An Asia
Times Online Report
President
Bush's Advisor Condoleezza Rice takes oath before 9/11 Commission
A Weird
Conspiracy Theory or the Real Smoking Gun of 9/11
By
Pepe Escobar
IF
THE 9/11 Commission is really looking for a smoking gun, it should
look no further than at Lieutenant-General Mahmoud Ahmad, the
director of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) at
the time.
In
early October 2001, Indian intelligence learned that Mahmoud had
ordered flamboyant Saeed Sheikh - the convicted mastermind of
the kidnapping and killing of Wall Street Journal reporter
Daniel Pearl - to wire US$100,000 from Dubai to one of hijacker
Mohamed Atta's two bank accounts in Florida.
A juicy direct connection was also
established between Mahmoud and Republican Congressman Porter
Gross and Democratic Senator Bob Graham. They were all in Washington
together discussing Osama bin Laden over breakfast when the attacks
of September 11, 2001, happened.
Mahmoud's
involvement in September 11 might be dismissed as only Indian
propaganda. But Indian intelligence swears by it, and the US Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has confirmed the whole story:
Indian intelligence even supplied Saeed's cellular-phone numbers.
Nobody has bothered to check what really happened. The 9/11 Commission
should pose very specific questions about it to FBI Director Robert
Mueller when he testifies this month.
In December 2002, Graham said he
was "surprised at the evidence that there were foreign governments
involved in facilitating the activities of at least some of the
[September 11] terrorists in the United States ... It will become
public at some point when it's turned over to the archives, but
that's 20 or 30 years from now." He could not but be referring
to Pakistan and Mahmoud. If Mahmoud was really involved in September
11, this means the Pakistani ISI -"the state within the state"
- knew all about it. And if the intelligence elite in Pakistan
knew it, an intelligence elite in Saudi Arabia knew it, as well
as an intelligence elite in the US.
On
September 9, the legendary "Lion of the Panjshir", Ahmed
Shah Masoud, the key Northern Alliance commander, was assassinated
by two suicide bombers posing as journalists in his base in northern
Afghanistan. The Northern Alliance tells Washington that the ISI
may be involved. Masoud himself had told this correspondent, two
weeks before he was killed, of the incestuous link between bin
Laden and al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the ISI.
A
2002 Asia Times Online investigation would later establish
that Masoud was killed as a gift from al-Qaeda to the Taliban,
with heavy involvement by Abdul Sayyaf, an Afghan mujahideen commander
very close to the ISI and the Saudis. From Washington's perspective,
this was also a gift. Masoud was the crucial Afghan nationalist
leader, supported by Russia and Iran; after the Taliban being
smashed he would never have accepted a feeble, US-sponsored, Hamid
Karzai-style government.
On
September 10, the Pakistani daily The News reported that
the Mahmoud visit to the United States "triggered speculation
about the agenda of his mysterious meetings at the Pentagon and
National Security Council". If he'd been to the National
Security Council, he had certainly met Rice. Mahmoud did meet
with his counterpart, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director
George Tenet.
Tenet
and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage had been in Islamabad
in May, when Tenet had "unusually long" meetings with
Musharraf. Armitage for his part has countless friends in the
Pakistani military and the ISI. Mahmoud also met a number of high
officials at the White House and the Pentagon and had a crucial
meeting with Marc Grossman, the under secretary of state for political
affairs. Rice maintains she did not meet Mahmoud then.
On the morning of September 11, Mahmoud
was having a breakfast meeting at the Capitol with Graham and
Goss. Goss spent as many as 10 years working on numerous CIA clandestine
operations. He is very close to Vice President Dick Cheney. It's
interesting to note that two weeks ago Goss suggested to the Justice
Department to bring perjury charges against the new Cheney nemesis,
Clarke. As it is widely known, Graham and Goss were co-heads of
the joint House-Senate investigation that proclaimed there was
"no smoking gun" as far as President George W Bush having
any advance knowledge of September 11.
According to the Washington Post,
and also to sources in Islamabad, the Mahmoud-Graham-Goss meeting
lasted until the second plane hit Tower 2 of the World Trade Center.
Graham later said they were talking about terrorism coming from
Afghanistan, which means they were talking about bin Laden.
Pakistani
intelligence sources told Asia Times Online that on the
afternoon of September 11 itself, as well as on September 12 and
13, Armitage met with Mahmoud with a stark choice: either Pakistan
would help the US against al-Qaeda, or it would be bombed back
to the Stone Age. Secretary of State Colin Powell presented an
ultimatum in the form of seven US demands. Pakistan accepted all
of them.
One of the demands was for Musharraf to send Mahmoud to Kandahar
again and force the Taliban to extradite bin Laden. Mahmoud knew
in advance Mullah Omar would refuse. But when he went to Kandahar
the Taliban leader said he would accept, as long as the Americans
proved bin Laden was responsible for September 11. There was no
proof, and Afghanistan was bombed anyway, a policy already decided
well in advance.
It's important to remember than on
September 13 Islamabad airport was shut down - allegedly because
of threats against Pakistan's strategic assets. On September 14,
Islamabad declared total support for the US: the airport was immediately
reopened. Mahmoud remained in Washington until September 16 -
when the war on Afghanistan was more than programmed, and Pakistan
was firmly in the "with us" and not the "against
us" column.
Million-dollar questions remain.
Did Mahmoud know when and how the attacks of September 11 would
happen? Did Musharraf know? Could the Bush administration have
prevented September 11? It's hard to believe high echelons of
the CIA and FBI were not aware of the direct link between the
ISI and alleged chief hijacker Mohammed Atta.
On October 7, Mahmoud was demoted
from the ISI. By that time, Washington obviously knew of the connection
between Mahmoud, Saeed Sheikh and Mohamed Atta: the FBI knew it.
The official version is that Mahmoud was sacrificed because he
was too close to the Taliban - which, it is never enough to remind,
are a cherished creature of the ISI. Two other ISI big shots,
Lieutenant-General Mohammed Aziz Khan and Chief of General Staff
Mohammed Yousuf, are also demoted along with Mahmoud. Saeed Sheikh
was under orders to Khan.
The
fact remains that even with this Musharraf-conducted purge of
the ISI elite, the bulk of ISI officers remained, and still are,
pro-Taliban. Other former ISI directors living in Pakistan, such
as the colorful, outspoken Lieutenant-General Hamid Gul, did not
"disappear" and always renew their support for the Taliban.
But as Asia Times Online has reported, Mahmoud did disappear.
He lives in near seclusion in Rawalpindi. And he is definitely
not talking. Graham and Goss may not be interested in talking
to him either. Because he may be the ultimate September 11 smoking
gun.
The Karl Rove-designed campaign to re-elect Bush is in essence
anchored on September 11. The Republican convention in New York
will happen in the first week of September. Bush's speech will
be on September 2 - to force the connection with the three-year
commemoration of September 11.
This
whole affair is not about whether Clarke committed "perjury";
whether Rice was really up to her job; or whether George W Bush
knew something and then "forgot" about it. The families
of September 11 victims, US public opinion, the demonized Islamic
world, the whole world for that matter, all everybody wants to
know is what really happened on September 11.
The
only party that does not seem interested in getting to the bottom
of it is the Bush administration. The official fable of 19 kamikaze
Arabs turning Boeings into missiles with military precision, armed
only with box cutters and a few flight lessons and directed from
an Afghan cave by a satellite phone-shy bin Laden simply does
not hold. The commission is not asking the really hard questions.
Here are just a few - and they are far from being the most embarrassing.
1.
The "stand down" order: Why, despite more than an hour's
warning that an attack was happening, were no F-16s protecting
US airspace? Documents easily available online reveal why the
Pentagon could not act: because of bureaucracy. Why did the North
American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) claim it took 25 minutes
after the transponder was shut down to learn that Flight 11 -
which hit World Trade Center Tower 1 - was hijacked? Why did fighters
not take off from Andrews Air Force base just outside Washington
to protect the Pentagon?
2.
The pre-September 11 suspicious stock option trades in American
Airlines and United Airlines were never fully investigated. Who
profited?
3.
What happened to the FBI investigation into flight schools - when
it was proved that at least five of the 19 hijackers were trained
in US military schools?
4.
Why did Bush keep reading a pet-goat story for more than half
an hour after the first WTC hit, and 15 minutes after Chief of
Staff Andrew Card told him there had been an attack?
5.
What really happened to Flight 93? An Associated Press
story last August quoting a congressional report said the FBI
suspected the plane was crashed on purpose. The FBI has a flight-simulation
video of what happened: the video - as well as the black box -
remain top secret. And as far as four "indestructible"
black boxes are concerned, how come none were found, unlike Mohammed
Atta's intact passport lying in the WTC rubble?
6.
Why have no scientific experts examined the physical and mathematical
evidence that a Boeing 757 could not have possibly "disappeared"
without a trace after hitting the Pentagon? For the most exhaustive
and practically incontrovertible analysis available on the net,
see this report.
7.
What remains of the very tight 1980s bin Laden-ISI-CIA connection?
How much did the CIA know about what the ISI was up to? And how
much did the ISI know about what al-Qaeda was up to?
8.
What does Rice really know about the very close relations between
Mahmoud and the top echelons of the Bush administration? The
genie - the crucial information - is still in the bottle.
