CIA paid mullahs to back US says book

WASHINGTON - The United States CIA paid mullahs and created fake Islamic religious leaders to preach a moderate message and counter anti-American sentiment in the Arab world after the September 11 attacks, it was claimed yesterday.

In The CIA at War, Ronald Kessler, an investigative reporter and author of several books about the CIA and the FBI, also detailed espionage activity in Iraq to support the March invasion that toppled President Saddam Hussein.

For the book, to be published next month, Kessler interviewed CIA director George Tenet in May and other senior CIA officials.

The agency supplied most of the photographs in the book.

"In Islam, as in many other religions, anyone can call himself a religious leader," Kessler writes. "So, besides paying mullahs, the CIA created fake mullahs - recruited agents who would proclaim themselves clerics and take a more moderate position about non-believers."

A CIA source is quoted as saying: "We are taking over radio stations and supporting clerics.

"It's back to propaganda. We are creating moderate Muslims."

Kessler says the CIA also paid for mullahs to issue fatwas, or religious edicts, urging Iraqis not to resist American forces. He does not specify the countries this took place in.

The CIA planted tiny video cameras to track Saddam, his sons and other officials, and monitor the position of Iraqi troops and suspected weapons of mass destruction.

Electronic beacons were attached to the undersides of cars that Saddam might use and radar-imaging sensors were dragged across the ground to look for underground bunkers and storage facilities, the book says.

Shedding light on how a major pre-war threat was averted - that Saddam would blow up his oil wells - Kessler says the CIA and US Special Forces paid Iraqi guards who protected the wells to snip wires to explosive devices after the war began.

To communicate with Iraqi agents, the CIA gave them devices such as satellite phones hidden in rifles and laptop computers with programs hidden in innocuous games or graphics that could send and receive encrypted documents.

The CIA also used a secret writing technique dating to biblical days, in which Iraqi agents wrote over innocuous letters to aunts or mothers through a second piece of paper treated with chemicals.

The hidden message would show up when placed under a special light.

Tenet is quoted as saying it was up to him to accept responsibility for any mistakes related to the September 11 attacks and not blame specific employees, as some in Congress had requested. Otherwise it could chill risk-taking essential to the CIA's mission.

"If you think this is about protecting your image or yourself, you're finished. Forget it," Tenet says.

Kessler says the CIA used operatives from intelligence services in Arab countries including Jordan, Syria and Egypt to infiltrate al Qaeda, develop intelligence, but also sow suspicion so members of the network would kill each other.

Al Qaeda was blamed for the September 11 attacks.

Meanwhile, Pakistani police have captured the younger brother of Hambali, Osama bin Laden's head man in Southeast Asia, in an arrest that may help to unravel a tangled web of links between al Qaeda and the Jemaah Islamiyah terror group blamed for the Bali bombings.

Rusman Gunawan, an Indonesian, was among 17 students detained at the weekend in raids on three Islamic schools in the southern port city of Karachi.

Gunawan was believed to be in charge of Jemaah Islamiyah's Pakistan branch and to have arranged trips for Hambali to Pakistan and Afghanistan, said an Indonesian-based terrorism expert who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Hambali, 39, was Southeast Asia's most wanted man until he was arrested on August 11 in Thailand.

In the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, a police spokesman said they had no evidence of wrongdoing against Gunawan and would not seek his extradition.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq