Liberian dictator Charles Taylor confirmed as CIA agent

[Cain]

http://articles.boston.com/2012-01-17/metro/30632769_1_courtenay-griffiths-charles-taylor-war-crimes

When Charles G. Taylor tied bed sheets together to escape from a second-floor window at the Plymouth House of Correction on Sept. 15, 1985, he was more than a fugitive trying to avoid extradition. He was a sought-after source for American intelligence.

After a quarter-century of silence, the US government has confirmed what has long been rumored: Taylor, who would become president of Liberia and the first African leader tried for war crimes, worked with US spy agencies during his rise as one of the world's most notorious dictators.

The disclosure on the former president comes in response to a request filed by the Globe six years ago under the Freedom of Information Act. The Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon's spy arm, confirmed its agents and CIA agents worked with Taylor beginning in the early 1980s.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-16627628

US authorities say former Liberian leader Charles Taylor worked for its intelligence agencies, including the CIA, the Boston Globe reports.

The revelation comes in response to a Freedom of Information request by the newspaper.

A Globe reporter told the BBC this is the first official confirmation of long-held reports of a relationship between US intelligence and Mr Taylor.

Mr Taylor is awaiting a verdict on his trial for alleged war crimes.

Rumours of CIA ties were fuelled in July 2009 when Mr Taylor himself told his trial, at the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone in the Hague, that US agents had helped him escape from a maximum security prison in Boston in 1985.

The CIA at the time denied such claims as "completely absurd".

But now the Defence Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon's spy arm, has disclosed that its agents - and those of the CIA - did later use Mr Taylor as an informant, the Globe reports.

Globe reporter Bryan Bender told the BBC's Network Africa programme that Pentagon officials refused to give details on exactly what role Mr Taylor played, citing national security.

But they did confirm that Mr Taylor first started working with US intelligence in the 1980s, the period when he rose to become one of the world's most notorious warlords, Mr Bender says.

Mr Taylor was later elected Liberia's president.

He has been accused of arming and controlling the RUF rebels in neighbouring Sierra Leone during a 10-year campaign of terror conducted largely against civilians.

If convicted, Mr Taylor would serve a prison sentence in the UK.

He denies charges of murder, rape and using child soldiers.

So yeah.

[Pope Lecherous]

Thanks for the article.  Have you seen the Vice guide to Liberia? This really puts that short documentary into context (at least his part in it)

[Nephew Twiddleton]

The Globe is a reliable source of info, so this one is pretty much a yep.

[Cain]

There were also suspicions for years beforehand.

I'm not sure what Samuel Doe, his predecessor, did to cross the CIA, however.  Doe was considered a Cold War strategic ally.  Former members of his administration testified the CIA aided his coup, in 1980, which led to him seizing control of the country.

Perhaps they felt the writing was on the wall after the 1985 coup attempt against Doe and the subsequent crackdown, and if there was going to be a rebellion, they might as well have a reliable man running it.  Or else they were cleaning house as the Cold War was dying down, and it was felt Doe knew too much.

Of course, I am fully expecting in 20 years time, it will be revealed that Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was also a CIA asset, just after she is arrested for slaughtering a rebelling town's population, who were of course rebelling due to an agitator working for the CIA, who then becomes President etc etc.

[Cain]

It'd be a fun project, I'm thinking, to discover every CIA-assisted dictator of the last 40 years or so, look at their successors and see if they were also CIA-assisted, what precipitated their former leader's demise and exactly how long it takes for the Washington Post to decide the leader it was praising not so long is now a Hitler that needs to be overthrown.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

It'd be a fun project, I'm thinking, to discover every CIA-assisted dictator of the last 40 years or so, look at their successors and see if they were also CIA-assisted, what precipitated their former leader's demise and exactly how long it takes for the Washington Post to decide the leader it was praising not so long is now a Hitler that needs to be overthrown.

Might take awhile, but it would be interesting as hell.

[Cain]

Yeah.

I'm trying to figure out exactly when Taylor was considered a lost cause by his former backers.  It's not easy, since, as anyone who is a student of African military history knows, shit is fucked yo.  African wars tend to have a disturbing tendency to cross borders, metasizing rapidly.  Throw in ethnic affiliations, corruption, post-colonial manipulation, weak central governments, armed militias and ambitious military officers, and figuring out whether someone is a wild card (Valentine Strasser) or an asset of a foreign power (Taylor) quickly becomes messy.

Tony Blair's intervention in 1998 seems to have been a major turning point.  This was in Sierra Leone, not Liberia, of course.  Blair sent in 800 troops, who helped secure the capital and save the President from the rebel forces who were affiliated with Charles Taylor.  That seems to have been the first definitive move by a western power against Taylor.

It's possible that western powers stumped up some of the cash for hiring Executive Outcomes in 1995, but not necessarily so, and there is little evidence to show for it.  Nigeria also seems to have played a prominent role in backing Sierra Leone... although Nigeria itself was fairly secure, the neighbouring countries (who now form the ECOWAS alliance) were not, and in particular, the only strong, stable countries between Liberia and Nigeria were Ghana and Guinea.  RUF-like insurgencies could have easily been sponsored in most of them, and that would not have been good.

Not much happened in America until 2001, when Bush signed a law that banned the sale of diamonds from Liberia.  Sierra Leone's own diamond trade had previously been banned under Clinton, but everyone knew that the diamonds were just taken across the border and sold as Liberian anyway.  So something changed between 1996 and 2001, with first the Nigerians and Guineans, then the British and Americans getting involved in sucessive stages (incidentally, there is a hell of a thesis waiting in that for a motivated PhD student, in the use of successive multi-lateral cooperation groups and layered military intervention to build legitimacy and promote stability in conflict zones...though of course everyone knows the real reason the intervention by western powers went down so well is that no-one cares about Africa) to demolish Taylor's power base and eventually overthrow him.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Fuck.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Fuck.

Don't be scared, it's only slapstick.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Fuck.

Don't be scared, it's only slapstick.

It's more like "things I already know, being publicly acknowledged, and what are the odds that anything will change?"

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I am fairly convinced that Liberia primarily exists as a means for the US to be able to say "See? We gave them  their own country and they fucked it all up. They NEED governance."

Never mind that the whole concept was fucked from inception and that Africa's problems are largely a result of European invasion and profit-driven machinations.

[East Coast Hustle]

I'd say you could safely replace the world "largely" with the word "solely".

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I'd say you could safely replace the world "largely" with the word "solely".

Yeah, I was totally hedging when I typed that.