Solvay and Zhr,

you never explained how you went through the government's firewall to freely access this web site. 

first explain that before you plunge into criticizing the West.

World News Briefs; Dalai Lama Group Says It Got Money From C.I.A.
Published: October 2, 1998
The Dalai Lama's administration acknowledged today that it received $1.7 million a year in the 1960's from the Central Intelligence Agency, but denied reports that the Tibetan leader benefited personally from an annual subsidy of $180,000.

The money allocated for the resistance movement was spent on training volunteers and paying for guerrilla operations against the Chinese, the Tibetan government-in-exile said in a statement. It added that the subsidy earmarked for the Dalai Lama was spent on setting up offices in Geneva and New York and on international lobbying.

The Dalai Lama, 63, a revered spiritual leader both in his Himalayan homeland and in Western nations, fled Tibet in 1959 after a failed uprising against a Chinese military occupation, which began in 1950.

The decade-long covert program to support the Tibetan independence movement was part of the C.I.A.'s worldwide effort to undermine Communist governments, particularly in the Soviet Union and China.



CIA's involvement in Tibet during the cold war was well known to knowledgable readers in this group, although the inside stories were scarce. Since Dalai Lama started so-called "non-violent" approach, he and his followers don't want people to know their dirty laundry. However, those who were involved started to talk, for variuos reasons. Following story tells us the deep involvement of CIA and cooperation between Taiwan, India, and Tibetans. Now, "non-violent" approach has got them to nowhere, except a Nobel Peace Prize that fell on Dalai Lama's lap and two Hollywood box-office bombs, they are longing once again for those good old violence. Well, could Hollywood + violence achieve what CIA + violence couldn't achieve?

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Copyright 1997 The American Spectator
 The American Spectator
December, 1997
SECTION: FEATURE
The Secret War Over Tibet
A story of Cold War heroism -- and Kennedy administration cowardice and
betrayal.

John B. Roberts II
John B. Roberts II is a television producer and freelance journalist.

The Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, doesn't want his
secrets revealed. He has given his blessing to a new Hollywood film, Kundun,
enshrining the officially sanctioned and sanitized history of his country's
battle for independence against Communist China. And in another Hollywood
Tibetan epic, based on the memoirs of German mountaineer Heinrich Harrer,
actor Brad Pitt re-enacts a spiritual odyssey with the Dalai Lama in Tibet's
remote and mysterious mountain kingdom.

  What neither film portrays are facts about the true adventures -- and
tragedy -- of Tibetan freedom fighters that have remained secret for decades.
But thanks to the willingness of a handful of former diplomats, military
special operations personnel, and intelligence officials, the real story of
America's secret war in Tibet can now be told.

  Officials at the Central Intelligence Agency were unusually helpful in the
research for this article, although it reports events that are still
classified today. Perhaps they were motivated by the desire to prevent
Hollywood's propagation of revisionist histories about what really happened
in Tibet. Or perhaps this is one of those rare occasions when the Central
Intelligence Agency decides to take some well-deserved credit for one of its
successes by revealing tidbits from its secret history.

  But don't expect the Clinton administration to declassify the Tibetan
operation files anytime soon. The secret archives include a shameful episode
involving Clinton's favorite presidency, the Kennedy administration, and
Democratic icon John Kenneth Galbraith. One of the best-kept secrets of the
Tibetan War is Ambassador Galbraith's role in the abandonment of an army of
Tibetan guerrillas caught in a pitched battle. While special operations Air
Force planes stood by to parachute ammunition and supplies to the Tibetan
freedom fighters, Galbraith refused to give permission for the  CIA  to
resupply its covert  Tibetan  army. Cut off and surrounded, between six and
eight thousand Tibetans were annihilated by the Chinese in a massacre that
has been shrouded in secrecy for more than thirty years.

  The parallels to the Cuban Bay of Pigs fiasco are eerie. In both cases the
Eisenhower administration originally launched the covert programs to train
freedom fighters to resist Communist domination. In both the guerrillas
depended on U.S. support for arms and ammunition. In Tibet, as in Cuba, only
air support and airdrops of supplies could help trapped men fight their way
out of desperate situations. In both cases, when the freedom fighters were at
their moment of greatest peril, the Kennedy administration chose to abandon
them. This is the true story of how the Tibetan operation began in glory, and
ended in shame.

After Mao Tse-tung and the Peoples Liberation Army pushed the Nationalist
Chinese off the mainland in the late 1940's, Peking turned its attention to
consolidating its territory. In the summer of 1950, skirmishing at border
posts broke out between China and Tibet. Using this fighting as a pretext,
China invaded Tibet with more than 80,000 troops.

   Tibet's army was tiny and poorly equipped. Efforts to resist the Chinese
alone would have been futile. Tibet needed allies, it needed to buy time, and
most of all it needed arms.

  It is hard to imagine today, in an age of satellites and the Internet, how
remote Tibet was in the fifties. Communications had to be relayed by
messenger over mountain passes. In desperation, Tibet sent emissaries abroad
to negotiate on three separate tracks. Some delegations sought an
accommodation with China, on terms that would maintain some autonomy for
Tibet. Others explored the possibility of asylum and financial support for
the Dalai Lama and his retinue. Still others sought diplomatic support for
Tibet's independence, and military weapons for armed resistance.

  Today, with our emphasis on Tibet's human rights situation, it may surprise
many to think of the Buddhist kingdom seeking arms to fight China. Owing
largely to the Vietnam war era television images of self- immolating Buddhist
monks, many Americans mistakenly believe that all Buddhists practice
non-violence and passive resistance. But Tibetan Buddhism, as practiced by
its monks and the people of Tibet, did not shy from violence.

  By early 1951, Tibet's emissaries had made contact with American diplomats
in neighboring India. A delegation speaking in the name of the Dalai Lama
asked for support for Tibet's independence, and inquired whether the U.S.
would shoulder the costs of the Dalai Lama and several hundred followers in
exile.

  Tibet's request was handled at the top levels of the U.S. government.
Secretary of State Dean Acheson sent top-secret cables to embassies in
Ceylon, Thailand, and India, instructing ambassadors to sound out the
prospects for asylum for the Dalai Lama. America's support for Chiang
Kai-Shek's Chinese Nationalists on Formosa complicated matters. Like
Communist China, the Nationalists also viewed Tibet as a historic part of the
Chinese empire. Stopping the Communist conquest of Tibet was attractive to
the U.S., but not if it would alienate Chiang Kai-shek, who opposed Tibetan
independence.  But one thing was clear from the beginning. The U.S. wanted
the Dalai Lama to lead his country's resistance against the Chinese. A secret
cable from 1951 reveals that Washington encouraged the Dalai Lama to "remain
in (a) country near Tibet for purpose of mounting resistance to Chinese
Communists within Tibet." The more immediate problem was how to support
Tibet's resistance war.

  In the early 1950's, there were no secure channels of communication between
the U.S. and Tibet. American diplomats had little knowledge of the Dalai
Lama's retinue. They didn't know who could be trusted to safely and
accurately convey messages, and who might be a Chinese agent. Sending written
notes the Chinese might intercept was risky. As a result, it took months to
relay oral messages back and forth to the Dalai Lama over the mountainous
reaches of Tibet.

  A top secret telegram from Secretary of State Acheson to the U. S. Embassy
in India gives a sense of this difficulty: "Info Contel 91 July 31 and Embtel
440 (rptd Cal unnumbered) Aug 1 suggests unreliable intermediaries figured
critically in failure effort persuade DL leave Yatung....Believe it unwise
advise any Tibetan to receive this msg prior actual communication."

  The message Acheson referred to in his cable confirmed America's standing
offer to the Dalai Lama: "our original position -- full aid and assistance to
you when you come out." Acheson wanted U.S. aid conditioned on the Dalai
Lama's agreement to leave Tibet. The Dalai Lama was told that while American
planes couldn't fly into Lhasa to take him into exile, the U.S. would do all
it could to aid him in fleeing Tibet.

  The Tibetan emissaries wanted arms. A secret cable from November 15, 1951,
reports the U.S. reply: "...suggestions for overt US provision of planes,
arms, supplies and leadership are practically impossible and politically
undesirable at this time....US shld make at least one final effort by letter
or oral messages to encourage DL to resist in ways best known to Tib
Govt....Although it may not be feasible, DL might for example make pilgrimage
to Buddhist shrines in Tib from one of which he might escape southward to
Ind."

   Where others saw diplomatic quandaries, CIA deputy director Allen Dulles
recognized opportunity. A veteran of "Wild Bill" Donovan's Office of Strategic
Services, America's clandestine predecessor to the CIA, Dulles gained field
experience during World War II as the OSS hustled to organize U.S. spying and
sabotage operations. OSS specialized in behind-the-lines support to resistance
movements across Nazi-occupied Europe, parachuting agents, supplies, and
officers deep behind enemy lines. Some OSS officers were old China hands, and
had fought alongside Mao Tse-tung's forces against the Japanese. OSS veterans
like Dulles had the mindset and experience to run guerrilla operations behind
Chinese lines.

  At the time of  Tibet's  invasion, Allen Dulles was  CIA's  Deputy Director
of Plans, with responsibilities that included overseeing all CIA covert
operations. While the State Department temporized about how much aid to give
the Dalai Lama before he left Tibet, Dulles began to explore arming and
training the Tibetan resistance.

  Weapons were a problem. Covert aid required arms that could not be traced
to the United States. To cloak their origin, guns had to be compatible with
Chinese military stocks. As a bonus, compatible guns meant Tibetan rebels
could use captured Chinese ammunition. Thirty years later in Nicaragua, CIA
planners faced the same challenge when they had to find Soviet weapons to
supply the contras. When Israel invaded Lebanon and seized PLO warehouses
full of Soviet-supplied weapons, the CIA rapidly transported the captured
arms to Nicaragua's freedom fighters.

  But in the early 1950's, the weapons Dulles needed were German.  During the
decades of war-lordism that befell China in the twenties and thirties, German
guns were widely used throughout the country. CIA cabled U.S.  military
attach s across Europe, asking them to report back on inventories of captured
Nazi arms. But the CIA had little bureaucratic clout in the early days of its
existence, and the Defense Department was unresponsive.

  Sam Cummings, now an internationally known arms dealer, was then a young
weapons expert in CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence. His office
received a routine copy of the Defense Department report, and he knew
immediately that it was wrong. Cummings had been in Europe shortly after
World War II, and had seen stockpiles of Nazi arms himself. He sent his
superiors a memo that claimed there were plenty of surplus guns stashed in
Europe.