No more unheeded warnings...

(older article, yes, but not outdated)

Yesterday, October 9, 2001, I was watching Bill O'Reilly ask Newt Gingrich a question on his show 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 side-stepped 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 the damage caused by Bill Clinton in the area of international relations or matters of national security. 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 San Diego (by leasing a decommissioned military base to a Chinese company named COSCO - China Ocean Shipping Company), and that he allowed the same company to take control of the Panama Canal after the U.S. very unwisely (and on Clinton's orders) pulled out of the area. Or how Bill Clinton compromised the integrity (and security) of NATO by single-handedly forcing the admission of the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary into NATO without them really qualifying for something of that magnitude.

After the events of September 11 everybody is paying attention to warning signs that 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 the former Czechoslovakia - switched from being a member of the communist Warsaw Pact to becoming a member of anti-communist NATO without any major internal political or social changes. It is a trick that even the great Houdini would not be hard pressed to pull off - but Clinton did. It is akin to Hitler's Germany (after causing WWII and killing over 6 million Jews) becoming "a democratic country" overnight with no punishment for the guilty and with the same people in government.

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 terrorists not only from Palestine and Libya, but from most Arab countries, one of the most notable being Carlos "The Jackal." According to Jan Frolik, the director of the Czech government archives, this terrorist school was officially called the "Institute for foreign studies" and had the code name "Pristav" (The Port). None of the camp's organizers and instructors were ever brought to justice or even remotely pursued - just the opposite. One of the instructors at the "Pristav," 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 factory in Semtin near Pardubice). To blow a Boeing out of the sky over Lockerbie Scotland, the Libyans needed less than a pound (0.30 kg) of Semtex. According to Frolik, Czechoslovakia sold over 900 metric tons (that's almost two MILLION pounds!) to the Libyans, 14 metric tons (30,000 lbs) to Vietnam and even at the time of the "Velvet Revolution" they were sending 200 kg (440 lbs) of Semtex and 1000 kg (2200 lbs) of "classic" TNT to Guinea. Frolik mentioned, among other things, shipments of 110 Scorpion mini-machine guns, hundreds of pistols, thousands of rounds of ammunition and eavesdropping equipment to Yasser Arafat. The Western world can hardly consider the Czech Republic an ally: they never cooperated and habitually hid everything they could - and continue to do so until today.

Support of and connection to terrorism is not a thing of the past: the Czech Republic is unable to come clean even today. Muhammad Atta, who piloted one of the jets into the World Trade Center towers was in Prague just before he left for the USA for the final time aboard a Czechoslovak Airlines flight. He met in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence agent, probably got his orders and left. The Czech intelligence knew about it and did nothing.

According to Czech media reports, a Czech instructor who trained terrorists in Osama bin Laden's organization in Afghanistan (and who has since left the area) was in fact a member of the Czech military intelligence. The Czech minister of defense claims he knew nothing about it. Well, let's hope that if not him, then the Americans did know - according to another suppressed report, the government of the Czech republic was given (by their American counterparts) a list of about 1000 Czech citizens suspected of having ties to terrorists. What a surprise!

An even more chilling angle; according to British Islamic terrorism expert Simon Reeve and his sources, 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, the price the biological weapons went for was $7500 for one glass capsule. Not so unexpectedly, Czech minister of defense Tvrdik and minister of the interior Gross are, of course, claiming total and utmost ignorance of the matter.

Of the 18 cabinet members of the current Czech government, 17 of them were members of the communist party (including prime minister Zeman). While the alleged membership of President Havel in the communist party is still being disputed, in neighboring 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 is qualified with these specific boundaries. Even if the current situation may only be a fraction of the dirty sins of the past, the Czech Republic's top offices are still manned by the same people who were in charge when they were happening, there was no distancing from that past, no investigations, no punishment for the guilty. What's worse is that those very same communists are now sitting in NATO headquarters in Brussels, listening intently 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 their secrets to the KGB, for which they all worked all those years ago. What are we waiting for? Until we will find that, for example, they forwarded all available information on Bush's Missile Defense Plan they got as NATO members directly to Moscow, Beijing or North Korea? It'll be too late then. Who's paying attention to the warning signs now?

Given the current tense situation, I think that president Bush has the right to ask for at least a temporary suspension of the Czech Republic from NATO, as well as 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.

If they ignore it, or are difficult - let's give them 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.

Ross Hedvicek
Thu, 11 Oct 2001