- President Clinton incubated the Taliban regime in Afghanistan
for at least three years, despite the fact that it was harboring Osama
bin Laden, was responsible for growing 60 percent of the world's heroin
and denied basic human rights to the nation, a U.S. congressman charges.
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- Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., says he was belittled,
stonewalled and ridiculed for three years for asserting the congressional
oversight role in the formulation of foreign policy toward Afghanistan
during the last term of the Clinton administration.
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- Using his seat on the House International Affairs Committee,
Rohrabacher attempted, he says, for several years to secure communiquÙs,
cables and other State Department documents that would reveal what was
behind U.S. policy toward Kabul. He says he and his committee were "stonewalled"
and "belittled" in all their attempts.
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- Rohrabacher renewed his requests for those documents
in a committee hearing with Secretary of State Colin Powell last week.
Powell pledged to look into the matter.
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- The congressman has some first-hand experience with Afghanistan,
having traveled there during the Mujahedin's war with the Soviet Union
invaders just prior to entering the House.
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- He blames Saudi Arabia and Pakistan for sponsoring the
brutal Taliban regime, and U.S. neglect of Afghanistan following the Soviet
withdrawal for its rise to power.
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- "The U.S. spent $1 billion a year aiding the Mujahedin
during the war with the Russians," Rohrabacher says. "When the
war was over, the U.S. walked away, leaving Afghanistan to its own fate
after years of death and destruction. We didn't even help them clear the
land mines we gave them to plant. Afghan children by the hundreds were
still getting their arms and legs blown off by American land mines long
after the war was over, because we did nothing to help them."
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- Rohrabacher blames the first Bush administration for
this policy of neglect.
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- But he reserves more passion for criticism of the Clinton
administration, which, he says, bailed out the Taliban in its most fateful
days.
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- "In 1997, the Taliban overextended themselves,"
he says. "Thousands of troops were captured in the north. Much of
their equipment was destroyed by the Northern Alliance. Nothing prevented
the opposition from taking Kabul. The Taliban was more vulnerable than
it ever was before."
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- But instead of seizing the opportunity to support the
Northern Alliance, Rohrabacher says the Clinton administration imposed
a ceasefire and arms embargo that was supposed to apply to both sides.
Instead, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia took the opportunity to resupply and
rebuild the Taliban army.
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- President Clinton, Rohrabacher maintains, knew about
this but withheld information from Congress and the Northern Alliance.
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- Two years ago, Rohrabacher says, a friend very knowledgeable
about Afghanistan called him to say he knew exactly where Osama bin Laden
was in Afghanistan. If the U.S. wanted to take him out, this was the opportunity.
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- Rohrabacher contacted the Central Intelligence Agency
and asked officials to talk to his friend. A week went by and nothing
happened, he says. He called again. Another week went by with no contact.
Rohrabacher got in touch with Rep. Porter Goss, the chairman of the House
Intelligence Committee, who set up a meeting with the Bin Laden Task Force,
a group comprised of members of the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency.
Rohrabacher met with the task force, which assured him it would get right
on the matter.
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- "It took a month before anyone from the task force
ever got in touch with my friend," he says. By then, bin Laden had
moved.
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- Rohrabacher accuses the U.S. intelligence establishment
of gross negligence and incompetence over what he calls the "biggest
intelligence failure in the history of the country."
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- "Here we were paying hundreds of people to conduct
a secret war against bin Laden for years, yet they allowed this attack
against these buildings in New York," he says. "They were evidently
more concerned about their own little turf wars than they were about protecting
the lives of thousands of Americans."
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- Rohrabacher says people should be fired over this failure
or Americans will pay an even bigger price in the future.
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- "I think this is evidence that our CIA and our intelligence
apparatus are run by nincompoops and incompetents," he says. "People
should lose their jobs over this."
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- Rohrabacher, a major supporter of the Afghan resistance
during the Soviet invasion, says, contrary to popular opinion, the U.S.
did not support bin Laden and his allies during the war. Bin Laden got
his support from Saudi Arabia and the Taliban, which arose "seemingly
from nowhere in 1996." It was a creation of the Pakistan ISI, the
equivalent of that nation's CIA.
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- He says Pakistan wanted a regime it could control, while
Saudi Arabia, which also supported the Taliban, wanted to block the development
of an oil pipeline through Afghanistan that would drive down the price
of oil. In addition, he says, the Pakistan ISI siphoned off money from
the Afghan heroin trade, controlled by the Taliban.
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- Rohrabacher organized several humanitarian relief efforts
on behalf of the Northern Alliance, but, he says, he could never interest
the Clinton administration in helping. In fact, he says, the administration
threw up roadblocks to his efforts on more than one occasion.
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- During the Clinton administration, the congressman says,
Voice of America became known in Afghanistan as the "Voice of the
Taliban."
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- "When I tell people that President Clinton supported
the Taliban, they go berserk," he said. "But that is the truth."
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