Book claims CIA turned blind eye on Pakistan’s post-9/11 terror links

J.L. Bruguiere

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A new book by France’s former leading investigating magistrate on counterterrorism affairs alleges that the CIA allowed the Pakistani army to train members of a notorious Islamist militant group, even after 9/11. In the book, entitled Ce que je n’ai pas pu dire (The Things I Would Not Utter), Jean-Louis Bruguiere says the US spy agency was aware that Pakistani army trainers worked with Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani group responsible for a series of sophisticated strikes in India, including the 2008 Mumbai attacks. The former magistrate bases his allegations on official testimony provided by Willy Brigitte, a French citizen from Guadeloupe, who was arrested in Australia in 2003, in connection with Lashkar-e-Taiba activities there. Soon after the US invasion of Afghanistan, Brigitte traveled to Pakistan aiming to join the Taliban insurgency, but was unable to cross the Pakistani-Afghan border. Instead, the Frenchman eventually joined a Lashkar-e-Taiba training camp for foreign recruits, located near the Punjabi capital Lahore, where he was trained for nearly 90 days. He later told his French captors that he quickly realized his personal Lashkar contact and most camp instructors were members of the Pakistani armed forces who had been officially tasked with training Lashkar fighters. Moreover, Brigitte said that CIA operatives in the Punjab, where the training camp was located, had struck a tacit deal with the camp operators, whereby they would be allowed to continue their training as long as “no foreign fighters” were recruited or trained. Brigitte said the Lashkar camp operators got around the deal by concealing the foreign recruits –most of whom were from Europe– each time the Americans were in the area.