"THE FORGOTTEN TERRORISTS"
[col. writ. 9/24/01] *01 Mumia Abu-Jamal

    For far too many Americans, the word 'terrorism' has
acquired a whole new meaning in the dusty aftermath of 11
September 2001.  The word now instantly refers to the mental
imagery of the shattered twin towers of the World Trade
Center in downtown Manhattan, or the broken edifice of the
Pentagon building in Washington, or even the smouldering
mound of earth in southwestern Pennsylvania.

    They refer to the thousands of people, from dozens of
countries, who lost their lives when the buildings were
shattered, broken and leveled into dust.  But, if truth be
told, they refer mostly to Americans.

    When an airliner in the far-off South China Sea area
develops engine trouble, and plummets into the ocean depths,
reporters always rush to inform us, "Flight 502 of a PanAm
to Hong Kong went down over the South China Sea today: 15
Americans were onboard."  In such a common report, it is
implicitly assumed that those of other nationalities are of
lesser importance.  They don't *really* matter.

    It is indeed possible to look at the events of 11
September in a somewhat similar light.  For, if it is indeed
found that the acts of that day may be traced to terrorists,
working out of Middle Eastern organizations, what most will
ignore is another kind of terrorism.  It is waged against
the poor and powerless of many nations.  It kills, maims,
tortures, and destroys many thousands of people every year.

    It is the spectre of State Terrorism.

    Don't expect to find eye-catching exposes in the Daily
Blah, or to hear about it on your favorite network news
program in the evening on the tube.  You have to look hard
for this stuff.  Consider the views of John Stockwell, a
former CIA station chief (Angola), who considers the work
that he was doing overseas, on behalf of the US government,
to be supporting terrorism.  He looks at the time when a man
named Bush headed the CIA:

        CIA Director George Bush allegedly worked to
        convince the former OPMONGOOSE operators to
        reorganize outside the United States.  In June 1976,
        they went to the Dominican Republic and founded
        CORU, a counter-revolutionary group.  On October 26,
        1976, they blew up an airplane that was taking off
        from Barbados, killing 73 passengers on board in a
        raw act of terrorism.  Luis Posada Carrilles and
        Orlando Bosch were jailed in Venezuela for that
        bombing.  There is evidence that members of this
        same CIA/Cuban exile community participated in the
        killing of President John F. Kennedy in 1963.  We
        also know that the CIA's 1980 contra program later
        managed to get Luis Posada Carilles out of prison in
        Venezuela.  They put him to work for Felix
        Rodriguez, who was reporting directly to then Vice-
        President Bush's Office.  As Felix Rodriguez told
        the press, "We needed him."  He was referring to
        Carilles, the terrorist airplane bomber (See The
        Praetorian Guard: The U.S. Role in the New World
        Order (Boston: South End Press, 1991).

    These are the words of a man who spent over a decade in
the CIA, and even served briefly on a subcommittee of the
National Security Council, during the Kissinger era.  Even
though his work had to be cleared by CIA censors to be
published, his view of how the United States government has
functioned, through its CIA, is telling:

           To summarize, the CIA has overthrown functioning
        constitutional democracies in over 20 countries.  It
        has manipulated elections in dozens of countries.
        It has created standing armies and directed them to
        fight.  It has organized ethnic minorities and
        encouraged them to revolt in numerous volatile
        areas. (p. 73)

    Looking at CIA activities abroad, in Asia, Africa, and
Latin America, this former station chief offers a
conservative estimate of how many people, all over the
world, "...would not have died if U.S. tax dollars had not
been spent by the CIA to inflame tensions, finance covert
political and military activity, and destabilize societies,"
and comes up with a figure of: 6,000,000.  Six million
people, he says, "and this is a minimum figure" (p. 81).

    Are Afghan-trained rebels, from various Middle Eastern
states, responsible for the carnage of 11 September, 2001?
Who armed them?  Who trained them?  Who loosed them upon the
world?  Their very deadly expertise are your tax dollars at
work.

    Americans mean one thing, when they think of terrorism.

    Americans from the South, in Peru, Colombia, Nicaragua,
Uruguay, Brazil, Cuba, El Salvador, Chile, etc., think of
something else.

    People from Indonesia, South Africa, Angola, Egypt, the
Occupied Territories of Palestine, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia,
and the like, think of something else.

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*'01 maj