- [On 6 April, 2001 Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D), GA. Boldly
sponsored
a forum on the totally ignored rape of Africa - a key part of the current
headlong rush toward globalization. FTW has been woefully silent about
Africa as we have reported on trends elsewhere in the world. We admit that
this has been partially out of ignorance which we begin to correct now
by posting (with permission) this report on her forum. As the planet
coalesces
with frightening speed into three dominant economic regions (The Western
Hemisphere, Europe and Asia) it is critical to understand that the carnage
in Africa can only accelerate. McKinney, who sits on the House
International
Relations Committee, is to be commended for her non-partisan critique of
both Democratic and Republican Administrations. The following is about
as ugly as it gets. - FTW]
- Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney
-
- Covert Action in Africa: A Smoking Gun in Washington,
D.C.
- Rayburn House Office Building
- Friday, April 6, 2001
- 10:00am - 12:00 noon
-
- * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
-
- OPENING STATEMENT
- Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney
- I want to thank you all for coming today.
-
- I especially want to thank our esteemed speakers for
traveling, in some instances quite a long way, to be with us today.
-
- Our speakers are courageous individuals who have gone
to many of Africa's most dangerous and desperately poor locations, not
for wealth or riches, but in order to merely discover the truth. They
provide
us with a remarkable insight into what has gone on in Africa and what
continues
to go on in Africa today.
-
- Much of what you will hear today has not been widely
reported in the public media. Powerful forces have fought to suppress these
stories from entering the public domain.
-
- Their investigations into the activities of Western
governments
and Western businessmen in postcolonial Africa provide clear evidence of
the West's long-standing propensity for cruelty, avarice, and treachery.
The misconduct of Western nations in Africa is not due to momentary lapses,
individual defects, or errors of common human frailty. Instead, they form
part of long-term malignant policy designed to access and plunder Africa's
wealth at the expense of Africa's people. In short, the accounts you are
about to hear provide an indictment of Western activities in Africa.
-
- The West has, for decades, plundered Africa's wealth
and permitted, and even, assisted in slaughtering Africa's people. The
West has been able to do this while still shrewdly cultivating the myth
that much of Africa's problems today are African made--we have all heard
the usual Western defenses that Africa's problems are the fault of corrupt
African administrations, centuries-old tribal hatreds, the fault of
unsophisticated
peoples. But we know that those statements are all a lie. We have always
known it.
-
- The accounts we are about to hear today assist us in
understanding just why Africa is in the state it is in today. You will
hear that at the heart of Africa's suffering is the West's, and most
notably
the United States', desire to access Africa's diamonds, oil, natural gas,
and other precious resources.
-
- You will hear that the West, and most notably the United
States, has set in motion a policy of oppression, destabilization and
tempered,
not by moral principle, but by a ruthless desire to enrich itself on
Africa's
fabulous wealth. While falsely pretending to be the friends and allies
of many African countries, so desperate for help and assistance, many
western
nations have in reality betrayed those countries' trust--and instead, have
relentlessly pursued their own selfish military and economic policies.
Western countries have incited rebellion against stable African governments
by encouraging and even arming opposition parties and rebel groups to begin
armed insurrection.
-
- The Western nations have even actively participated in
the assassination of duly elected and legitimate African Heads of State
and replaced them with corrupted and malleable officials. Western nations
have even encouraged and been complicit in the unlawful invasions by
African
nations into neighboring counties.
-
- Something must be done to right these wrongs.
-
- I invite you to listen and learn first-hand of the West's
activities in Africa.
-
- * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
-
- Prepared Statement of
Wayne Madsen
-
- WHAT A DIFFERENCE AN ELECTION MAKES:
OR DOES IT?
-
- Wayne Madsen is an investigative journalist who has written for The
Village Voice, The Progressive, CAQ, and the Intelligence Newsletter. He
is the author of Genocide and Covert Activities in Africa 1993-1999
(Lewiston,
NY: Edwin Mellen, 1999), an expose of U.S. and French intelligence
activities
in Africa's recent civil wars and ethnic rebellions. He served as an on-air
East Africa analyst for ABC News in the aftermath of the 1998 U.S. embassy
bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. Mr. Madsen has appeared on 60 Minutes,
World News Tonight, Nightline, 20/20, MS-NBC, and NBC Nightly News, among
others. He has been frequently quoted by the Associated Press, foreign
wire services, and many national and international newspapers.
-
- Mr. Madsen is also the author of a motion picture screen play treatment
about the nuclear submarine USS Scorpion. He is a former U.S. Naval Officer
and worked for the National Security Agency and U.S. Naval
Telecommunications
Command.
-
- ---
-
- I wish to discuss the record of American policy in Africa
over most of the past decade, particularly that involving the central
African
Great Lakes region. It is a policy that has rested, in my opinion, on the
twin pillars of unrestrained military aid and questionable trade. The
military
aid programs of the United States, largely planned and administered by
the U.S. Special Operations Command and the Defense Intelligence Agency
(DIA), have been both overt and covert.
-
- ACRI, ACSS, and the covert programs all involve the use
of private military training firms and logistics support contractors that
are immune to Freedom of Information Act requests. More troubling than
these overt problems are those that involve covert assistance to the
Rwandan
and Ugandan militaries. Sources in the Great Lakes region consistently
report the presence of a U.S.-built military base near Cyangugu, Rwanda,
near the Congolese border. The base, reported to have been partly
constructed
by the U.S. firm Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, is said
to be involved with training RPF forces and providing logistics support
to their troops in the DRC.
-
- The increasing reliance by the Department of Defense
on so-called Private Military Contractors (PMCs) is of special concern.
Many of these PMCs -- once labeled as "mercenaries" by previous
administrations when they were used as foreign policy instruments by the
colonial powers of France, Belgium, Portugal, and South Africa -- have
close links with some of the largest mining and oil companies involved
in Africa today. PMCs, because of their proprietary status, have a great
deal of leeway to engage in covert activities far from the reach of
congressional
investigators. They can simply claim that their business in various nations
is a protected trade secret and the law now seems to be on their side.
-
- THE DESTABILIZATION OF AFRICA
-
- America's policy toward Africa during the past decade,
rather than seeking to stabilize situations where civil war and ethnic
turmoil reign supreme, has seemingly promoted destabilization. Former
Secretary
of State Madeleine Albright was fond of calling pro-U.S. military leaders
in Africa who assumed power by force and then cloaked themselves in
civilian
attire, "beacons of hope."
-
- In reality, these leaders, who include the current
presidents
of Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Angola, Eritrea, Burundi, and the Democratic
Republic of the Congo preside over countries where ethnic and civil turmoil
permit unscrupulous international mining companies to take advantage of
the strife to fill their own coffers with conflict diamonds, gold, copper,
platinum, and other precious minerals including one that is a primary
component
of computer microchips.
-
- Some of the companies involved in this new "scramble
for Africa" have close links with PMCs and America's top political
leadership. For example, America Minerals Fields, Inc., a company that
was heavily involved in promoting the 1996 accession to power of the late
Congolese President Laurent-Desire Kabila, was, at the time of its
involvement
in the Congo's civil war, headquartered in Hope, Arkansas. Its major
stockholders
included long-time associates of former President Clinton going back to
his days as Governor of Arkansas. America Mineral Fields also reportedly
enjoys a close relationship with Lazare Kaplan International, Inc., a major
international diamond brokerage whose president remains a close confidant
of past and current administrations on Africa matters.
-
- One of the major goals of the Rwandan-backed
Rassemblement
Congolais pour la Democratie (RCD), a group fighting the Kabila government
in Congo, is restoration of mining concessions for Barrick Gold, Inc. of
Canada. In fact, the rebel RCD government's "mining minister"
signed a separate mining deal with Barrick in early 1999. Among the members
of Barrick's International Advisory Board are former President Bush and
former President Clinton's close confidant Vernon Jordan.
-
- Currently, Barrick and tens of other mining companies
are stoking the flames of the civil war in the Democratic Republic of the
Congo. Each benefits by the de facto partition of the country into some
four separate zones of political control. First the mineral exploiters
from Rwanda and Uganda concentrated on pillaging gold and diamonds from
the eastern Congo. Now, they have increasingly turned their attention to
a valuable black sand called columbite-tantalite or "col-tan."
Col-tan is a key material in computer chips and, therefore, is as
considered
a strategic mineral. It is my hope that the Bush administration will take
pro-active measures to stem this conflict by applying increased pressure
on Uganda and Rwanda to withdraw their troops from the country. However,
the fact that President Bush has selected Walter Kansteiner to be Assistant
Secretary of State for African, portends, in my opinion, more trouble for
the Great Lakes region. A brief look at Mr. Kansteiner's curriculum vitae
and statements calls into question his commitment to seeking a durable
peace in the region. For example, he has envisaged the splitting up of
the Great Lakes region into separate Tutsi and Hutu states through
"relocation"
efforts and has called the break-up of the DRC inevitable. I believe
Kansteiner's
previous work at the Department of Defense where he served on a Task Force
on Strategic Minerals and one must certainly consider col-tan as falling
into that category -- may influence his past and current thinking on the
territorial integrity of the DRC. After all, 80 per cent of the world's
known reserves of col-tan are found in the eastern DRC. It is potentially
as important to the U.S. military as the Persian Gulf region.
-
- The U.S. military and intelligence agencies, which have
supported Uganda and Rwanda in their cross-border adventures in the DRC,
have resisted peace initiatives and have failed to produce evidence of
war crimes by the Ugandans and Rwandans and their allies in Congo. The
CIA, NSA, and DIA should turn over to international investigators both
signals intelligence and human intelligence evidence in their possession,
as well as overhead imagery, including thermal imagery indicating the
presence
of mass graves and when they were dug. There must be a full accounting
before the Congress by the staff of the U.S. Defense Attaché's
Office
in Kigali who served there from early 1994 to the present time.
-
- A LINGERING QUESTION ON
ASSASSINATIONS
-
- The present turmoil in central Africa largely stems from
a fateful incident that occurred on April 6, 1994. That was the missile
attack on the Rwandan presidential aircraft that resulted in the death
of Rwanda's Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana, his colleague President
Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi, Habyarimana's chief advisers, and the French
crew.
-
- This aerial assassination resulted in a genocide
coordinated
by the successor militant Hutu Rwandan government that cost the lives of
some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. This was followed by a
counter-genocide
orchestrated by the Tutsi-led Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) government that
resulted in the deaths of 500,000 mostly Hutu refugees in Rwanda and
neighboring
Zaire/Congo.
-
- No one has even identified the assassins of the two
presidents
let alone sought to bring them to justice. There have been a number of
national and international commissions that have looked into the causes
for the Rwandan genocide. These have included investigations by the Belgian
Senate, the French National Assembly, the United Nations, and the
Organization
of African Unity. None of these investigations have identified the
perpetrators
of the aerial assassination. In 1998, French Judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere
launched an investigation of the aircraft attack. After interviewing
witnesses
in Switzerland, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Russia, Bruguiere apparently has
enough evidence to issue an international arrest warrant for President
Kagame. A former French Judge, Thierry Jean-Pierre, now a Member of the
European Parliament, in an entirely separate and private investigation,
came to the same conclusion that Kagame was behind the attack. The United
States government must come to its senses, as it did with past intelligence
assets like Sadaam Hussein, Alberto Fujimori, General Suharto, Ferdinand
Marcos, and Manuel Noriega, and support a judicial accounting by Kagame.
If it is proven that U.S. citizens were in any way involved in planning
the assassination, they should also be brought to justice before the
international
war crimes tribunal.
-
- Immediately after the attack on the presidential plane,
much of the popular press in the United States brandished the theory that
militant Hutus brought it down. I suggest that following some four years
of research concentrating on the missile attack, there is no basis for
this conclusion. In fact, I believe there is concrete evidence to show
that the plane was shot down by operatives of the RPF. At the time, the
RPF was supported by the United States and its major ally in the region,
Uganda. Prior to the attack, the RPF leader, the current Rwandan strongman
General Paul Kagame, received military training at the U.S. Army Command
and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Many of Kagame's
subordinates received similar training, including instruction in the use
of surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) at the Barry Goldwater Air Force Range
at Luke Air Force Base, Arizona. It was Soviet-designed SAMs that were
used to shoot down the Rwandan president's airplane. By its own admission,
the U.S. Defense Department provided official military training to the
RPF beginning in January 1994, three months before the missile attack on
the aircraft.
-
- In testimony before the French inquiry commission, former
French Minister for International Cooperation Bernard Debre insisted that
the two SAM-16s used in the attack on the aircraft were procured from
Ugandan
military stocks and were "probably delivered by the Americans . .
. from the Gulf War." He was supported by two former heads of the
French foreign intelligence service (DGSE) Jacques Dewatre and Claude
Silberzahn,
as well as General Jean Heinrich, the former head of French military
intelligence
(DRM). Former moderate Hutu Defense Minister James Gasana, who served under
Habyarimana from April 1992 to July 1993, stated before the French inquiry
that his government declined to purchase SAMs because they realized the
RPF had no planes and, therefore, procurement of such weapons would have
been a waste of money.
-
- The contention by French government officials that the
RPF was responsible for the aerial attack is supported by three former
RPF intelligence officers who disclosed details of the operation to UN
investigators. The three informants were rated as Category 2 witnesses
on a 4-point scale where 1 is highly credible and 2 is "true but
untested."
The RPF informants claim the plane was downed by an elite 10-member RPF
team with the "assistance of a foreign government." Some of the
team members are apparently now deceased. A confidential UN report on the
plane attack was delivered to the head of the UN War Crimes Tribunal, Judge
Louise Arbour of Canada, but was never made public. In fact, Arbour
terminated
the investigation when details of the RPF's involvement in the
assassination
became clear. The UN now denies such a report exists. Michael Hourigan,
an Australian lawyer who first worked as an International War Crimes
Tribunal
investigator and then for the UN's Office of Internal Oversight Services,
confirmed that the initial war crimes investigation team uncovered evidence
of the RPF's involvement in the attack but their efforts were undercut
by senior UN staff.
-
- After the former RPF intelligence team revealed details
of the attack, they were supported by yet another former RPF intelligence
officer named Jean Pierre Mugabe. In a separate declaration, Mugabe
contended
that the assassination was directed by Kagame and RPF deputy
commander-in-chief
James Kabarebe. The RPF, according to Mugabe, campaigned extensively for
the regional peace meeting in Dar es Salaam from which Habyarimana was
returning when he was assassinated. Mugabe claimed the idea was to collect
the top Hutu leadership on the plane in order to easily eliminate them
in the attack.
-
- Yet another defector from the RPF, Christophe Hakizabera,
in a declaration to a UN investigation commission, states that the
"foreign
power" that helped the RPF shoot down the airplane was, in fact,
Uganda.
According to Hakizabera, the first and second assassination planning
meetings
were held in Uganda in the towns of Kabale and Mbarara, respectively. A
third, in which Kagame was present, was held in March 1994 in
Bobo-Dioulasso,
Burkina Faso.
-
- As it did with the three other RPF defectors, the UN
took no action as a result of this complaint. It appears, and this is
supported
by private conversations I have had with former UN officials, that some
other party is calling the shots in the world body's investigation of human
rights violations in Africa.
-
- The involvement of Uganda in the assassination tends
to support the contention of the former French government ministers that
the SAMs were provided to Uganda by the United States from captured Iraqi
arms caches during Desert Storm. My own research indicates that these
missiles
were delivered to Uganda via a CIA-run arms depot outside of Cairo, Egypt.
After the transfer, Uganda kept some of the missiles and launchers for
its own armed forces and delivered the remainder to the Sudan People's
Liberation Army (SPLA) and the RPF.
-
- Other evidence pointing to an RPF role in the attack
includes COMINT (communications intelligence) picked up by military units
and civilian radio operators in Rwanda. A Rwandan Armed Forces COMINT
listening
station picked up a transmission on an RPF frequency, which stated
"the
target is hit." This was reported to a Togolese member of the UN
Assistance
Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR). A Belgian amateur radio operator reported
that after the attack, he heard someone on a frequency used by a Belgian
PMC in Kigali state, "We killed Le Grand (Habyarimana)." The
Belgian operator also stated that all Rwandan Armed Forces messages
following
the attack indicated the Rwandan army was in complete disarray n something
that would not have been the case had the Rwandan government perpetrated
the attack on its own president. Another source of COMINT was a French
signals intelligence unit sent to Kigali from the French military base
in Bangui, Central African Republic. According to French Judge Jean-Pierre,
copies of French intercepts of RPF communications indicate, beyond a doubt,
the culpability of the RPF in the attack on the aircraft.
-
- Some formerly classified US State Department cables,
which I received following a Freedom of Information Act request, reveal
that the U.S. foreign policy establishment was of two minds over the April
6 attack. The U.S. Embassy in Burundi kept a surprisingly open mind about
its theories about the missile attack, even suggesting a Rwandan Patriotic
Front (RPF) role in it. Other U.S. diplomatic posts, most notably that
in Kigali, seemed to follow the script that the aircraft was downed by
hard-line Hutus who wanted to implement a well-planned genocide of Tutsis
and moderate Hutus.
-
- A May 25, 1994 Secret message from the Department of
State to all African diplomatic posts also reports that "the RPF has
summarily executed Hutu militia alleged to have been involved in the
massacres
and the RPF has admitted to such killings." The same message states
that "Rwandan government officials who controlled the airport"
or "French military officials" recovered the downed presidential
aircraft's black box after securing the airport and removing the body of
the French pilot from Habyarimana's plane. However, according to officials
I interviewed who were involved with UN air movements in the region, the
black box was secretly transported to UN Headquarters in New York where
it remains to this day.
-
- Officially, the Rwandan government claims the black box
went missing. According to the UN investigators, the black box was spirited
away by UN officials from Kigali to New York via Nairobi. In addition,
this shipment was known to US government officials. According to the UN
sources, data from the black box is being withheld by the UN under pressure
from our own government. The investigators also revealed that RPF forces
controlled three major approaches to Kayibanda Airport on the evening of
the attack and that European mercenaries, in the pay of the RPF and US
intelligence, planned and launched the missile attack on the
Mystere-Falcon.
The CIA figured prominently in the UN investigation of the missile attack.
According to the investigators, the search for the assassins ultimately
led to a warehouse in Kanombe, near the airport. From this warehouse,
during
the afternoon of April 6, the missile launchers were assembled and readied
for action by the mercenaries. As the UN investigation team was nearing
its final conclusion and was prepared to turn up evidence indicating the
warehouse had been leased by a Swiss company, said to be linked to U.S.
intelligence, its mandate was swiftly terminated.
-
- CONCLUSION
-
- It is clear that the United States, contrary to comments
made by its senior officials, including former President Clinton, played
more of a role in the Rwandan tragedy than it readily admits. This
involvement
continued through the successive Rwandan and Ugandan-led invasions of
neighboring
Zaire/Congo. Speculation that Rwanda was behind the recent assassination
of President Laurent Kabila in Congo (and rumors that the CIA was behind
it) has done little to put the United States in a favorable light in the
region. After all, the date of Kabila's assassination on January 16 this
year -- was practically 40 years from the very day of the CIA-planned and
executed assassination of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba.
-
- The quick pace at which Kabila's son and successor Joseph
Kabila visited the United States at the same time of Kagame's presence,
and his subsequent meetings with Corporate Council for Africa officials
and Maurice Tempelsman (the majordomo of U.S. Africa policy), calls into
question what the United States knew about the assassination and when it
knew about it.
-
- Also, particularly troublesome is a conclusion the CIA
is said to have reached in an assessment written in January 1994, a few
months before the genocide. According to key officials I have interviewed
during my research, that analysis came to the conclusion that in the event
that President Habyarimana was assassinated, the minimum number of deaths
resulting from the mayhem in Rwanda would be 500 (confined mostly to Kigali
and environs) and the maximum 500,000. Regrettably, the CIA's higher figure
was closer to reality.
-
- Certain interests in the United States had reason to
see Habyarimana and other pro-French leaders in central Africa out of the
way. As recently written by Gilbert Ngijol, a former Assistant to the
Special
Representative of the Secretary General of the UN to Rwanda in 1994, the
United States directly benefited economically from the loss of influence
of French and Belgian mining interests in the central Africa and Great
Lakes regions.
-
- There is also reason to believe that a number of people
with knowledge of Kagame's plot against the presidential aircraft have
been assassinated. These possibly include Tanzania's former intelligence
chief, Major General Imran Kombe, shot dead by policemen in northeastern
Tanzania after he was mistaken for a notorious car thief. His wife
maintains
he was assassinated. Kombe had knowledge of not only the planned
assassination
of the Rwandan and Burundian presidents but a plot against Kenya's
President
Moi and Zaire's President Mobutu, as well. There is a belief that Roman
Catholic Archbishop of Bukavu, Emmanuel Kataliko, was assassinated last
October in Rome by members of a Rwandan hit team acting on orders from
Kagame. Other Tutsi and Hutu leaders who oppose Kagame's regime continue
to flee Rwanda to the U.S. and France in fear of their lives. Rwanda's
figurehead Hutu President Pasteur Bizimungu was forced to resign last year
under pressure from the only power in Rwanda, his then-Vice President,
Paul Kagame. Deus Kagiraneza, a former intelligence officer in Kagame's
Military Intelligence Directorate (DMI), interim Prefect of the Ruhengeri
province, and member of the Parliament, is now in exile in Belgium. He
charges that Kagame's top government and military are responsible for
torturing
and executing their political opponents. Kagiraneza maintains that the
RPF has pursued such policies since the time of the 1990 invasion of Rwanda
from Uganda.
-
- It is beyond time for the Congress to seriously examine
the role of the United States in the genocide and civil wars of central
Africa, as well as the role that PMCs currently play in other African
trouble
spots like Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Equatorial Guinea, Angola, Ethiopia,
and Cabinda. Other nations, some with less than stellar records in Africa,
France and Belgium for example, have had no problem examining their own
roles in Africa's last decade of turmoil. At the very least, the United
States, as the world's leading democracy, owes Africa at least the example
of a critical self-inspection.
- * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
-
- Prepared Statement of
Keith Snow
-
- Thank you Representative McKinney for organizing this
very important forum.
-
- I find it particularly remarkable that the diamond
exports
from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) were some US$897 million in
1997. Now this is a "country" which was in a major war. And then
in 1998, DRC ranked second in diamond production at 25.7 million carats.
Again, a country in a brutal war where hundreds and hundreds of thousands
of people and in fact I think it is millions of people -- suffered the
consequences through disease and despair and displacement and rape and
hunger and robbery and often death.
-
- Based on my research, this is a western syndicated proxy
war, and like Sierra Leone, Angola and Sudan, it is war-as-cover for the
rapid and unrestricted extraction of raw materials, and war as a means
to totally disenfranchise the local people. Diamonds, gold, columbium
tantalite,
niobium, cobalt, manganese and petroleum, natural gas and timber and
possibly
uranium -- are a few of the major spoils being pillaged behind the scenes
as war ravages DRC and some of these minerals are almost solely found in
DRC, especially cobalt, niobium, columbium tantalite.
-
- Barrick Gold provides a convenient example using
war-as-cover.
According to testimony I took in western Uganda in November, Barrick Gold
is operating in the Kilo Moto mines near Bunia. These mines are reportedly
protected by UPDF. An Israeli General was awarded another Kilo Moto
concession
and UPDF and RCD operate others. And there is massive ivory poaching again
protection rackets going on. Barrick Advisory Board member George Bush
and his CIA connections certainly play into these mining deals and lay
the groundwork a.k.a. slaughter if necessary to get the product. That
includes
long-time links to people like CIA station operative in Zaire Lawrence
Devlin for example, and his associations with the Templesmans. Look at
the CIA operations in Lubumbashi and you will probably find connections
to the repression and massacres of students at the University of Lubumbashi
in the early 1990s.
-
- George Bush apparently telephoned Mobutu just prior to
the first US supported invasion of Congo August 1996 on behalf of Swedish
Financier Adolph Lundin to negotiate a deal over the Kilo Moto fields.
And the US Presidential Election outcome of 1996 was completely irrelevant
to the invasion of Zaire and the replacement of Mobutu. Remember that
Kagame
was in Washington about August 1996 checking his battle plans with the
Pentagon. Mobutu's days were numbered.
-
- The US took all the right decisions to allow the Rwanda
genocide to unfold. And Clinton's comment that "we didn't know what
was going on at the time" couldn't have been a bigger lie. Do you
suppose it was coincidental that a Rwanda delegate rotated on to the
security
council early in 1994 and then worked with US representatives to block
all subsequent attempts to deal appropriately with the unfolding slaughter?
-
- The Lundin Group appears also to be involved in south
Katanga, where they are into the Tenke Fungarume copper/cobalt concessions.
This is near where America Mineral Fields International and Anglo American
are operating as well. And these are a few of the many mining companies.
-
- All these US military programs like IMET and E-IMET,
ACRI and JCET are designed to consolidate US hegemony. UPDF and RCD and
SPLA have conscripted child soldiers. They use sophisticated weapons not
only the machetes so widely advertised by the media propaganda front of
1994 which sowed indifference and apathy in the US public. Troops have
been trained by US green berets and US military personnel have worked to
coordinate SPLA and RPF/UPDF/RCD military campaigns. This is according
to Ugandan dissidents and/or Congolese refugees fleeing Congo and/or
ex-patriots
on the ground. And there are plenty of people who support these statements.
-
- Weapons are reportedly shipped in through Entebbe. Again,
people testified to seeing "American blacks" -- quote Negroes
unquote traveling in the area, both in Uganda and in Eastern DRC, but they
are always very clandestine and they don't mingle or talk to people. One
refugee cited the locations of jungle camps where western he said American
military advisors were training RCD or RPF or UPDF guerrillas in
counterinsurgency
and heavy artillery operations. Again, this was in November.
-
- Note that the whole Tutsi contre-genocide against Hutus
is off the radar screen of people in the US and that's because the media
has covered for the powerful interests and US agenda of consolidating power
in the region by any means necessary. In fact, the RPF have actually
"turned"
Interahamwe to their service in doing the dirty work of eliminating any
dissidents and insurgents and creating a situation defined by the media
as incomprehensible tribal warfare.
-
- It was reported to me that UPDF will disguise themselves
as their enemies and attack villages to provide justification to return
and sweep n a.k.a. brutalize or rape or pillage these villages. They have
also reportedly used these tactics to substantiate their needs for
international
support weapons and funds and military expertise from US and UK backers,
funds and equipment which was often diverted to the secret US SPLA war
against Khartoum, for example.
-
- But war doesn't seem to be essential to the plan.
Multinational
-
- corporations-- a very significant constellation of US
companies and/or US citizens included, are everywhere stripping the
resources,
leaving pollution and disease and environmental disasters in their wakes.
And you might probe into the whole classified nuclear waste transshipments
programs.
-
- Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon, Togo, Niger, Madagascar and
Burkina Faso provide examples, being massively exploited, where military
repression and structural adjustment and the concomitant destitution
suffice
to enable lucrative western control and exploitation. Zambia, Tanzania,
Namibia, Botswana and Ghana are a few more examples where I have similarly
witnessed profound human suffering amidst huge multinational profits and
SAP. I mean, 120 years after the British invasion of western Zambia this
is an area heavily burdened by refugee flows out of Angola and DRC and
the concomitant insecurity of insurgent nomadic military forces -- the
people have absolutely no possessions. The schools don't exist and even
if they do there are no books and the kids are so destitute that they often
can't attend in any case. You can't buy basic staples. I mean absolutely
no food, no medicine, no drugs for malaria. Some 30% of people in Zambia
don't even know that malaria is caused by mosquitoes. But you can buy
Coca-Cola
and Sprite and Fanta virtually everywhere, but there are usually no basic
foodstuffs, no books, no medical supplies. You cannot imagine the suffering
until you live it yourself.
-
- And it is no coincidence that one of the directors of
Coca Cola now I think that's a US company -- is also a Director of Elf,
and ELFs corrupt practices have been mildly exposed but very, very mildly.
-
- These wars are prosecuted by local warlords, military
dictators and their elite intelligence and security networks, typically
armed, funded and trained by western intelligence and/or ex-military and/or
private security companies. And these networks are particularly ruthless.
However, again, they are directly associated with in-country western
military
and intelligence advisors and their programs. That includes Israel, US,
British, German and French. But IMF/WB and OPIC and ADB funds continue
to flow, and they support selective interests and projects and
infrastructure
which helps their related industries further expropriate the resources
and the people and the institutions.
-
- Uganda provides a good example. Uganda is at war on three
fronts and a significant percentage of the IMF/WB funding which has gone
into Uganda has been diverted for military objectives. The banks which
fund Uganda through the international monetary institutions are often
associated
with the multinationals involved in the plunder of raw materials. Uganda
has supported the SPLA war in southern Sudan, and I took testimony from
Uganda dissidents who insist that US military advisors have worked with
the SPLA and UPDF against Khartoum.
-
- In Cameroon, Benin, Burkina Faso, Gabon and Niger in
1997, I found abundant evidence of unrestricted raw materials extraction
by interests associated with the United States. The people of the
oil-producing
areas of the Niger River Delta are suffering horrendous atrocities. Again,
on the Niger border with Burkina -- famine, disease, despair, political
repression for the most trifling reasons -- and right next door there is
a Barrick Gold mining operation. And Sumitomo and the Keidanren (Zaibatsu)
out of Japan are all involved. And people in these (African) countries
know what is going on, but they can't tell their stories because most
westerners
are completely caught up in the mental illness of colonialism and
imperialism,
which disallows the simple truth to be seen. And those who tell their
stories
are often brutalized or disappeared.
-
- In Zimbabwe, the issue of land and elections and Mugabe's
intransigence aside, the lasting repercussions of the Mugabe "five
brigade" genocide against the Ndebele people in Matebelelands North
and South and the Midlands provinces are heartbreaking. Here was this
scorched
earth campaign from 1981 to 1987 where hundreds and hundreds of thousands
perished, where food was used as a weapon and rape prevailed, and the
United
States diverted its eyes. And the media knew about it but the media
diverted
its eyes. And this is all very current stuff in Zimbabwe. The 1990s was
more of the same in a more subtle form. And the Ndebele people have
suffered
untold injustice and terror.
-
- Meanwhile, there was plenty of mining and tobacco farming
going on in Zimbabwe and the weapons for Mugabe's dirty little secrets
came from where? The IMF and WB funded Mugabe, no matter, throughout his
tenure and right up into the late 1990s. Again, these are big banks like
Chase Manhattan and First Boston and Citicorp and the Morgan Banks -- and
their directors sit on some of the western media boards and they dictate
relief operations at a certain level. And then of course there are all
these supranational multinational corporations like Asea Brown Baveri (ABB)
and Unilever and Royal Dutch Shell and Lonrho and Citibank and Bechtel.
I mean, Bechtel gets away with raping the system in Boston the 10 or 12
billion dollar overruns in the Harbor Tunnel project never mind their tight
CIA and US government interconnections, policy interventions of dictations,
and the orchestration of coups, assassinations, disappearances and wars.
-
- Lonrho of course is Buckingham Palace and I contend that
very powerful US citizens are tied in through companies like Brown and
Root and Halliburton to Lonrho and Lonrho interests. And please recall
that Vice President Cheney is a former Halliburton executive. And Lonrho
has a lock on British media. And it is no coincidence that Lonrho has the
most elegant and modern skyscraper in downtown Nairobi.
-
- And all this is hidden by the US media. Even the village
idiot, if he opens his eyes, can see that the directors of the media
corporations
are the same directors of those corporations raping Africa. But too many
people have a paycheck to worry about. And that includes humanitarian
organizations
and the United Nations and the OAU and the International Criminal Tribunal
on Rwanda.
-
- Special torture centers and death squads and massive
repression of the population are the rule in Togo, Cameroon, Kenya, Gabon,
Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso, and were so in Zaire. And these
people--Eyadema,
Biya, Bongo, Obasanjo, Abacha, Babangida, Mobutu, Compaore, Rawlings,
Banda,
Kaunda, Moi, Habyarimana, Kagame, Museveni, Garang, Ratsiraka--they provide
the environment for pillage, and they are duly rewarded, with power, with
all the perks.
-
- Charles Taylor was incarcerated in Charlestown,
Massachusetts
circa 1983 or 1984 and he is the only person, I believe, in the history
of the Charlestown jail to have been broken out. Apparently the records
no longer exist of his stay there. And now he is President in Liberia?
-
- And then you have the whole misery industry, which
profits
from the wars and repression and population displacement which their
affiliated
institutions and their funding banks and materials-providing multinationals
create. Again, you don't need a Ph.D. to figure out that thousands of
highly
paid western AID workers would be out of a job if there were peace in
Sudan.
And Toyota wouldn't sell all those shiny 4-WD SUVs. And who would buy the
US made weapons? And all that business of feeding and clothing and
interning
the refugees would be lost by these multinationals who get huge tax
write-offs
and subsidies and whose products are purchased by USAID or other government
agencies. And some of these relief organizations also have close ties to
the corporate media executives.
-
- So I see it as a policy of depopulation in Africa.
Because
what I am talking about is access. That's all. Access to the animals.
Access
to the game parks and trophy fishing. Access to the minerals. Access to
the cheap and replenishable labor pool. Access to uninformed populations
to dump inferior and toxic and outdated products on. Access for military
adventurism and special forces training and psyops operations. Access to
biological and pharmaceutical testing grounds. Access to markets. And while
at times it seems contradictory, at times it is, but it's all completely
unethical, entirely arrogant and racist. It is driven purely by greed.
And the profound human suffering is totally unnecessary.
- * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
-
- Prepared Statement of
Janine Farrell Roberts
-
- MAURICE TEMPELSMAN: THE CONVERGENCE OF POLICY
AND PROFIT IN PRIVATE
How US Foreign Policy Over Decades Was
Influenced by the Diamond Cartel.
-
- By author of Book "Blood Stained Diamonds,"
Janine Farrell Roberts The Secret Story Behind Blood Diamonds
-
- May I first briefly introduce myself. I hold degrees
in Sociology and Theology and have authored several books written about
Australian Aborigines and their civil rights struggle, which were launched
by their leaders. For many years I was funded by a coalition of US and
European church to work on human rights frontiers internationally.
-
- This work led me to De Beers - after it clashed with
an Aboriginal community. The more I worked internationally the more I
discovered
about its human rights violations. I have now been researching and writing
on De Beers and the diamond trade for twenty years during which time I
have made several films - including: "The Diamond Empire", a
feature length" Frontline" since suppressed by WGBH due to
pressure
from De Beers. The owners of Doubleday also commissioned a major work from
me on diamonds - only to drop it at the very last moment as they wrote
"rich and important people" did not want it to come out.
-
- De Beers is nothing if not secretive In the course of
my investigation, De Beers banned me from its South African diamond mines
where I was the guest of the National Union of Mineworkers (but I was
smuggled
in). Here I witnessed in De Beers's mines horrific conditions with wages
paid at one-third of the official union minimum and in very hazardous
conditions.
I also witnessed considerable natural resources being hidden from the SA
Government. I went also to India and witnessed children as young as 8
cutting
and polishing diamonds in workshops mostly supplied by De Beers through
its favored merchants, working in what is defined as a form of slavery.
The wages were slashed this year from 40c to 25c a diamond causing riots.
Workers get one dollar a day for cutting romantic gems. India cuts 55%
by value of the world's gem diamonds.
-
- De Beers tried to stop my film in the Canadian NW
Territories
diamond fields
-
- - but the Sierra Club and the Unions made it happen.
On 5th Avenue, merchants were phoned telling them not to speak to me
"as
I worked with Blacks in Australia to make life difficult for De
Beers."
I was also the keynote speaker at the first post apartheid conference of
Southern African mineworkers where I was funded by the World Council of
Churches.
-
- I have been told that a major reason for some of my
difficulties
is the fear publishers have of a certain Maurice Tempelsman, the former
companion of Jackie Onassis who in 1998 was reported to be developing a
relationship with Secretary of State Albright. He is a leading
international
diamond merchant of unique power and influence - often he has helped shape
US foreign policy in directions that favour De Beers. I have extensively
researched his work. Much of this is in my forthcoming book "Blood
Stained Diamonds."
-
- I have been asked to talk about Tempelsman's role in
the confluence of public policy and private profit that happens in private.
He is an excellent example. I have time only to summarise my findings.
-
- Why was he uniquely important in the De Beers? In the
1940s De Beers was indicted by the US Justice Department for price fixing
under the Sherman Act. The US also believed De Beers had rationed the
supply
of tool diamonds to the US during the Second World War severely damaging
the war effort. It was determined never to let this happen again, and
legislation
was thus passed to set up a national diamond stockpile. De Beers needed
a way to ensure it was the source of this stockpile despite being indicted.
It sought a middleman to do the deals with the US. Early in the 1950s
Tempelsman
met with the Oppenheimers who rule De Beers and became this middleman.
He was uniquely supplied with millions of diamonds to sell the US as its
strategic reserve. Most of these diamonds came from the Congo.
-
- THE CONGO
-
- When Lumumba, Congo's first elected leader, spoke of
using the Congo's resources to benefit the Congo. De Beers feared it would
lose access to the one-third of world's diamond supply in the Congo - as
would also Tempelsman. Shortly after this, the CIA facilitated Lumumba's
assassination. Evidence on this came before the Church Intelligence
Commission.
Immediately after Lumumba's death, the Acting Prime Minister of the Congo,
Adoula announced support for a very major Tempelsman diamond deal,
telegramming
this to President Kennedy. The historian Richard Mahoney claimed that the
Adoula regime was receiving funds from Tempelsman. A State Department memo
headed "Congo Diamond Deal" stated "The State Department
has concluded that it is in the political interest of the US to implement
this proposal." (2 August 1961)
-
- Immediately after Mobutu came to power, Tempelsman became
an even bigger player in the Congo - recruiting his own staff from those
CIA staffers that Mobutu most favored that put him in power. Mobutu also
at this time gave Tempelsman, as a "Christmas Gift," rich mineral
reserves. According to Tempelsman's staff we interviewed, they had a
wonderful
time helping to run the Congo. One of the first acts by Tempelsman was
to facilitate the return of the Oppenheimers to the Congo - and to secure
funding for Mobutu. He succeeded in persuading the White House to secretly
buy a vast number of diamonds for the US strategic reserve - at a time
when Administration officials were protesting that the reserve was over
full. The reason for this deal given in secret US government memos was
to support Mobutu and his partner Adoula. This Tempelsman plan made much
profit for him and for De Beers.
-
- A State Department Cable of 23 December 1964 warned about
the need of secrecy over this Mobutu diamond and South African uranium
deal because; "it could outrage the moderate Africans we are trying
to calm down." It suggest South African Foreign Minister Muller would
understand the need for secrecy since the US was "doing a job"
in the Congo that South Africa could not do. This covert support for Mobutu
gave the US a gross excess in the strategic diamond stockpile that was
still being sold off in 1997.
-
- In 1967 the State Department reported; "Tempelsman
is playing an increasingly central role as GDRC (Congo's) technical advisor
and mediator." But these deals and other deals done throughout the
following decades with a corrupt Mobutu government left the Congolese
people
in absolute poverty.
-
- GHANA
-
- In the late 1950s democracy arrived in Africa with the
election of President Nkrumah - who thought Black Africans should not have
to sell diamonds to an apartheid company - so took Ghana's diamonds from
the cartel. A short while later, the State Department wrote a furious
letter
to Maurice Tempelsman saying that his office, by using an unguarded phone
line, had betrayed the identity of the plotters against Nkrumah and the
identity of the CIA Head of Station. The plotters seemingly were
communicating
to the White House via Tempelsman's office. (Memorandum for the President
from WW Rostow, 24 September 1961) Tempelsman clearly had advanced
knowledge
of this coup attempt. Shortly afterwards President Kennedy decided not
to "downgrade" (his word) Tempelsman for this error.
-
- SIERRA LEONE
-
- Tempelsman worked out a new diamond contract for
President
Stevens - under which Tempelsman got 27% of the country's diamonds -
setting
up an independent cutting factory - and De Beers bought shares in it.
However
it was not set up to compete effectively.
-
- I have gathered ample evidence that historically Sierra
Leone has been grossly exploited by fraudulent De Beers' practices which
I would be happy to give during question time.
-
- ANGOLA
-
- In recent years Tempelsman has been trying to use US
money and support to set up Savimbi of UNITA in the diamond trade with
both De Beers the US support. On the side, he has also been setting up
his own diamond cutting factory - here as in his other African cutting
plants on terms that are likely to stop Africa getting a fully commercial
cutting industry... a De Beers aim.
-
- Tempelsman in 1996 persuaded the Assistant Secretary
of State George E. Moose to give him a letter suggesting that the US would
finance Tempelsman's plans. On October 10th 1996 he met with Tony Lake
the National Security Advisor and with Lake's deputy, Shawn McCormick -
and gained their support for Tempelsman's plans. In May 1997 the US
Ambassador
for Angola, Steinbach met with Savimbi - to back the Tempelsman plan. This
plan included UNITA keeping its diamond mines - and selling them via De
Beers. Again US foreign policy was being shaped to benefit De Beers.
-
- TEMPELSMAN'S INDEPENDENCE OF DE
BEERS
-
- Tempelsman frequently poses as an independent diamond
merchant, even as a rival to De Beers. This has enabled him to do such
things as to advise the President of Namibia on his negotiations with De
Beers. But if he were truly such, he would lose his diamond supplies from
De Beers as have other diamond merchants who tried to rival De Beers. He
has never lost these supplies. He is rumoured in the trade as having one
of the very largest of the diamond "sights" supplied by De Beers.
It is easy for De Beers to pay him secretly. They simply put more and
better
stones into the box they send him. The US customs are unable to check if
this has happened, as they do not the experts on staff.
-
- CONCLUSION
-
- Maurice Tempelsman served the De Beers diamond cartel
by promoting foreign policy decisions that favoured its access to and
control
of African diamond fields. This lead to the US covertly supporting
undemocratic
and corrupt regimes in Africa to the great detriment of the African people.
-
- Information on Blood Diamonds Suppressed?
-
- Why did WGBH suppress its Frontline program "The
Diamond Empire," refusing to sell it to many who asked for it. The
owners of Doubleday were later scared off from publishing the
"sensational,
important and accomplished" (their words) human rights book
"Glitter
and Greed: The story of Blood Stained Diamonds." They wrote after
putting promoting the book as due to come out in 3 months, saying that
rich and powerful people were against it, and although we may win any legal
battle, it is not worth the cost of such a fight.
-
-
-
- MainPage
http://www.rense.com
-
-
-
- This
Site Served by TheHostPros
|