Here's One More Atrocious Nugget From the CIA Files
Another point of national pride.
BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
MAY 16, 2016
Let's finish the day with another visit to Tim Weiner's book on the history of the CIA.
The Guardian reports that one of the hot movies at Cannes is a documentary about the horrors visited upon the nation of Chad by its leader, Hissein Habre, a thoroughgoing monster who was in charge there until 1990, and who soon will go on trial in Senegal for the horrors he inflicted on one of the world's poorest nations, horrors that were financed heavily by the United States of America because Habre was an ally in our undercover hostilities against Muammar Quaddafi in Libya.
Some 40,000 people were murdered during Habré's eight-year reign of terror between 1982 and 1990, while the west looked the other way, more worried about the cold war and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. Habré was an ally of the Americans at the time. French money even paid for the country's political police, the feared DDS, who committed torture on an industrial scale, according to Clément Abaifouta, who leads a survivors' group in the capital N'Djamena.
According to Weiner, the United States involvement with Habre began when William Casey was the head of the CIA and when the president of the United States was Ronald Reagan. Casey and Reagan decided to back Habre, who then was merely one of several warlords fighting for control of Chad. Weiner:
The CIA, knowing little about Habre and his history, helped him take over Chad in 1982.
It supported him because he was Qaddafi's enemy. CIA supply planes flew the weapons into North Africa in shipments coordinated by the National Security Council. This was the first major covert operation in which a young lieutenant colonel named Oliver North caught Bill Casey's eye. David Blakemore, a military aide in the Chad operation, took an urgent call from North on a Friday night in late 1981.
"He asked what the delay was in getting the equipment out to Chad. He wanted to see it move immediately. I said, 'Well, Colonel North, that is fine. We have notified the Congress and we have to wait so many days and then we will get it moving. We understand the urgency."
"North's reply was, 'Fuck the Congress. Send the stuff now.' Which we did."
Chad thereupon slipped into unspeakable darkness—40,000 dead and countless tortured. But, by Christ, it was morning in America.
BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
MAY 16, 2016
Let's finish the day with another visit to Tim Weiner's book on the history of the CIA.
The Guardian reports that one of the hot movies at Cannes is a documentary about the horrors visited upon the nation of Chad by its leader, Hissein Habre, a thoroughgoing monster who was in charge there until 1990, and who soon will go on trial in Senegal for the horrors he inflicted on one of the world's poorest nations, horrors that were financed heavily by the United States of America because Habre was an ally in our undercover hostilities against Muammar Quaddafi in Libya.
Some 40,000 people were murdered during Habré's eight-year reign of terror between 1982 and 1990, while the west looked the other way, more worried about the cold war and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. Habré was an ally of the Americans at the time. French money even paid for the country's political police, the feared DDS, who committed torture on an industrial scale, according to Clément Abaifouta, who leads a survivors' group in the capital N'Djamena.
According to Weiner, the United States involvement with Habre began when William Casey was the head of the CIA and when the president of the United States was Ronald Reagan. Casey and Reagan decided to back Habre, who then was merely one of several warlords fighting for control of Chad. Weiner:
The CIA, knowing little about Habre and his history, helped him take over Chad in 1982.
It supported him because he was Qaddafi's enemy. CIA supply planes flew the weapons into North Africa in shipments coordinated by the National Security Council. This was the first major covert operation in which a young lieutenant colonel named Oliver North caught Bill Casey's eye. David Blakemore, a military aide in the Chad operation, took an urgent call from North on a Friday night in late 1981.
"He asked what the delay was in getting the equipment out to Chad. He wanted to see it move immediately. I said, 'Well, Colonel North, that is fine. We have notified the Congress and we have to wait so many days and then we will get it moving. We understand the urgency."
"North's reply was, 'Fuck the Congress. Send the stuff now.' Which we did."
Chad thereupon slipped into unspeakable darkness—40,000 dead and countless tortured. But, by Christ, it was morning in America.
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