I was watching 'A mighty heart' during the luncheon interval and was subsequently searching on the net to check how the movie fared and also the fate of Omar Sheikh. As usual I was led by links and ended at one of the most chilling articles. It's chilling not so much for its contents but for what it implies. It's a very very lengthy article and this post itself is a lengthy one giving excerpts from the article. These excerpts are not even 10% of the article contents. This is for those who do not want to take the link. But read the article, as it raises lot of questions about terrorism and the role Pak and ISI and the complicity of CIA and USA.
Excerpts from the article 'Sept.11's Smoking Gun: The Many faces of Saeed Sheikh'
If you read just one thing at this website, please read this essay. Don’t mind the length and complexity. Saeed Sheikh’s story is not just mildly interesting. Understanding the history of this young man may not only explain many mysteries of 9/11, including solid evidence of foreign government involvement in the attacks, but may also reveal if nuclear war in the near future is likely. No kidding. Please read! Note that this was first written in September 2002 but has been thoroughly overhauled based on exposure to additional evidence. Also, click to find more details about Saeed Sheikh and his boss Mahmood Ahmed.
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A Curious Visit
The relationship between the US and the ISI is hard to fathom. On September 4, 2001, ISI Director Mahmood Ahmed arrived in Washington, D.C. On September 10, a Pakistani newspaper reported on the visit, saying that it had “triggered speculation about the agenda of his mysterious meetings at the Pentagon and National Security Council” as well as meetings with CIA Director George Tenet, unspecified officials at the White House and the Pentagon, and his “most important meeting” with Marc Grossman, US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. The article suggested that “of course, Osama bin Laden” was the focus of some discussions. Prophetically, the article added, “What added interest to his visit is the history of such visits. Last time [his] predecessor was here, the domestic [Pakistani] politics turned topsy-turvy within days. That this is not the first visit by Mahmood in the last three months shows the urgency of the ongoing parleys.” [Karachi News, 9/10/01] In May 2001, both CIA Director George Tenet and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage had visited South Asia. It’s not known if they met with Mahmood or anyone else in the ISI, but according to credible news reports, Tenet had “unusually long” consultations with President Musharraf. It is also worth noting that Armitage is known for his “large circle of friends in the Pakistani military and ISI” [SAPRA, 5/22/01] as well as his connections to the Iran-Contra affair.
Of course everyone knows that politics did turn very “topsy-turvy” one day after the Karachi News article on September 10. But what many don’t know is that on the morning of September 11, Lt. Gen. Mahmood was at a breakfast meeting at the Capitol with the chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, Senator Bob Graham (D) and Representative Porter Goss (R). The meeting was said to have lasted at least until the second plane hit the World Trade Center. Goss is a self-admitted 10-year veteran of the CIA’s clandestine operations wing. [Washington Post, 5/18/02] Goss and Graham were later the heads of the joint House-Senate investigation into the September 11 attacks, and Goss in particular made headlines for saying there was no “smoking gun” indicating that the government had sufficient foreknowledge to prevent the September 11 attacks. [Washington Post, 7/11/02] Also present at the meeting were Senator John Kyl (R) and the Pakistani ambassador to the US, Maleeha Lodhi (note that all or virtually all of the people in this meeting also met Lt. Gen. Mahmood in Pakistan a few weeks earlier [Salon, 9/14/01]). Senator Graham later said of the meeting: “We were talking about terrorism, specifically terrorism generated from Afghanistan,” and the New York Times mentioned that bin Laden was specifically being discussed. [Vero Beach Press Journal, 9/12/01, Salon, 9/14/01, New York Times, 6/3/02] The fact that these people were meeting at the time of the attacks is a strange coincidence at the very least, not to mention the topic of their conversation!
On September 12 and 13, Lt. Gen. Mahmood met with Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, Senator Joseph Biden, the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Secretary of State Colin Powell. An agreement on Pakistan’s collaboration in the new “war on terror” was negotiated between Mahmood and Armitage. [Miami Herald, 9/16/01] All these meetings coordinated Pakistan’s response to September 11. [New York Times, 9/13/01, Reuters, 9/13/01, Associated Press, 9/13/01] Isn’t it strange that the terms of Pakistan’s commitment to fight al-Qaeda were negotiated with the man who may have given orders to send $100,000 to the September 11 hijackers?
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So many other countries—Argentina, Britain, Cayman Islands, Egypt, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Morocco, Russia, even a Taliban cabinet minister—warned the US about an impending attack (see the They Tried to Warn Us essay). How it is possible that Pakistan, in the best position to know, gave no warning? If Musharraf is in control of the ISI, then how could he not have known of the 9/11 attack, and if he isn’t in control and didn’t know, then what good is he as a leader?
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A UPI editorial stated, “Al-Qaeda terrorists have long since scattered deep inside Pakistan and in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir where they enjoy the protection of the [ISI]… The unspeakable is that Pakistan is the new Afghanistan, a privileged sanctuary for hundreds of al-Qaeda fighters and Taliban operatives. Some estimates go as high as 5,000… The Pakistani—al-Qaeda connection is visible to all but the geopolitically challenged.” [UPI, 8/28/02] Prominent Taliban leaders wanted by the US have been living openly in Pakistani cities and yet the US does nothing about them. [Guardian, 12/24/01, Time, 5/6/02] It is now widely reported that Osama bin Laden, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and most other prominent al-Qaeda leaders are believed to be living in Pakistan, some of them living in the open and in luxury, with the protection of the ISI. It is frequently pointed out that Pakistan’s efforts to find them are mostly a charade. [Los Angeles Times, 4/6/02, Christian Science Monitor, 7/2/02, Los Angeles Times, 6/16/02, Time 7/29/02, Washington Post, 8/4/02, New York Times, 9/15/02, AP, 11/12/02, Los Angeles Times, 11/17/02] But still, the situation doesn’t change. As an example of Bush’s seemingly inexplicable response to terrorism in Pakistan, Azhar’s group Jaish-e-Mohammed had its assets frozen shortly after 9/11, but the group simply changed its name and over a year later the US has not frozen the assets of this “new” group. [Financial Times, 2/8/03, Washington Post, 2/8/03]
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Pakistan has nuclear weapons. Since 1997, Pakistan has been secretly supplying North Korea with nuclear technology, in return for long-range missile technology. Seymour Hersh has suggested that it is likely Pakistan is giving nuclear technology to other countries as well. [NOW with Bill Moyers, 2/21/03] Even at the end of the Clinton administration this link between Pakistan and North Korea was known, but neither Clinton nor Bush stopped it. [San Jose Mercury News, 10/24/02] As the Guardian put it, “If George Bush’s ‘war on terror’ were remotely rational, or even roughly reasoned, then its next target might be Pakistan, not Iraq. It should be said that the US is not justified in pre-emptively and unilaterally attacking either country—or any other sovereign state for that matter. But on the basis of Mr. Bush’s own ‘axis of evil’ criteria at least, Pakistan sits squarely in the theoretical firing line.” [Guardian, 10/8/02]
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There is no evidence that the US has questioned Saeed about 9/11. Indian newspapers have pointed out that if the US were to pressure its close ally Pakistan so Saeed could to be interrogated in his Pakistani prison, they could not only learn more about the financing of the 9/11 attacks, but also gain valuable information about the structure of al-Qaeda cells in Pakistan. [Indian Express, 7/19/02] Needless to say, there’s no evidence Lt. Gen. Mahmood has been questioned, either.
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Disturbing questions
One doesn’t have to wait 20 or 30 years to deduce that the ISI assisted al-Qaeda in the 9/11 attacks. The question is, why is the US government seemingly ignoring the evidence and actively discouraging the media from pursuing these ideas? Shortly after 9/11, Bush said, “From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.” [Los Angeles Times, 10/13/01] What about Pakistan’s support of terrorism, if not 9/11, then the other terrorist attacks on India since? Is the US afraid of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons? If so, what’s to prevent the ISI from planning similar future attacks with impunity, against any country?
Perhaps the US has plans to deal with Pakistan eventually. In January 2003, Musharraf warned of an “impending danger” that Pakistan will become a target of war for “Western forces” after the Iraq crisis. “We will have to work on our own to stave off the danger. Nobody will come to our rescue, not even the Islamic world. We will have to depend on our muscle.” [Press Trust of India, 1/19/03, Financial Times, 2/8/03] Pointing to “a number of recent ‘background briefings’ and ‘leaks’” from the US government, “Pakistani officials fear the Bush administration is planning to change its tune dramatically once the war against Iraq is out of the way.” [Financial Times, 2/8/03] If so, could this lead to nuclear war?
Does the US ignore Pakistani complicity in 9/11 because it might be a thread that could unravel in other disturbing directions? For instance, there have been reports of secret deals between rich Saudis, the ISI, and bin Laden. [Sunday Times, 8/25/02] Saudi Arabia has supported the Taliban by paying the ISI. [UPI, 6/14/01] Before 9/11 the Asia Times reported that Crown Prince Abdullah, the defacto ruler of Saudi Arabia, is secretly a supporter of bin Laden. Furthermore, he made a secret visit in the summer of 2001 to Afghanistan with Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed to confer with the Taliban on how best to prevent bin Laden from being harmed by the US. [Asia Times, 8/22/01] Another secret meeting between Mahmood and Crown Prince Abdullah may have taken place shortly after 9/11. [Intelligence Online, 10/4/01] While such reports are very fragmentary and speculative, it is interesting to note that Senator Graham said “foreign governments”—plural, not singular—were behind 9/11. Newsweek has reported a possible connection between the Saudi government and some of the hijackers [Newsweek, 11/22/02], and has since reported that “The possibility of a Saudi link to 9-11 is growing.” [Newsweek, 12/9/02]
Could the thread unravel in other directions as well? For instance, what about the suggestion that Saeed was a CIA agent? A long time regional expert with extensive CIA ties stated publicly in March 2001 that “the CIA still has close links with the ISI,” and repeated the claim to CNN in February 2002. [Times of India, 3/7/01, CNN, 2/27/02] An anonymous former senior ISI official has stated, “The biggest problem we have [in Pakistan] are the rogue elements in the intelligence agencies, especially those who at some time became involved with the CIA.” [Christian Science Monitor, 2/22/02] At the very least, the ISI may know very embarrassing facts about the US. For instance, they may know a thing or two about CIA involvement in drug smuggling and/or support of bin Laden in the 1980s. [Star Tribune, 9/30/01, Atlantic Monthly, 5/96, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/23/01, UPI, 6/14/01] Unfortunately, Daniel Pearl was killed before he could investigate the connections between the US and the ISI, and no journalist seems willing to explore such dangerous subjects since his death.
What would the American public think of the motives for war in Iraq if they knew a country with much deeper ties to al-Qaeda that was also proliferating weapons of mass destruction was being so ignored?
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Baskar the actual credit goes to Paul Thomson who seem to have done a fantastic job. I just did cut and paste.
ReplyDeleteYou may have read the post without the initial paragraphs from me appearing at the top now. I had some problems with their formatting initially that I kept editing it and you may have just read the post without them.
When I finished reading that article I was compelled to post the excerpts here. It's chilling and alarming.
Hi All
ReplyDeleteI guess US has always enjoyed fuelling conflict between nations. Americans have always sided-up with Pakistan only to increase arms-proliferation which has fetched them good money in the past 40 years or so. But maybe they have realized that it has come back and bit them in the ass. But something's fishy, i mean pakistan saying that "We will not allow other nations to conduct a search in our region" and the US simply not taking adequate action.
All these ex-defence sects now say that Pakistan is not doing enough. Sadly, those idiots (or) liars never realized that when they were in power.
ARAMCO = ARAB AMERICAN OIL COMPANY
ReplyDeletePlease send me the link SB. In fact I did take one link provided by NC or Scorpi in TCWJ during that time. It's written by a Russian.
ReplyDelete"how much a tool of Saudis USA is"
I was thinking along these lines SB. Who the boss is? Naturally with so much of oil wealth and a stable regime, Saudi must be wielding enormous clout in international relations.
That article and even the 9/11 timeline in that same website are well researched and are not just mere conspiracy theories. We think many of us are not aware of the real world and it is the make believe world that we all live in.
The threat to India is far greater than we all perceive, given the kind of links terrorism has in the high places.
SS is indeed the mystery guy and key person to unravel the real story. One set of writings claim that he has still not been executed or released (since KSM, mastermind of 9/11 has already admitted to killing Daniel Pearl)for the murder of DP is because of his connections to ISI and that he would reveal a lot of their operational secrets in JK. Another group of writers claim that he has lots of connections to CIA operations in Afghan/Pak and hence US doesn't want him to be released. Rumours are speculating that he was some kind of go-between Taliban,Bin Laden and or ISI,CIA and that he may already killed Bin Laden (note musharaff was the one who was speculating that bin-laden may have been dead some time back) !!. Now Musharaff says in his book that SS is actually a British agent. And to add to this there is murky story abt his involvement with Daniel Pearl who had already been talking a lot with ex-CIA clandestine officer Robert Baer before and after 9/11. Now SS is being suspected for executing assasination attempts on Mushraff thorugh Laskhar Jhangvi which is believed to have been behind the Mariott hotel bombing. Why is that all terrorism crimes are being leading to SS ?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.uwire.com/Article.aspx?id=3641328
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