(note that by treaty, all ISI directors must be approved by the CIA -rw)
Is the "War on Terrorism" a sham?
Just prior to the commencement of the Anglo-American bombing campaign
against Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Mahmoud Ahmad was dismissed from his position
as ISI Director-General. ISI Public Relations stated that he sought
retirement after being superseded on the 8th of October. But it was soon
learned that he had actually been dismissed quietly, at U.S. instigation,
for far more serious reasons: the alleged leader of the September11 suicide
hijackers, Mohamed Atta, received funding on the General's instructions.
The general lost his job because of the links to one of the suicide bombers
that wrecked the World Trade Center. The U.S. authorities sought his
removal after confirming the fact that $100,000 was wired to WTC hijacker
Mohammed Atta from Pakistan by Ahmad Umar Saeed Sheikh on the orders of Gen
Mahmoud. (On October 10, 2001, the Wall Street Journal reported that "US
authorities confirm[ed] the fact that $100,000 [was] wired to WTC hijacker
Mohammed Atta from Pakistan by Ahmad Umar Sheikh at the insistence of
General Mahmoud.")
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/main/essaysaeed.html
In addition, Agence France Press confirmed that:
"A highly-placed government source told AFP that the `damning link' between
the General and the transfer of funds to Atta was part of evidence which
India has officially sent to the U.S. `The evidence we have supplied to the
U.S. is of a much wider range and depth than just one piece of paper linking
a rogue general to some misplaced act of terrorism,' the source said . (475)
These damning revelations were soon further confirmed in the Pakistani and
American press. The respected Pakistani newspaper Dawn, for instance,
reported that the links first uncovered by Indian intelligence had been
confirmed by the American FBI. When the FBI traced calls made between
General Ahmad and Sheikh's cell phone, a pattern linking the general with
Sheikh clearly emerged:
"Director General of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Lt Gen
Mahmoud Ahmed has been replaced after the FBI investigators established
credible links between him and Omar Sheikh, one of the three militants
released in exchange for passengers of the hijacked Indian Airlines plane in
1999. The FBI team, which had sought adequate inputs about various
terrorists including Sheikh from the intelligence agencies, was working on
the linkages between Sheikh and former ISI chief Gen Mahmoud, which are
believed to have been substantiated... Informed sources said there were
enough indications with the U.S. intelligence agencies that it was at Gen
Mahmoud's instruction that Sheikh had transferred 100,000 U.S. dollars into
the account of Mohammed Atta, one of the lead terrorists in strikes at the
World Trade Center on Sept. 11 (476)
The Wall Street Journal has also confirmed these reports,`" (477) According
conservative U.S. news service WorldNetDaily, "Dennis M. Lormel, or of FBI's
financial crimes unit, confirmed the transaction" between the ISI and the
CIA .(478)
It is worth noting again the acute observations of the Times of India that:
A direct link between the ISI and the WTC attack could have enormous
repercussions. The U.S. cannot but suspect whether or not [ere were other
senior Pakistani Army commanders who were in the now of things. Evidence of
a larger conspiracy could shake U.S. confidence in Pakistan's ability to
participate in the anti-terrorism coalition (479)
This should be understood in context with the observations of Middle
specialist Mohamed Heikal, former Egyptian Foreign Minister and "the world's
most respected political commentator," according to The London Guardian.
Heikal questions whether Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network were
solely responsible for the September 11 attacks. He pointed out that:
Bin Laden does not have the capabilities for an operation of this magnitude.
When I hear Bush talking about al Qaeda as if it was Nazi Germany or the
communist party of the Soviet Union, I laugh because know what is there.
Bin Laden has been under surveillance for years: every telephone call was
monitored and al Qaeda has been penetrated by American intelligence.
Pakistani intelligence, Saudi intelligence. Egyptian intelligence. They
could not have kept secret an operation hat required such a degree of
organization and sophistication." (480)
The testimony of Milton Beardman, the former director of CIA operations in
Afghanistan, is also worth noting. In a CBS interview after the 11
September attacks with Dan Rather, Beardman was asked if he thought Osama
bin Laden was responsible for the attacks. Beardman virtually snubbed the
possibility, observing that on his evaluation of the scale of the attacks,
blame should not be automatically laid on bin Laden. Instead, he elaborated
that it was more likely that a far more "sophisticated" intelligence
operation was behind these precise coordinated attacks. Indeed, when
pressed by Rather on the possibility of bin Laden's involvement, Beardman
responded: "Look, if they didn't have an Osama bin Laden, they would invent
one. (482)
Other intelligence experts have been even more forthright in deriding the
idea that al-Qaeda could perform the 11 September operation alone. Former
CIA official Robert Baer, who was Case Officer in the Directorate of
Operations for the CIA from 1976 to 1997, and who received the Career
Intelligence Medal in 1997, observes: "Did bin Laden act alone, through his
own al Qaeda network, in launching the attacks? About that I'm far more
certain and emphatic: no." (483)
U.S. military intelligence expert Professor Anthony Cordesman Senior Fellow
in Strategic Assessment at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and
International Studies (CSIS) and former senior official in the Office of the
Secretary of Defense, the State Department, the Department of Energy, the
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the NATO International Staff
strongly warned against assuming that Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda was to
blame.
He emphasized the fact that no known terrorist network, including al Qaeda,
has the capability to carry out the sophisticated 11 September attacks
alone: "There is a level of sophistication and co-ordination that no
counterterrorism expert had ever previously anticipated, and we don't have a
group that we can immediately identify that has this kind of capability."
(481)
Eckehardt Werthebach, former President of Germany's domestic intelligence
service, Verfassungsschutz, notes that "the deathly precision" and "the
magnitude of planning" behind the 11 in September attacks would have
required "years of planning." An operation of this level of sophistication,
would need the "fixed frame" of a state intelligence organization, something
not found in a "loose group" of terrorists like the one allegedly led by
Mohammed Atta while he studied in Hamburg, Germany. Werthebach thus argues
that the scale of the attacks indicates that they were a product of "state
organized actions.
Author Ahmed Rashid notes that "Support for Bin Laden by elements within the
Pakistani establishment" has been accompanied by the fact that: "The U.S.
was Pakistan's closest ally, with deep links to the military and the ISI."
(488) The suggestive implications are that bin Laden derived intensive
support for the 11 September operation from a state intelligence
organisation. Indeed, a CBS Evening News report by anchorman Dan Rather and
foreign correspondent Barry Peterson, citing authoritative Pakistani
intelligence sources, reveals that: "the night before the September 11
terrorist attack. Osama bin Laden was in Pakistan. He was getting medical
treatment with the support of the very military that days later pledged its
backing for the U.S. war on terror in Afghanistan.
By pressuring the then ISI Director-General to resign without scandal on the
pretext of routine reshuffling, while avoiding any publicity with respect to
his siphoning of funds to alleged lead hijacker Mohamed Atta, the U.S. had
effectively blocked any sort of investigation into the matter. It prevented
wide publicity of these facts, and allowed the ISI chief, who was clearly
complicit in the terrorist attacks of 11th September, to walk away free.
There is no valid reason, therefore, to arbitrarily dismiss the possibility
that there are additional, broader reasons for the U.S. blocking of an
inquiry into ISI complicity in 11th September, as related to U.S.
culpability. Indeed, in light of the other documentation presented here,
there is evidence suggesting that this is a reasonable, if not probable,
possibility that is in need of urgent investigation.
Jared Israel is right to bluntly state the possibility of U.S. involvement
in Lt. General Ahmad's funding of Mohamed Atta. He is also right in noting
that the implications of the known aspects of the U.S. policy clearly
illustrate that the against terror is a "sham." If it were not a sham, then
we would expect as part and parcel of the war on terror, the U.S. government
would want a full-fledged inquiry into the ISI role. The fact that the Bush
Ministration has blocked such an inquiry proves that the administration is
genuinely concerned with finding the terrorists responsible for 11 September
and holding them accountable.
-- Excerpts from p. 218-227 in The War on Freedom, a book by Nafeez Mosaddeq
Ahmed, executive director at the Institute for Policy Research &
Development, in the U.K.
www.thewaronfreedom.com, and http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WarOnFreedom.
Also, www.globalresearch.org.
According to sources at the site listed below, the link between Lt Gen
Mahmoud of the ISI and Mohammed Atta was a certain Saeed Sheikh, who is
currently in Pakistani prison on conviction of the murder of Daniel Pearl.
"There is no evidence that the US has questioned Saeed Sheikh about 9/11.
Indian newspapers have pointed out that if the US were to pressure its close
ally Pakistan so Saeed Sheikh could to be interrogated in his Pakistani
prison, they could not only learn more about the financing of the
9/11attacks, 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. Mahmoud has been questioned, either." Now why
do you suppose that would be? "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 (a) choosing to ignore the evidence and (b)
actively discouraging the media from pursuing these ideas?"
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/main/essaysaeed.html Some
people point out that if the US were to pressure its close ally Pakistan
about this, and the Pakistanis were (as currently assumed) not in any way
involved in helping al Qaeda and 9/11, Saeed Sheikh could be interrogated by
the FBI in his Pakistani prison cell, and the US could perhaps learn more
about the financing of the 9/11 attacks, and also gain valuable information
about the structure of al Qaeda cells in Pakistan. And yet the US has made
no move to do this.
The most likely explanation seems to be that the Bush administration already
_has_ intimate (and secret) knowledge of the financing of 9/11 and has no
need to question Saeed Sheikh (full name: Ahmed Omar/Umar Saeed Sheikh).
Given the fact that the FBI has confirmed that Saeed Sheikh was in close
communication with Mahmoud -- and that the Wall Street Journal reported
that, "US authorities confirm[ed] the fact that $100,000 [was] wired to WTC
hijacker Mohammed Atta from Pakistan by Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh, at the
insistence of General Mahmoud." [Wall Street Journal, 10/10/01] -- how else
to explain the Bush administration's lack of interest in having him
interrogated by the FBI?