THE BLOWBACK FILES



BLOWBACK AND 9/11

Blowback is defined as the unintended consequences of an intelligence operation. Originally it only referred to propaganda or disinformation planted overseas by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that was picked up by U.S. press, hence the info had "blown back." But now it refers to any unintended consequence, the connotation usually being a negative one such as the killing of U.S. nationals or attacks on U.S. soil by those who were supported covertly by the U.S. Government at one point or another.

Many assume that intelligence operations only refer to the gathering of information on others. However the National Security Act of 1947 as it listed the duties of the CIA included that the CIA could "perform such other functions and duties related to intelligence affecting the national security as the National Security Council may from time to time direct." This is the loophole through which every covert action that the U.S. Government has undertaken from reinstalling the Shah of Iran to overthrowing the Guatemalan government has been legally justified.

There are two covert operations that come to mind in Washington, DC, as we observe the 11th of September. Both are linked by that date: one is linked to the suicide attacks in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania, and is an operation that lasted more than likely from 1979 to 1988, the duration of the Soviet Union's occupation of Afghanistan. During that time, the CIA funneled millions of dollars of covert aid and training to Afghani resistance fighters which included very radical fundamentalist zealots who recruited other like minded zealots from throughout the Arab world. The fight against the Soviet Union was framed as a "jihad" or "holy war" early on, with the enthusiastic encouragement and cheerleading by the CIA.

The problem is that once the Soviet Red Army was driven out, the fighting did not stop and the "holy" warriors continued, having long ago framed this struggle as one against the West. Two attacks on U.S. soil indicated that we had not seen the end of this: one was a murder committed at the entrance of the CIA in the early 1990s and the other the 1993 bomb attack at the World Trade Center. Further bombings against US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, a compound housing U.S. soldiers in Saudi Arabia, and the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen were preludes to the terrible murders of September 11, 2001. The alleged mastermind behind many of these attacks, Osama Bin Laden, more than likely worked with the CIA at some point during their joint struggle against the Soviet Union and thus the current carnage is in fact blowback: unintended consequences of the intelligence operation in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union.

The other covert operation is one that succeeded on the 11th of September twenty-nine years ago (1973) in the South American nation of Chile. On that day, a coup d'etat overthrew the democratically-elected government of Salvador Allende and instated a dictatorship that would last until 1990. During that time, the Chilean military government, supported by the CIA and the U.S. Government, extrajudicially executed or "disappeared" more than 3,000 Chileans while thousands more were tortured and/or exiled. One of the earlier examples of blowback may have been the murder of two U.S. nationals living in Chile, Charles Hormann and Frank Teruggi. While their murder by the Chilean military is a fact, what is unclear is whether or not their murder was an unintended consequence. Recent documents declassified by the U.S. Government seem to indicate that officials of the State Department seemed to believe at the time that the CIA may have provided information to the Chilean government that may have condoned their murder.

Washington, DC was the stage for a clear cut case of blowback in 1976 when on September 21, a bomb ripped open a car on Sheridan Circle, killing two of the passengers, former Chilean Ambassador Orlando Letelier and his assistant Ronni Moffitt who was working for the think tank Institute for Policy Studies. The FBI investigation uncovered a trail that led directly to the head of the secret police in Chile (DINA), General Manuel Contreras, and discovered that among the agents who perpetrated this terrorist crime were Cuban veterans of the CIA war on Cuba.

So here we have two horrible crimes in Washington, DC - the attack on the Pentagon by suicide attackers using a civilian plane carrying civilians as a flying bomb, itself a war crime, and the car bombing on Sheridan Circle - both linked to other horrible crimes by the common denominator of past CIA operations abroad.

And what is the reaction by Washington? Increase covert operations, increase CIA operations, do more of the same (not to mention the frontal assault on the Constitution, the separation of powers, and civil liberties). Everyone seems to have forgotten that when you do more of the same, you get more of the same back. An even more painful lesson? You reap what you sow. The families of the victims did not sow this, the Government did. How long will we continue to pay for the arrogance and short-sightedness of the Government's covert operations?