"Blind
Sheik" And The CIA - Media Again Bury U.S.
Support For Radical Islamism
By Moon Of Alabama
February
21, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- "Moon
Of Alabama" -
Two
days ago the Takfiri Islamist leader Omar Abdul-Rahman
, the so called "Blind Sheik", died in a U.S.
prison. He had been found guilty of involvement
in the 1993 attempt to bring down the World
Trade Center in New York and of other crimes.
The
obituaries of Omar Abdul-Rahman in U.S. media
are an example of white washing of the U.S.
exploitation of radical Islamism for its
imperial purposes. While extensively documented
in earlier media and official reports the CIA's
facilitation and involvement with Abdul-Rahman
is seemingly stricken from history.
Since the 1970s Omar Abdul-Rahman was
involved in the
growth of radical Sunni Islamism:
Founded in 1976, Faisal Islamic Bank of
Egypt (FIBE) is part of the banking empire
built by Saudi Prince Mohammed al-Faisal.
Several of the founding members are leading
members of the Muslim Brotherhood, including
the “Blind Sheikh,” Sheikh Omar
Abdul-Rahman.
Financed by Saudi sources Abdul-Rahman created
various groups of radicals in Egypt and gets
deeply involved with Al-Qaeda, recruiting
fighters for Afghanistan in cooperation with the
CIA and the Pakistani secret services. He was
the ideological leader of Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya,
an Islamic radical organization in Egypt
responsible for several terrorist attacks. He
traveled to the U.S. several timed between 1986
and 1990 to further his violent ideology. His
visas were issued by CIA agents despite his
appearance on a State Department terrorism watch
list. In 1990 he moves to the U.S. where he
preached his violent Islam and continued to
recruit fighters for radical causes.
In December 1990 the New York Times
reported:
The
52-year-old religious leader, Sheik Omar
Abdel-Rahman, entered the country more than
five months ago despite being on a State
Department list of people with ties to
terrorist groups, the authorities said. He
illegally obtained a tourist visa from a
consul in the United States Embassy in
Khartoum, the Sudan, in May, according to
records of the Federal Immigration and
Naturalization Service and State Department
officials.
In July 1993 the NYT
reported that
"illegally obtained tourist visa" was not
illegal at all:
Central Intelligence Agency officers
reviewed all seven applications made by
Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman to enter the United
States between 1986 and 1990 and only once
turned him down because of his connections
to terrorism, Government officials said
today.
...
Mr. Abdel Rahman helped to recruit Arab
Muslims to fight in the American-backed war
in Afghanistan, and his lawyer and Egyptian
officials have said he was helped by the
C.I.A. to enter the United States.
...
American officials had acknowledged last
week that the diplomat at the United States
Embassy in Khartoum who signed the May 1990
visa request that allowed Mr. Abdel Rahman
to enter the United States was in fact a
C.I.A. officer.
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Several
attempts to remove Abdel-Rahman from the U.S.
mysteriously failed. In 1991 he was inexplicably
granted a Green Card despite still being
blacklisted.
His
involvement in the 1993 WTC bombing was a
typical "blowback" from the CIA's chronic
support of radical takfiri Islamism, supported
by Saudi Arabia, whenever it helps its "regime
change" plans here or there. Over the last years
such CIA support led to the growth of Al-Qaeda
and the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
After
the recent death of Omar Abdul-Rahman several
obituaries appeared in U.S. media. But none of
them mention or dig into his deep and long CIA
connections and the continuing CIA support for
radical Islamism.
There is
zero mentioning
of the CIA and the visa shenanigans in his NYT
obit, despite its earlier reporting. Neither the
Associated Press
nor
AFP mention any
connection to the CIA. The British service
Reuters buries the visa story in one sentence in
the 12th paragraph.
That the
deep involvement
over the years of the CIA (and FBI) in the
crimes Omar Abdul-Rahman is now swept under the
carpet and forgotten is not just coincidentally.
It is a distinct feature of U.S. political
culture.
The British poet Harold Pinter referred to this
in
his 2005 Nobel lecture:
It
never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even
while it was happening it wasn't happening.
It didn't matter. It was of no interest.
I have
called this chronic forgetfulness the concept of
immaculate conception of U.S. (foreign) policy.
There never is an acknowledged history of U.S.
misdeeds that may have led to this or that
current blowback. When there is one it
immediately gets buried, pushed out of sight,
never to be talked about. The same applies to
partisan policies within the U.S.
Currently the fake "resistance" against a Trump
presidency blasts his policy of seeking better
relations with Russia, his temporary travel ban
reference to seven specific countries and his
words against media leaks. But it was the
Secretary of State Clinton who initiated a
"reset" with Russia, it was the Obama
administration that set a ban on those seven
countries and it was the Obama justice
department that used the espionage act against
journalists for publishing leaked material. That
all is now forgotten and not to be talked about.
Likewise the deep CIA connection with Omar
Abdul-Rahman is now scrubbed from any of the
semi-official media reporting. This at the same
time the CIA continues its involvement with
radical Islamists in Syria and elsewhere.
Pinter
continued his lecture:
The
crimes of the United States have been
systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless,
but very few people have actually talked
about them. You have to hand it to America.
It has exercised a quite clinical
manipulation of power worldwide while
masquerading as a force for universal good.
It's a brilliant, even witty, highly
successful act of hypnosis.
...
To not be taken in by the "immaculate
conception" mechanism I recommend to
reread or
watch Pinter's
lecture every once a while.
