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Read Cockburn and St. Clair's Whiteout: the CIA, Drugs and the Press and discover how the CIA gave a helping hand to the opium lords who took over Afghanistan, thus ushering the Taliban into power.


CounterPunch: Complete Coverage of 9/11 and the War on Afghanistan

New Print Edition of CounterPunch Published November 28: Kevin Alexander Gray explores the crisis in America's black leadership; an FBI agent's torture confession; liberals see "silver lining" in war; married to a muslim truck driver. Note: CounterPunch has fallen victim to the @home bankruptcy, leaving us without internet access since Friday. Things may not be entirely back to speed for another week. For those of you trying to reach Jeffrey St. Clair, his new email address is: sitka@attbi.com. Subscribe Now!

December 9, 2001

John Chuckman
High-Tech Puritanism

December 8, 2001

Laurence Tribe
Military Tribunals
Undermine the Constitution

Patrick Cockburn
The End of a Strange War

December 7, 2001

John Troyer
Blacklist Me!

Sen. Edwards v. Ashcroft
Military Tribunals

George Naggiar
Occupation as Terrorism

Hugo von Sponek
and Denis Halliday
Iraq the Hostage Nation

David Vest
The Coen Brothers'
Minstrel Show

Alexander Cockburn
Sharon or Arafat:
Who's the Terrorist?

December 6, 2001

CounterPunch Wire
Hampshire College the First
to Condemn the War

Robert Jensen
University Teaching After
September 11

Jack McCarthy
Does Tom Friedman Read
the New York Times?

Sam and Leila Bahour
The Psychology of a Suicide Attacker

December 5, 2001

Edward Hammond
The Only Real Way to
Prevent Biowarfare

Harvey Wasserman
Atomic Treason in the House

Carl Estabrook
America's Israel

Don Williams
Questions Barbara Walters Didn't Ask George Bush

Cockburn/St. Clair
Liberals Hail War as
Return of Big Government

Robert Fisk
The Last Colonial War?

Bahour/Dahan
It's About the Occupation

December 4, 2001

Dave Marsh
A Plea for Byron Parker

Rep. Ron Paul
Keep Your Eye on the Target

Susan Herman
Ashcroft and the Patriot Act

Tariq Ali
The Afghan King and the Nazis

November 30, 2001

Jordan Green
Disappeared in the Southland

Willliam Blum
Rebuilding Afghanistan?

November 29, 2001

Phillip Cryan
Defining Terrorism

Robert Fisk
We Are the War Criminals Now

November 28, 2001

Tom Turnipseed
A Continuum of Terror

Patrick Cockburn
Tribal Council:
Don't Blame It All on Taliban

Robert Fisk
At Last, The Truth about the Sabra and Chatila Massacres

Harry Browne
The Bill of Rights:
They Threw It All Away

Sunil Sharma
Suffer Palestine's Children

November 27, 2001

Paul Coggins
Kafka and the Patriot Act

Tariq Ali
Tigris and Euprhates

November 26, 2001

Robert Fisk
Blood and Tears in Kandahar

Jeffrey St. Clair
Boeing's Sweet Deal

CounterPunch Wire
Human Rights Abuses and
Nuke Waste Shipments

Alexander Cockburn
Harry Potter and Terrorism


A Photographic Journal of Life in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann

Resources:
100s of Links About 9/11


CounterPunch:
Complete Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath


Five Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond

By Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula

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Published Oct. 15, 2001

8-Page Special Issue

War Diary

CIA's Assassination Plan a History of Torture in US Prisons

bin Laden and Bush Business Connections

Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype of US Food Bombs

Peter Linebaugh on Pakistan

Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher

Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em


Search CounterPunch

Read Whiteout and Find Out How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden

Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the Press

by Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair

The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff

The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid

Edited by Roane Carey

A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair

The Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine

Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair

Buy This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
 

Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual


Private Warriors
by Ken Silverstein

CounterPunch's Booktalk

December 9, 2001

The CIA Wanted Me Killed

Journalist Yvonne Ridley Says Intelligence Agencys Wanted Her Killed to Build Support
for War on Afghanistan

By Jo Dillon
The Independent

Yvonne Ridley, the British journalist captured by the Taliban, this week makes the extraordinary claim that Western intelligence agencies tried to get her killed to bolster public support for the air strikes on Afghanistan.

In her new book, In The Hands of the Taliban, published tomorrow, Express journalist Ms Ridley, 43, says despite her release from captivity she still has "unfinished business" surrounding her time in Afghanistan.

She claims that on her return to Pakistan she found her hotel room had been searched. In London, the locks on her Soho flat had apparently been tampered with. A journalist on the Arab TV station Al Jazeera then showed her a collection of as yet unverified documents. They purported to be copies of a dossier of personal and financial papers and pictures.

When told they had been handed to the Taliban, Ms Ridley asked: "Who the hell was trying to get me shot?"

With the help of prominent QC Michael Mansfield, the Al Jazeera journalist, Nacer Bedri, and contacts in the security and intelligence services, Ms Ridley is now trying to piece together what happened.

She says the documents were photocopies of genuine-looking Inland Revenue tax returns and the title deeds to a previous London home owned by her. There was also a copy of an Israeli passport belonging to her third husband, Hermosh, along with a Mossad code number and ID card also said to belong to him. The figures in the financial documents were exaggerated, Ms Ridley said. Also in the bundle was a photograph of Ms Ridley, Hermosh and her daughter Daisy, now aged nine, "taken on a river in Iran when you entered the country illegally".

Ms Ridley's book says: "I looked at the picture again and initially laughed, when I realised it had been taken in October 1998 in Stratford-upon-Avon. Then an awful feeling came to my stomach and I wanted to vomit. I remembered where I had last seen that picture--in my top drawer at my new flat in Soho. I had kicked out Husband No 3 a couple of weeks after those pictures were taken; they weren't developed until later--after he had gone. So who had been in my flat?"

Ms Ridley is convinced the intelligence services must have somehow been involved--and has vowed to prove it. "Without giving too much away, I can say the matter isn't going to rest," she said yesterday.

The publication of her book and the claims it makes are certain to throw Ms Ridley back into the spotlight--a place that has not been particularly comfortable for her since she was captured by the Taliban on 28 September and after her release on 8 October.

Ms Ridley was lambasted for making a "foolhardy" decision to go into Afghanistan with a number of commentators accusing her of being "selfish" for taking such a risk as a single mother.

Others raised questions about Ms Ridley's time in Afghanistan, one report claiming that rather than being captured in the country where she was carrying out a newspaper investigation; she was picked up over the border in Pakistan and had never entered Afghanistan.

On her return, Ms Ridley was criticised for failing to pay enough attention in her account of her ordeal to the two guides--then still in prison--captured helping her or the aid workers held alongside her. Early reviews of her book were far from flattering. But Ms Ridley is determined to get to the bottom of her own story.