Dalai Lama's links to CIA

Sueddeutsche Zeitung, one of Germany's largest subscription daily newspapers, recently reported on a documentary exposing the Dalai Lama's contacts with the US Central Intelligence Agency in the 1960s, which fully reveals the hypocrisy of the Dalai Lama. Excerpts:

The CIA in Tibet, a documentary by US director Lisa Cathey, is due to be completed this year. Part of it has already been released online. Cathey conducted more than 30 interviews with retired CIA operatives and former Tibetan separatist soldiers, who talk about what really happened in the Tibet autonomous region in the 1960s.

A series of books and movies about the links between the CIA and the Dalai Lama have appeared since the 1990s, but the truth is still not clear to many people. The religious leader has repeatedly claimed that he did not know anything in advance, despite the fact that his two brothers have long had contacts with CIA, which became the main sponsor of Tibetan separatist militants in the 1960s.

However, the investigation by Sueddeutsche Zeitung has revealed that the Dalai Lama had an intimate relationship with the CIA, and had a greater knowledge about the guerrilla warfare than he has publicly admitted. Some US documents also prove this.

A CIA memorandum showed that the CIA's Tibetan scheme was based on the promises the US government made to the Dalai Lama in 1951 and 1956. The Dalai Lama's emissary and his brothers met US representatives to talk about military and financial aid.

The Dalai Lama sent letters to US president Dwight D. Eisenhower after he arrived in India in 1959, thanking him for his "personal support and material aid". He also sent similar thank you letters to Eisenhower's successors John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.

The CIA started training Tibetan guerrillas to kill and make bombs in a small island in the Pacific in the 1960s, with one of the Dalai Lama's brothers acting as interpreter. The guerrillas later parachuted into Tibet, with US transport planes keeping them supplied. There were about 85,000 guerrillas in total, using the code "Chushi Gangdrug" they attacked the government army in small groups.

The US assistance to the Tibetan guerrillas ended in 1971 after the then secretary of state Henry Kissinger visited China, leading to the collapse of the separatists.

Following the Dalai Lama's call for them to surrender in 1974, the last group of guerrillas laid down their arms in Nepal, but some of them, unable to accept the failure, chose to end their lives instead.

Even today the Dalai Lama says he never asked the US for military assistance and that other people did all the dirty work. However, more and more investigations have found out the Nobel Peace Prize laureate was in fact not that peaceful.

(China Daily 06/28/2012 page9)