Chapter 70 The Guantanamo Incident Hearing
After Zoe's article was published in the New York Times, it did not arouse widespread response. One reason is that Ethiopia is so far away from the United States that Americans don't even know where this place is. Besides, Americans are far from starving. No matter how good Zoe's writing is, most readers will not be able to empathize with her.
But Zoe's article did not go unnoticed. After the introduction of this article, some charitable groups and international aid organizations have finally noticed the low-key charity of Friendship Africa, and their great strength in exporting food. Friendly Africa is a new charity organization that has been established for a few years, but this organization does not accept donations from the general public, and rarely organizes volunteers to participate in their activities. The agency doesn't even bother to publicize the unemployment it's working on in the media. This is simply a wonderful flower in the charity world.
However, these things are not what Zoe in Africa cares about, because Zoe is still digging deeper inside the friendly Africa. As the most important media in the United States, the editor-in-chief of the New York Times felt that this time Zoe did encounter a big news based on years of experience. What is the concept of seven million tons of grain? This is already one-third of the grain output of the United States in 1984. What kind of person has so much energy to export so much grain, and who is the buyer? All kinds of questions excited the editors of the political column of the New York Times, so with the support of the editor-in-chief of the newspaper, the New York Times began to send additional staff to help Zoe's follow-up report.
However, for the New York Times, now is not the best time to introduce the truth about the fraternal Africa incident, because several earth-shattering events have occurred in the world recently, and readers' interest has not yet been diverted. Among these major events, the release of the investigative report on the attack on Guantanamo Bay is what the American people are most concerned about. It took nearly a month for investigators commissioned by Congress to put together a report after the incident. The report will be questioned at a public hearing organized by Congress. Several important personnel related to the incident, including the commander-in-chief of the Guantanamo Bay base, the former US Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, Director of the CIA and other important ministers in the Reagan cabinet will be questioned in front of the media. So the New York Times plans to postpone Zoe's column for a while before the Guantanamo investigation report is fully released.
In addition to the Guantanamo report, the main focus of recent issues of the New York Times is the meeting between the top leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union in Geneva. The main opportunity for this meeting is that the leaders of the two countries will participate in a meeting on regional and international security in Switzerland. Although the top leaders of both the United States and the Soviet Union attended this meeting, their meeting was facilitated temporarily, so the two sides did not achieve many results. They only signed a cooperation letter of intent to limit the arms race. However, Gorbachev's moderate style is completely different from the aggressive attitude of previous Soviet leaders, which has attracted many people's interest in him.
Although the meeting between the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union was of great significance, Americans were more concerned about the loss of Guantanamo than those Europeans who lived in the shadow of the Soviet Union's steel torrent. After this incident, the media and some military scholars have been criticizing the combat effectiveness of the U.S. military. They questioned why the world’s most powerful armed force supported by Congress’s annual military appropriation of hundreds of billions of dollars was in front of the Colombian motley army. Vulnerable, powerless to fight back.
Former Minister of Defense Weinberg answered this question during the first day of the hearing. He said that the whole incident was carefully planned. Before the attackers acted, six fully loaded 10,000-ton oil tankers rushed into The narrow main channel of Guantanamo Bay. Then there was a big explosion, which ignited the oil floating in the sea. The harmful substances contained in the burning of oil prevented the US military's air power from working normally, and the navy could not enter Guantanamo Bay to support the battle because the channel was blocked.
The Secretary of Defense has admitted that he played an inexcusable role in the handling of the Guantanamo attack. However, Weinberg changed the subject and pointed the finger at the CIA, the largest intelligence agency in the United States.
"Dear members of Congress, I would like to emphasize that the cause of the whole incident was a prisoner named Ivankov, and the attackers paid such a high price to rescue Ivankov from the Guantanamo base! In view of the sensitive identity of Ivankov, please forgive me for not disclosing too much specific information about him. However, I would like to remind members of Congress that Ivankov was arranged by the CIA to the Guantanamo base one month before the attack. , and just a week before the attack, the CIA's agents dispatched to Colombia discovered the abnormal situation of the local armed groups, and already knew that they were planning a crazy plan against the Guantanamo base. It's a pity that these precious The intelligence was thrown into the wastebasket by the deputy director of the CIA, and we didn't learn that such intelligence had existed until after the incident! So I don't think the Department of Defense should take a bigger role in this incident The responsibility, but the work attitude of senior CIA officials is worrying!" Although Weinberg, the outgoing Secretary of Defense, became President Reagan's scapegoat, he had no worries because he was unofficial and light, and Weinberg Now I just want to bring the CIA closer to the political vortex of Guantanamo, instead of letting the Ministry of Defense alone bear the criticism from the American media and citizens when the incident first happened.
"Mr. Weinberg, you just mentioned that the attackers used six 10,000-ton ships at the beginning of the operation, and one of the freighters was deliberately stranded in Guantanamo Bay by the attackers? Can you tell us about the origin of these ships? ?” A member of the investigative committee was the first to ask a question after Weinberg’s speech, and he was curious about how the attackers organized this massive military operation.
"Good Mr. Congressman, according to the investigation of the Ministry of National Defense, the ship registered in the attack is in Panama, but the owner of the ship is Mediterranean Shipping Company, a European shipping company. The Greek shipping company bought these six Suez-class ships. However, the attack occurred a week before the attack, and these ships encountered pirates while sailing in the waters of West Africa. Then their whereabouts are unknown!"