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Posted on 09/28/2001 9:44:31 AM PDT by Jean S

      Former Clinton officials have been all over the air expressing surprise at the terrorist attacks blamed on Osama bin Laden. But journalists have failed to point out that the Clinton Administration was allied with bin Laden in the U.S. and NATO war on Yugoslavia when the CIA assisted the Kosovo Liberation Army, a group involved in drug trafficking whose members were trained by bin Laden.

      The Washington Times ran a story by Jerry Seper about those ties on May 4th, 1999. It said, "Some members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, which has financed its war effort through the sale of heroin, were trained in terrorist camps run by international fugitive Osama bin Laden, who is wanted in the 1998 bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 224 persons, including twelve Americans…. The KLA members, embraced by the Clinton administration in NATO’s bombing campaign to bring Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to the bargaining table, were trained in secret camps in Afghanistan... and elsewhere, according to newly obtained intelligence reports."

      It went on to say, "The reports also show that the KLA has enlisted Islamic terrorists, members of the Mujahideen, as soldiers in its ongoing conflict against Serbia, and that many already have been smuggled into Kosovo to join the fight.… The reports said bin Laden's organization, known as al-Qaeda, has both trained and financially supported the KLA. Many border crossings into Kosovo by ‘foreign fighters’ also have been documented and include veterans of the militant group Islamic Jihad from Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan. Many of the crossings originated in neighboring Albania and, according to the reports, included parties of up to 50 men. Jane’s International Defense Review... reported in February that documents found last year on the body of a KLA member showed that he had escorted several volunteers into Kosovo, including more than a dozen Saudi Arabians. Each volunteer carried a passport identifying him as a Macedonian Albanian."

      In view of the nature of the KLA, once labeled a terrorist group even by a Clinton State Department official, it is ironic that General Wesley Clark, the NATO commander during the war in Kosovo, published a column in the Washington Post after the September 11 attacks arguing that the U.S. now has to use decisive force against international terrorism.

      Clark worked closely with the KLA during that war and implemented a Clinton policy that ignored far more serious human rights problems in other parts of the world. The Clinton administration, for example, remained largely indifferent to the persecution of Christians in Sudan, where an Islamic regime that hosted bin Laden has killed almost two million people.

      The Washington Post published a long article about bin Laden’s worldwide activities, noting his presence in places like NATO- and U.N.-occupied Bosnia and Kosovo, but failed to point out that this has occurred under the watchful eye of the Clinton administration. The Post would rather not bring up that subject.

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