Behind the Dalai Lama's Cloak

[AlicetheKurious]

The Role of the CIA: Behind the Dalai Lama's Holy Cloak

by Michael Backman

Global Research, March 23, 2008

Global Research Editor's note

This incisive article by Michael Backman outlines the relationship of the Dalai Lama and his organization to US intelligence.

The Dalai Lama has been on the CIA payroll since the late 1950s. He is an instrument of US intelligence.

An understanding of this longstanding relationship to the CIA is essential, particuarly in the light of recent events. In all likelihood US intelligence was behind the protest movement, organized to occur a few months prior to the Beijing Olympic games.

M. C. 23 March 2008


Rarely do journalists challenge the Dalai Lama.

Partly it is because he is so charming and engaging. Most published accounts of him breeze on as airily as the subject, for whom a good giggle and a quaint parable are substitutes for hard answers. But this is the man who advocates greater autonomy for millions of people who are currently Chinese citizens, presumably with him as head of their government. So, why not hold him accountable as a political figure?

No mere spiritual leader, he was the head of Tibet's government when he went into exile in 1959. It was a state apparatus run by aristocratic, nepotistic monks that collected taxes, jailed and tortured dissenters and engaged in all the usual political intrigues. (The Dalai Lama's own father was almost certainly murdered in 1946, the consequence of a coup plot.)

The government set up in exile in India and, at least until the 1970s, received $US1.7 million a year from the CIA.

The money was to pay for guerilla operations against the Chinese, notwithstanding the Dalai Lama's public stance in support of non-violence, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989.

The Dalai Lama himself was on the CIA's payroll from the late 1950s until 1974, reportedly receiving $US15,000 a month ($US180,000 a year).

The funds were paid to him personally, but he used all or most of them for Tibetan government-in-exile activities, principally to fund offices in New York and Geneva, and to lobby internationally.

Details of the government-in-exile's funding today are far from clear. Structurally, it comprises seven departments and several other special offices. There have also been charitable trusts, a publishing company, hotels in India and Nepal, and a handicrafts distribution company in the US and in Australia, all grouped under the government-in-exile's Department of Finance.

The government was involved in running 24 businesses in all, but decided in 2003 that it would withdraw from these because such commercial involvement was not appropriate.

Several years ago, I asked the Dalai Lama's Department of Finance for details of its budget. In response, it claimed then to have annual revenue of about $US22 million, which it spent on various health, education, religious and cultural programs.

The biggest item was for politically related expenditure, at $US7 million. The next biggest was administration, which ran to $US4.5 million. Almost $US2 million was allocated to running the government-in-exile's overseas offices.

For all that the government-in-exile claims to do, these sums seemed remarkably low.

It is not clear how donations enter its budgeting. These are likely to run to many millions annually, but the Dalai Lama's Department of Finance provided no explicit acknowledgment of them or of their sources.

Certainly, there are plenty of rumours among expatriate Tibetans of endemic corruption and misuse of monies collected in the name of the Dalai Lama.

Many donations are channelled through the New York-based Tibet Fund, set up in 1981 by Tibetan refugees and US citizens. It has grown into a multimillion-dollar organisation that disburses $US3 million each year to its various programs.

Part of its funding comes from the US State Department's Bureau for Refugee Programs.

Like many Asian politicians, the Dalai Lama has been remarkably nepotistic, appointing members of his family to many positions of prominence. In recent years, three of the six members of the Kashag, or cabinet, the highest executive branch of the Tibetan government-in-exile, have been close relatives of the Dalai Lama.

An older brother served as chairman of the Kashag and as the minister of security. He also headed the CIA-backed Tibetan contra movement in the 1960s.

A sister-in-law served as head of the government-in-exile's planning council and its Department of Health.

A younger sister served as health and education minister and her husband served as head of the government-in-exile's Department of Information and International Relations.

Their daughter was made a member of the Tibetan parliament in exile. A younger brother has served as a senior member of the private office of the Dalai Lama and his wife has served as education minister.

The second wife of a brother-in-law serves as the representative of the Tibetan government-in-exile for northern Europe and head of international relations for the government-in-exile. All these positions give the Dalai Lama's family access to millions of dollars collected on behalf of the government-in-exile.

The Dalai Lama might now be well-known but few really know much about him. For example, contrary to widespread belief, he is not a vegetarian. He eats meat. He has done so (he claims) on a doctor's advice following liver complications from hepatitis. I have checked with several doctors but none agrees that meat consumption is necessary or even desirable for a damaged liver.

What has the Dalai Lama actually achieved for Tibetans inside Tibet?

If his goal has been independence for Tibet or, more recently, greater autonomy, then he has been a miserable failure.

He has kept Tibet on the front pages around the world, but to what end? The main achievement seems to have been to become a celebrity. Possibly, had he stayed quiet, fewer Tibetans might have been tortured, killed and generally suppressed by China.

In any event, the current Dalai Lama is 72 years old. His successor — a reincarnation — will be appointed as a child and it will be many years before he plays a meaningful role. As far as China is concerned, that is one problem that will take care of itself, irrespective of whether or not John Howard or Kevin Rudd meet the current Dalai Lama.

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8426

[slow_dazzle]

I read it on GR and I know that Michael Parenti has also written about Tibet in less than favourable terms. But GR is slipping up these days. It posted the Norman Baker MP article on Dr David Kelly but that is possibly a limited hangout version of what might have happened. Then Stephen Lendman and Bill Engdahl publish articles undermining the notion that energy supplies have peaked when the evidence for hitting the peak is fairly compelling.

I did some research on the author of the GR article you posted. He writes for a publication called "The Globalist" and he seems to be very much part of the establishment. He has been praised by The Economist magazine which is about as establishment as it gets.

link

I'm not dismissing the possibility that the claims of the DL being a CIA asset are correct. But the credentials of the author make me a tad suspicious as to his motives.

This quote is quite revealing:

He has kept Tibet on the front pages around the world, but to what end? The main achievement seems to have been to become a celebrity. Possibly, had he stayed quiet, fewer Tibetans might have been tortured, killed and generally suppressed by China.

The message I take from that is the author is saying any leader of an opressed nation should never protest or they will draw the heat. Well, I can think of a few other examples of opressed peoples' leaders speaking out and we, quite rightly, support their right to express dissent. So why is it different for the DL?

[chlamor]

Camp Hale

Camp Hale, between Red Cliff and Leadville in the Eagle River valley in Colorado, was a United States Army training facility constructed in 1942 for what became the 10th Mountain Division. It was named in honor of General Irving Hale. Soldiers were trained in mountain climbing, skiing and cold-weather survival. When it was in full operation, approximately 16,000 soldiers were housed there.

From 1959 to 1964, Tibetan guerrillas were secretly trained at Camp Hale by the CIA. The site was chosen because of the similarities of the Rocky Mountains with the Himalayan Plateau. The Tibetans loved the surroundings so much that they nicknamed the camp, "Dhumra", the Garden. The CIA circulated a story in the local press that Camp Hale was to be the site of atomic tests and would be a high security zone. Until its closure in 1964, the entire area was cordoned off and its perimeter patrolled by military police. In the nearby mining town of Leadville, where instructors from Camp Hale occasionally went for rest and recreation, numerous rumors spread about the camp but no one guessed its real function.

The Tibetan project was codenamed ST Circus, and it was similar to the CIA operation that trained dissident Cubans in what later became the Bay of Pigs Invasion. In all, around 259 Tibetans were trained at Camp Hale. Some were parachuted back into Tibet to link up with local resistance groups (most perished); others were sent overland into Tibet on intelligence gathering missions; and yet others were instrumental in setting up the CIA-funded Tibetan resistance force that operated out of Mustang, in northern Nepal (1959-1974). After Camp Hale was dismantled in 1964, no Tibetans remained in Colorado.

From 1958 to 1960 Anthony Poshepny trained various special missions teams, including Tibetan Khambas and Hui Muslims, for operations in China against the Communist government. Poshepny sometimes claimed that he personally escorted the 14th Dalai Lama out of Tibet, but this has been denied, both by former CIA officers involved in the Tibet operation, and by the Tibetan Government-in-exile (Central Tibetan Administration).

In 1964, Camp Hale was dismantled and the land was deeded to the United States Forest Service. Since 1974 the area has reflected its roots by becoming a youth development training center. The Eagle County non-profit, Meet The Wilderness,[1], has effectively used the site to expose disadvantaged youth to many of the same outdoor challenges experienced by the 10th Mountain Division. In 2003, there was a cleanup effort to remove some of the unexploded ordnance at the site

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Hale

[chlamor]

<snip>

For centuries the high Tibetan plateau has constituted a key strategic position within the region—long under Chinese patronage, and then after the Chinese revolution of 1911, used by the British in India as a buffer against China and Russia. Soon after Mao's peasant armies took power in Beijing in 1949, the Chinese army seized Tibet and in 1951 it was formally incorporated into China.

But the Chinese Stalinists were unable to create a stable social base for their rule. Beijing invariably approached religious and cultural questions in Tibet with the heavy hand of the state bureaucrat imbued with Chinese chauvinism. Incapable of eliminating social inequality, poverty and cultural backwardness, Chinese policy has in varying degrees combined brutal repression with pandering to Tibetan Buddhism in an effort to create its own officially sanctioned hierarchy of lamas through which to manipulate local politics.

China's brutish behaviour in Tibet created oppositional tendencies. Throughout the Cold War, the US was able to exploit as a means of putting pressure on Beijing. While not diplomatically recognising the Dalai Lama's government-in-exile, US administrations have in the past provided diplomatic, financial and even military assistance to the Tibetan priesthood. After China's takeover of Tibet in 1950, the CIA financed and trained Tibetans to engage in espionage and guerrilla activities against the Chinese authorities.

Details of the CIA's operations in Tibet have recently begun to leak out as former operatives have began to publicly reminisce about their Cold War exploits. An article in the US-based Newsweek magazine last August pointed out that the CIA's activities began as far back as 1956. While the Dalai Lama, keen to preserve his image as a man of peace, claims not to have been directly involved, his elder brother Gyalo Thondup was at the centre of the operations. According to the magazine's report: “Gyalo Thondup now says he didn't inform his exalted sibling about all of his intelligence connections at the time: ‘This was a very dirty business'.”

The Newsweek article explained: “Beginning in 1958, American operatives trained about 300 Tibetans at Camp Hale in Colorado. The trainees were schooled in spy photography and sabotage, Morse Code and minelaying. Between 1957 and 1960, the CIA dropped more than 400 tonnes of cargo to the resistance. Yet nine out 10 guerrillas who fought in Tibet were killed by the Chinese or committed suicide to evade capture, according to an article by aerospace historian William Leary in the Smithsonian's Air & Space Magazine.”

These activities culminated in an abortive uprising in Tibet in 1959, which was ruthlessly suppressed by Chinese security forces. The Dalai Lama, his close associates and thousands of other Tibetans fled to Nepal and India and established a government-in-exile, which received US and CIA support throughout the 1960s. “By the mid-60s,” Newsweek explained, “the Tibet operation was costing Washington $1.7 million a year, according to intelligence documents. That included $500,000 subsidy to support 2,100 guerrillas based in Nepal and $180,000 worth of ‘subsidy to the Dalai Lama'.”

Following Washington's rapprochement with Beijing in 1972, overt support for the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan guerrillas dried up. The Newsweek article quoted the rather bitter remarks of the Dalai Lama: “They [the CIA] gave the impression that once I arrived in India, great support would come from the United States. It's a sad, sad story... The US help was very, very limited.” By 1974, the Dalai Lama was forced to publicly call for an end to armed resistance in Tibet.

While the US and other Western powers have been wary about alienating Beijing by associating too closely with the Dalai Lama's government-in-exile, neither have they dropped completely what could still be a useful political tool. It was no doubt for past services rendered that the Dalai Lama was given the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989. He continues to receive “unofficial” audiences with political leaders and to bathe in the invariably reverential adulation of the international media.

Tibet along with Taiwan has always been a political hobbyhorse of the extreme right in the US, particularly in the Republican Party. The anti-China lobby wields considerable influence within both the Democrat and Republican parties and as the presidential campaign heats up it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that Tibet along with US-China relations as a whole will surface as an issue.

<snip>

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/mar2000/tib-m22.shtml

[American Dream]

The film Shadow Circus: The CIA in Tibet may be of interest. Viewable in six parts here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOhDBo6x2ZY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iwu5qYosTo0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2iaIcoHBl4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJYamwYSe2M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FviSTNWRgHU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yMV0-KOY1k

[AlicetheKurious]

slow_dazzle said:

The message I take from that is the author is saying any leader of an opressed nation should never protest or they will draw the heat.

I didn't take that message at all. But, whatever the writer's motives, his facts do seem to check out, and they are damning.

Leaders (and regular members) of oppressed nations should, indeed must, speak out. But there is no more insidious and destructive way to undermine a people's liberation movement, than to have its leaders tarnished by corruption and an imperialist nation's secret agenda.

[Penguin]

Thanks for the info. Ive read that book about US-backed guerilla army of tibetians sometime.

[erosoplier]

Much ado about nothing, one would have thought, but it's currently one of the prominent stories on the front page of The Australian website:


Protest as Olympic Games flame lit

Correspondents in Olympia | March 25, 2008

HUMAN rights demonstrators last night breached tight security and tried to hijack the Beijing Olympic torch-lighting ceremony in Olympia.

In a globally televised ceremony to mark the start of a five-month torch relay, the actor Maria Nafpliotou, playing the high priestess, used a break in the clouds to light the torch in front of the Temple of Hera.

However, just before the torch-lighting ceremony inside the archeological site that played host to the Olympics in ancient Greece, three demonstrators managed to break a tight police cordon.

One of them, carrying a black banner with five interlocked handcuffs in the pattern of the Olympics rings, approached Beijing Games chief Liu Qi during his speech in front of hundreds of officials but was quickly led away by police before unfolding it.

Mr Liu was not distracted by the commotion and continued his speech, while television footage immediately cut away from the incident.

"The Olympic flame will radiate light and happiness, peace and friendship, and hope and dreams to the people of China and the whole world," Mr Liu told the assembled crowd.

Police said that three men had been arrested and would be charged with breaching the peace. Press freedom group Reporters Without Borders said three of its members had tried to stage the protest.

"If the Olympic flame is sacrificed, human rights are even more so," the group said in a statement on its website.

"We cannot let the Chinese Government seize the Olympic flame, a symbol of peace, without condemning the dramatic human rights situation."

Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Robert Menard unfurled a second black banner from the VIP area where he was seated.

Protests also followed the first few runners of the relay, with several demonstrators briefly holding up the runners, when they lay in front of the convoy of cars. Others wore Free Tibet T-shirts and a large banner was hanging from one of the buildings along the main street through Olympia.

"They managed to hold up the relay very briefly at three different parts of the high street," a Reuters photographer said.

Exiled Tibetans had pledged to demonstrate on the day against China's security crackdown in the region and what they say is the IOC's hesitance to pressure Beijing to improve its human rights record.

Police said an additional 25 protesters had attempted to come in, but a strong police presence kept them at bay before they dispersed. Greek police also detained the Tibetan activist Tenzin Dorjee of the Students for Free Tibet group in Olympia.

A crackdown by China on anti-Chinese protests in Tibet, which exiled Tibetans say have left at least 130 dead, has overshadowed the build-up to the Games.

Greek athlete Alexandros Nikolaidis, an Athens 2004 Games taekwondo silver medallist, was the first torchbearer starting a six-day Greek relay before the flame is handed over to the Chinese on March 30. China's only Athens 2004 Games swimming gold medallist, Luo Xuejuan, was the second runner.

The flame now starts a long international and Chinese relay that will include Tibet and the peak of Mount Everest before ending in Beijing on August 8, when the Games officially open.

"I express here the hope that the symbol of the torch will be recognised by everybody and that the right circumstances can be created, wherever the torch travels, for it to resonate," International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge said in a speech inside the ancient stadium. He insisted there was no "momentum" for a boycott. "I think it's always sad when there are protests, but they were not violent," he said.

Reuters


And what of "Reporters Without Borders"? Well it has an interesting State Department funded history of its own, as it turns out.

[solarstone]

Dave Emory did a good show on the Dali Lama's connection with Nazis over the 20th century.

Show is available in real player format for streaming

Scroll down this page to FTR 547 May 2, 2006

http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/DX[/url]

[Truth4Youth]

Dave Emory did a good show on the Dali Lama's connection with Nazis over the 20th century.

Show is available in real player format for streaming

Scroll down this page to FTR 547 May 2, 2006

http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/DX[/url]

I also believe it is available from Lenny Bloom's (dubious) Cloak and Dagger website:

http://cloakanddagger.de/shows/webcast/ ... 0Dalai.mp3

There is also another page on the website concerning this topic:

http://cloakanddagger.de/home%20page%20 ... 20Lama.htm

NOTE: I'm not a big fan of Cloak and Dagger and am very wary of their "news" myself, so PROCEED WITH CAUTION!

[OP ED]

Not being a big fan of Chinese imperialism either, I'd consider this series of events to be one of the very few useful things that the CIA has ever been involved in. I like how the guy in the article blames the Tibetans for being killed/tortured by the Chinese. Very neo-imperialist.

[mentalgongfu2]

One must be careful to separate the wheat from the chaff wherever one goes for knowledge.

[8bitagent]

The Dalai Lama is one of the most kind, pleasant, and centered people in the famous sphere out there. I know its hip to label everyone of important cultural significance as CIA spook alligned and NWO agents, but anyone is free to thumb through his books and his speeches and know which side of humanity he is on...and which side China is on.

[solarstone]

The Dalai Lama is one of the most kind, pleasant, and centered people in the famous sphere out there. I know its hip to label everyone of important cultural significance as CIA spook alligned and NWO agents, but anyone is free to thumb through his books and his speeches and know which side of humanity he is on...and which side China is on.

8bit:

I have genuinely enjoyed your posts and point of view in my time lurking here at RI.

I would like to know your take on what Dave Emory's position is on the Dali Lama as far as any fascist tendencies in his belief system and his usefulness to NWO types go.

Also, I recall that Heinrich Harrer was considered to be a sort of tutor for the Dali Lama. I suppose it is altogether possible that the connection to Harrer could be meaningless other than that of mutual interest.: Harrer= Tibet, Dali Lama= western culture / mountaineering?

Thanks in advance should you have the time and inclination to pursue a response.

[8bitagent]

The Dalai Lama is one of the most kind, pleasant, and centered people in the famous sphere out there. I know its hip to label everyone of important cultural significance as CIA spook alligned and NWO agents, but anyone is free to thumb through his books and his speeches and know which side of humanity he is on...and which side China is on.

8bit:

I have genuinely enjoyed your posts and point of view in my time lurking here at RI.

I would like to know your take on what Dave Emory's position is on the Dali Lama as far as any fascist tendencies in his belief system and his usefulness to NWO types go.

Also, I recall that Heinrich Harrer was considered to be a sort of tutor for the Dali Lama. I suppose it is altogether possible that the connection to Harrer could be meaningless other than that of mutual interest.: Harrer= Tibet, Dali Lama= western culture / mountaineering?

Thanks in advance should you have the time and inclination to pursue a response.

The Dalai Lama preaches kindness. And not in that creepy smarmy fake way. the NWO is about a boot on your neck.

The Nazis had a STRONG interest in Tibet, because of their Thule/Theosophic like belief of Aryan super gods living in a portal above Tibet.

I mean, Gandhi was a well known adept of Blavatsky doctrine, someone(Blavatsky) I feel whose occult mastery descended into some pretty racist like ideas. That doesnt mean Gandhi was bad

Tibet was ruled by cruel, brutality before China took over, and after China took over. So the Tibetans have always had it bad.

I fail to see how the Dalai Lama is a tool of the nwo, given how in my view China is one of the most fascist Orwellian countries on the planet