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The CIA's links with Charles Taylor?: Numerous readers have written to inform me that the quote by Global Witness' Alex Yearsley alleging the CIA had been making payments to Liberia's exiled former leader and accused war crimes suspect Charles Taylor until as recently as 2001 has mysteriously disappeared from the FT piece in which it originally appeared yesterday. I have calls into Global Witness to try to understand what has happened.
But, keep in mind, the US does seem to be giving financial contracts to the notorious black market arms dealer and friend-of-Taylor Victor Bout as well. And that there seems to be an extremely unflattering pattern emerging here of the US government maintaining ties with two of the men on the planet who have not only an extraordinary amount of blood on their hands, but who also have helped fund al Qaeda through the blood diamonds trade. [For its part, the independent 9/11 commission disputes Al Qaeda has profitted from conflict diamonds.]
More on this soon, with an eye to doing it in a reported piece. As Ryan Lizza has masterfully reported in the New Republic, Taylor long enjoyed the political support of the likes of evangelist Pat Robertson, Jesse Jackson, and the former Massachusetts DNC chair and attorney Lester Hyman who successfully lobbied the Clinton administration to drop US federal and Massachusetts state charges against Taylor for breaking out of a Plymouth County MA jail in 1985. Meanwhile, thanks for the many tips, particularly to my friend in Sierra Leone. The BBC, meanwhile, is reporting that Nigeria is agitating to extradite Taylor to face war crimes prosecution in Sierra Leone. Who doesn't want Taylor to get there?