Dalai Lama connected with CIA's support of Tibetan secession

Despite his frequent claims of peace, the Dalai Lama knew much more about the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)'s support of Tibetan secessionists in the 1950s and 1960s than he admitted, Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported recently.

A report titled "Seemingly Sacred," which shed light on the relationship between the Dalai Lama and the CIA, said a shadow of violence falls on the divine king.

The report said an emissary of the Dalai Lama first contacted the U.S. through its embassy in New Delhi and consulate in Calcutta in 1951, and both sides discussed U.S. military and financial aid to Tibetan separatists. One of the Dalai Lama's elder brothers also attended the meetings.

In the same year the U.S. Defense Department gave the Dalai Lama a letter, in which "light weapons" and "financial aid" were promised to the Tibetan separatist movement, it said.

The Dalai Lama also received 180,000 U.S. dollars a year from the CIA, which was described as "monetary aid for the Dalai Lama" in confidential documents.

The report said the CIA launched "St. Circus Operation" in 1956, which trained Tibetan guerrillas on a South-Pacific island to kill, shoot, lay mines and make bombs.

The CIA also made air drops that provided the guerrillas with machine weapons, ammunition, medicine, and propaganda materials, among others, it said.

According to the newspaper, "The Dalai Lama clearly stood closer to the CIA and knew significantly more than he let on."

Though the Dalai Lama had always claimed that he only came to know the operations afterwards, it should be no later than 1958 when he was aware of the paramilitary training given by the CIA that was closely linked to poison, killing and other violent acts, it said.

The report said a U.S. movie director, Lisa Cathey, had conducted more than 30 interviews in her shooting of a documentary, CIA in Tibet.

One of those interviewed was a retired CIA agent named John Kenneth Knaus, who was in charge of CIA operations in Tibet and had preserved documents that recorded the training.

The Dalai Lama had met with Knaus twice, once in 1964 and again in the 1990s.

The Dalai Lama apparently hasn't been honest on whether he knew the CIA's support to the Tibetan separation, the paper said. Now that with more truth on the Dalai Lama's relationship with the CIA revealed, a shadow of violence falls on the divine king, it added.

The report called the Dalai Lama "a chess piece of the CIA during the Cold War" and his direct CIA connection does not match his "supreme moral authority."