PORTER AT THE PASS: HEADING OFF THE CIA’S OCTOBER SURPRISE
To the Point ^ | Oct. 20, 2004 | Dr. Jack WheelerScorpio was suspended in the clear night sky above Ghazni, Afghanistan. The air was so pure the tiny two stars of Lambda and Upsilon in Scorpio’s stinger shone brightly. The city below was quiet, the only sounds were emplacements of government soldiers calling out to each other to watch for Mujahaddin attacks. Every few seconds one of them would fire off a round or two from a Dashaka machine gun, the tracer bullets creating bright day-glo pink arcs through the dark.
Looming in front of me was the enormous rock fortress of Bala Hissar, on top of which were the barracks and headquarters of the Soviet High Command for Ghazni, lit up with huge floodlights. It was August of 1984 and I was with a group of Harakat Mujahaddin about to attack the fortress.
The commander, Adam Khan, whose flowing black hair spilling over his shoulders and huge handlebar mustache made him look like an Afghan Wild Bill Hickock, divided his 55 men in three contingents. Turan (capta! in) Kaiyum took 35 men, an 85-millimeter recoilless rifle they called a Tope, and several RPG rocket launchers to stage the main attack. Another group of ten was sent to create a distraction. Adam Khan and I were with the rest providing cover.
Dogs began to bark in the bazaar at the foot of Bala Hissar. Brilliant green flares were fired off from Bala Hissar’s summit, illuminating the surrounding area. Suddenly, Kaiyum’s Tope went off with a whoosh and explosions lit up the entire hill. Kalashnikovs started to chirp and two rocket launchers flashed into action. The fort responded with massive bursts of machine gun fire, with pink showers of tracer bullets blanketing the sky.
Flares, tracers, automatic rifles, and heavy machine guns were soon going full tilt, with deafening blasts as shells landed. The battle would periodically die down as Kaiyum and his men left their immediate position, then resume quickly as they took up a new one. There was anot! her whoosh of the recoilless rifle, and the Soviet power station atop the fortress exploded in a spectacular array of fireworks, sending waterfalls of sparks cascading down the sides of the rock face.
Bala Hissar was now plunged into darkness, while the Mujahaddin concentrated their fire on the barracks of the Soviet officers. Several shells scored direct hits on one of the main buildings causing it to collapse. With this, Adam Khan signaled everyone to withdraw, giving them cover by having several rockets fired at the fortress. This instantly gained the attention of the Soviets, whose response was overwhelming. Within seconds, 105-millimeter artillery shells were raining down on our position.
As we raced away, shells were landing so close to us, sending up clouds of choking dust, that the concussions almost knocked us over. Retreating into the night, we looked back to see the silhouette of Bala Hissar in the distance, now dark and lightless. “A good ! night’s work,” observed Adam Khan. “And just with these few weapons we have stolen from the Shuravi (Soviets).” He looked at me pointedly. “Just think what we could do if the Americans would help us as they do Gulbuddin.”
* * * * * *
That would be Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, head of the “Hezbi” guerrilla group, hater of America, Islamofascist admirer of Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran, and the favorite of the CIA.
Everywhere I went inside Afghanistan in the 1980s, the story was always the same: the Hezbis spent their time fighting other Mujahaddin groups for turf instead of the Shuravi. Rather than fight for the freedom of Afghanistan, Gulbuddin hoarded his weapons, planning a takeover of his country once the other Mujahaddin had liberated it for him.
Yet the CIA was obsessively and perversely insistent that the lion's share of arms and support they gave to the Afghan Mujahaddin went to Gulbuddin. The term "obsessive" is in no way hyperbo! lic. The CIA's obsession to support Gulbuddin in vast preference to all other Mujahaddin leaders bordered on the pathological.
Every CIA agent I ever talked to -- especially the armchair analysts at Langley - - was insufferably condescending whenever I would state that Gulbuddin's people did no fighting, that the other groups were begging for weapons while the Hezbis had an oversupply of weapons they didn't use. The agents would patronizingly assure me their "intel" contradicted what I and every other independent observer who actually went into Afghanistan saw with our own eyes - - so we all must be wrong.
But we were not wrong, and to this day the CIA has never acknowledged that it is responsible for ruining Afghanistan. Gulbuddin was in partnership with his fellow Islamofascists who ran Pakistani intelligence, the ISI. The ISI in turn ran the CIA around with a ring through its nose. When Gulbuddin failed to seize power after the Soviet retreat in 198! 9, the ISI with CIA acquiescence enabled him to create civil war and total chaos. When that didn’t work, Gulbuddin fled to sanctuary in Iran and the ISI created another group of Stone Age Moslem radicals called the Taliban. Again, for all its years of working hand-in-glove with the ISI, the CIA did nothing to prevent the Taliban takeover.
Most folks think the CIA is a right-wing outfit. It is not. The CIA has been dominated by incompetent left-wing hyper-liberals for years. The worst mistake of George Bush’s presidency was not replacing Clinton holdover George Tenet as CIA Director. This is a guy responsible for the single greatest intelligence failure in US history (being unaware of 9-11), who sweet talked his way into Bush's confidence and was able to keep his job because he named the CIA Headquarters after his father.
(Drive along the George Washington Parkway in McLean, Virginia, and you'll see the exit for "The George Bush Center for Intelligenc! e." Bush the Elder was a caretaker CIA Director for less than a year, January 30, 1976-January 20, 1977. The Center of course should have been named for the Agency's founder, Wild Bill Donovan.)
As explained in Tenet Down, Powell To Go (TTP Intel Bulletin, June 3, 2004), Bush only asked for Tenet’s resignation when Rummy said he would quit if Tenet wasn’t fired. The story told there is extraordinary so I encourage you to read the article again. As that article predicted last June, Porter Goss, Florida Congressman and chairman of the House Intel Committee, would replace Tenet.
GW secured Tenet’s resignation on June 3 but couldn’t get the Senate to confirm Goss until September 24. During those almost four months, the left-wing CIA bureaucracy waged a war against Goss’ confirmation. That war is a part of the open warfare being waged by th! e CIA against the re-election of George Bush and on behalf of John Kerry – as described in To The Point last week by Tony Blankley in Kerry and the CIA: Both Living in a September 10 World .
The key to understanding this war is that the CIA doesn’t simply live in a pre-September 11 world where terrorism is only a “nuisance” – it is that the CIA lives in a left-wing world, the same left-wing world as the State Department. Both worship at the Shrine of Accommodation, Appeasement, and Compromise. Both Langley and Foggy Bottom bureaucrats hate George Bush for alienating the Euroweenies and taking the fight to the Moslem terrorists. Both are working overtime to do what they can to secure Bush’s defeat.
The leader of this effort at the CIA is Paul Pillar. His 1983 book, Negotiating Peace was a paean to appeasement with the Soviets – and y! es, he was one of the main guys at Langley supporting Gulbuddin. Pillar’s the guy who leaked the gloomy NIE (National Intelligence Estimate, or rather selected portions of it) on Iraq so Kerry could bash Bush with it. Pillar knew it was OBE (Overtaken By Events, obsolete) by the time it was written in July, much less when it was leaked in September, as it was based on research conducted in April – but all’s fair in war.
The bigtime question right now is: Can Porter Goss hold Pillar and his gang of CIA lefties off at the pass? It’s like an old Hopalong Cassidy movie: Can Hoppy head off the bad guys in time?
Here’s how desperate the bad guys are. Six days after Porter was sworn in as DCI (Director of Central Intelligence), at the September 30 morning staff meeting, he announced he was replacing four top-level positions, starting with Executive Director, the third-ranking spot under the Director himself and the Deputy Director. A. B. “Buzzy” Krongra! d, Tenet’s ED, then announced his resignation, and Porter introduced his replacement Mike Kostiw.
Mike was the staff director for the House Subcommitte on Terrorism and had been with the CIA for 10 years in the 1970s. The next day, Pillar’s gang asked their buddies at the Washington Post to run a hit piece on Kostiw, dredging up an old shoplifting charge back in 1982. They gave the Posties all the private files of the investigation, which – even though Kostiw was exonerated – they managed to twist into character assassination. The hit piece appeared in the October 3 edition and Kostiw resigned the next day. It had taken the lefties five short days to knock Kostiw off.
All of Porter’s people – and Porter himself – now have bull’s eyes painted on their backs. Nonetheless, they are determined to root out the Pillar Gang and replace it with folks willing and able to wage the GWOT (Global War on Terrorism). Right now, however, the most crucial battle of al! l is to block Pillar’s plan to spring an October Surprise on President Bush.
The October Surprise is the CIA Inspector General’s 9-11 Report. It is a total whitewash of Tenet and other top CIA officials and attempts to place the blame on the Bush White House, naming specific Administration personnel. It is a political document far removed from an honest and objective assessment. Pillar is desperate to have it released, Goss will not and has threatened that should it be leaked, those responsible will not only be fired, they will be criminally prosecuted.
Somehow, though, a Langley bird has perched on Jane Harman’s shoulder, whispering into the Congresswoman’s ear that the report was being “suppressed.” She and her fellow Democrats are now baying to the moon about a “cover-up.”
Porter has managed to stop this phony scandal just in time. Pillar and his fellow conspirators are tearing-hair-out enraged. It’s wartime at Langley as you read t! his. If Porter wins this battle and Bush wins the election, the bull’s eyes will be on the lefties and we may have a CIA worth our respect once again.
A CIA that has no qualms about waging war on Moslem terrorists instead of accommodating them, or supporting them like Gulbuddin. There are many, many tough, dedicated, first-class folks at the CIA – but they have been sold out by their left-wing superiors who are doing their best to sell out the President of the United States.
Hold them off at the pass, Porter. With less than two weeks to go, we’re counting on you.
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