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Site Map SETTING UP THE WAR: PAKISTAN'S ISI, AMERICA'S AGENT FOR PROTECTING THE TALIBAN AND AL QAEDA -- CHAPTER 8 FROM "CROSSING THE RUBICON" |
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by Michael C. Ruppert
The US secret team exposed We have demonstrated that Saudi interests have, with US blessing and sanction, acted as the chief financial and in some cases strategic supporters of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. In turn Pakistan, acting under US direction and guidance, has served as the logistical support arm for US geostrategic "imperatives" in Central Asia. In an examination of Pakistan's role we see evidence of an elite cadre of personnel, transcendent of either political party, which makes this kind of conspiracy function effectively and in secret without involving large numbers of people. In fact, this critical lesson will be demonstrated for us by an influential Republican member of the House International Relations Committee. In this chapter we meet one of many key witnesses who need a thorough interrogation about 9/11, Karl "Rick" Inderfurth. I would like to express my deep gratitude and profound respect for the work of two scholars, Professor Michel Chossudovsky, PhD of the University of Ottawa and the Centre for Research on Globalization, and Nafeez Ahmed of the Institute for Policy Research and Development. Their work has laid enormously important foundations for all of us. The ISI Since 9/11 there has been little denial in the mainstream press or elsewhere that Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) has been a close ally of the CIA. The use of Pakistan by the CIA in the 1980s to conduct a clandestine war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan is well documented. Pakistan's leader at the time, Zia ul-Haq, intensified an already strong CIA-ISI relationship during covert operations planned by Brzezinski and others, and then executed by CIA Director Bill Casey under Ronald Reagan. During the 1980s, the heroin trade in the region exploded, and Osama bin Laden, fighting alongside the likes of opium warlord and CIA protege Gulbuddin Hekmaryar, got his first taste of guerilla warfare and terrorist tactics in Afghan and Pakistani mountains. Those mountains became riddled with reinforced caves, in many cases built by the Binladin Group and paid for by the CIA. I was nor surprised when Michel Chossudovsky told me in a 2001 conversation that by verbal agreement each new head of the ISI had to receive the personal blessing of the director of Central Intelligence in Langley, Virginia. The rise of the Taliban to assert control over fragmented tribal cultures in Afghanistan happened because the CIA and the ISI made it happen. According to the lingering cover story, the United Slates believed that in the Taliban it had found one group that could unify the country and provide a stable platform for the construction of pipelines. This may in fact have been the case at first, but as the Caspian oil bonanza went bust, things changed. Yet the CIA still protected the Taliban. Why? In The War on Freedom, Ahmed wrote: Control of Afghanistan by the warlords of the Northern Alliance was ... increasingly curbed by Taliban forces backed by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. When the Taliban took control of Kabul in 1996, signaling the faction's domination of Afghanistan, respected French observer Oliver Roy noted that: "When the Taliban took power in Afghanistan (1996), it was largely orchestrated by the Pakistani secret service [ISI] and the oil company Unocal, with its Saudi ally Delta." 1 This was confirmed by additional research from Peter Dale Scott indicating that ISI support for the Taliban was facilitated -- if not directed -- by Saudi Arabia, the CIA, and Unocal. 2 Ahmed continued: After a visit by the head of Saudi intelligence, Prince Turki [Saudi Arabia's liaison with bin Laden for more than 20 years], to Islamabad and Kandahar, US ally Saudi Arabia funded and equipped the Taliban march on Kabul. US Afghan experts, including Radha Kumar of the Council on Foreign Relations, now admit that the US supported the rise of the Taliban. 3 Remember that in 1996 Osama bin Laden was already a wanted man. Bur it was also a logical move to have a scion of the family with experience in the oil business where he could be useful: owning the largest construction company in the region. Although the Saudi Taliban relationship was generally denied in the first months after 9/11 as many writers tried to bring it to light, we have generally won concession on this point in the mainstream press. One wonders then about the real purpose of a series of secret meetings held by the so-called "6+2 Group" that culminated in July 2001 involving the six countries bordering Afghanistan, as well as Russia and the United States. Afghanistan's contiguous neighbors are Pakistan, China, Iran, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. US representatives included Tom Simmons, former US Ambassador to Pakistan; Lee Coldren, a former State Department expert on South Asian affairs; and Karl "Rick" Inderfurth, former Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian affairs. These meetings and the US participants are well documented in major European press outlets and in Forbidden Truth. 4 Simmons, Coldren, and Inderfurth had only recently become "former" US officials. They had all been part of the Clinton administration, and they continued in the talks as private citizens, giving them a degree of deniability in what Brissard and Dasquie call Level Two diplomacy. It was, as a matter of fact, Rick Inderfurth who had made the first (January 2000) official US visit to Pakistani General Pervez Musharraf after the latter seized power in a 1999 coup. While there, Inderfurth met with two representatives of the Taliban. 5 It was reported in a number of news stories that the Pakistani representatives (including the ISI) attending these 6+2 meetings served as intermediaries with the Taliban during negotiations when the Taliban were not present. 6 Although all press accounts offer the same basic description of the purpose of these meetings, they are nowhere explained in greater detail than by Brissard and Dasquie in Forbidden Truth. Having been created in 1997 under UN auspices and approved by Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbot, the group was intended to secure multinational agreements that would allow the development of Caspian oil and gas resources and the construction of pipelines. For two years the group's negotiations were hobbled by internal disputes. But by the end of 2000 it appeared as though an agreement was near. The Taliban often attended these meetings, and for a while it seemed there was no need for war. Even the surrender of Osama bin Laden himself was on the table: One month later, on October 18, 2000, the State Department recognized the work being done by 6+2, as well as the pursuit of negotiations with the Taliban in the name of pacifying Afghanistan. Two weeks later the negotiations seemed to be on the verge of conclusion. [UN special representative] Francesc Vendrell announced that for the first time the Taliban and the Northern Alliance were considering a peace process under the guidance of 6+2. The West's great hopes for Afghanistan's stability seemed, more than ever, on the verge of being realized, and Osama bin Laden would be driven out of his sanctuary. Yet suddenly, at the very end of the Clinton administration and after the US election debacle which saw George W. Bush emerge as the victor, everything changed, seemingly in cadence with the election. In less than a month, the diplomatic equilibrium between the Taliban and the West had been broken. Negotiations were now out of the question, as were the discussions led by 6+2. Remarks on both sides were violent and full of suspicion, even anger ... Most inflammatory -- from the Taliban's perspective -- was Russia's call to harden sanctions against the Taliban, and the UN Security Council resolution that the US and Russia were drafting that proposed banning sales of weaponry to the Taliban but not to the opposition. 7 This was a 180-degree shift from secret positions taken by the US for the preceding four years. Previously, the US had been arming the Taliban and denying aid to its opponents. Of course, after four years and having achieved control of the country, one might well ask how many more weapons the Taliban needed. In one of its last diplomatic initiatives the Clinton administration called for painful new sanctions on the Taliban. 8 Several questions merit discussion. First, Forbidden Truth is not clear as to what caused relations to worsen at a moment when the long-sought oil agreements were within reach. All we know is that this change coincided with the election. Second, the US and Russia acting jointly to sour relations and call for sanctions suggests something other than an embittered Democratic administration scorching the earth behind it. Russia would never act against its own interests, either in the region or globally, by irritating an incoming American president with whom it was going to have to live for at least four years. There had to have been some approval by the incoming administration for this antagonistic shift. What is known is that the plans for an invasion of Afghanistan in a so-called "military option" had been in place for some time (they were initiated during the Clinton administration). 9 It is also known that India, Russia, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan had been part of the preparations for what was reportedly joint US- Russian military action against Afghanistan scheduled for October 2001. It was even being openly discussed in regional newspapers in June 2001. 10 In the months following the 9/11 attacks a number of military websites contained references to US military personnel being quietly dispatched to Central Asia from as far back as 1997. Even the Washington Post reported that a quiet US military buildup was taking place in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan for months before the Presidential election. 11 After having consulted with a number of military experts including retired West Point instructor Stan Goff, I find it difficult to believe that invasion plans could have been concocted and implemented from scratch in January 2001 in time to have become public knowledge by June. The military option was clearly initiated under Clinton. Another historical landmark is important here. It was right after the 2000 spring harvest that the Taliban instituted its opium ban. With world opium production centered in Afghanistan, the result was a blow to the world's financial markets. I characterized the ban as a form of economic warfare. 12 According to Paul Thompson's timeline, Accounts vary, but former Pakistani Foreign Secretary Niaz Naik later says he is told by senior American officials at the [July 2001 6+2] meeting that military action to overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan is planned to "take place before the snows started falling in Afghanistan, by the middle of October at the latest." The goal is to kill or capture both bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar, topple the Taliban regime, and install a transitional government of moderate Afghans in its place. Uzbekistan and Russia would also participate. Naik also says "it was doubtful that Washington would drop its plan even if bin Laden were to be surrendered immediately by the Taliban." [BBC, 9/18/01] 13 That was a great way of ensuring that bin Laden would remain in Afghanistan, especially if the Taliban were sensing their impending doom. It is likely also a sign that the CIA had become desperate to restore the cash flow generated by the opium trade. The CIA was already well placed in the region; it had an infrastructure, and its mandate was to protect the drug cash flows for Wall Street's benefit. An April 11, 2002, speech by CIA Deputy Director of Operations James Pavitt at Duke University Law School belied the myths that the CIA either lacked resources or was somehow not present in the region. The speech was posted on the CIA's website and later brilliantly analyzed by journalist Larry Chin of the Online Journal «www.onlinejournal.com». Key excerpts from the speech show the importance of the region and CIA's active presence in it: We had very, very good intelligence of the general structure and strategies of the al Qaeda terrorist organization. We knew, and we warned, that al Qaeda was planning a major strike. There need be no question about that ... If you hear somebody say, and I have, the CIA abandoned Afghanistan after the Soviets left and that we never paid any attention to that place until September 11th, I would implore you to ask those people how we were able to accomplish all we did since the Soviets departed. How we knew who [sic] to approach on the ground, which operations, which warlord to support, what information to collect. Quite simply, we were there well before the 11th of September In the Directorate of Operations alone, since just five or six years ago, we are training more than 10 times as many operations officers. 14 The new Bush administration promptly engaged in what was to become a frenzy of renewed and hostile negotiations with the Taliban. The UN-appointed head of the 6+2 group, Francesc Vendrell, made five trips to Afghanistan between April and August of 2001 alone. 15 The culmination of these last and secret negotiations held in July 2001 in Berlin was apparently triggered by discussions at the July 15 G8 summit in Genoa, Italy, where the focus of discussion comprised pipelines, oil issues, and Osama bin Laden. 16 It was immediately afterward that Inderfurth, Simmons, and Coldren started slamming the military option at the Taliban through messages relayed by the ISI. 17 All of this would seem to indicate that another set of priorities -- other than the pipelines -- had taken over. And yet it was at this time that the American representatives delivered a reported ultimatum to the Taliban to surrender bin Laden, stabilize, and negotiate, or the choices would be between a carpet of gold and a carpet of bombs. 18 This ultimatum, widely reported in the European press, evoked a number of equivocal explanations from meeting participants. Pakistani Ambassador Niaz Naik, who attended the fateful meetings, agreed that the statement was made but denied that pipelines were the subject of the negotiations. This seems unlikely, because one is compelled to ask where the "gold" for the Taliban was going to come from if not from the pipelines. 19 So what were the urgent negotiations intended to accomplish? The more layered the deceptions, the more effort is required to understand them and reverse engineer the imperatives that brought them about. Clues about the 2000 election Certainly by the end of 2000 a true picture of the actual Caspian oil reserves was becoming visible to the major US oil companies and to BP-Amoco. It was also likely known by the Taliban and bin Laden, whose Islamic network was well established throughout the Muslim populations of Central Asia. It is not likely, given the damage such knowledge would cause on the financial markets, that this information would be widely shared. For a similar reason, sharing it with other nations would immediately signal that the US would be turning its sights on Iraq and Saudi Arabia. There was no place else to go. US oil consumption, depletion, and demand were an open book for all to read. So were the relevant data for every nation and region of the world. The need for oil was exploding, and there was less to obtain. The oil companies had already invested billions in Central Asia and had committed to spending billions more. Public knowledge of the Central Asian bust would lead to a frenzied worldwide repetition of the California gold rush in the Middle East, where the stakes would be much higher. American foreign policy had been focused on the isolation of Iraq through sanctions, and a unilateral decision, objected to by many of the major oil companies, to prohibit business with Iran. The US was faced with obstacles of its own making in getting to the remaining supplies of oil. That much is clear, no matter what view one takes as to the original intentions behind those American policies toward Iraq and Iran: whether they're seen as troublesome byproducts of older conflicts, or as cynically engineered facets of an eventual oil-seeking militarization whose hour had finally come. Just four days after taking office, Vice President Cheney organized his energy task force in near total secrecy. But some scraps of information were allowed to fall from the table; for instance, the small revelation that the task force would examine the development of new partnerships in Central Asia. Could it be that, with it known to only the elites that Central Asian oil (the terms "Central Asian" and "Caspian" are used interchangeably) was a bust, it was recognized before the 2000 election that perhaps the biggest crisis in human history was both nearer and more threatening than imagined? Could it be that a crisis management program was put into effect? If so, that crisis management program would have necessitated that an administration capable of ruthless covert and overt actions, friendly to the drug trade, and knowledgeable about oil and energy, be immediately installed in the White House. And if the election, rigged or stolen by whatever means necessary, were challenged, it would require that the Supreme Court render an illegal decision co achieve the desired results. This is exactly what happened. This would require of course that other nations be kept in the dark about the true nature of the crisis. It would also require that the general business community and the markets be shielded from knowledge of the imminence of Peak Oil. It would likely require the violation of American law and custom, even perhaps the total violation of the Constitution not once, but repeatedly. If the crisis were that serious, and given the mindset of the powers behind globalization and the oil-gluttonous American Empire, what other options could they see? They put their "nasty" team, the one that had produced Iran-Contra, death squads, the Savings and Loan scandal, and the Gulf War, into office and gave them carte blanche. Still, something would be required to justify Brzezinski's "imperial mobilization" and a massive deployment of US military forces into Central Asia and the Middle East on a war footing -- an enemy capable of presenting a "massive and widely perceived direct external threat." Here we need to take a look at the man who, at the beginning of the Bush administration, became the Taliban's main antagonist. During the Clinton years he had been its patron saint. His change in position came as suddenly as the election of 2000 seemed endless. Having created and armed an enemy, the US government now had to make the enemy act like one on a broad enough scale to make the world believe that it could provide the planning and logistical support for the attacks of 9/11. Deep politics and a secret team Understanding how such a plan might have been enacted quietly, from behind the scenes, without causing undue political or economic alarm, is facilitated by looking more closely at Rick Inderfurth and a member of Congress who openly criticized him. Inderfurth's biography, obtained from the Internet, says: Karl F. 1nderfurth served as Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs from August, 1997 to January, 2001. 1n this capacity, Assistant Secretary Inderfurth had responsibility for the countries of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Maldives. From October, 1997 to December, 1998 Assistant Secretary Inderfurth also served as the US Special Representative of the President and the Secretary of State for Global Humanitarian Demining. As the Special Representative he oversaw the President's "Demining 2010 Initiative." Prior to his Presidential appointment as Assistant Secretary, Mr. Inderfurth served as the US Representative for Special Political Affairs to the United Nations, with the rank of Ambassador. His portfolio included UN peacekeeping, disarmament, and security affairs. Ambassador Inderturth also served as Deputy US Representative on the UN Security Council. Mr. Inderfurth departed government service in January of this year, at the end of the Clinton Administration. His activities now include Senior Advisor to the Nuclear Threat Reduction Campaign (an initiative of The Justice Project), Raymond and Juliet Bland Professorial Lecturer at George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, Senior Associate at the Institute for Global Engagement, US participant in United Nations Track II diplomacy on Afghanistan [this is confirmation of the 6+2 effort] and member, Board of Directors of the Landmine Survivors Network. Mr. Inderfurth was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1946. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, majored in Political Science and received his BA in 1968. He was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland in 1973 and earned his MA from the Department of Politics at Princeton University in 1975. Subsequently, Mr. Inderfurth served in several government positions, including on the staffs of the National Security Council and US Senate Intelligence and Foreign Relations Committees. In 1981 he joined ARC News, first as a National Security Correspondent with a special focus on arms control for which he won several honors, including an Emmy Award. Mr. Inderfurth was Moscow Correspondent for ABC News from February 1989 to August 1991. Mr. Inderfurth is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, the Fulbright Association, and the Council of American Ambassadors. Along with Dr. Loch K. Johnson of the University of Georgia, he co-authored an examination of the history and transformation of the National Security Council entitled Decisions of the Highest Order: Perspectives on the National Security Council. 20 Inderfurth also served on the staff of the 1975-1976 Church Committee, investigating CIA abuses (I suspect as part of a damage-control team) with fellow CFR member Zbigniew Brzezinski. 21 A colorful Congressional figure who publicly criticized "Rick" Inderfurth and who spent a great deal of time in Congress attempting to blame the Clinton administration and the Democratic Party for the ascendancy and seeming invulnerability of the Taliban is Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher of Orange County, California. The biography on his Congressional website says, Prior to his election to Congress in 1988, Dana served as Special Assistant to President Reagan. For seven years he was one of the president's senior speech writers. During his tenure at the White House, Rohrabacher played a pivotal role in the formulation of the Reagan Doctrine and in championing the cause of a strong national defense. He also helped formulate President Reagan's Economic Bill of Rights, a package of economic reforms that the president introduced in a historic speech before the Jefferson Memorial. 22 Other websites reveal the special nature of Rohrabacher's connections to Afghanistan. A staunch supporter of the Afghan freedom fighters since his days as a White House speech writer for President Reagan, Congressman Rohrabacher remains committed to bringing democracy and peace to Afghanistan. Rohrabacher has traveled inside Afghanistan with Afghan freedom fighters during the war with Soviet-backed forces. As a member of the Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific House Committee on International Relations, he has played a leadership role in organizing Congressional hearings and fact-finding missions regarding Afghanistan. 23 The website for the conservative Human Events magazine even displays a 1998 photograph of a bearded Rohrabacher, dressed in tribal garb and holding an AK-47 rifle as he posed with anti Taliban rebels in the Afghan hillside. 24 Rohrabacher has one other little-known claim to historical connectedness. On the night of June 5, 1968, as a 21-year-old activist, he was at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles when Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated after winning the California primary and securing the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. His name turns up in LAPD interrogation records of the event. 25 As a former LAPD investigator, I have noted how Rohrabacher's trips to Afghanistan in the 1980s had been facilitated by the CIA, and I know with certainty that the CIA was directly connected to RFK's assassination. In 1993 I consulted briefly on a BBC-funded documentary that brought many of those connections to light. I also knew it from first-hand experience with some of the people charged with framing Sirhan Sirhan. 26 This is not to say that by implication Rohrabacher was part of the larger and secretive strategic planning that had, I believe, taken place regarding Afghanistan. On the contrary, it is to suggest that Rohrabacher, having reached a certain level, like Christopher Cox, in his attempts to damage the Clinton Administration for the criminality of its Russia policies, was not privy to or aware of the larger agendas that transcend political parties and that determine the course of world events. And when it came to Pakistan, US support for the Taliban, and "Rick" Inderfurth, Rohrabacher hit a brick wall that seemed co cause him a big headache. He had "exceeded his pay grade." Perhaps one of the greatest post-9/11 research discoveries is reported by Nafeez Ahmed in The War on Freedom, a record of a 2000 Congressional hearing on Pakistan and Afghanistan that is more revealing and adds more to our case than any additional writing I could do on the subject. From Hearings on Global Terrorism and South Asia, held in the House Committee on International Relations, Washington, DC, July 12, 2000: REP. DANA ROHRABACHER: After a year of requesting to see State Department documents on Afghan policy -- and I would remind the committee that I have -- I have stated that I believe that there is a covert policy by this administration, a shameful covert policy of supporting the Taliban -- the State Department, after many, many months -- actually, years -- of prodding, finally began giving me documents, Mr. Chairman. And I have, in the assessment of those documents, I have found nothing to persuade me that I was wrong in my criticism. And I might add, however, that there has been no documents provided to me, even after all these years of requesting it, there have been no documents concerning the time period of the forming of the Taliban. And I would again, I would hope that the State Department gets the message that I expect to see all those documents ... And although the administration has denied supporting the Taliban, it is clear that they discouraged all of the anti Taliban supporters from supporting the efforts in Afghanistan to defeat the Taliban. Even so much as when the Taliban was ripe for being defeated on the ground in Afghanistan, Bill Richardson and "Rick" Inderfurth, high-ranking members of this administration, personally visited the region in order to discourage the Taliban's opposition from attacking the Taliban, and then going to neighboring countries to cut off any type of military assistance to the [opponents of the] Taliban. This at a time when Pakistan was heavily resupplying and rearming the Taliban. What did this lead to? It led to the defeat of all of the Taliban's major enemies except for one, Commander Massoud, in the north, and left the Taliban the supreme power in Afghanistan ... [Massoud was assassinated by al Qaeda operatives posing as TV cameramen two days before the attacks in New York and Washington.] One last note. Many people here understand that I have been in Afghanistan on numerous occasions and have close ties to people there. And let me just say that some of my sources of information informed me of where bin Laden was, they told me they knew and could tell people where bin Laden could be located. And it took me three times before this administration responded to someone who obviously has personal contacts in Afghanistan, to even investigate that there might be someone who could give them the information. And when my contact was actually contacted, they said that the people who contacted them were half-hearted, did not follow through, did not appear to be all that interested ... Later the subject of discussion between committee members turned to who had been supplying that Taliban with weapons. REP. ROHRABACHER: (Laughing) This is a joke! I mean, you have to go to closed session to tell us where the weapons are corning from? Well, how about let's make a choice. There's Pakistan or Pakistan or Pakistan. (Laughs) Where do you think the Taliban -- right as we speak -- I haven't read any classified documents. Everybody in the region knows that Pakistan is involved with a massive supply of military weapons and has been since the beginning of the Taliban. Let me just state for the record, here, before I get into my questions, that I think there's -- and it's not just you, Mr. Ambassador [Michael Sheehan, State Department Coordinator For Counterterrorism], but it is this administration and, perhaps, other administrations as well. I do not believe that terrorism flows from a lack of state control. Only the United States has given -- and I again make this charge -- the United States has been part and parcel to supporting the Taliban all along, and still is let me add ... We have been supporting the Taliban, because all our aid goes to the Taliban areas. And when people from the outside try to put aid into areas not controlled by the Taliban, they are thwarted by our own State Department ... Again, let me just -- I am sorry Mr. Inderfurth is not here to defend himself but let me state for the record: at a time when the Taliban were vulnerable, the top person of this administration, Mr. Inderfurth and Bill Richardson [Clinton Energy Secretary and now Governor of New Mexico] went to Afghanistan and convinced the anti Taliban forces not to go on the offensive and, furthermore convinced all of the anti Taliban forces, their supporters, to disarm them and to cease their flow of support for anti Taliban forces. Rohrabacher's pique continued during an exchange with Deputy Assistant Secretary of State (Inderfurth's assistant) Alan Eastham. REP. ROHRABACHER: But the Taliban were included; except what happened right after all of those other support systems that had been dismantled because of Mr. Inderfurth's and Mr. Richardson's appeal, and the State Department's appeal? What happened immediately -- not only immediately after, even while you were making that appeal, what happened in Pakistan? Was there an airlift of supplies, military supplies, between Pakistan and Kabul and the forward elements of the Taliban forces? REP. ROHRABACHER [answering his own question]: The answer is yes. I know. MR. EASTHAM: The answer is -- REr ROHRABACHER: You cant tell me because -- MR. EASTHAM: The answer is -- REP ROHRABACHER: -- it's secret information. MR. EASTHAM: The answer is closed session. If you would like to dredge up that record. REP ROHRABACHER: Well, I don't have to go into closed session because I didn't get that information from any classified document ... Mr. Inderfurth, Mr. Bill Richardson, a good friend of mine, doing the bidding of this administration, basically convinced the anti Taliban mentors to quit providing them the weapons they needed, with some scheme the Taliban were then going to lay down their arms. And immediately thereafter, Pakistan started a massive shift of military supplies that resulted in the total defeat of the anti Taliban forces ... Why haven't I been provided any documents about State Department analysis of during the formation period of the Taliban, about whether or not the Taliban was a good force or a bad force? Why have none of those documents reached my desk after two years? MR. EASTHAM: The effort was to stop the support for all the factions. REP ROHRABACHER: That's correct. You didn't deny that we disarmed their opponents, you just said we were doing it with the Taliban as well. Bur as I pointed out, which you did not deny, the Taliban were immediately resupplied. Which means that we are part and parcel of disarming the victim, thinking that the aggressor was going to be disarmed as well, but it just didn't work out -- at the moment when Pakistan was arming them I might add. Pakistan's 9/11 smoking gun in the CIA's hand One of the most important items FTW was to bring to light immediately after the attacks is listed as item 18 in our timeline "Oh Lucy, You Gotta Lotta 'Splainin' to do!" May 2001 -- Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, a career covert operative and [reported] former Navy Seal, travels to India on a publicized tour, while CIA Director George Tenet makes a quiet visit to Pakistan to meet with Pakistani leader Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Armitage has long and deep Pakistani intelligence connections. It would be reasonable to assume that while in Islamabad, Tenet, in what was described as "an unusually long meeting," also met with his Pakistani counterpart, Lt. Gen. Mahmud Ahmad, head of the ISI. [Source: The Indian SAPRA news agency, May 22, 2001] 27 One could argue that these meetings were essential in light of the deteriorating political situation. However the evidence suggests a different motive altogether -- especially for Tenet's visit to Pakistan; that darker agenda is suggested by previous history and by the cover-up behavior of the White House and its pliant allies in the media. [Special acknowledgement and thanks are given to Professor Michel Chossudovsky of the University of Ottawa who granted me permission to include lengthy excerpts from the following article that he published on June 20, 2002.] Political Deception: The Missing Link behind 9-11 by Michel Chossudovsky [Reprinted with permission] A "Red Herring" is a fallacy of rhetoric, in which an irrelevant topic is presented in order to divert attention from the original issue. The foreknowledge issue is a Red Herring. On May 16th the New York Post dropped what appeared to be a bombshell. "Bush Knew." Hoping to score politically, the Democrats jumped on the bandwagon, pressuring the White House to come clean on two "top-secret documents" made available to President Bush prior to September 11, concerning "advance knowledge" of al Qaeda attacks. Meanwhile, the US media had already coined a new set of buzzwords "Yes, there were warnings"' and "clues" of possible terrorist attacks, but "there was no way President Bush could have known" what was going to happen. The Democrats agreed to "keep the cat inside the bag" by saying: "Osama is at war with the US," and the FBI and the CIA knew something was cooking but "failed to connect the dots." In the words of House Minority Leader, Richard Gephardt: "This is not blame-placing. We support the President on the war against terrorism. Have and will. But we've got to do better in preventing terrorist attacks." The media's spotlight on "foreknowledge" and so-called "FBI lapses" served to distract public attention from the broader issue of political deception. Not a word was mentioned concerning the role of the CIA, which throughout the entire post-cold war era, has aided and abetted Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda, as part of its covert operations. Of course they knew! The foreknowledge issue is a red herring. The "Islamic Brigades" are a creation of the CIA. In standard CIA jargon, al Qaeda is categorized as an "intelligence asset." Support to terrorist organizations is an integral part of US foreign policy. Al Qaeda continues to this date (2002) to participate in CIA covert operations in different parts of the world. These "CIA-Osama links" do not belong to a bygone era, as suggested by the mainstream media. The US Congress has documented in detail, the links of al Qaeda to agencies of the US government during the civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, as well as in Kosovo. More recently in Macedonia, barely a few months before September 11, US military advisers were mingling with Mujahideen mercenaries financed by al Qaeda. Both groups were fighting under the auspices of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), within the same terrorist paramilitary formation. The CIA keeps track of its "intelligence assets." Amply documented, Osama bin Laden's whereabouts were always known. Al Qaeda is infiltrated by the CIA. In other words, there were no "intelligence failures"! In the nature of a well-fed intelligence operation, the "intelligence asset" operates (wittingly or unwittingly) with some degree of autonomy, in relation to its US government sponsors, but ultimately it acts consistently, in the interests of Uncle Sam. While individual FBI agents are often unaware of the CIA's role, the relationship between the CIA and al Qaeda is known at the top levels of the FBI. Members of the Bush administration and the US Congress are fully cognizant of these links. The foreknowledge issue focusing on "FBI lapses" is an obvious smokescreen. While the whistleblowers serve to underscore the weaknesses of the FBI, the role of successive US administrations (since the presidency of Jimmy Carter) in support of the "Islamic Militant Base." is simply not mentioned. Fear and disinformation campaign The Bush administration, through the personal initiative of Vice President Dick Cheney, chose not only to foreclose the possibility of a public inquiry, but also to trigger a fear and disinformation campaign: "I think that the prospects of a future attack on the US are almost a certainty. It could happen tomorrow, it could happen next week, it could happen next year, but they will keep trying. And we have to be prepared." What Cheney is really telling us is that our "intelligence asset," which we created, is going to strike again. Now, if this "CIA creature" were planning new terrorist attacks, you would expect that the CIA would be first to know about it. In all likelihood, the CIA also controls the so-called "warnings" emanating from CIA sources on "future terrorist attacks" on American soil. Carefully planned intelligence operation The 9/11 terrorists did not act on their own volition. The suicide hijackers were instruments in a carefully planned intelligence operation. The evidence confirms that al Qaeda is supported by Pakistan's military intelligence, the Inter- Services Intelligence (ISI). Amply documented, the ISI owes its existence to the CIA: "With CIA backing and the funneling of massive amounts of US military aid, the ISI developed [since the early 1980s] into a parallel structure wielding enormous power over all aspects of government ... The ISI had a staff composed of military and intelligence officers, bureaucrats, undercover agents, and informers estimated at 150,000." The missing link The FBI confirmed in late September 2001, in an interview with ABC News (which went virtually unnoticed) that the 9/11 ring leader, Mohammed Atta, had been financed from unnamed sources in Pakistan: As to September 11th, federal authorities have told ABC News they have now tracked more than $100,000 from banks in Pakistan, to two banks in Florida, to accounts held by suspected hijack ring leader, Mohammed Atta. Time Magazine is reporting that some of that money came in the days just before the attack and can be traced directly to people connected to Osama bin Laden. It's all part of what has been a successful FBI effort so far to close in on the hijacker's high commander, the money men, the planners, and the mastermind. The FBI had information on the money trail. They knew exactly who was financing the terrorists. Less than two weeks later, the findings of the FBI were confirmed by Agence France Presse (AFP) and the Times of India, quoting an official Indian intelligence report (which had been dispatched to Washington). According to these two reports, the money used to finance the 9/11 attacks had allegedly been "wired to WTC hijacker Mohammed Atta from Pakistan, by Ahmad Umar Sheikh, at the instance of [ISl Chief] General Mahmoud [Ahmad]." According to the AFP (quoting the intelligence source): "The evidence we have supplied to the US is of a much wider range and depth than just one piece of paper linking a rogue general to some misplaced act of terrorism." Pakistan's chief spy visits Washington Now, it just so happens that General Mahmoud Ahmad, the alleged "money man" behind 9/11, was in the US when the attacks occurred. He arrived on September 4th, one week before 9/11, on what was described as a routine visit of consultations with his US counterparts. According to Pakistani journalist, Amir Mateen (in a prophetic article published on September 10): ISI Chief Lt-Gen. Mahmoud's week-long presence in Washington has triggered speculation about the agenda of his mysterious meetings at the Pentagon and National Security Council. Officially, he is on a routine visit in return to CIA Director George Tenet's earlier visit to Islamabad. Official sources confirm that he met Tenet this week. He also held long parlays with unspecified officials at the White House and the Pentagon. But the most important meeting was with Marc Grossman, US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. One can safely guess that the discussions must have centered around Afghanistan ... and Osama bin Laden. What added interest to his visit is the history of such visits. Last time Ziauddin Butt, Mahmoud's predecessor, was here, during Nawaz Sharif's government, the domestic politics turned topsy turvy. within days. Nawaz Sharif was overthrown by General Pervez Musharaf. General Mahmoud Ahmad, who became the head of the ISI, played a key role in the military coup. Schedule of Pakistan's Chief of Military Intelligence Lt:. Gen. Mahmoud Ahmad, Washington, September 4-13, 2001: Summer 2001: ISI Chief Lt. Gen. Mahmoud Ahmad transfers $100,000 to 9/11 Ringleader Mohamed Atta. September 4: Ahmad arrives in the US on an official visit. September 4-9: He meets his US counterparts including CIA head George Tenet. September 9: Assassination of General Massood, leader of The Northern Alliance. Official statement by Northern Alliance points to involvement of the ISI-Osama Taliban axis. September 11: Terrorist Attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon. At the time of the attacks, Lt. Gen. Ahmad was at a breakfast meeting at the Capitol with the chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees Sen. Bob Graham and Rep. Porter Goss. Also present at the meeting were Sen. John Kyl and the Pakistani Ambassador to he US, Maleeha Lodhi. September 12-13: Meetings between Lt. Gen. Ahmad and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. Agreement on Pakistan's collaboration negotiated between Ahmad and Armitage. Meeting between General Ahmad and Secretary of State Colin Powell. September 13: Ahmad meets Senator Joseph Biden, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Condoleezza Rice's press conference In the course of Condoleezza Rice's May 16 [2002] press conference (which took place barely a few hours after the publication of the "Bush Knew" headlines in the New York Post), an accredited Indian journalist asked a question on the role of General Mahmoud Ahmad: Q: Dr. Rice? Ms RICE: Yes? Q: Are you aware of the reports at the time that the IS1 chief was in Washington on September 11th, and on September 10th $100,000 was wired from Pakistan to these groups here in this area? And why was he here? Was he meeting with you or anybody in the administration? Ms RICE: I have not seen that report, and he was certainly not meeting with me. Although there is no official confirmation, in all likelihood General Mahmoud Ahmad met Rice during the course of his official visit. Moreover [as was the case with President Bush's 2003 dishonest statement about Iraqi attempts to purchase uranium from Niger] she must have been fully aware of the $100,000 transfer to Mohammed Atta, which had been confirmed by the FBI. Mysterious 9/11 breakfast meeting on Capitol Hill On the morning of September 11, General Mahmoud Ahmad, the alleged "money-man" behind the 9/11 hijackers was at a breakfast meeting on Capitol Hill hosted by Senator Bob Graham (Democrat) and Representative Porter Goss (Republican, respectively chairmen of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees. While trivialising the importance of the 9/11 breakfast meeting, the Miami Herald (September 16, 2001) confirms that General Ahmad also met Secretary of State Colin Powell in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. "Graham said the Pakistani intelligence official with whom he met, a top general in the government, was forced to stay all week in Washington because of the shutdown of air traffic. 'He was marooned here, and I think that gave Secretary of State Powell and others in the administration a chance to really talk with him,' Graham said." With the exception of the Florida press (and <www.salon.com>, September 14), not a word was mentioned in the US media's September coverage of 9/11 concerning this mysterious breakfast reunion. While the Washington Post acknowledges the links between ISl Chief Mahmoud Ahmad and Osama bin Laden, it fails to dwell on the more important question: What was Mahmoud doing on Capitol Hill on the morning of September 11, together with Rep. Porter Goss and Senator Bob Graham and other members of the Senate and House intelligence committees? The investigation and public hearings on "intelligence failures" In a bitter irony, Rep. Porter Goss and Senator Bob Graham, the men who hosted the mysterious September 11 breakfast meeting with the alleged "hijackers high commander" (to use the FBI's expression), had been put in charge of the investigation and public hearings on so-called "intelligence failures." Meanwhile, Vice President Dick Cheney had expressed anger on a so-called "leak" emanating from the intelligence committees regarding "the disclosure of National Security Agency intercepts of messages in Arabic on the eve of the attacks. The messages ... were in two separate conversations on September 10 and contained the phrases 'Tomorrow is zero hour' and 'The match is about to begin.' The messages were not translated until September 12." 28
Below is a transcript of the same Rice press conference (obtained by Chossudovsky) from the Federal News Service. Both the CNN and White House transcripts reported that when Rice was questioned about Ahmed's presence in Washington the identity of the person being asked about was inaudible! Yet the Federal News Service got it right. In watching a tape of the press conference every word was crystal clear. There was not the slightest chance that any part was inaudible.
Federal News Service May 16, 2002, Thursday Q: Are you aware of the reports at the time that ISI chief was in Washington on September 11th, and on September 10th, $100,000 was wired from Pakistan to these groups here in this area? And why he was here? Was he meeting with you or anybody in the administration? MS. RICE: I have not seen that report, and he was certainly not meeting with me. Daniel Pearl Wall Street journal reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped in January of 2002 from Pakistani streets. His body was found in May, and at the same time the Pakistani police announced that they had a prime suspect in the case, Omar Saeed Sheikh. He is variously known also by the names Ahmad Umar Sheik, Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh, and Umar Sheikh. He was raised and educated in London, and, by whatever name he is known, it has been acknowledged that he was an ISI agent. When the Times of India revealed that by examining his cell phone records (obtained through Indian intelligence services) they could prove that he was the leg man who had wired $100,000 to Mohammed Atta in Florida just days before the attacks, they did nor know that he was going to be arrested and convicted for the murder of Pearl. It was the cell phone records, among other things, that tied Sheikh directly to the ISI. 29 And before his link to ISI Chief General Ahmad became known and corroborated by major US papers, the American press had been setting him up as the number one al Qaeda bag-man. The ISI connection changed all that and became a liability for the US government. Paul Thompson's timeline contains a compelling entry on the case that could have proven devastating for the CIA had the dots been connected properly. September 8-11, 2001 (C): Saeed Sheikh transfers money from the United Arab Emirates to Atta in Florida on September 8 and 9 (the United Arab Emirates is known for lax banking laws and has no law against money laundering [State Department briefing, 7/8/99]). On September 9, three hijackers, Atta, Walid Alshehri, and Marwan Alshehhi, transfer about $15,000 back to Saeed's account. [Time, 10/1/01; Los Angeles Times, 10/20/01] Apparently the hijackers are returning money meant for the 9/11 attacks that they didn't use. Saeed then flies from the United Arab Emirates to Karachi, Pakistan, on 9/11. These last minute transfers are touted as the "smoking gun" proving al-Qaeda involvement in the 9/11 attacks, since Saeed is a known financial manager for bin Laden. [Guardian, 10/1/01] 30 With so much damning evidence stacking up to suggest that the CIA had actually helped to finance the 9/11 attacks, there was nothing left for the mainstream press to do but engage in a game of confusion. Instead of asking the questions that should have been asked, the media confused the issue by describing the same man in his roles as ISI agent and bin Laden bagman under many different names and by attempting to insert another individual into the mix. Researcher Chaim Kupferberg documented the major media's name game in trying to confuse Sheikh's identity with another man, bin Laden's brother-in-law. Kupferberg meticulously pulled apart about two dozen mainstream press reports and demonstrated deceptive reporting in attempts to conceal Sheik's identity by attributing acts originally been reported as Sheikh's to another person entirely. 31 After Sheik's conviction for Pearl's murder in July 2002, other revelations showed that Pearl had maintained fairly close relationships with the CIA. One report indicated that Pearl was involved in passing a hard-drive from an al Qaeda laptop computer to the CIA. Another quoted former CIA case officer Robert Baer as saying, "I was working with Pearl." Baer stated in the story that he had been encouraging Pearl to investigate the CIA's top operational suspect in the attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. 32 Abandoning the tortuous logic of trying to rationalize actions indicating guilty knowledge and cover-up, it is appropriate to ask if Pearl was really investigating the hottest 9/11 story around. Was Pearl investigating the ISI? At least two sources say yes. Kupferberg wrote: Tariq Ali of the Guardian reported on April 5, 2002: 'Those he [Pearl] was in touch with say he was working to uncover links between the intelligence services and terrorism. His newspaper has been remarkably coy, refusing to disclose the leads Pearl was pursuing.' 33 And in the spring of 2002 I interviewed an international attorney just returning from several months of work in Pakistan. Because he has ongoing business in Pakistan I cannot name him here, but I can tell you what he said. "Oh, there's no doubt about it. It was common knowledge on the streets. Pearl was investigating the ISI." |
