Rohrabacher Shills for the KLA.

The Albanian-American Civic League (AACL) is an American group that lobbies on behalf of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The guest of honor at the group's July 23rd fundraiser in Edgewater, New Jersey, was Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.).

By way of introducing Rep. Rohrabacher, AACL President (and former Congressman) Joseph J. DioGuardi recalled: "He was the first member of Congress to insist that the United States arm the Kosova Liberation Army, and one of the few members who to this day publicly supports the independence of Kosova."

In his remarks, Rep. Rohrabacher castigated his colleagues for their reluctance to arm the KLA. Alluding to the support that the American colonists received from France following our Declaration of Independence, Rohrabacher declared: "Based on our own experience, the Kosova Liberation Army should have been armed." If the U.S. had armed the KLA in 1998, he continued, "we would not be where we are today. The 'freedom fighters' would have secured their freedom and Kosova would be independent."

The "freedom fighters" Rohrabacher compares to our Founding Fathers have a colorful and troubling pedigree. New York Times Balkans correspondent Chris Hedges reported in 1999 that the KLA's founders were "diehard Marxist-Leninists (who were bankrolled in the old days by the Stalinist dictatorship next door in Albania) as well as descendants of the fascist militias raised by the Italians in World War II."

Then there is the KLA narcotics connection. The KLA's relationship with the international heroin trade was documented four years before Rep. Rohrabacher demanded that the U.S. provide it with arms. A 1994 report compiled by France's Observatire Geopolitique Des Drogues, which carries out counter-narcotics investigations on behalf of the European Commission, found that "heroin shipment and marketing networks are taking root among ethnic Albanian communities in Albania, Macedonia, and the Kosovo province of Serbia, in order to finance large purchases of weapons destined not only for the current conflict in Bosnia but also for the brewing war in Kosovo."

Predictably, KLA-connected heroin is pouring into the United States, a fact lamented by Michael Levine, a highly decorated former Drug Enforcement Administration undercover agent: "These guys have a network that's active on the streets of this country.... They're the worst elements of society that you can imagine, and now, according to my sources in drug enforcement, they're politically protected." Politically protected, that is, by the AACL and, unfortunately, by Congressman Rohrabacher.