbows are tied behind his back. He is pushed down and kneels on the blanket... "Spann [to Dave]: I explained to him what the deal was. "Spann [to the prisoner]: It's up to you. "Dave [to Spann]: The problem is, he's got to decide if he wants to live or die. If he wants to die, he's going to die here. Or he's going to fucking spend the rest of his fucking life in prison. It's his decision, man. We can only help guys who want to talk to us. We can only get the Red Cross to help so many guys."(1) Between 150 and 400 prisoners of war died at Qalai Janghi, many of them with their hands tied behind their backs. U.$. bombers and U.$. and British special forces helped the Northern Alliance retake the prison. This videotape shows U.$. agents directly violating international humynitarian law, threatening the summary execution of Taliban prisoners or war. Ironically, one of the reasons given for the uprising which killed Spann was "that the prisoners feared they were about to be executed."(2) Spann and Dave's actions mirror on the micro level the United $tates' actions on the macro level -- "Do what we want or we'll bomb you or withhold food aid and let you starve." The prisoner being interrogated by Spann and Dave in the videotape is John Walker, a 20-year old Amerikan who fought with the Taliban. Amerikan media coverage has focused on the simple fact that Spann and Walker met, and let the clear death threats drop without comment. We wonder whether this incident would have been reported at all had it not involved Walker. Indeed, the videotape contains footage of Spann and Dave interviewing other prisoners, but as of 7 Dec Newsweek has not released this footage. The Los Angeles Times mentioned that Spann spoke "menacingly" to Walker but did not elaborate with the above material.(3) MIM is also highly suspicious of the killing of prisoners. It reeks of the U.$. imperialist means of handling prisoners--as in the Canto Grande prison massacres in Peru. As reports came out, we noticed that headlines in bourgeois papers stressed fighting, but what actually happened at Qalai Janghi appeared to have been executions and bombings. John Walker Lindh is the one that the media is yelping "treason" about. Thus far, the average Amerikan yahoo is eating up every word. Judging from the staged, reactionary and unscientific CNN polls and a New York Times story for local color, trying Walker for "treason" is a slam dunk for the Amerikkkans.(4) At least a pair of news outlets have noticed that the United States never declared war against anyone in this Afghanistan war.(5) Hence, the legal basis for a treason charge is shaky--based on establishing warring acts in Afghanistan as counting as a war. Yet, there is a huge danger to the ruling class itself in this gambit. If acts of war and not a declaration of war are sufficient pre-conditions for treason, then we will all have to remember the USS Cole and the embassies bombed in Tanzania and Kenya. After Walker goes on the chopping block, then certainly we must consider the CIA agent who met with Osama bin Laden in July.(6) Then there are the president's negotiators who met with the terrorists all through the summer negotiating for a pipeline and delivering aid. Certainly, whatever Walker did, it is not likely to have helped the Taliban as much as food and other aid totalling hundreds of millions of dollars delivered by Bush and Clinton before him, but after "acts of war," including Clinton's cruise missile attack on the Taliban/bin Laden in 1998. The last disbursement came announced by Colin Powell after he criticized the Taliban for supporting terrorists. He gave the Taliban $10 million supposedly for not growing opium. There was a total of $132 million of aid in the pipeline this year under the Bush administration.(7) If Walker does go to trial, we do hope he carries out a legal discovery process to find out how the law has been applied, whether he is the only one who has provided "aid" or "comfort" to the Taliban engaged in "acts of war" or whether the law is being selectively enforced. We find it likely that the French secret service professionals that wrote a book on this subject could testify. Bourgeois Indian journalists could testify that the CIA was training terrorists headed for Afghanistan just recently, not just back in the Cold War of the 1980s. (8) Then we will find both the CIA and President guilty of "treason." Then maybe the yahoos will charge Walker with "terrorism" and we hope that no matter what he asks for discovery on that point in court. MIM is confident that a thorough and thoughtful court will find that the U.$. government as currently constituted is a "terrorist organization" by a neutral reading of the U.S. law.(9) Yes, readers will recall that if the standard is "acts of war," then the CIA concluded that bin Laden was behind the World Trade Center bombing of 1993. In November, 1995, there was the attack in Riyadh aimed at the U.S. military in Saudi Arabia, an attack which bin Laden openly justified. In 1998 we had the bombings of U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar- es-Salaam. It seems that the CIA and the President will be in a lot of trouble if the charge of "treason" goes around. On the other hand, there is also the question of the FBI. Was it just "bungling" or did senior officials know that their double agents in the al-Qaeda continued their attacks and did the FBI want those attacks to continue?(10) Some reports say yes, the FBI knew and even wanted to see what would happen.(11) Other reports show that Bush stymied the FBI investigators in charge of bin Laden terrorism investigations. These are not just charges from just anybody but from the former head of a visa bureau in Saudi Arabia who says the CIA was training terrorists to return to Afghanistan. (12) This would again seem to be "aid" and "comfort" for "acts of war"--actually preventing the FBI from finding out the real situation of Bush-Saudi-al-Qaeda ties. Bought-off with the spoils of empire, the Amerikan population is going to have a very hard time learning the truth about its government and itself. We encourage Walker to make the most of the legal system to educate the public and the whole world about the real nature of the U.S. Government--and not to serve as a willing scapegoat for desperate rulers seeking to avoid the blame for the suicide bombers of September 11th. The truth is that there would be no Osama bin Laden story without the CIA. The solution is not to have the CIA train more terrorists to join up with him. The solution is to abolish the CIA and similar agencies. The Amerikan population should have learned that from the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis that dragged on there in 1979 that ended with Reagan's election. In that crisis, the Iranian people acted in anger against torturers trained by the CIA, and as admitted by CIA officers on videotape. The Amerikan population is currently buying the CIA publicity campaigns, but bringing out the "treason" game is a big risk for the ruling class. None of the scapegoats the Bush administration is picking on have had nearly as much to do with "terrorism" as the politicans leading the U.S. government. Going after Walker may result in instability in the ruling class itself. Notes: 1. www.msnbc.com/news/668588.asp 2. "The Castle of Death," The Independent (UK), 30 Nov 2001. 3. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la- 120701walker_wr.story 4. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/07/national/07WALK. html?searchpv=nytToday 5. http://www.cbsnews.com/now/story/0,1597,320121- 412,00.shtml 6. http://www.thisislondon.com/dynamic/news/story.htm l?in_review_id=470280&in_review_text_id=424130 7. http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/561 /context/outrage 8. http://www.infowars.com/saved%20pages/Prior_Knowle dge/Bush_Took_CIA_off.htm?art_id=1030259305 9. http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/mn/sept112001/te xt.php?mimfile=terrordef.TXT ; http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/mn/sept112001/st atedeptdefinitionAGAIN.html ; for CNN's legal discussion of this see, http://www.cnn.com/2001/LAW/12/07/ret.walker.possi ble.charges/index.html 10. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2001/11/04/MN117081.DTL#sec tions 11. As in the 1993 bombing, see New York Times, 28Oct1993, p. A1. 12. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/events/newsnight/ newsid_1645000/1645527.stm 13. See MIM material on the subversion of "democracy" by the CIA: http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/faq/opposedem.html