Former CIA Agent Says Afghan War is For Oil, Not Freedom

During an interview with Press TV, former CIA agent Ray McGovern said that the Afghan Taliban does not pose a threat to American national security.

In reference to an attack against an American base in Afghanistan on Wednesday, which killed seven CIA agents, McGovern said the agents should not have been there in the first place. McGovern said that CIA operatives are in Afghanistan only because the US wants to build an oil pipeline to transport oil from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan.

The former CIA man came to his conclusions through documents he had received from the Enron Corporation, which planned on building an oil pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The US Defense Department’s 1992 “Defense Planning Guidance,” written by Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis Libby and Zalmay Khalilzad under the direction of then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, said that the US should gain further control over Persian Gulf oil. George W. Bush approved 40 million dollars in financial aid to Taliban-led Afghanistan in May 2001. He hoped this would bring the Taliban closer to the American line so the US could get cheaper oil. When this didn't work, a plan to invade Afghanistan hit Bush's desk on September 10, 2001. The war in Afghanistan wasn't over 9/11, it was over oil, and it was planned in advance.