The Role of the CIA: Behind the Dalai Lama’s Holy Cloak

Michael Backman
Global Research
March 23, 2008

Global Research Editor’s note

This incisive article by Michael Backman outlines the relationship of the Dalai Lama and his organization to US intelligence.

The Dalai Lama has been on the CIA payroll since the late 1950s. He is an instrument of US intelligence.

An understanding of this longstanding relationship to the CIA is essential, particuarly in the light of recent events. In all likelihood US intelligence was behind the protest movement, organized to occur a few months prior to the Beijing Olympic games.

M. C. 23 March 2008

Rarely do journalists challenge the Dalai Lama.

Partly it is because he is so charming and engaging. Most published accounts of him breeze on as airily as the subject, for whom a good giggle and a quaint parable are substitutes for hard answers. But this is the man who advocates greater autonomy for millions of people who are currently Chinese citizens, presumably with him as head of their government. So, why not hold him accountable as a political figure?

No mere spiritual leader, he was the head of Tibet’s government when he went into exile in 1959. It was a state apparatus run by aristocratic, nepotistic monks that collected taxes, jailed and tortured dissenters and engaged in all the usual political intrigues. (The Dalai Lama’s own father was almost certainly murdered in 1946, the consequence of a coup plot.)

The government set up in exile in India and, at least until the 1970s, received $US1.7 million a year from the CIA.

The money was to pay for guerilla operations against the Chinese, notwithstanding the Dalai Lama’s public stance in support of non-violence, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989.

The Dalai Lama himself was on the CIA’s payroll from the late 1950s until 1974, reportedly receiving $US15,000 a month ($US180,000 a year).

The funds were paid to him personally, but he used all or most of them for Tibetan government-in-exile activities, principally to fund offices in New York and Geneva, and to lobby internationally.

Details of the government-in-exile’s funding today are far from clear. Structurally, it comprises seven departments and several other special offices. There have also been charitable trusts, a publishing company, hotels in India and Nepal, and a handicrafts distribution company in the US and in Australia, all grouped under the government-in-exile’s Department of Finance.

The government was involved in running 24 businesses in all, but decided in 2003 that it would withdraw from these because such commercial involvement was not appropriate.

Several years ago, I asked the Dalai Lama’s Department of Finance for details of its budget. In response, it claimed then to have annual revenue of about $US22 million, which it spent on various health, education, religious and cultural programs.

The biggest item was for politically related expenditure, at $US7 million. The next biggest was administration, which ran to $US4.5 million. Almost $US2 million was allocated to running the government-in-exile’s overseas offices.

For all that the government-in-exile claims to do, these sums seemed remarkably low.

It is not clear how donations enter its budgeting. These are likely to run to many millions annually, but the Dalai Lama’s Department of Finance provided no explicit acknowledgment of them or of their sources.

Certainly, there are plenty of rumours among expatriate Tibetans of endemic corruption and misuse of monies collected in the name of the Dalai Lama.

Many donations are channelled through the New York-based Tibet Fund, set up in 1981 by Tibetan refugees and US citizens. It has grown into a multimillion-dollar organisation that disburses $US3 million each year to its various programs.

Part of its funding comes from the US State Department’s Bureau for Refugee Programs.

Like many Asian politicians, the Dalai Lama has been remarkably nepotistic, appointing members of his family to many positions of prominence. In recent years, three of the six members of the Kashag, or cabinet, the highest executive branch of the Tibetan government-in-exile, have been close relatives of the Dalai Lama.

An older brother served as chairman of the Kashag and as the minister of security. He also headed the CIA-backed Tibetan contra movement in the 1960s.

A sister-in-law served as head of the government-in-exile’s planning council and its Department of Health.

A younger sister served as health and education minister and her husband served as head of the government-in-exile’s Department of Information and International Relations.

Their daughter was made a member of the Tibetan parliament in exile. A younger brother has served as a senior member of the private office of the Dalai Lama and his wife has served as education minister.

The second wife of a brother-in-law serves as the representative of the Tibetan government-in-exile for northern Europe and head of international relations for the government-in-exile. All these positions give the Dalai Lama’s family access to millions of dollars collected on behalf of the government-in-exile.

The Dalai Lama might now be well-known but few really know much about him. For example, contrary to widespread belief, he is not a vegetarian. He eats meat. He has done so (he claims) on a doctor’s advice following liver complications from hepatitis. I have checked with several doctors but none agrees that meat consumption is necessary or even desirable for a damaged liver.

What has the Dalai Lama actually achieved for Tibetans inside Tibet?

If his goal has been independence for Tibet or, more recently, greater autonomy, then he has been a miserable failure.

He has kept Tibet on the front pages around the world, but to what end? The main achievement seems to have been to become a celebrity. Possibly, had he stayed quiet, fewer Tibetans might have been tortured, killed and generally suppressed by China.

In any event, the current Dalai Lama is 72 years old. His successor — a reincarnation — will be appointed as a child and it will be many years before he plays a meaningful role. As far as China is concerned, that is one problem that will take care of itself, irrespective of whether or not John Howard or Kevin Rudd meet the current Dalai Lama.

The Pentagon’s Pain Compliance and Mind Control Weapons

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
March 21, 2008

It should come as no secret the Pentagon has an array of high-tech weapons, far ahead of their time, ready to deploy when the guys with scrambled eggs on their lapels deem necessary. One such control device — and all non-lethal weapons are control devices, submission devices, not necessarily murder devices — was recently featured on the PopSci website. Megan Miller writes:

The U.S. Defense department has tested some spooky weapons, but those involving mind control and telepathic attack may be near the top of the list. A newly declassified 1998 document released under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (download the pdf here), describes potential weapons for crowd control, such as a microwave gun that could beam words directly into people’s ears, and an electromagnetic pulse that causes epilepsy-like seizures.

Some of this technology, on a far grander scale, is available to local cops. Back in 2005, the LA cops played around with a sonic device, capable of projecting sounds on targets a mile away. “There was nearly no distortion,” explains DefenseTech. “In fact, at one statute mile, we clearly listened to a Frank Sinatra record and could understand the words, hear the intonations and pitch, and even the background music! Other sounds, especially those in the higher frequency ranges like sirens and screams, were easily detected even over the noise from the 5 Freeway a short distance away.”

Now why would the police want to direct sound – more specifically, messages — at people a mile away? Stupid question. Why would the authorities in England want to install “talking cameras… in Southwark, Barking and Dagenham, in London, Reading, Harlow, Norwich, Ipswich, Plymouth, Gloucester, Derby, Northampton, Mansfield, Nottingham, Coventry, Sandwell, Wirral, Blackpool, Salford, South Tyneside and Darlington”?

Because it delivers that unique Winston Smith experience? In 1984, the telescreen watched 24/7 and even barked orders if the control freaks at their consoles far off thought it was well deserved, even necessary.

Back to PopSci:

The report also discusses a weapon that can heat a victim’s body internally, producing an artificial fever. It is unknown whether the fever-inducing technology was actually tested, but the report notes that the equipment needed “is available today” and that the resulting fever would keep a victim incapacitated for “any desired period consistent with safety.”

No doubt it “is available today,” as it was engineered decades ago, and probably ready to deploy at a moment’s notice.

Last month, a 60 Minutes reporter subjected himself to “a non-lethal weapon the Pentagon has developed,” write David Edwards and Chris Tackett for Raw Story. David Martin, acting as a corporate media guinea pig of sorts, subjected himself to the beam. “The gun is really an antenna which shoots out this very high-frequency radio beam that penetrates the skin to a depth of 1/64 of an inch, which is just deep enough to hit the nerves. And it creates this instantaneous sensation of heat which makes anyone who is hit with it try to get out of the way as fast as possible.”

CNN and the BBC reported this friendly little device — well, actually, large as it was mounted on a Humvee — back in January, 2007. “The weapon focuses non-lethal millimeter-wave radiation onto humans, raising their skin surface temperature to an uncomfortable 130 F. The goal is to make the targets drop any weapons and flee the scene. The device was apparently tested on two soldiers and a group of ten reporters, which makes me wonder how thoroughly this thing has been safety tested,” URSpider posted on the technogeek website, Slashdot.

It’s called the Active Denial System, ADS.

“A prototype Humvee-mounted ADS system could be sent to Iraq by the end of the year. A modified Stryker armored personnel carrier, equipped with a low-power version of the pain ray, a laser dazzler, and a sonic blaster, isn’t all that far behind, officials familiar with the program say,” DefenseTech noted in mid-2005.

Last December, the Arizona Daily Star reported the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department was “looking to new ‘directed-energy’ technology from Tucson-based Raytheon Missile Systems as a possible addition to his department’s arsenal,” to be used against “unruly inmates,” it was explained. “The weapons, which deliver a beam of energy that feels akin to scalding hot water but leaves no injuries, have been developed for use by the Defense Department as a ‘force-protection’ tool for use on battlefields overseas.”

It will be tested here in America, as stipulated by international treaty.

“If we’re not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation,” Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne told the Associated Press. “(Because) if I hit somebody with a nonlethal weapon and they claim that it injured them in a way that was not intended, I think that I would be vilified in the world press.”

This willingness is predicated strictly on the need to conduct scientific experiments and field tests. It has nothing to do with rolling out the ADS Humvees on, say, food rioters or stubborn souls who refuse to turn in their guns when Black Water mercenaries come a’knocking after the next bird flu pandemic. It will be Active Denial of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights by a recently returned Iraq veteran festooned in tattoos and shaved head listening to death rock on his iPod.

In an interview with New Scientist, Steve Wright, a UK security expert at Leeds Metropolitan University, warned that such technologies could be used for torture. “The epileptic seizure-inducing device is grossly irresponsible and should never be fielded,” He said. “We know from similar artificially-induced fits that the victim subsequently remains ‘potentiated’ and may spontaneously suffer epileptic fits again after the initial attack.”

It’s amazing, this complete lack of understanding of why these technologies were developed, as the point is to induce epileptic seizures. I guess it’s better to kill people slowly with depleted uranium.

But the device that beams “words directly into people’s ears,” that is intriguing. Imagine messages beamed into the heads of troublemakers — you know anarchists and the Timothy McVeigh types, those damn 9/11 truthers who need to be tasered, beaten to a pulp, and locked in detention camps, or so insist a few prominent members of the corporate media, that is to say their handlers and bosses. Make that a voice inside the head that argues, doubts, and disputes 24/7 and you have a pretty effective weapon, or hands-on brainwashing device.

It will have to be tested here first, naturally, before it will be used in Iraq, the “war” that will never end, as our rulers promise. And that’s why we are reading about this technology now, to get us ready for pain compliance — and telepathic compliance eventually as well.

U.S. death toll in Iraq reaches 4,000

• Story Highlights
• Four U.S. soldiers die when roadside bomb hits their vehicle
  
• As Iraq war enters sixth year, American death toll rises to 4,000
  
• At least 35 Iraqis killed Sunday
  
• Iraq national security adviser says war is "well worth fighting"
  

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Four U.S. soldiers died Sunday night in a roadside bombing in Iraq, military officials reported, bringing the American toll in the 5-year-old war to 4,000 deaths.

The four were killed when a homemade bomb hit their vehicle as they patrolled in a southern Baghdad neighborhood, the U.S. military headquarters in Iraq said. A fifth soldier was wounded.

The grim milestone comes less than a week after the fifth anniversary of the start of the war.

"No casualty is more or less significant than another; each soldier, Marine, airman and sailor is equally precious and their loss equally tragic," said Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, the U.S. military's chief spokesman in Iraq.

"Every single loss of a soldier, sailor, airman or Marine is keenly felt by military commanders, families and friends both in theater and at home."

Of the 4,000 U.S. military personnel killed in the war, 3,263 have died in attacks and fighting and 737 in nonhostile incidents, such as traffic accidents and suicides. Eight of those killed were civilians working for the Pentagon.

The numbers are based on Pentagon data counted by CNN.

Also Sunday, at least 35 Iraqis died as the result of suicide bombings, mortar fire and the work of gunmen in cars who opened fire on a crowded outdoor market. Nearly 100 were wounded in the violence.

Estimates of the Iraqi death toll since the war began range from about 80,000 to the hundreds of thousands. Another 2 million Iraqis have been forced to leave the country, and 2.5 million have been displaced from their homes within Iraq, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

Many of the Iraqis and U.S. troops killed over the years, like the four soldiers slain Sunday in Baghdad, have been targeted by improvised explosive devices -- the roadside bombs that have come to symbolize Iraq's tenacious insurgency. Watch how the bombs have become a deadly staple »

The Pentagon's Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization has been developed to counter the threat of IEDs in Iraq as well as Afghanistan. The group calls IEDs the "weapon of choice for adaptive and resilient networks of insurgents and terrorists."

The news of the 4,000 mark came on the same day that Iraq's national security adviser urged Americans to be patient with the progress of the war, contending the struggle has implications for "global terror."

"This is global terrorism hitting everywhere, and they have chosen Iraq to be a battlefield. And we have to take them on," Mowaffak al-Rubaie said Sunday on CNN's "Late Edition With Wolf Blitzer."

"If we don't prevail, if we don't succeed in this war, then we are doomed forever. I understand and sympathize with the mothers, with the widows, with the children who have lost their beloved ones in this country.

"But honestly, it is well worth fighting and well worth investing the money and the treasure and the sweat and the tears in Iraq."

Nearly 160,000 U.S. troops remain in Iraq, and the war has cost U.S. taxpayers about $600 billion, according to the House Budget Committee.

Senior U.S. military officials are preparing to recommend to President Bush a four- to six-week pause in additional troop withdrawals from Iraq after the last of the so-called surge brigades leaves in July, CNN learned last week from U.S. military officials familiar with the recommendations but not authorized to speak on the record.

The return of all five brigades added to the Iraq contingent last year could reduce troop levels by up to 30,000 but still leave about 130,000 or more troops in Iraq.

Al-Rubaie emphasized Sunday that any drawdown of U.S. troops "has to be based on the conditions on the ground."

But there has been too much "foot-dragging on key governance questions in Iraq," Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, said Sunday. "It seems to me you put off those troop withdrawals, you send exactly the wrong message to the Iraqis."

When conditions warrant the withdrawal of American troops, the Iraqis will say, "'Thank you very much, indeed,' " al-Rubaie said. "A big, big thank you for the United States of America for liberating Iraq, for helping us in sustaining the security gains in Iraq ... and we will give them a very, very good farewell party then."

Responding to recent remarks from U.S. presidential candidates that Iraqis are not taking responsibility for their future, al-Rubaie said his countrymen are making political and security gains.

"Literally by the day and by the week, we are gradually assuming more responsibility," he said, noting that Iraqis have taken over security in many provinces.

CNN's Mohammed Tawfeeq contributed to this report.

Jim Rogers: Fire Bernanke, Abolish the Fed

From OpEdNews

Top investor Jim Rogers has publicly called for Federal Reserve chaiman Ben Barnanke to resign, blaming him for destroying the dollar and bailing out his friends on Wall Street at the cost of the American taxpayer, in the latest savage attack on the Fed amidst the latest round of economic turmoil.

“I think the Fed should be abolished, we’d all be better off without the Fed….in my view their day is done,” said Rogers during an appearance on CNBC yesterday.

Comcast Cameras to Start Watching You?

If you have some tinfoil handy, now might be a good time to fashion a hat. At the Digital Living Room conference today, Gerard Kunkel, Comcast’s senior VP of user experience, told me the cable company is experimenting with different camera technologies built into devices so it can know who’s in your living room.

The idea being that if you turn on your cable box, it recognizes you and pulls up shows already in your profile or makes recommendations. If parents are watching TV with their children, for example, parental controls could appear to block certain content from appearing on the screen. Kunkel also said this type of monitoring is the “holy grail” because it could help serve up specifically tailored ads. Yikes.

Kunkel said the system wouldn’t be based on facial recognition, so there wouldn’t be a picture of you on file (we hope). Instead, it would distinguish between different members of your household by recognizing body forms. He stressed that the system is still in the experimental phase, that there hasn’t been consumer testing, and that any rollout “must add value” to the viewing experience beyond serving ads.

Perhaps I’ve seen Enemy of the State too many times, or perhaps I’m just naive about the depths to which Comcast currently tracks my every move. I can’t trust Comcast with BitTorrent, so why should I trust them with my must-be-kept-secret, DVR-clogging addiction to Keeping Up with the Kardashians?

Kunkel also spoke on camera with me about fixing bad Comcast user experiences, the ongoing BitTorrent battle and VOD. But he mostly towed the corporate line on these issues (the monitoring your living room came up after my camera was put away).