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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 February 20: the Lie That Won Bush the Election; Harvey Matusow: the Death of a Snitch; an Honest Outlaw, the Legacy of Waylon Jennings; Jack Henry Abbott and the New Anti-Crime Wave; Debating Liberal Laptop Bombers. Subscribe Now!

March 6, 2002

Edward Said
Thoughts About America

March 5, 2002

CounterPunch Wire
Ann Coulter At It Again:
Race-Baiting Norm Mineta

Bill Christison
A Former CIA Officer
Explains Why the War
on Terror Won't Work

Delkhasteh and Wright
What Should We be Fighting For? An Open Letter
to Pro-War Academics

Mariya Tsvekova
Putin's Georgian Gambit

March 4, 2002

Ralph Nader
Dick Cheney: A Dinosaur
in the Age of Mammals

Uri Avnery
How Israel Will Torpedo
the Saudi Peace Plan

Southern / Kubrick
Stangelove Scenario
for Shadow Govt. Bunker

David Vest
Grammy's of Constant Sorrow

March 3, 2002

Bernard Weiner
War on Terrorism for Dummies

Paul Cox
Boycott Mel Gibson's
"We Were Soldiers"

Frederick Hudson
Toward a Nonviolent Africa:
Bill Sutherland's Quest

Eric Schaeffer
Dear Christie Whitman:
Take This Job and Shove It

John Chuckman
Why the Rest of Planet is Unnerved by America

March 2, 2002

Alexander Cockburn
Sweat, Sex, Feet and
the Working Class

March 1, 2002

Brendan Sexton III
What's Wrong With Black Hawk Down: an Actor Speaks Out

Terry Diggs
Why Twain's Pudd'nhead
Wilson Still Matters

David Krieger
Nuclear Terrorism
and US Nuclear Policy

February 28, 2002

James T. Phillips
Baghdad, Spring 1992

Gideon Samet
Sharon Must Go

Rep. Ron Paul
Before We Bomb Iraq

M. Shahid Alam
Samuel Huntington:
Peddling Civilizational Wars

St. Clair / Cockburn
Rumble from the Jungle:
Ecuadorian Farmers Fight
DynCorp's ChemWar

February 27, 2002

Eric Hobsbawm
The Future of War and Peace

John Troyer
About that WTC Memorial

Mokhiber / Weissman
Wired for Democracy
or Business?

Alexander Cockburn
Daniel Pearl: Should His
Editors Have Sent Him There?

February 26, 2002

Jonathan Steele
Kabul's Loss

Vasily Streltsov
The Pentagon in
the Transcaucusas

CounterPunch Wire
How Corporations Use Shadowy "527" Groups to Influence Politicians

Lt. Col. Robert Bowman
ABM Treaty: Alive or Dead?

Rep. Dennis Kucinich
A Prayer for America

February 25, 2002

John Clarke
Interrogated at US Border

Blankfort, Poirier, Zeltzer
ADL Blinks, Settles Spying Case

Alex Lynch
Naked from Sin:
The Ordeal of Nahla
and Sami Al-Arian

John Chuckman
Ashcroft Speaks in Tongues

February 24, 2002

David Vest
Skate Date

February 23, 2002

Tom Turnipseed
Axis of Evil and
Media Monopolies

Bahour/Dahan
Cracks in the Occupation

February 22, 2002

Alexander Cockburn
Axel of Evil: Sex Crimes
and the Constitution

February 21, 2002

Gary Leupp
The Philippines: Second Front in US's Global War

David Vest
Reagan Clone Project?

Mokhiber and Weissman
Chicago School and Corporate America: Rotten to the Core

February 20, 2002

Bernard Weiner
The Shallow Throat Document

Kay Lee
The Prison Guard Who Never Owned Up to His Crimes

February 19, 2002

David Orr
Waylon Jennings, the Duke,
and the Navajo

John Chuckman
The Devil and Georgie Bush

Prudence Crowther
Giblet Gravitas

Ramzi Kysia
Caught in the Iraq DMZ

February 18, 2002

Ron Jacobs
The US and Iran

George Lewandowski
Empire in Declline

Lenni Brenner
Life and Death of a Folk Hero

February 17, 2002

Robert Fisk
Lost in a Pit of Desperation

February 16, 2002

Phillip Cryan
Colombia in War Time

February 15, 2002

C.G. Estabrook
From New York to Porto Alegre

Robert O'Brien
The View from Porto Alegre

Mokhiber/Weissman
Resisting the Assassins

February 14, 2002

Levy and Easton
Ante Pavelic
Real Butcher of the Balkans

Joan Claybrook
Dear Jeb Bush,
About You and Enron

John Chuckman
Time for a Woman Prez

Alexander Cockburn
Banning the Koran

February 13, 2002

Sen. Russ Feingold
War Powers and
the War on Terror

Tom Turnipseed
Bush's Folly

George Monbiot
American Imperialism

February 12, 2002

Uri Avnery
The Great Game:
Oil, Sharon and Iran

Tommy Ates
Black Land Loss

February 11, 2002

Walt Brasch
The Synergizing of America

John Troyer
Enron's Deep Throat?

February 9, 2002

John Blair
Criticize Cheney, Go to Jail

 


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 New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism

By Rahul Mahajan

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

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Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual


Private Warriors
by Ken Silverstein

CounterPunch's Booktalk

March 6, 2002

Deadly Attacks that Made Putin a Hero

By Patrick Cockburn

A series of bomb attacks on civilians in Russia two and a half years ago killed 300 and set the scene for a new war in Chechnya and the sudden elevation of Vladimir Putin, a little-known intelligence officer, as the unchallenged leader of Russia.

The bombs terrified Russians, as they were designed to do, because they were left in working-class apartments. The worst was in Kashirskoye Shosse, in central Moscow, where an explosion at 5am on 13 September 1999 killed 124 people as they slept.

A wave of fear and rage swept Russia. Chechens were widely blamed. Islamic militants in Chechnya had invaded the neighbouring republic of Dagestan a few weeks before.

Russian troops were soon ordered across the Chechen border. Within weeks Mr Putin became a symbol of Russian patriotism and the most popular man in the country.

From the beginnings there were suspicions about who was behind the bombings. Foreign newspapers, in the summer of 1999, had reported that officials in the Kremlin had discussed launching a "terrorist" campaign against their own people.

When The Independent interviewed survivors of the Kashirskoye Shosse explosion before the presidential election, which was easily won by Mr Putin, many doubted the official explanation. "It was only at the beginning that we thought it was the Chechens," said Svetlana Nikolaevna, who worked in a kindergarten. "Now we think it was people in the Kremlin administration who wanted to stay in power."

A number of Muslims from the North Caucasus, though few from Chechnya, were arrested but security officers admitted they did not know who had given the orders for the attacks. A problem for investigators is that those who bombed the buildings may not have known for whom they were ultimately working.