Published by: World Tibet Network News Wednesday, September 17, 1997

Contact: John Ackerly 202-785-1515

WASHINGTON, September 17, 1997 (ICT) -- A feature story in the new October issue of George Magazine falsely claims the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency "rescued" and "saved the life" of the Dalai Lama in 1959 by orchestrating his flight from Tibet during an aborted uprising against China's occupation forces.

"We regret that this article states that the CIA instigated and 'scripted' His Holiness the Dalai Lama's flight from Tibet into exile. It is an insult to the Tibetan freedom movement to imply we were inspired and led by the CIA. On the contrary, the Dalai Lama's flight was planned and executed by Tibetans," said Lodi Gyari, Special Envoy of the Dalai Lama in Washington.

The George article, by freelance writer John Roberts, comes at a time when the U.S. role in Tibet is under greater scrutiny with two major Hollywood movies on Tibet being released and Chinese President Jiang Zemin coming on a state visit to Washington in late October. Both of the Hollywood films cover events in the 1950s when the Tibetan resistance was very active.

The article describes a "CIA trained guerrilla army" fighting in March, 1959. This grossly overstates the involvement of the CIA as of March, 1959, as no Tibetan or Western participant or historian corroborates this assertion. The writer's source, said to be a CIA case officer involved in the mission, requested anonymity. However, virtually all of the CIA operatives involved in this mission have spoken on the record, and they all contradict these assertions.

Adopting new age jargon, Roberts claims that the CIA scripted instructions for one of the Dalai Lama's advisors, who "channeled" the oracle to tell the Dalai Lama to leave. To infer Tibet's oracle would act for the CIA is a very serious and unsubstantiated charge. Roberts also says that "Tibet's war for independence was about to begin" in 1959. In fact, it had started a decade earlier and cannot be tied to the CIA's involvement, as Roberts tries to do.

When the Dalai Lama fled Tibet, as shown in the upcoming movie Kundun, directed by Martin Scorsese, 2 of the Tibetans trained by the CIA caught up with the Dalai Lama when he was half-way to India. At that point, they sent a radio message to the CIA - which marked the first time the American government knew that the Dalai Lama was fleeing Tibet.