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Site Map THE JOURNALIST AND THE TERRORIST |
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by Robert Sam Anson Vanity Fair, August 2002 The reporter who comes to Karachi, Pakistan is given certain cautions.
The Marriott in Karachi satisfies lodging guidelines. Metal detectors flank the entrances, guards with sawed-off shotguns patrol the premises, and the shopping arcade leads directly to the U.S. Consulate which seemed a plus until a car bomb killed 12 people there on June 14. My room, per instruction, is on the Marriott's backside, and offers a fine view of the nearby Sheraton, where a bus containing 11 French nationals was blown up by a suicide bomber in May. It is also where, according to a U.S. official, F.B.I. agents recovered a videotape showing an American journalist having his head cut off. His name was Daniel Pearl, he was 38 years old, a father-to-be, and South Asia bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal. He got the same security briefing I did. By now, the horror that befell Danny Pearl is deeply engraved. A handsome young man, loved by everyone "Sweetest guy in the world," friends call him goes to a rendezvous he believes will lead him to a scoop. Instead, terrorists are waiting to snatch him from the street. They issue photographs of Danny in chains, a pistol held to his head, and charge that he is a spy and will be executed unless demands are met. Danny's French wife, Mariane six months pregnant with their first child appears on television to appeal for his life. But there is only silence. Then, just when things are at their darkest, the terrorist ringleader, a former British public-school boy named Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, is arrested and says Danny is alive. Hopes soar as Pakistan's president, General Pervez Musharraf, predicts his imminent freedom. But all that is released is the videotape. "My father's Jewish, my mother's Jewish, I'm Jewish," it records Daniel Pearl saying. Then he is butchered. We've been told that Danny was not only a great reporter, with an eye for the offbeat and the absurd, but a cautious one not the sort who'd look for trouble. We've heard how he grew up in suburban Los Angeles, went to Stanford, and landed at the Journal, which sent him to Atlanta, Washington, London, Paris, and, finally, Bombay, a posting he accepted after confirming that there were venues where Mariane could exercise her passion for salsa dancing. We've had described how he was skeptical in the best sense of the word, questioning things taken for granted, unearthing stories others overlooked. He was working that way on his last story, an investigation of the connections between the "shoe-bomber," Richard C. Reid, and a virulently anti-Semitic Muslim militant, Mubarak Ali Shah Gilani, tracing an unbeaten path that led to who knows where. The who, what, when, and where have been laid out. Everything except the why. Why did Danny Pearl die? Because he was a Jew? A journalist? An American? Or was he simply in the wrong place at the wrong time? The why is always the hardest question for a journalist to answer, and it's what brought Danny Pearl to Pakistan. "I want to know why they hate us so much," he said. Why he died trying to find out brought me. My qualification is having been in a similar circumstance a long time ago August 1970, in Cambodia, to be precise. I was 25 years old then, covering the war for Time and feeling invulnerable, a frequent, sometimes fatal journalist's malady. The short of it is that I drove alone to somewhere I shouldn't have, and wound up in a hole with the barrel of an AK-47 pressed to my forehead. I was presumed dead for several weeks, and the conviction of my fellows back in Phnom Penh just as it is among many today about Danny Pearl was that I'd asked for it. The difference is, I came back. There is a lot else about Danny and the people who picked him up that is dissimilar, but every reporter has got to start somewhere. And the place Danny Pearl began, shortly after 9/11, was with a phone call to a number in Manhattan. On the line that morning was Mansoor Ijaz, founder and chairman of Crescent Investment Management, LLC, and a U.S. born-and-bred Pakistani-American with unusual friends and interests. His business partner is Lieutenant General James Abrahamson, former director of Ronald Reagan's Star Wars program; and the vice-chairman of his board is R. James Woolsey, director of the CIA under Bill Clinton. For a time Ijaz was also chums with Clinton and his national-security adviser Samuel Berger. This came in handy in April 1997, when, as a private citizen, Ijaz negotiated Sudan's counterterrorism offer to the U.S. and again in August 2000, when Ijaz had Pakistan and India on the seeming verge of cooling the Kashmir cauldron. The deal broke down, as did the relationship with the White House. But soon enough Ijaz was back, as tight with George W. and Condie as he'd been with Bill and Sandy. Danny called on a tip from Indian intelligence, which said Ijaz was wired with leading jihadis. Figuring that a prominent Pakistani-American who came recommended by Indian spooks to get to Muslim militants must have been a gold mine for Danny. Ijaz made introductions to three sources: Shaheen Sehbai, editor of The News, Pakistan's largest English-language daily; a jihadi activist he declines to name; and--most fatefully-- Khalid Khawaja, a Muslim militant and a onetime agent with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI) who counts among his very best friends Osama bin Laden. Within weeks, Danny ... was in the capital, Islamabad, 700 miles to the north, for a several-hour session with Khalid Khawaja. Khawaja was always good for a provocative quote, which made him a journalist favorite. "America is a very vulnerable country," he'd told CBS in July 2001. "Your White House is the most vulnerable target. It's very simple to just get it." After the U.S. began bombing Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, Asra got a zinger, too: "No American is safe now ... This is a lifelong war." Some dismissed Khawaja as a PR man. But when it came to Muslim militancy, he was the real deal, having acquired his credentials during the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, where, as an airforce squadron leader, Khawaja was serving with the ISI, which was distributing CIA- purchased munitions to mujahideen. The more radically Islamist the fighter, the more weapons he got, including Osama bin Laden, who formed an instant bond with Khawaja. It deepened when Khawaja was forced out of the ISI in 1988 after criticizing military strongman Zia ul-Haq for not doing enough to Islamize Pakistan--equivalent to questioning the piety of the Pope. But despite his talk of bin Laden's being "a man like an angel," Khawaja was sufficiently broad-minded [LOL] in his allegiances that he got the Taliban to agree to receive Ijaz and ex-CIA director Woolsey. Khawaja, in short, was a source to kill for, and Danny charmed him. Describing the reporter to Ijaz as "competent, straightforward," and not given to asking "inappropriate questions," Khawaja agreed to steer Danny to leading jihadis and to be a sounding board during his time in country. Danny made another valuable acquaintance in Hamid Mir, editor of Islamabad's Urdu-language Daily Ausaf and self proclaimed "official biographer" of Osama bin Laden. In their last chat, in early November, bin Laden had boasted of possessing chemical and nuclear weapons. Mir is a Taliban enthusiast. Quietly, though, Danny was onto something much more compelling than the daily bombing reports: he'd found links between the ISI and a "humanitarian" organization accused of leaking nuclear secrets to bin Laden. The group--Ummah Tameer-e-Nau (UTN)--was headed by Mr. Bashiruddin Mahmood, former chief of Pakistan's nuclear-power program and a key player in the development of its atomic bomb. Mahmood--who'd been forced out of his job in 1998 after U.S. Intelligence learned of his affection for Muslim extremists--acknowledged making trips to Afghanistan as well as meeting Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar. But he claimed that all they'd discussed was the building of a flour mill in Afghanistan. As for bin Laden, Mahmood said he knew him only as someone who "was helping in different places, renovating schools, opening orphan houses, and helping with rehabilitation of widows." That's not how the CIA saw it. According to the agency, Mahmood and another nuclear scientist, Caudry Abdul Majid, met with bin Laden in Kabul a few weeks before 9/11-- and not to talk about whole-wheat bread. U.S. pressure got the scientists detained in late October, and they admitted having provided bin Laden with detailed information about weapons of mass destruction. But, for what was termed "the best interests of the nation," they were released in mid- December. All this had been reported. What no one had tumbled on to, except for Danny and Journal correspondent Steve LeVine, were UTN's connections to top levels of Pakistan's ISI and its military. General Hamid Gul--a former ISI director with pronounced anti-American, radically Islamist views--identified himself as UTN's "honorary patron" and said that he had seen Mahmood during his trip to brief bin Laden. Danny and LeVine also discovered that UTN listed as a director an active-duty brigadier general, and ran down a former ISI colonel who claimed that the agency was not only aware of Mahmood's meeting with bin Laden months before his detention but had encouraged his Afghan trips. A few days later Danny was back in the paper with another exclusive, date-lined Bahawalpur, headquarters of Jaish-e-Mohammed, one of the most violent jihadi groups, as well as one of the best connected to the ISI. Jaish had been banned by Musharraf, its bank accounts frozen, and its founder, Maulana Masood Azhar, placed under house arrest. However, Danny later reported that the Jaish office in Bahawalpur was still up and running, as was the Jaish account at the local bank. If Danny hadn't been on the ISl's radarscope before, he was now. But Danny wasn't letting up; he now had his sights set on the "shoe-bomber," Richard C. Reid. Interest in the British ex-con turned Muslim radical had tailed off since December 22, when he had tried to blow up an American Airlines Paris- to-Miami flight by touching a match to an explosive in his tennis sneakers. But there remained some dangling ends, none more intriguing than who was giving Reid orders. A story in the January 6 edition of The Boston Globe got Danny on the case. It reported that U.S. officials believed Reid to be a follower of Sheikh Mubarak Ali Shah Gilalni, a leader of an obscure Muslim militant group named Jamaat ul-Fuqra ("The Impoverished"). Described by the State Department's 1995 report on terrorism as dedicated "to purifying Islam through violence," ul-Fuqra recruited devotees from as far away as the Netherlands and had sent jihadis into battle in Kashmir, Chechnya, Bosnia, and Israel. Since the early 1980's, ul-Fuqra had also operated in the U.S. where, under the name Muslims of America, it's largely black membership lived on rural communes in 19 states, including-- according to authorities--money-laundering, arson, murder, and the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. Gilani was for a time based himself in the States, but now he was mostly to be found in a walled compound in Lahore, Pakistan, where a Pakistani official said that one of his visitors was Richard C. Reid. The Globe quoted a Gilani "spokesman" and "friend" as denying any relationship between the sheikh and Reid, and warning that further such accusations were not advisable. "If you push him ... he has no option but to declare jihad on America," said Khalid Khawaja. "It will blow like a volcano." Danny had stayed in regular touch with friend Khawaja and, after seeing the Globe piece, asked if he could put him together with Gilani. Out of the question, Khawaja said: Gilani hadn't granted an interview in nearly a decade, and he certainly wasn't going to give one now to an American reporter. "Don't try," he warned. "You will not be able to do it." Undeterred, Danny asked his "fixer," an Islamabad reporter named Asif Furuqi, for a way in. Furuqi asked around, and a journalist friend told him about a man who could lead them to Gilani named Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh. [Sheikh] was born December 23, 1973, in Wanstead, an East London suburb. His parents had immigrated to the U.K. from a village outside Lahore five years before, and Sheikh was the eldest of their three children. Sheikh's father, Saeed Ahmed Sheikh, was a successful businessman who generated enough income to send Sheikh to the $12,000-a-year Forest School. In 1987 Saeed Ahmed Sheikh moved the family to Pakistan, and Sheikh, then 13, was enrolled in Aitchison College, the subcontinent's Eton. He was a standout in his studies and popular with his classmates. The only problem was that once a month or so there'd be a scrap between an old boy and a new, with Sheikh in the middle, punching for the underdog. Shipped back to the Forest School, Sheikh was admitted to the London School of Economics. He read math and statistics; made $1,500 a day peddling securities to his father's customers. During the next Easter holiday, Sheikh joined a "Caravan of Mercy," taking relief supplies to Bosnia. On his return to London, Sheikh immersed himself in military theory, dropped out of the London School of Economics, and went to Pakistan with an elaborate plan for guerilla operations in Kashmir, including--novel twist--kidnappings. In June 1994 he was invited to join a kidnapping plot in India. In late October, 1994, Indian provincial police raided the kidnappers' hideouts. In the ensuing gun battles, two officers and one of the kidnappers were killed, and Sheikh shot in the shoulder. The ISI paid for a lawyer, but it didn't do any good for Sheikh, who was held without trial for the next five years in a maximum-security prison. But in late December, 1999, Azhar's terrorist outfit--now renamed Harkat ul- Mujahadeen-seized an Indian airliner with 155 passengers and crew aboard; slit the throat of a honey-mooning Indian businessman; and demanded the release of Azhar, Sheikh, and another jihadi. After the plane sat six days on the Kandahar tarmac under the watchful eyes of the Taliban, the Indians gave in. Azhar went to Karachi and, before 10,000 howling supporters, called for the destruction of the U.S. and India. Then, after a few weeks touring under the protection of the ISI, he announced the formation of Jaish-e- Mohammed, the terrorist group Danny would find thriving in Bahawalpur. Sheikh, for his part, stayed at a Kandahar guesthouse for several days, conferring with Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar and--reports had it--Osama bin Laden, who was said to refer to him as "my special son." When he crossed the Pakistan frontier in early January 2000, an ISI colonel was waiting to conduct him to a safe house in Islamabad. He went next to Afghanistan, and reportedly helped devise a secure, encrypted Web-based communications system for al-Qaeda. His future in the network seemed limitless; there was even talk of one day succeeding bin Laden. Then came 9/11. Tracing the hijackers' funding, investigators discovered that in the weeks before the Trade Center attack someone using the alias Mustafa Muhammad Ahmad had wired more than $100,000 to hijacking ringleader Mohammad Atta. On October 6, CNN reported that the U.S. had decided that Mustafa Muhammad Ahmad and Sheikh were one and the same. With recruits picked up from other jihadi groups, Sheikh and Ansari, meanwhile, were mounting their first big operation, the October I suicide truck-bomb attack on the Kashmir assembly, which left 38 dead. On December 13 they struck again, with a shooting and grenade assault on the Parliament building in New Delhi. That incident-- which India charged was staged at the direction of the ISI--claimed 14 lives and prompted India to mass half a million troops on the Pakistan border. Sheikh was in the midst of planning yet another operation--a drive-by shoot-up of the American Center in Calcutta on January 22, in which five guards were killed--when Danny Pearl dropped into his lap. [Danny's] quest for a big score finally seemed within reach. Come to Room 411 of the Akbar International Hotel in Rawalpindi on January 11, he was told; "Bashir" would be waiting. They talked for three hours. "It was a great meeting," said Sheikh. Sheikh stressed that Gilani was a busy man; he'd have to weigh the question carefully. A Journal reporter's need for a replacement computer gave Danny more reason than ever to get [his story]. The reporter, Moscow correspondent Alan Cullison, had had his smashed in late November, when his car rolled over while crossing the Hindu Kush. On his arrival in Kabul, a shopkeeper offered to sell him a used IBM desktop and a Compaq laptop that--in a billion-to-one shot-- turned out to have been recovered from the bombed headquarters of Mohammed Atef, Osama bin Laden's abruptly deceased military strategist, and on the IBM's hard drive he found a treasure trove of al- Qaeda materials--at least 1,750 files, recording four years' worth of terrorist doings. On the hard drive was the itinerary of a target-scouting expedition by a terrorist referred to as "brother Abdul Ra'uff." It matched to a T the pre-9/11 travels of Richard C. Reid. There was more good news the same day, with the arrival of an email from "Bashir," [who] reported that he'd forwarded Danny's articles to Gilani and apologized for not having contacted him sooner. Three days later he sent an email saying that Gilani was looking forward to a get-together. There was another story he wanted to try to cram in: a piece on Karachi underworld boss Dawood Ibrahim, an Indian-born Muslim terrorist who enjoyed the patronage and protection of the ISI. In mid-January, while waiting for "Bashir's" next missive, Danny called Ikram Sehgal for leads. "He asked if I had any contacts with the local Mafia. I said, 'Danny, the Mafia head here doesn't function the way you think Mafias do. This is not something out of The Godfather. I know the direction you're going in. Don't do this! Forget it! It you want to know something, come over and we'll talk, not on the telephone.'" "Bashir" checked in again on Sunday, January 20, saying that Gilani would be available that coming Tuesday or Wednesday. Sheikh said he'd forward the phone number of a Gilani mureed (follower), who would escort him to the meeting. Wednesday, January 23 was going to be busy for Danny ... He had an appointment to see Jamil Yusuf, head of Karachi's Citizens Police Liaison Committee, at 5:45. And then there was Gilani. "Bashir" by now had told him that "Imtiaz Siddiqui" was the mureed who'd lead him to Gilani. But Danny had yet to hear from him. Nor did he know that Siddiqui's real name was Mansur Hasnain and that he'd been one of the Indian Airlines hijackers who'd freed Sheikh in 1999. Danny phoned his fixer in Islamabad. "Give me a quick reply,," he said. 'Is it safe to see Gilani?" Asif assured him it was; Gilani was a public figure. Danny called the Dow Jones bureau to ask the resident correspondent, Saaed Azhari, to set up a appointment for him the next morning. Azhari said there was something Danny ought to know; Ghulam Hasnain, the Karachi Time stringer, had gone missing the day before. Guessing was, the ISI had picked him up because of an expose he had written on Dawood Ibrahim for a Pakistani monthly. [Jamil Yusuf] describes his last meeting with a reporter of whom he was very fond. "He asked me about Gilani, and I said, 'I never heard of him. I don't think a lot of people have heard of him in this country.' Then he told me about this Richard Reid thing. I joked with him: I said, 'Danny, do something else. The guy is caught. He is with the FBI. Why waste time? "When he was sitting here, he got two phone calls. He said, 'Yes,' he is coming there at seven o'clock, somewhere close by. I did not know what was happening. He did not tell me who he was going to meet." Danny's caller was the mureed he knew as Siddiqi, saying to meet him at the Village Garden Restaurant, next to the Metropole Hotel, a mile or so away. In the cab on the way over, Danny phoned Mariane, telling her where he was going, and to start the party without him. He'd be back around eight. The hour came and went without any sign of Danny. Asra phoned Khawaja, thinking he would know whether Danny actually had a meeting. But Khawaja said he'd never heard of any meeting with Gilani. No one was using the word "kidnapping" yet, but that was the suspicion. It was confirmed early Sunday morning by emails to The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and two Pakistani news organizations. Attached were four photographs of Danny in captivity, and a message in English and Urdu announcing the capture of "CIA officer Daniel Pearl who was posing as a journalist for the Wall Street Journal." The note demanded that the U.S. hand over F-16 aircraft, whose delivery to Pakistan had been frozen by 1990 nuclear sanctions; that Pakistanis detained for questioning by the FBI over the 9/11 attacks be given access to lawyers and allowed to see their families; that Pakistani nationals held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, be returned to their homeland to stand trial; and that the Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan, now held in Afghanistan, be returned to Pakistan. Of Danny, the note said, "Unfortunately, he is at present being kept in very inhuman circumstances quite similar in fact to the way that Pakistanis and nationals of other sovereign countries are being kept in Cuba by the American Army. If the Americans keep our countrymen in better conditions we will better the conditions of Mr. Pearl and the other Americans that we capture." Sent on the account of [email protected], the message was signed, "The National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty." Police had never heard of the group, but the name sounded a gong at the Islamabad bureau of the BBC, which in late October had received a package from the "National Youth Movement for the Sovereignty of Pakistan." Inside were an unplayable videocassette and a computer printout announcing the capture of an alleged CIA operative, "one Joshua Weinstein, alias Martin Johnson, an American national and a resident of California." Also enclosed was a photograph of a male Caucasian in his 30's. Flanked by two robed and hooded men aiming AK-47s at his head, he was holding up a Pakistani newspaper showing the date of his abduction--just as Danny would months later. U.S. Embassy officials said at the time that no one named Joshua Weinstein or Martin Johnson had either come to Pakistan or been reported missing, and that the letter was a hoax. When local police agencies and other Western embassies said the same, the BBC let it drop. But the release of the virtually identical Pearl materials got the BBC checking again with American diplomats. Was the first "kidnapping" truly a hoax? Why so many similarities between the October episode and Pearl's abduction? The response was a studied silence. Police, meanwhile, were focusing their suspicions on Harkat ul-Mujahedeen, the terrorist group that had hijacked the airliner to free Sheikh and Azhar. With a number of its members killed by U.S. air strikes, Harkat ul-Mujahedeen had the motive, as well as the MO. Trouble was, this didn't have the feel of a jihadi operation. Where were the allahu ahkbars in the note? The riffs about Palestine and infidels and Western demons? There wasn't even a mention of "Zionist conspiracy." Instead, the demands read like an ACLU press release. The English was too good, too. Usage, spelling, and grammar were virtually perfect, and the few errors seemed deliberate, as if the writer was trying to hide his education. Jihadis didn't have to feign lack of schooling; most were illiterate. One investigator, inspired, typed "foreign," "kidnapper," and ''suspect" onto Google.com and clicked search. The first listing that popped up was "Omar Saeed Sheikh." No one believed it; it couldn't be that easy. The Journal, meanwhile, was moving on several fronts. Managing editor Paul Steiger issued a statement that Danny was not now nor ever had been an employee of any agency of the U.S. government, and the CIA broke long-standing policy to say the same. Questions about what story Danny was working on were deflected, lest the truth cause him harm. Finally, a confidential appeal was made to major U.S. media organizations to not disclose that Danny's parents were Israeli. All agreed. But on January 30, Danny's Jewishness leaked. In a story in The News, Kamran Khan, the paper's chief investigative reporter, wrote that "some Pakistani security officials--not familiar with the worth of solid investigative reporting in the international media--are privately searching for answers as to why a Jewish American reporter was exceeding 'his limits' to investigate a Pakistani religious group." "An India based Jewish reporter serving a largely Jewish media organization should have known the hazards of exposing himself to radical Islamic groups, particularly those who recently got crushed under American military might," Khan quoted "a senior Pakistani official" as saying. Having let the religious cat out of the bag, Khan--who doubles as a special correspondent for The Washington Post--revealed Danny's relationship with Asra Nomani, whom he claimed--falsely--Danny had imported from India to be "his full time assistant." "Officials are also guessing, rather loudly, as to why Pearl decided to bring in an Indian journalist," Khan wrote. "They are also intrigued as to why an American newspaper reporter based in Bombay would also establish a full time residence in Karachi by renting a residence." Khan's revelations stunned colleagues. But there was no wondering about the source of his information: he was well known for his contacts at the highest levels of the ISI. The same morning Khan's story appeared, the kidnappers released a second note, changing Danny's supposed spying affiliation from the CIA to the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service. The language that followed differed radically from the first note: "U cannot fool us and find us. We are inside seas,oceans,hills.grave yards, every where. We give u 1 more day if America will not meet our demands we will kill Daniel. Then this cycle will continue and no American journalist could enter Pakistan. Allah is with us and will protect us. We had given our demands and if u will not then "we" will act and the Amrikans will get teir part what they deserve. Don't think this will be the end, it is the beggining and it is a real war on Amrikans. Amrikans will get the taste of death and destructions what we had got in Afg and Pak.Inshallah " This did not sound like Sheikh--and it wasn't. A note later found on his computer read, "We have investigated and found that Daniel Pearl does not work for the CIA. Therefore, we are releasing him unconditionally." Having lured Danny, Sheikh had ceased calling the shots; Danny's fate was now in the hands of more murderous others. Investigators, however, were still concentrating on Gilani, who turned himself in on January 30, protesting his innocence and ticking off the names of more than a dozen senior and retired officials who would vouch for his services to state security. After interrogating Khawaja--who backed Gilani's story--police began having second thoughts. UI-Fuqra had never been involved with violence in Pakistan and indeed had become so inactive of late the State Department had dropped it from the terrorist list. Someone had set Gilani up. But who? For days, nothing more happened. Sheikh appeared to have vanished, and there were no further messages from the kidnappers. On his way to visit George W. Bush, General Musharraf--who was now blaming India for the abduction--assured the world that all would be well. The case had been cracked; Danny's release was expected any minute. February 14, Sheikh made a liar out of him. According to the police, he'd been captured in a daring raid in Lahore two days before. The truth was that he'd been turned over by Brigadier Ejaz Shah, home secretary of Punjab and formerly a hard-line officer of the ISI. Sheikh had turned himself over to Shah February 5, and for a week it had been hidden from the police. "Whatever I have done, right or wrong, I have my reasons, and I confess," Sheikh said when he was brought before a magistrate. "As far as I understand, Daniel Pearl is dead." Police interrogated him for a week, a silent ISI man always present, but got little else. Then, one day, the lead investigator--visited his cell. And then he told them nearly everything. He'd learned that Danny had been killed, he said, when he called "Siddiqi" from Lahore, February 5, and ordered, "Shift the patient to the doctor"--a pre-arranged code for Danny to be released. "Siddiqi" replied, "Dad has expired. We have done the scan and completed the X rays and postmortem"--meaning that Danny had been videotaped and buried. As he understood it, Sheikh said, Danny had been shot while trying to escape. Where the videotape was or what was on it, he said he didn't know. The sole subject he refused to discuss was the week he had spent with his ISI handlers. "I know people in the government and they know me and my work" was all he'd say. A week later the videotape was recovered in a classic sting. A man (authorities won't reveal his identity) called a Karachi journalist and said he had a tape of what had happened to Danny Pearl, and would sell it to the movies for $100,000. The journalist told the U.S. Consulate, which instructed him to tell the man to bring it to the lobby of the Karachi Sheraton at four o'clock, where a movie producer would meet him. An FBI agent played the role to perfection. The rest you probably know. As of this writing, Sheikh and three co- defendants were still on trial. Everyone in Pakistan expects all of them to be convicted and sentenced to die by hanging. I never did answer the "why" of everything. Sheikh said that the reason was to strike a blow at Musharraf, while Musharraf himself said it was because Danny was "overly inquisitive." And more than a few knowledgeable Pakistanis think the ISI was involved. When asked by Vanity Fair whether it shares that view, The Wall Street Journal issued a two-word written answer: "No comment." |