The International Herald Tribune

Wednesday, September 16, 1998

CIA PAPERS DETAIL 1960s PAYMENTS TO DALAI LAMA

By Jim Mann

(Los Angeles Times Service)

WASHINGTON - For much of the 1960s, the CIA provided the Tibetan exile movement with $1.7 million a year for operations against China, including an annual subsidy of $180,000 for the Dalai Lama, according to newly released U.S. intelligence documents.

The money for the Tibetans and the Dalai Lama was part of the CIA's worldwide effort during the early years of the Cold War to undermine Communist governments, particularly in the Soviet Union and China.

The documents published last month by the State Department, illustrate the historical background of the situation in Tibet today, in which Beijing continues to accuse the Dalai Lama of being an agent of foreign forces seeking to separate Tibet from China.

The CIA's program encompassed support of Tibetan guerrillas in Nepal, a covert military training site in Colorado, "Tibet Houses" established to promote Tibetan causes in New York and Geneva, education for Tibetan operatives at Cornell University and supplies for reconnaissance teams.

"The purpose of the program," top U.S. intelligence officials wrote in one memo, is "to keep

the political concept of an autonomous Tibet alive within Tibet and among foreign nations, principally India, and to build a capability for resistance against possible political developments inside Communist China."

The declassified historical document provide the first inside details of the CIA's decade long covert program to support the Tibetan independence movement. At the time of the intelligence operation, the CIA was seeking to weaken Mao Zedong's hold over China. And the Tibetan exiles were looking for help to keep their movement alive after the Dalai Lama and his supporters fled Tibet following an unsuccessful 1959 revolt against Chinese rule.

Tibetan exiles and the Dalai Lama have acknowledged for many years that they once received support from U.S. intelligence. But until now Washington refused to release any information about the CIA's Tibetan operations.

The U.S. intelligence support for the Tibetans ended in the early 1970s after the Nixon administration's diplomatic opening to China, according to the Dalai Lama's writings, former CIA officials and independent scholars.

The Dalai Lama wrote in his autobiography that the cutoff in the 1970s showed that the assistance from the Americans "had been a reflection of their anti-Communist polices rather

than genuine support for the restoration of Tibet independence."

The newly published files show that the collaboration between U.S. intelligence and the Tibetans was less than ideal. "The Tibetans by nature did not appear to be congenitally inclined toward conspiratorial proficiency," a top CIA official wrote in one memo.

The budget figures for the agency's Tibetan program are contained in a memo dated Jan. 9, 1964. "Support of 2,100 Tibetan guerrillas based in Nepal: $500,000," it reads. "Subsidy to

the Dalai Lama: $180,000." After listing several other costs, it concludes: "Total: $1,735,000."

The files show that this budget request was approved soon afterward.

A later document indicates that these annual expenses continued at the same

level for four more years, until 1968. The agency then scrubbed its U.S. training programs for Tibetans and cut the program budget to just below $1.2 million a year.

Lodi Gyari, the Dalai Lama's personal representative in Washington, said last week that he had knowledge of the CIA's $180,000 a year subsidy or how the money was spent.

But speaking more generally of -the CIA's past support for the Tibetans, Gyari acknowledged: "It is an open secret. We do not deny it."

The CIA has long resisted disclosing information about its Tibet-related operations.