Hope is a great falsifier -- Baltasar Gracian

The long and the short of it

No More Unheeded Warnings

By Ross Hedvicek
ross@scanlon.im1.net

    Yesterday, October 9, 2001, I was watching Bill O'Reilly asking Newt Gingrich a question that CNN and other mainstream left-leaning media pundits wouldn't dare ask; "How much blame for events of Sept.11 can be put on Bill Clinton and his administration?"

    Newt, given his rich personal history with Clinton ,and being a patriot, just smiled and ducked the question: "While this a valid point, the primary blame still lays with terrorists".

    One can only feel sorry for president Bush, when we realize that he now
has to undo all that damage caused by Bill Clinton in the area of international relations or matters of national security of the United States. Before the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington nobody paid much attention to the fact that Bill Clinton allowed the Chinese communist army to create a beachhead in Long Beach (by attempting to lease a decomissioned military base to a communist Chinese company named COSCO - China Ocean Shipping Company), and that
he allowed other Chinese front companies to take control of the Panama Canal after the U.S. very unwisely (and on Clinton's orders) pulled out of Panama. Or how about when Bill Clinton compromised the integrity of NATO by single-handedly forcing the admission of the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary as new members of NATO -- when these countries did not honestly qualify for membership.

    After the events of September 11 everybody's paying attention to warning signs which used to be ignored -- that is, to all warnings related to the more obvious terrorist possibilities. But there is still a few not so obvious areas. Let's take for example the above mentioned Czech Republic.

    The Czech Republic -- consisting of the western-part of former Czechoslovakia -- switched from being a member of the communist Warsaw Pact to becoming a member of the anti-communist NATO alliance without any major internal political or social changes. It is one of the hard-to-believe tricks even Houdini would not manage; but Clinton did. Imagine if Hitler's Germany, after causing a WWII and killing 6 million Jews, declared itself a democracy overnight with no punishment for the guilty and with the same people in the government.

    Well, that's what happened in the Czech Republic.

    Communist Czechoslovakia was always a "big-league" supporter of world terrorism. There were four major terrorist training camps in Czechoslovakia (the biggest one in Zastavka u Brna), where  Czechoslovak government experts trained terrorist not only from Palestine or Lybia, but from most Arab countries, and likes like Carlos "The Jackal" as well. According to information from the director of the Czech government archives, Jan Frolik, this terrorist school
was officially called "The Institute for foreign studies" and had a codename -- "Pristav" (The Port). None of the organizers and instructors of this camp were ever brought to justice or even remotely pursued.  In fact, it was just the opposite.

    One of the instructors at the "Pristav" training camp, Richard Falbr, is now the head of the Czech trade unions and a "senator"! The most infamous Czech product was (and still is) of course the plastic explosive Semtex (made in a Synthesia factory in Semtin near Pardubice).

    To blow a Boeing from the sky over Lockerbie the Libyans needed less than a pound (0.30 kg) of Semtex. According to Frolik, Czechoslovakia sold over 900 tons ( that is 900,000 kg!) to the Lybians, 14 tons (14 000 kg) to Vietnam and even at the time of the "velvet revolution" they were sending 200 kg of Semtex and 1000 kg of "classic" TNT to Guinea. Frolik mentioned, among other things, shipments of 110 Scorpion mini-machineguns, scores of pistols, ammunition and eavesdropping equipment to Arafat. The Western world can hardly consider the Czech republic an ally.  This "ally" never cooperated and habitually hid everything up to the present.

    Czech support for terrorism is not a thing of the past. The Czech Republic is unable to come clean even today. Muhammad Atta, who piloted the jet into one of the WTC towers was in Prague just before he left on his fatal mission to the USA. He met in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence agent.  There, in the Czech Republic, he probably got his orders and left. Given existing intelligence methods, there is little doubt Czech intelligence knew about the meeting and did nothing.

    According to Czech media reports, the Czech instructor, who was training terrorists of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan (and who has left the area in the meantime) was in fact a member of Czech military intelligence. The Czech minister of defense claims he knew nothing about that.  According to another suppressed report the Czech Republic was given by their American counterparts a list of about 1000 Czech citizens suspected of ties with terrorists.

    What a surprise!

    An even more chilling angle:  according to a British expert on islamic terrorism, Simon Reeve, associates of Osama bin Laden were purchasing biological weapons in the Czech Republic as recently as 1995. The institute working on biological weapons still exists in Techonin near Hradec Kralove, and according to Reeve's sources, purchase prices for biological weapons went as high as 7500 dollars for one glass capsule. Czech Minister of Defense Tvrdik and Minister of Interior Gross are, of course, claiming total and utmost (what else is new?) ignorance of the matter.

    From 18 cabinet members of the current Czech government, 17 of them were members of communist party (including the prime minister Zeman). While alleged membership of President Havel in the communist party is still being disputed.  In neigboring Slovakia (not in NATO yet) even the current president was a communist and a politburo member. No big deal!

    Something should be done about it. The U.S. government has stated repeatedly that it will pursue all countries which "harbor, train or finance" any terrorist activities. In the light of the information above I believe that the Czech Republic qualifies as a state sponsor of terrorism. Even if the current situation only reflects the shade of a dirty past, the Czech republic top offices are still manned by the same people who were in charge when terrorism was being supported openly; and there has been no distancing from that past, no investigations, no punishment for the guilty. And they are now sitting in NATO headquarters in Brussels listening keenly to secrets they should not have any access to in the first place, just waiting for the right opportunity to stab the free world in the back and squeal the secrets to the KGB, for which they all worked in years past. One day we will find that they have forwarded all the information on Bush's Missile Defense Plan directly to Moscow, Beijing and North Korea.

    Given the current tense situation, I think that president Bush should ask for at least temporary suspension of the Czech Republic from NATO, demand and receive removal and/or resignation of the current communist-stained Czech government officials from their posts and request a full investigation of any terrorist-related activities sponsored and financed by the previous or current governments of Czech Republic/Czechoslovakia. 

    Let's give the old communist crowd a warning, just like we did to the Taliban. Either comply or face the consequences. Support for terrorism must not be a subject for negotiations. Give them fourteen days to think about it. And then use all necessary force. Everybody's equal. I don't see a reason why the terrorism-supporting government of the Czech Republic should be treated any different than the Taliban.

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