12/11/15 – Andrew Cockburn – The Scott Horton Show

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Alright you guys, welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton, this is my show, Scott Horton Show.
Alright.
So, check this out.
Thanks to Brad Hoff for tweeting out the link last night.
I think maybe I got dropped from the email list or something here, but Andrew Coburn has got a brand new one in Harper's.
Welcome back to the show, Andrew.
How are you doing?
Hey, Scott.
Great to be with you.
Very good to talk to you again.
And hey, great to read you.
And check it out, guys.
A special relationship.
And it's not about Israel.
The U.S.
Oh, actually I spoke too soon.
It's a little bit about Israel.
It's maybe a lot bit about Israel.
A special relationship.
The United States is teaming up with Al Qaeda.
Again.
Really great piece here.
Great to see this in Harper's.
Hope it gets a lot of attention.
And hey, there's a single page button on the right side there, guys.
You'll like that.
Use it.
Use it wisely.
And you can find the link from my Twitter feed, of course.
All right.
So, you know, one thing I really like about this article is how you take us back to the old days.
You were a reporter back then.
And so obviously know a lot about this stuff.
And you really give us, I think, a pretty unique history of the CIA intervention in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
I mean, not entirely unique, but it's very interesting to read and good.
And and then, you know, the very early blowback from that, the two way pressure valve or whatever it is, as you call it in here.
So take us back.
Tell us some stories about Ronald Reagan's support for the Mujahideen in Afghanistan in the war against the Soviets in the 1980s.
Oh, or unless you want to start in the Carter years.
Well, I do.
Yeah.
I mean, everyone's forgotten.
This is such ancient history, but it's really why we are where we are now.
You know, you could draw a straight line, straight line from then to San Bernardino, I guess.
Yeah, I am starting with the Carter years because it was in those years that Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter's national security adviser, conceived the really brilliant scheme of supporting Islamic groups.
I don't know if we can call them terrorists yet, but anyway, Islamic extremists in Afghanistan, which had never really been an extreme.
It was a very pious Muslim country, but they weren't extremists.
They were kind of they weren't hard over about it.
You know, they were soupies.
They were quite gentle type, a gentle type of religion of Islam, really.
Anyway, he was supporting them against the leftist regime, which, as he boasted, boasted in an interview later with the express idea of getting the Russians to intervene, which he wanted to give them their Vietnam, which, you know, he hoped, therefore, to bring down the Soviet Union.
But in the meantime, start a war, which he was amazingly successful in.
He started a war in Afghanistan.
Well, you know, promoted a war which killed a million people.
And I've never seen or heard a flicker of regret from him on this.
Anyway, he always boasts about it.
In fact, I'm sorry, I got to do this.
It just take a few like not even a minute.
But I just got this soundbite brand new from a friend the other day.
Sent it to me.
This is actually Zbigniew Brzezinski in Afghanistan addressing the Mujahideen, Andrew.
We know of their deep belief in God.
We are confident that their struggle will succeed.
That land over there is yours.
You'll go back to it one day because your fight will prevail and you'll have your homes and your mosques back again because your cause is right and God is on your side.
Because your cause is right and God is on your side.
Because your cause is right and God is on your side, he says.
What a turkey.
Anyway, so then Reagan comes in and this is, you know, really believes in the cause.
And so the CIA pours money in and weapons.
Now, the excuse they've always said that, oh, you know, we didn't know where it was going.
We just gave it all to Pakistani intelligence and they decided who got it.
And that excuse is there because it turned out who was getting it were the most extreme Islamic fundamentalists.
People like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who made a name for himself early on in the early 70s by throwing acid in women's faces if he thought they were showing too much of their faces.
Later on, he earned a reputation for skinning prisoners alive.
He was a very, very, very, very unpleasant guy who would have nothing to learn from ISIS and, you know, our current monsters.
So, I mean, that excuse that, oh, well, we didn't control it, it was all the Pakistanis, is there because Gulbuddin, actually, he was getting, he was the largest recipient of USAID by far.
He was our favorite Afghan.
And what I say in the piece was it's all baloney that, you know, that they were hands off.
They were very hands on.
In fact, one of the more secular, moderate, anti-Russian resistance people at the time said the CIA micromanaged the campaign.
So they were definitely involved.
They selected the people who got the money and the people who got the money were these, you know, fanatics.
And among them, not only was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, but was a very intriguing character called Abdullah Azam who was considered the father of the Arab Mujahideen.
And he not only got, you know, got a lot of support, he came here on numerous occasions.
He was in and out of this country all the time with official blessing to recruit people to go do jihad in Afghanistan.
So this country was a recruiting ground for these people.
Hey, let me ask you something about that too, by the way.
Now, I think as far as I know, this comes from Ted Gunderson, a former FBI agent, but who's a complete lunatic.
But on the other hand, it's at least supposedly, you know, documentation and pieces of paper that talk about that, you know, supposedly at least link Osama bin Laden to some of these trips with Abdullah Azam in the 1980s and that he was here in the country and traveling under the name Tim Osman.
And I wonder whether you know if that's true that Osama bin Laden himself ever came.
I've never seen supporting evidence.
And, you know, there was no...
People have looked into Abdullah Azam quite carefully and would be happy to believe that.
I'm not sure.
I mean, I'll leave it open.
But Azam certainly had official blessing here.
And he had back in Afghanistan or in Pakistan, he had this bright, young Saudi rich kid, Osama bin Laden, who was like his sidekick.
And that was really the birth of Al-Qaeda.
So moving forward.
Well, in fact, let me...
I'm sorry to step on you here, but I'll just add one more thing here too.
Eric Margulies has told the story on the show quite a few times about how in 1989, Abdullah Azam told him to his face that when we're done with the Soviets, you're next Yankee imperialist.
And that Margulies was shocked by this because here we're your buddies and only communists call us imperialists.
So that's ridiculous.
And then he started explaining about, you know, American military role, you know, the American military role in the Middle East and how it was going to come to an end and his brother and how Margulies took him very seriously back then.
Right.
Well, Azam was, he was murdered in the end of 1989.
And there were a lot of candidates for who did it, maybe bin Laden himself.
But his widow told actually my, Leslie Coburn, my wife, who did an investigation of all this in the early nineties, that she was convinced that the CIA had done it.
Now, you know, take that as you like, but it might have made sense, not just for what he was telling Eric Margulies, but what he was also saying, maybe even more serious, was he was going to take the tribe, their methods that, you know, what they've been doing in Afghanistan, what they'd learned and tactics and techniques to Israel.
And, ah, well, that's where we'll pick this conversation up on the other side of this break.
Bear with me, Andrew.
We'll be right back.
That's the great Andrew Coburn on the other side of this break.
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All right, y'all.
Welcome back.
Sorry to Andrew Coburn and everybody for the hard breaks here.
We've got to do what we've got to do to do radio.
Talking with Andrew Coburn, author of Rumsfeld.
Oh, you've got to read that.
And also Kill Chain, which is great.
You've got to read Rumsfeld, his rise, fall, and catastrophic legacy.
And he wrote a bunch of other books, too.
And here he is again, writing at Harper's.org, where he's a such-and-such editor, fellow, something.
And this piece is called A Special Relationship.
It's about America's alliances with Al-Qaeda back in the day and brand new.
We'll talk about the war in a minute.
But right where we got interrupted at the break, Andrew, you were saying that your wife reported that she was told back when that it was the CIA who had killed Abdul Azam.
Doesn't sound like it was 100 percent, but it seemed like maybe they had the possibility there.
And then you were saying that and that had to do with a possible threat to Israel.
Well, yeah, it was Mrs.
The Widow Azam who told Leslie that.
So, yeah, that's a pretty good source.
Yeah.
She was very, very convinced of that.
It wasn't just stray gossip in the bazaar.
Yeah, yeah.
Azam was saying that he wanted to take the jihad to Israel, which obviously would not have been that would be bad enough taking it, bringing it here, but bringing it to Israel would have gone down really badly.
So who knows?
But the point I want to stress is that, you know, the extremists across the Arab world and in this country, as I was explaining earlier, they had a twofold purpose.
One was to bring, you know, cannon fodder to the front line against the Soviets.
But the other was to to get rid of people.
Abu Hamza, who, you know, became a notorious, well, you know, is now doing 300 years or something for terrorism in some supermax here of, you know, the Saudis, the Egyptians, the Yemenis, and even the Americans, the Tunisians could get rid of, you know, what they regard as troublemakers by sending them off to fight in Afghanistan and, you know, maybe hopefully get killed.
But they didn't all get killed, of course.
And as the U.S. found out in 1993, when a group of jihadis, including someone who'd been, a couple of people who'd been recruited in this country, in this trade center did kill a few people.
They tried to bring the whole thing down.
This was the first indication that this scheme had gone badly wrong.
And there were further, you know, this went through the 90s until, you know, the big demonstration, 9-11-2001.
Nonetheless, unfortunately, this hasn't really deterred them.
You'd think they'd give up after that and think this is a bad idea.
But no.
Fast forward to the Syrian war where it turns out that we've been funneling and we've been enabling our allies in the Middle East, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, principally, and Turkey to support, fund, supply the same people.
I mean, these extremist jihadis, people like Al-Nusra who are really part of Al-Qaeda.
They changed their name because that was an Al-Qaeda scheme to sort of brighten up their image a bit.
So some of them they called Al-Nusra.
There was another big group called Al-Nusra and they are, you know, literally Al-Qaeda by another name and we give them our support either sort of at one remove like Al-Nusra because they've got a bad name but this other one I mentioned Al-Nusra you get you know learned articles op-eds from the Brookings Institute saying these are really not so bad.
You've got former US diplomats you know touting for them saying they are not so bad.
These are the guys who you know give you a public flogging for skip Friday prayers and God help you if you're a woman in the territory they've covered.
So we are through our arms supply network in Syria we are supplying arms to what is Al-Qaeda.
I mean it's a pretty shocking fact but that is the case and these are the people we're enabling to take over Syria.
I mean I know that only because I've been covering this the whole time and mostly because I've been talking with your brother Patrick this whole time I mean really since Iraq War 2 long before the Arab Spring but all the way through so yeah I know this stuff but it still blows my mind I mean sitting here reading this thing I just think I almost can't believe it I know I sound like a birther kook when I talk about it I know that your editors are probably like man yeah of course what are we going to do it's true we have to run it it's true it's true it's true I think you know people you know it's so hard I mean I've had you know ex-CIA people get violent when you say this to them you know this is such a terrible secret you know the way they helped start all this in the first place this enabling of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan really for this you know to you know to fight the Soviet Union and even after the Soviets had left even after their war was won they went on doing it you know just for the heck of it really sure in Bosnia remember colleague Sheikh Mohammed was a veteran of the Bosnia war where America was on their side good example and the Chechens you write about the Chechen thing in here don't you I mentioned yeah I do the Russians I don't I didn't have time for which is you know the Russians we you know another story but Georgia you know our friend Saakashvili who tried to get us into a war with Russia the Russians kept complaining that we were with our Saakashvili was helping us funnel jihadis up into the Caucasus into Chechnya that was a in the Bush junior years you're talking about in the Bush junior years yeah absolutely and this was you know it didn't get much I mean I wrote about it a bit but it didn't get much commentary in this country surprise surprise but that was a perennial Russian complaint and they haven't forgotten it and that I think it's probably true I mean I no I'll go strong on that sure it's true and of course but no one no one paid attention because this was the Russians complaining right well and this is the thing about this is the part where I'm kind of confused I I'm anxious to hear what you think about you know how you measure the difficulty of turning the ship of the empire around when we adopt all of our allies foreign policies like they all hate Assad so much and they hate the so called Iranian Shiite crescent so much that they've got our government fighting on the side of the 9-11 hijackers against our allies enemies when Hezbollah hadn't even attacked us since 1983 and Pat Buchanan at least says that that was the Amal militia that did the Beirut bombing it wasn't even Hezbollah that did the Beirut bombing and yet but we're supposed to prefer Al Qaeda to Hezbollah and even a year and a half after the declaration of the holy caliphate and all of this stuff to use Al Qaeda if not the Islamic state they don't seem to mind the Islamic state that much but to use Al Qaeda at least to still try to get rid of Assad even after the Russians have intervened and said absolutely not and you know called our bluff yeah it's right I mean I it is amazing I try and you know I trace in the article um there's an important point in I talk about it in the article that broke out uh dawned or something um the U.S. the Obama administration thought this is great this shows we can you know ally ourselves with the Arab street with the you know Arab Spring all these calls for democracy and then we'll be the good guys in the Arab world not Al Qaeda you know not bin Laden but this is great for Al Qaeda they said at the time and you know the New York Times immediately reprinted and all the pundits agreed you know this was you know this was the end of the old war on terror we finally won through this what they didn't seem to notice was Al Qaeda was saying the same thing hey this is great for us this is we're overthrowing all these corrupt police regimes that the Americans were sponsoring and you know they said I hope I'm not making this too complicated but the US then said or was saying well to outflank Al Qaeda we will you know we'll link up with moderate Islam moderate Islam is the way to go and they identified that as the Muslim Brotherhood this venerable organization which was originally set up by the British to to be you know anti-nationalist and anti-communist what they again failed to notice which was like linked to Al Qaeda now I'm sorry Andrew we got these hard breaks and usually I just record through the break but unfortunately the way I'm set up I can't today is there any way I can hold you one more segment of course you can okay great now it's gonna be a long top of the hour news type break so everybody take a break we'll be back at 6 after with Andrew Coburn okay Hey y'all Scott Horton here it's always safe to say that one should keep at least some of your savings in precious metals as a hedge against inflation and if this economy ever does heat back up and the banks start expanding credit rising prices could make metals a very profitable bet since 1977 Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Inc has been helping people buy and sell gold, silver, platinum and palladium and they do it well they're fast, reliable and trusted for more than 35 years and they take Bitcoin call Roberts and Roberts at 1-800-874-9760 or stop by rrbi.co Alright kiddos welcome back to the show here I'm Scott Horton it's my show the Scott Horton Show on the line Andrew Coburn author of Kill Chain buy it for yourself and for your friend for Christmas or Hanukkah or Kwanzaa or you know another time a special relationship the United States is teaming up with Al-Qaeda again and of course we're talking about support for the Al-Nusra Front the monarch of the United States the moderate Al-Qaeda in Syria and I like the way you noticed this and wrote it up in the article here Andrew the part about how ISIS likes to brag about their savagery and put out videos of them shooting a bunch of people in the back of the head and that kind of thing and then it's so easy to go from wow those ISIS guys are really brutal to wow Al-Nusra is so much less brutal than ISIS they're moderate by comparison when no no no no these are the guys that did the coal attack these are the guys that killed 4500 of our guys in Iraq War 2 these are the guys that did 9-11 keep your eye on the ball for a minute for God's sake they're the ones who are still loyal to Ayman al-Zawahiri the butcher of New York City ISIS has never actually attacked the United States well right you know and this is all part of a calculated campaign Al-Qaeda back they thought we better clean up our image a bit this you know this because they had the reputation at that point of being like ISIS has today chopping people's heads off on TV and so on Zarqawi yeah in Iraq Zarqawi so they said no no we got to cool it a bit and you know act nice and in fact bin Laden even discussed changing the name maybe we'll change our name and in fact they did change the name I mean not in you know in in the center but all these offshoots in Syria in Tunisia in in Yemen all over the place so they they you know they started giving themselves new names al-Nusra Arar al-Sham Ansar al-Sharia across the world not in not in Yemen actually but in Libya and in in Tunis and in a lot of you know the sort of a lot of Africa so that is why you know they can get away we know get away well we the government can get away now with sort of when it turns out we're supplying them and they're you know they you could go on YouTube and you'll find a 100 or 500 videos of weapons US supplied weapons and say well that's not Al Qaeda that's just you know part of the moderate opposition so you know the scheme is working very well yeah it just shows what a idiots we have running things well and the thing is you know for the historians checking the archives in the future from now you know the supported armed and finance groups go over in mass numbers to the Al-Nusra Front to the Al-Nusra Front or lose a battle to them and lose all their materiel or whatever it is over and over again and then now what you said are basically the Muslim Brotherhood right which is yeah more or less same damn difference anyway Patrick your brother's been saying on the show there's no difference between these groups they're all bin Laden nights you know at the end of the day well in fact their sort of spiritual mentor is you know it exists that a little while ago for eminent pundits from the Brookings Institute wrote published an article saying Arara Sham not so bad not so bad what you have to know is that Qatar the principal you can't buy a think tank from Washington but you can rent one you'd think they'd launder the money a little bit more cleverly than that you know I don't know Republican PACs and this is all of course you know America fighting against itself or our government fighting against the American people on the side of our enemies as a way to try to compensate for the damage that we've done to our country and our country and our country and our country and our country and our country and our country and our country and our country and our country and our country and our country and our country and its purpose $150 billion worth of American weapons.
You know, they are completely panicked by Iran and by the by by the Shia.
And you know, I quote Prince Bandar in the article say, you know, the a bit a billion Sunnis have enough.
I've had enough.
It's a bad day.
It's going to be a bad day.
Bad day for the Shia.
I mean, this is a religious war where we are allied really on the wrong side.
I don't say we should ally with the Shia, but we're certainly enabling these horrible groups like Al Qaeda.
And even ISIS in a way, you know, because ISIS couldn't really survive without its pipeline from Turkey.
And Turkey's our ally.
And when you know, we submit good made NATO member and you know, they're buying American weapons all the time and coming on as a sort of, you know, there's a few problems like the suppression of the press and arresting journalists and torturing people.
But we forgive all that because they're our ally.
And meanwhile, they are really the sort of back office in terms financially and for terms of supplies for for Daesh or ISIS or whatever you want to call them.
All right.
Well, so now what about this?
What about Turkey now invading part of northern Iraq near Mosul?
They say that they're just training the Peshmerga.
But when the Baghdad Shiaistan government told them to beat it, they said, no, we're staying.
And I wonder what you think is going on there.
Well, I think that's that's right.
I mean, they what they're thinking about first and foremost, of course, is the is the Turkey, the PKK and the Syrian extension, the YPG, YPD.
So they want to bolster their own sort of position for first in a dried plank that in northwest Iraq.
And this group that they're, you know, their excuse for being, you know, having gone into sent these troops into Iraq as they're helping to train this group, but not really Peshmerga, what they are a former policeman from Mosul, who are run by this guy, Kapoji, who was a former mayor of Mosul, who says he's going to liberate Mosul from from ISIS.
I mean, good luck with that.
How many men does he have?
If I'm not too sure, a few hundred.
I mean, it's, it's a pretty, you know, it'd be nice if someone could do it.
But I don't think this guy is going to do it.
But you know, that's providing the excuse for the Turks to send troops into into Iraq.
I mean, I see it primarily as some part of some move against against the PKK against the, you know, the Turkish, the Kurdish, excuse me, opposition and armed opposition in Turkey.
Which is funny, because of course, well, not funny, haha, but funny and ironical way that America and Russia are both backing the Kurdish YPG, the Syrian branch of the PKK, as you said, they're in their war against the Islamic State.
And so, you know, this whole thing, somebody should really draw a map of the Middle East with all the like, color coded lines of who all is fighting for and against which all sides are.
Ties and knots.
Yeah, exactly.
Never seen such a knot.
All right, listen, you're great.
Thank you so much for your time on the show again, Andrew.
That's the great Andrew Coburn, everybody writing at Harper's, you got to go read this, a special relationship, America and Al Qaeda again.
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