those French journalists...

[Doug Millison]

...were on Democracy Now this morning.  The book was also covered in Le
monde a while back.

Story: BIN LADEN: THE FORBIDDEN TRUTH ABOUT BUSH, OIL AND WASHINGTON'S
SECRET NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE TALIBAN

At Democracy Now! we have often called the Bush administration the
Oiligarchy. Vice-President Dick Cheney of course was the president of
Halliburton, a company that provides services for the oil industry. For
nearly a decade, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice worked with
Chevron, while secretaries of commerce and energy, Donald Evans and Spencer
Abraham, worked for another oil giant. Many of the US officials now working
on the administration's Afghanistan policy also have extensive backgrounds
in the world of multinational oil giants.

An explosive new book published originally in France is revealing some
extraordinary details of the extent to which US oil corporations influenced
the Bush administration's policies toward the Taliban regime prior to
September 11th. The book is called Bin Laden: The Forbidden Truth. And it
paints a detailed picture of the Bush administration's secret negotiations
with the Taliban government in the months and weeks before the attacks on
the World Trade Center. It charges that under the influence of US oil
companies the Bush administration blocked U.S. secret service
investigations on terrorism. It tells the story of how the administration
conducted secret negotiations with the Taliban to hand-over Osama bin Laden
in exchange for political recognition and economic aid. The book says that
Washington's main aim in Afghanistan prior to September 11th was
consolidating the Taliban regime, in order to obtain access to the oil and
gas reserves in Central Asia.

The authors claim that before the September 11th attacks, Christina Rocca,
the head of Asian Affairs in the US State Department, met the Taliban
Ambassador to Pakistan Abdul Salam Zaeef in Islamabad on August 2. Rocca is
a veteran of US involvement in Afghanistan. She was previously in charge of
contacts with Islamist guerrilla groups at the CIA, where she oversaw the
delivery of Stinger missiles to Afghan mujahideen fighting the Soviet
occupation forces in the 1980s.

The book also reveals that the Taliban actually hired an American public
relations' expert for an image-making campaign in the US. What's amazing is
that the PR officer was a woman named Laila Helms, who is the niece of
former CIA director Richard Helms. Helms is described as the Mata Hari of
US-Taliban negotiations. The authors claim that she brought Sayed
Rahmatullah Hashimi, an advisor to Mullah Omar, to Washington for five days
in March 2001 - after the Taliban had destroyed the ancient Buddhas of
Bamiyan. Hashimi met the Directorate of Central Intelligence at the CIA,
and the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the State Department.

The book also says that the Deputy Director of the FBI, John O'Neill,
resigned in July in protest of the Bush administration's obstruction of an
investigation into alleged Taliban terrorist activities. O'Neill then
became head of security at the World Trade Center. He died in the September
11th attacks.

Guests:

*	Jean-Charles Brisard, co-author of Bin Laden: The Forbidden Truth.
He has worked for the French Secret Services and wrote a report for them in
1997 on Bin Laden's Al Qaeda network.
*	Guillaume Dasquie, co-author of Bin Laden: The Forbidden Truth. He
is an investigative journalist and publisher of Intelligence Online.



http://www.democracynow.org/


Looks like you can hear a Real Audio file of the show at
http://www.webactive.com/pacifica/demnow/