For some three decades, local residents near a top secret terrorist training base have reported on hearing explosions, seeing sudden flashes of light and night time flares, and noticing small planes and "black helicopters" arriving at and departing from a small airfield on the base. The airspace over the base is off-limits to unauthorized aircraft.
The base is not in Pakistan's restive Waziristan region or in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley but in northeastern North Carolina on Albemarle Sound, near the town of Hertford. Officially known as the Harvey Point Defense Testing Activity the base, which was once a Navy Supply Center, it actually serves as a paramilitary training course for the CIA and allied intelligence and paramilitary services, including Israel's Mossad and Britain's Special Air Services (SAS). On March 20, 1998, The New York Times reported that during its existence, Harvey Point trained 18,000 foreign intelligence operatives from 50 different countries.
Among those terrorists trained at Harvey Point were those who worked for the Chilean military junta of General Augusto Pinochet, El Salvador's death squad chief Roberto D'Aubisson, Egypt's General Intelligence Directorate, Katangan secessionist leader Moise Tshombe, Angola's UNITA guerrilla force, Colombian counter-insurgency personnel, Laotian anti-communist paramilitary forces, and Arab cadres who would later join Osama bin Laden's forces fighting against the Soviets in Afghanistan. One can only contemplate how such regulars and irregulars from the far-flung corners of the world reacted to eastern North Carolina cuisine, including the barbecued pork, hush puppies, and steamed crabs.
First used to train anti-Castro Cubans for the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1960, the base has seen Lebanese Phalangist militia train for the failed March 8, 1985, west Beirut car bombing assassination attempt against Lebanese Shi'a spiritual leader Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, who was also known to be a leading figure in Hezbollah. Although Fadlallah escaped assassination, the car packed with 440 pounds of dynamite leveled an apartment building and a movie theater, killing 80 innocent people, including women and children, and injuring some 300 others.
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