Perhaps an End to the Diamond-Terrorism Debate
By Douglas Farah
Well, Dateline NBC finally aired its program on the ties of al Qaeda to Charles Taylor. While taking more credit than they deserved for "breaking" the story I broke more than three years ago, mentioning my role in passing and the role of Global Witness not at all, the program advanced the ball considerably. I hope it finally ends the debate over what really happened, and how badly the CIA and FBI have fouled up their investigations.
The biggest NBC breakthrough was getting a former CIA station chief in Liberia to go over there and confirm the findings of al Qaeda's ties to Charles Taylor. He helps nail down the tie between Ibrahim Bah and al Qaeda, dating back some time. The program also quotes Middle Eastern intelligence sources (Israelis, I would guess) saying Bah was a known al Qaeda operative. This I knew and reported, but it strengthens things considerably. It was great to finally find someone in the intelligence community who could come forward and say what needed to be said, without ambiguity. The bottom line is that if the intelligence community had had more interest in verifying the story and less about trying to discredit the messenger, it is likely that we would be far less behind the curve on Islamic terrorism issues in West Africa than we are today. Al Qaeda used Charles Taylor to buy diamonds to hide its assets following the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in East Africa. That is what happened, and we paid a terrible price for not knowing of those ties.
The document they referred to in passing, a report written in 1998 by a Liberian intelligence officer on al Qaeda operatives in Liberia, is in fact very interesting. (To continue reading, go here).
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://counterterrorismblog.org/mt/pings.cgi/1741
