Ray Starke Interview Excerpts
October 27, 2010Ray Starke was a radio communications instructor for the CIA's Tibetan Task Force from 1958 to 1960. He began at Camp Peary in Williamsburg, Virginia, then moved to Camp Hale, Colorado as the Tibetan trainees needed to be in an altitude closer to the homeland they would infiltrate after training.
Here are some excerpts from an interview with him on August 31st, 2010, along with a few pictures he took while at Camp Hale--avoiding taking shots of the trainees, since operations there were top secret. Their cover was atomic testing for the military.
Interview Excerpts: Jamyang Norbu
October 13, 2010Jamyang Norbu is a noted author, blogger and activist in the forefront of the Tibetan struggle for independence from China. While he has many supporters, he is also controversial within the Tibetan community for criticizing the Dalai Lama and the Central Tibetan Administration for eventually taking a "middle way" position of accepting Chinese rule, seeking only autonomy within it.
Norbu began working in the Tibetan Government-in-Exile in 1968, and was part of the Tibetan resistance in Mustang, Nepal from '71 to '72, just when the CIA was beginning to pull their aid. Mainly charged with getting intelligence on China, he also helped raise funds to keep the resistance alive until the Dalai Lama finally put an end to the Mustang base in 1974. Among other involvements in Tibetan activism, culture and academia, he was a president of the Tibetan Youth Congress, director of Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts, and co-founder of the Amnye Machen Institute for advanced studies on Tibet.
He currently lives in the US, blogging on jamyangnorbu.com and rangzen.net (rangzen is Tibetan for independence), and writing his latest book, a literary history of Tibet's fight for freedom. Here are some excerpts from my interview with him on August 29.
