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The CIA's Unwelcome Mission
(Ha'aretz/Jane's Weekly/Daily Star - Lebanon) - The CIA is moving forward with plans to overhaul the Palestinian Authority's security services, based on restructuring and training new ranks with the help of Egyptian, Jordanian, and American trainers. One of the greatest ironies of the latest Palestinian intifada is that a considerable number of those attacking the Israelis have been members of Yasser Arafat's security forces who were trained by the CIA, at Israeli insistence, to stamp out the very Islamic militants they joined soon after the uprising erupted in late September 2000. Senior and mid-level Palestinian security officials underwent training at a CIA facility in North Carolina by counter-terrorism and covert operations specialists, while lower-level operatives attended facilities in Virginia.