The Role of the CIA: Behind the Dalai Lama’s Holy Cloak
The Role of the CIA:
Behind the Dalai Lama’s Holy Cloak
The Dalai Lama has been on the CIA payroll since the late 1950s. He is an instrument of US intelligence.
by Michael Backman
(Global Research)
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 Australia’s John Howard or Kevin Rudd meet the current Dalai Lama.
Regarding successor, “The Dalai Lama has said he may appoint a successor or call democratic elections before his death instead of relying on reincarnation, a Japanese newspaper reported Tuesday, following recent orders that China must approve Tibet’s spiritual leaders”
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/20/asia/AS-GEN-Japan-Dalai-Lama-Successor.php
The article above has been re edited and distorted without the authors permission. This is probably a part of the current PRC anti Dalai Lama propaganda campaign. See below.
“The Dalai Lama & Tibet
It has come to my attention that an old Age newspaper column of mine which looked at some aspects of the Dalai Lama has recently been posted on a website operated by something called the Centre for Research on Globalization.
This is not an organisation that I support or indeed had heard of until now. My permission was not sought to reproduce my column and therefore this represents a breach of copyright.
That my column should be posted on this site now with the current troubles in Tibet suggests that the owners of the site are in some way linked to the government of mainland China.
An introduction that has been added as a prelude to my column again without my knowledge or consent claims that the Dalai Lama is on the CIA’s payroll. This is NOT what I said in the piece. To my knowledge the Dalai Lama does not receive CIA funding. He did receive such funding in the early 1970s and before however, something which I understand the Dalai Lama has publicly acknowledged.
To provide some background to what I wrote and why, the column was written to coincide with his visit to Australia last year. It was written to counterbalance the huge, uncritical media coverage then given to the Dalai Lama in the Australian media. It was written as a small way to balance up the overall coverage at that time, and needs to be seen in that context.
I am neither a supporter nor a critic necessarily of the Dalai Lama. What I do support is public debate. I have
always felt that the coverage accorded to the Dalai Lama in the Western media has been excessively favorable and uncritical – just as the media coverage in China of the Dalai Lama is appallingly biased but in the negative.
Clearly in the last few days ethnic Tibetans have been killed by the Chinese military. This has been widely reported.
But it is also clear that ethnic Chinese have been murdered by ethnic Tibetans in racially based attacks. This has not been made as clear in the Western media. And yet, the Western media was rightly appalled in 1998 when ethnic Chinese were raped and murdered in Jakarta for similar reasons – perceived excessive economic control at the expense of non-Chinese locals.
The apparent swamping of Tibetan culture by Han Chinese migrants is a tragedy. But the killing of ethnic Chinese small business people is also wrong and no doubt one of the reasons why the Dalai Lama has threatened to resign.
But again, the treatment of this seems to suggest that the Western media does have its own particular bias when it comes to reporting on Tibet. Unfortunately this blunts any criticism that can be made of China when it comes to its own propagandising.
It needs to be appreciated that unequivocal ‘right’ does not reside on either side. My original column was written to show that no matter how admirable the Dalai Lama might be, this does not make him perfect and most particularly, it does not make him beyond scrutiny. It is not enough to claim that the western media is better than China’s. We must show that it is by considering and debating all possibilities and points of view.”
Michael Backman
March 24, 2008
http://www.michaelbackman.com/DalaiLama.html
The CCP has a clear agenda - “expansionism” at all costs under the guise of peaceful liberation. Once a territory is gone, there will be 1.3 billion brainwashed fools who will come here and defend war crimes of the CCP and brag about Xinhua as free press. If the West remains complacent, South-East, Australia, New Zealand, Pacific would be occupied or rather “liberated” territories in a few decades.
I do not pretend to understand all these efforts to demonize the Dalai Lama. Nothing I have seen, heard nor read of him gives an indication of anything but a kindly, well wishing human being.
[...] le Dalaï Lama lui-même pourrait être depuis longtemps un atout de la CIA. Voir [en anglais] Le rôle de la CIA derrière le saint manteau du Dalaï Lama et La carte du [...]
[...] le Dalaï Lama lui-même pourrait être depuis longtemps un atout de la CIA. Voir [en anglais] Le rôle de la CIA derrière le saint manteau du Dalaï Lama et La carte du [...]