Guerilla Mistress To Obama Confidant;
The Life And Crimes Of Gayle Smith
By Thomas C Mountain
01 December, 2010
Countercurrents.org
Once the mistress of a marxist guerilla fighter in the Horn of Africa, today Gayle Smith is a senior advisor to Barack Obama in the White House, USA.
Gayle Smith started her career in service to the American Empire as an undercover CIA operative posing as a journalist in the Horn of Africa in the late 1970’s. Taking her duty seriously, she became the mistress of a guerilla fighter known by the nom de guerre of “Jamaica” in the Marxist-Leninist-Enver Hoxha-ite Tigrayan Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF), then fighting for independence from the Soviet Union supported Mengistu regime in Ethiopia.
As a close confidant to the leadership of the TPLF, Gayle Smith would spend the decade of the 1980’s as the liaison between the CIA and Meles Zenawi, the leader of the TPLF who was to become the Prime Minister of Ethiopia after the defeat and overthrow of the Mengistu regime by the Eritrean independence movement in 1991.
Gayle Smith is the person most responsible for the rise to power and elevation to international leadership status of Ethiopia’s Meles Zenawi, one of the most corrupt, bloodthirsty genocidal killers of modern times who would once again stride the world stage at the G-20 meeting held in Korea.
After the overthrow of the Mengistu regime in Ethiopia in 1991, Gayle Smith left her career as a “journalist” in the Horn of Africa and quickly (three years) became the Chief of Staff of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). As the de facto operations chief of this multi billion dollar American government “aid agency” she oversaw, amongst other nefarious activities, the assignment of CIA operatives using USAID as a cover for their various criminal activities in the rest of the world.
Journalist to chief operating officer at the largest USA aid outfit in a matter of a few years? Apparently Gayle Smith’s time in the trenches of the Horn of Africa had caught the attention of the heavy hitters in the USA intelligence community.
Within a few more years Gayle Smith had risen to a prominent place in the Clinton White House as head of African affairs on the National Security Council. As a NSC senior member she rose early every morning to help prepare the National Security Estimate, the report given to the President first thing every morning at the start of the Presidential work day. Every morning, rain or shine, she was in the White House ready to brief President Clinton and answer any questions he may have about the various activities of the CIA et al in Africa.
Before this as USAID operations chief in 1994, Gayle Smith initiated and coordinated the international multibillion dollar aid to arms diversion that allowed the Meles Zenawi regime in Ethiopia to rebuild the Ethiopian army into the largest, best equipped in Africa.
In 1998 Gayle Smith was adamant in demanding, along with her boss and National Security Advisor Anthony “Tony” Lake, that the Meles Zenawi regime launch a war against former comrades in arms in newly independent Eritrea, lead by the Eritrean Peoples Liberation Front in an attempt to destroy and re-colonialize the former Ethiopian “province”.
It seems that Gayle Smith and other such minions of the US Empire have a near pathological hatred for any and all independence movements that come to power via the armed struggle and that do not immediately kneel down and pledge allegiance to Pax Americana. Eritrea’s national motto is “Never Kneel Down” so they were slated to be destroyed and the Meles Zenawi mafia was chosen to do the dirty work as the newly anointed USA gendarme in East Africa.
The carnage that followed has been described as “The Holocaust in the Horn; The War Nobody Remembers”, with over 10,000 Ethiopian troops killed in the first offensive in 1998, 50,000 plus in the second Ethiopian offensive of 1999 and by conservative estimate, 150,000 Ethiopian soldiers killed in combat during the third offensive of May-June 2000.
On top of this the Ethiopian invasion of Eritrea created 1.5 million Eritrean refugees, internally displaced persons.
If Eritrean casualties are added, 19,000 killed in action/martyred, The Holocaust in the Horn resulted in almost a quarter million deaths.
250,000 dead,1.5 million refugees and Gayle Smith’s fingerprints all over the crime scene.
There is much more to this sordid tale with the ongoing genocide in the Ethiopian Ogaden being a strong contender for the worst crime against humanity in the world today. Committed by the Meles Zenawi mafia, funded and overseen by the likes of Obama “Senior Advisor” and Horn of Africa specialist Gayle Smith, 12 or maybe 15 million potential victims of the ongoing genocide in the Ethiopian Ogaden are forgotten by the world.
But not by Gayle Smith, who knows very well just how desperate the situation is and in response has ordered Meles Zenawi to expel all aid agencies and increased the level of support and financial aid to the Meles Zenawi regime from her perch in the Obama White House. She has rewarded these acts of genocide by helping elevate Meles Zenawi to world leader status, a G-20 statesman.
When someday, despite tens of billions of dollars in western “aid”, the Meles Zenawi regime crumbles and falls, maybe, just maybe, Gayle Smith will fall with him.
Until then the life and crimes of Gayle Smith continue, blessed by President Barack Obama himself. The guerilla mistress turned presidential confidant still rules her roost, ready to order the dispatch of her goombahs to commit murder and mayhem, genocide even, whatever it takes to try to preserve the crumbling empire she has served so faithfully.
Thomas c mountain is the only independent western journalist in the horn of africa, living and reporting from Eritrea since 2006
thomascmountain at yahoo dot com