Key Witnesses 'Overlooked' In Official 9/11 Report

'Smoking Gun'
9/11 Commission Report One Year On
Key Witnesses Blatantly 'Overlooked'
In Official Cover-Up Of 9/11 Money Trail
www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/WAT911OmmissionReport.htm
John O'Neill, John Pistole, Robert Wright, Sibel Edmonds,
Lt General Mahmoud Ahmed, Omar Sheikh, Daniel Pearl, Robert Baer
The Inner Secrets Of 9/11
Are Held By The FBI

"In the twilight of the Cold War, the United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings..... The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system's core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books...."
From U.S., the ABC's of Jihad
Washington Post, 23 March 2002

"The London bombings have thrown the terror spotlight back on Pakistan..... Thousands of [Afghan war jihadi] camps and hideouts were set up in Pakistan, sanctioned by Islamist dictator Zia-ul Hag and backed by the US Central Intelligence Agency and the military to train Islamic warriors ...... a senior police official involved in the anti-terror campaign told AFP... 'Still Pakistan and Afghanistan remain the only two places where Islamic militants can go and get motivation and sometime training,' "
Terror spotlight on Pakistan
News24 (South Africa), 17 July 2005

"Between 20,000 to 30,000 Muslim militants, [President Musharraf] said, flocked to Pakistan from all over the world during the US-backed war against the Soviets.... He said all their finances and logistics were routed through Pakistan."
Musharraf looks two ways in extremist fight
BBC Online, 21 July 2005

"We will be going much higher than these... These men are the pawns. We want the ones who moved the pawns.'....."
Watergate's Deep Throat, Associate Director Of The FBI, Mark Felt in 1972
'I'm The Guy They Call Deep Throat'
Vanity Fair, July 2005

"Deep throat, the anonymous source who leaked secrets about President Nixon’s Watergate cover-up to The Washington Post, revealed himself yesterday [as Mark Felt former deputy director of the FBI] after more than 30 years of silence...Deep Throat advised Mr Woodward to 'follow the money'."
At long last, Deep Throat steps out of the shadows
London Times, 1 June 2005

"Whether the bombers [in London on 7 July 2005] were British Muslims who had hidden their identity so well that they were unknown to the intelligence services, or a more seasoned group based on the Continent, they constitute the thinking and practice of a new al-Qaeda that has developed since September 11, 2001.... The old al-Qaeda's hero is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who planned the September 11 attacks, recruited the personnel and arranged the logistics while travelling around the world with false passports, in multiple disguises and womanising in bars. He was arrested in Pakistan in 2003 while trying to rebuild the organisation from its by then scattered members. The new al-Qaeda's hero is Ahmed Omar Sheikh, a British Muslim educated at the London School of Economics who is facing a death sentence in a Karachi jail for murdering the American journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002."
New terror groups pay homage to bin Laden but work alone
Daily Telegraph, 11 July 2005

"It appears that there is a connection between British and Pakistani Islamic militants. The kidnapper of the American reporter Daniel Pearl in Karachi, Omar Saeed Sheikh, is a British Muslim of Pakistani origin, and there are reports that Sheikh has been questioned about the London bombs."
Briton 'wanted for questioning over London bombs is held in Pakistan'
Independent, 12 July 2005

"Police are now trying to discover exactly where the three [July 2005 London bomber] men went and who they met in Karachi. One crucial part of the inquiry will be to find out if any of them met al-Qaeda militants linked to US journalist Daniel Pearl's killer Ahmed Omar Sheikh. The British Muslim, who studied at the London School of Economics, became an al-Qaeda hero for slaying Pearl in Karachi in 2002. He is now facing a death sentence."
TWO SUICIDE BOMBERS.... ON THEIR WAY TO TERROR SCHOOL
Mirror, 19 July 2005

"Reports from Pakistan indicate that Omar continues to be active from jail, reportedly keeping in touch with friends and followers in the UK. Statements purported to have been issued by him from jail calling on the Muslims of the world to retaliate against the US for desecration of the Holy Koran are disseminated every Friday in many Pakistani mosques controlled by jihadi organizations."
How London brought terror on itself
Asia Times, 16 July 2005

"British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Shaikh, convicted for the kidnap-slaying of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, has admitted to having met Bin Laden twice in Afghanistan, but says he is more committed to the one-eyed Taliban spiritual supremo, Mulla Omar, whom he considers 'the overall leader of all mujahideen. ' In his first-ever interview given from Adiala jail, which was perforce conducted surreptitiously, with the questionaire being smuggled in and out, Omar said he admires the 'grief' Bin Laden maintains in his heart for the 'plight of Muslims world-wide' and the sacrifices he has made, but said he doesn't necessarily agree entirely with the methods he has chosen to achieve his ends.... In the accompanying interview with Newsline, Omar admits to 'involvement' in the kidnapping of foreigners in India in 1994 for which he served time in that country, and the abduction of Wall Street Journal South-Asia bureau chief, Daniel Pearl, but adds that he 'didn't [physically] take part in the actual events.' This claim ties in with new evidence unearthed by the authorities in which it was revealed that while Omar was part of the conspiracy to kidnap Pearl - which included luring the reporter to the site of the abduction by e-mail, he was not physically present either at the time of the kidnapping, or his murder. Police insiders disclose that local authorities have arrested almost 90 per cent of the militants who took part in the abduction and slaying of Pearl, but since the former have already made a case against Shaikh Omar and four others who are charged along with him, and the new evidence, if pursued, would mean a retrial and the possible opening up of a Pandora's box, none of the men - not even those who have confessed to involvement in the crime - have been charged to date.... Police sources disclosed that senior government officials are petrified if the militants are charged they might reveal information demonstrating how the case against Shaikh Omar, whom Islamabad identified as the ringleader of Pearl's killers, was substantially spurious, since Sheikh's testimony, in which he denied direct involvement in the Pearl case has now been corroborated by the independent accounts of several of the men in custody.... Omar is presently detained in an isolation ward in Hyderabad Jail, where jail officials maintain he is being guarded round-the-clock."
The Mystery Thickens
Newsline (Pakistan), April 2005

"..... it is precisely the same man used by [the head of Pakistani Intelligence Services] General Mahmoud to wire money to 911 hijacker Mohammed Atta who has now been detained and tried for the murder of Pearl.....why is Sheikh still not being charged for his alleged involvement in the 911 attacks now that he is finally detained?.... In this respect the clamour from the Bush administration to spare Sheikh's life so that he can give evidence as to General Mahmoud's and his own involvement in the transfer of 911 money to Mohammed Atta is deafening by virtue of its total absence... Sheikh is a British born and educated Pakistani. He is a British Citizen. But this has not resulted in the British government securing an open trial for him.... The possibility that Sheikh has been framed (certainly he is an ideal candidate given his previous involvement with militant groups) in order to engineer his execution cannot be discounted.... "
What Did Britain Know About 911?
'Fight Smart', 28 Aug 2002

"I think there is very compelling evidence that at least some of the terrorists were assisted not just in financing -- although that was part of it -- by a sovereign foreign government and that we have been derelict in our duty to track that down...It will become public at some point when it's turned over to the archives, but that's 20 or 30 years from now. .... I do not believe we got the full cooperation that we needed. As an example, as of today there are 13 requests outstanding with the FBI alone for additional information which would help us follow the trail -- including the trail of foreign government involvement. That agency and others have been reticent to come forward."
Senator Bob Graham, Chairman of the Senate Select Committee On Intelligence
Improving Intelligence
PBS Online, 11 Dec 2002

" Over three years ago, more than four months prior to the September 11 terrorist attacks, in April 2001, a long-term FBI informant/asset who had been providing the bureau with information since 1990, provided two FBI agents and a translator with specific information regarding a terrorist attack being planned by Osama Bin Laden. This asset/informant was previously a high-level intelligence officer in Iran in charge of intelligence from Afghanistan. Through his contacts in Afghanistan he received information that: 1) Osama Bin Laden was planning a major terrorist attack in the United States targeting 4-5 major cities, 2) the attack was going to involve airplanes, 3) some of the individuals in charge of carrying out this attack were already in place in the United States, 4) the attack was going to be carried out soon, in a few months. The agents who received this information reported it to their superior, Special Agent in Charge of Counterterrorism, Thomas Frields, at the FBI Washington Field Office, by filing '302' forms, and the translator translated and documented this information. No action was taken by the Special Agent in Charge, and after 9/11 the agents and the translators were told to 'keep quiet' regarding this issue. The translator who was present during the session with the FBI informant, Mr. Behrooz Sarshar, reported this incident to Director Mueller in writing, and later to the Department of Justice Inspector General....After almost three years since September 11, many officials still refuse to admit to having specific information regarding the terrorists' plans to attack the United States..... Why did your report choose to exclude the information regarding the Iranian asset and Behrooz Sarshar from its timeline of missed opportunities?... To this date the public has not been told of intentional blocking of intelligence..... If Counterintelligence receives information that contains money laundering, illegal arms sale, and illegal drug activities, directly linked to terrorist activities; and if that information involves certain nations, certain semi-legit organizations, and ties to certain lucrative or political relations in this country, then, that information is not shared with Counterterrorism, regardless of the possible severe consequences. In certain cases, frustrated FBI agents cited 'direct pressure by the State Department,' and in other cases 'sensitive diplomatic relations' is cited......After almost three years the American people still do not know that thousands of lives can be jeopardized under the unspoken policy of 'protecting certain foreign business relations.' The victims family members still do not realize that information and answers they have sought relentlessly for over two years has been blocked due to the unspoken decisions made and disguised under 'safeguarding certain diplomatic relations.' .....Despite your full awareness and understanding of certain criminal conduct that connects to certain terrorist related activities, committed by certain U.S. officials and high-level government employees, you have not proposed criminal investigations into this conduct, although under the laws of this country you are required to do so..... As you are fully aware, these issues and incidents were found confirmed by a Senior Republican Senator, Charles Grassley, and a Senior Democrat Senator, Patrick Leahy. As you know, according to officials with direct knowledge of the Department of Justice Inspector General's report on my allegations, 'none of my allegations were disproved.' As you are fully aware, even FBI officials 'confirmed all my allegations and denied none' during their unclassified meetings with the Senate Judiciary staff over two years ago. However, neither your commission's hearings, nor your commission's five hundred sixty seven-page report, nor your recommendations include these serious issues....."
Open Letter To Thomas Kean - Chairman Of The 9/11 Commission
From Former FBI Translator And Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds
Asia Times, 5 August 2004

"While the [911] commission documents the high-level ties that al-Qaida had with Pakistan's government agencies, it has failed to confirm or refute persistent, credible reports connecting key Pakistan government officials to the 9/11 attacks.... While 9/11 commission co-chairman Thomas Kean considers the panel's report definitive, it has a glaring hole with the money trail. The panel says the attacks cost somewhere between $400,000 and $500,000 to execute. Where did the money come from? Despite reports of ISI links, the report says al-Qaida had many sources of funding, but the commission could not find out where the 9/11 funds originated. On Oct. 9, 2001, the Pakistani daily Dawn reported the ISI director-general, Lt. Gen. Mahmoud Ahmed, was fired after FBI investigators established a link between him and a $100,000 wire transfer to 9/11 lead hijacker Mohammed Atta in the summer of 2000. This report was also carried by the Wall Street Journal. Paul Sperry, Washington bureau chief for WorldNetDaily.com, wrote in his Jan. 30, 2002, column that Dennis Lormel, who until the end of 2003 led the FBI's terrorist finance investigations, confirmed this transaction.... On May 15, 2003, a group of 9/11 victims' relatives met with the commission co-chairman Thomas Kean and other senior staff and submitted a list of questions, which included a mention of Lt. Gen. Mahmoud Ahmed. A June 17, 2004, the New York Times reported that Lorie Van Auken, whose husband died in the World Trade Center, was 'irate' that the June 16 commission narrative of the 9/11 attacks did not even mention the allegation about Ahmed's role in the $100,000 transfer to Mohammed Atta. Clearly, the ISI link is no mere conspiracy theory."
Outside View: 9/11 report sidesteps Pakistan
United Press International, 26 July 2004

"Pakistan on Friday denied a report claiming that its intelligence officers knew in advance of the Sept 11, 2001, attacks. The report by Arnaud de Borchgrave, a journalist awarded by the Zia regime for his reporting on the Afghan war, also claimed that Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden was treated at a military hospital in Peshawar.... Mr de Borchgrave....claimed that on the eve of the publication of its report, the 9/11 commission received a document from Pakistan showing that Pakistani intelligence officers knew in advance of the attacks.... The document, according to the report, claimed that Pakistani intelligence had been actively facilitating the relocation of Al Qaeda from Afghanistan to Pakistan and that some serving and retired intelligence officers were still helping the network. Such officers, the report said, had provided money and directions to militant groups, specially the Arab hijackers of 9/11 from Al Qaeda. The document, apparently, failed to impress the authors of the commission's report....."
'Pakistan had no hint of 9/11 attacks'
Dawn (Pakistan), 24 July 2004

"Business as usual. That's the message of today's 9-11 Commission report. No one is held accountable for anything....Writing today in The Guardian (U.K.), Michael Meacher, a member of the British Parliament and former environment minister, pointed out that Omar Sheikh, who's about to hang for the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, wired $100,000 before the 9-11 attacks to lead hijacker Mohammed Atta—on the orders of General Mahmoud Ahmed, then head of the ISI. And it turns out, Meacher writes, that General Ahmed was in D.C. on September 11, 2001: He had just had a series of meetings 'in the White House, the Pentagon, the National Security Council, and with George Tenet . . . and Marc Grossman, the undersecretary of state for political affairs. When Ahmed was exposed by The Wall Street Journal as having sent the money to the hijackers, he was forced to 'retire' by President Pervez Musharraf. Why hasn't the U.S. demanded that he be questioned and tried in court?' Then Meacher zooms in on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a bin Laden lieutenant often identified in reports as 'KSM.' He was arrested in Pakistan in March 2003. A congressional report has identified him as having been 'active in recruiting people to travel outside Afghanistan, including to the U.S., on behalf of bin Laden.' Meacher wryly notes that, although the CIA and FBI were both aware of that, 'neither agency apparently recognized the significance of a bin Laden lieutenant sending terrorists to the U.S. and asking them to establish contacts with colleagues already there.' And he points out that The New York Times has already written that 'American officials said that KSM, once Al Qaeda's top operational commander, personally executed Daniel Pearl . . . but he was unlikely to be accused of the crime in an American criminal court because of the risk of divulging classified information.' Meacher adds, 'Indeed, he may never be brought to trial.' Bottom line: Some events preceding 9-11 implicate too many people high up in both the Clinton and Bush administrations for either Kerry or Bush to raise the issue in an election campaign."
Reading Between the Lines
Village Voice, 22 July 2004

"In London's prestigious The Guardian (July 22, 2004), Michael Meacher, a Labor MP writing a piece on 'The Pakistan Connection' has made [the] sensational disclosure that a British Pakistani Islamist Omar Saeed Sheikh, waiting to be hanged in Pakistan for the alleged murder of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002 [is] held by both the US government and Pearl's wife not responsible for the murder while Islamabad refuses to try other suspects newly implicated in Pearl's kidnap and murder for fear the evidence they produce in court might acquit Sheikh. Sheikh is the man who knows too much and Pakistani authorities fear that if he gets out of their hands, he might spill their secret beans since he had been involved in their key operations. According to Meacher Sheikh had been the conduit for transferring US$100,000 by Gen Mahmud Ahmed, the then head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to Mohammed Atta, the [9/11] lead hijacker'. Meacher wants General Mahmud to be questioned and put on trial.... For years the CIA used the ISI as a conduit to pump billions of dollars into militant Islamist groups in Afghanistan, both before and after the Soviet invasion of 1979.... The case of Ahmed confirms that parts of the ISI directly supported and financed Al-Qaeda, and it has long been established that the ISI has acted as go-between in intelligence operations on behalf of the CIA."
Wajid Shamsul Hasan, Former Pakistan High Commissioner to UK
Is Aziz the Continuity Factor For Washington After Musharraf
South Asia Tribune, 29 July 2004

"A chilling new detail of U.S. intelligence failures emerged Thursday, when the Justice Department disclosed that about 20 months before the Sept. 11 attacks, a CIA official had blocked a memo intended to alert the FBI that two known Al Qaeda operatives had entered the country. The two men were among the 19 hijackers who crashed airliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.....If the FBI had received the official communique from the CIA's special Osama bin Laden unit when it was ready for transmittal in January 2000, its agents likely could have tracked down the men, according to U.S. intelligence officials familiar with a newly declassified report of the Justice Department's inspector general. the report's conclusion that an agent had written a memo specifically designed for transmittal to the FBI to alert the bureau to the men's presence — and that a supervisor deliberately had prevented it from being sent — is new. The reason the CIA official, identified by the fictitious name 'John,' put a hold on the communique remains a mystery, the report said. It said the officials involved didn't recall the incident. Even when the author of the memo followed up a week later with an e-mail asking if it had been sent to the FBI, nothing was done. The memo was written by an FBI agent on assignment to the CIA's special Bin Laden unit. According to the report, rather than send his memo directly to the FBI, he sent it to the deputy chief of the CIA unit because only supervisors were authorized to send such memos to the FBI.... The CIA was unable to locate a response to the e-mail. Fine's report concludes that the CIA didn't turn over documentation of the electronic memo until Fine's investigators came across a reference and specifically asked for it in February 2004. That came so late in the investigation that it delayed release of the report and caused many more CIA and FBI officials to be interviewed, the report says. Ultimately, Fine's investigators gave up trying to find an explanation."
Memo on 9/11 Plotters Blocked
Los Angeles Times, 10 June 2005

"After the 9/11 attacks, when American forces began capturing Taliban and al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan, [FBI Director] Mueller made a key decision: He refused to allow his agents to be present at any of the interrogations by the CIA and military personnel at secret locations around the world and at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The decision angered FBI agents who had worked on previous terrorism investigations involving some of these same shady characters--including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks...."
Dodging a peck of trouble
US News, 28 March 2005

"A former Pakistani diplomat has told the BBC that the US was planning military action against Osama Bin Laden and the Taleban even before last week's attacks. Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, was told by senior American officials in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October. Mr Naik said US officials told him of the plan at a UN-sponsored international contact group on Afghanistan which took place in Berlin.... Mr Naik was told that Washington would launch its operation from bases in Tajikistan, where American advisers were already in place. .... He said that he was in no doubt that after the World Trade Center bombings this pre-existing US plan had been built upon and would be implemented within two or three weeks."
US 'planned attack on Taleban'
BBC Online, 18 September 2001

"Both civilian and military officials of the Defense Department state flatly that neither Congress nor the American public would have supported large-scale military operations in Afghanistan before the shock of 9/11."
The Military
9/11 Commission Staff Statement No 6, 2004

"The United States needs bases in Central Asia to ensure security and stability in the region, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers has said. Commenting on the demand by Russia and China that the US leave the bases now that the Afghan war is over, Myers said 'Central Asia is important to the United States for lots of reasons, not just for operations in Afghanistan.'"
US needs bases in Central Asia: General Myers
Press Trust of India, 15 July 2005

"....for the foreseeable future oil will remain an essential commodity. Greater attention must therefore be given to increasing supplies of oil in ways that diversify supplies from areas other than the Persian Gulf. The most promising new source of world supplies is the Caspian region, which appears to contain the largest petroleum reserves discovered since the North Sea. This geopolitical crossroad, which includes Iran, Russia, and a number of newly-independent states [i.e. the 'stans'] struggling with post-Soviet modernization and dangers of Islamic extremism, demands more attention by American policymakers."
AMERICA’S NATIONAL INTERESTS
A Report from The Commission on America’s National Interests, July 2000
Co-authored by Richard Armitage et al [pdf]
(Richard Armitage, a supporter of the PNAC agenda, became deputy Secretary of State with specific responsibility for Pakistan and other Asian states in 2001)

"It has now been reported by a respected Lahore-based Pakistani journalist, Amir Mir, continues Parthasarathi, that during his interrogation by US and Pakistani investigators, Sheikh revealed that he had been on the payroll of the Pakistani ISI and that the terrorist attacks on the Kashmir State Assembly building in October 2001 and the Indian parliament in December 2001 had the backing of the ISI. Amir Mir has also confirmed that Sheikh transferred a sum of $100,000 that had been provided to him by then ISI chief General Mahmood Ahmed to Mohammad Atta - the leader of the hijackers involved in the September 11 terrorist attacks. He also alleges that the United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) believes that Omar met Atta during one of his visits to Kandahar and knew of his plans for the September 11 terrorist strikes. On October 9, 2001, the Pakistani daily Dawn reported that the ISI director general, Lieutenant-General Mahmoud Ahmed, was fired after FBI investigators established a link between him and a $100,000 wire transfer to Atta in the summer of 2000. This report was also carried by the Wall Street Journal. Parthasarathi's comment: 'There does appear to be a conspiracy of silence on this score, because Syed Omar Sheikh is evidently a man who knows too much and can embarrass both the Musharraf dispensation and the Bush administration.' Meanwhile, Indian suspicions at these intriguing developments between Pakistan and the US are continuing to deepen. What exactly is Washington's game in South Asia?... India has been agonizing over the real nature of US-Pakistan relations for years. After September 11, New Delhi expected Washington to come down hard on Pakistan, known to be a hub of Islamic extremism and terrorism in the region. Instead, the US came to the rescue of what was then a clearly failing state under a blatant military dictatorship. Even after facts of Pakistani intelligence's involvement in September 11 came to light, the US has been not only forgiving but supportive to an extraordinary degree. As a result, Indian strategists are now finding it difficult to counter conspiracy theorists who continue to claim that the 'war on terrorism' is mere shadow-boxing and that September 11 had been organized by Islamabad with the help of al-Qaeda at US behest after the neo-conservatives ruling the US needed a pretext for fulfilling their imperialist agenda. There used to be few takers for such wild imaginings in India; but apparently things are changing. There are too many discrepancies and inconsistencies in official US claims that even the most incredible conspiratorial claims are beginning to gain credence."
India's US-Pakistan suspicions deepen
Asia Times, 27 January 2005

"An FBI official has told a Senate hearing here that investigators had 'traced the origin of the funding of 9/11 back to financial accounts in Pakistan, where high-ranking and well-known Al Qaeda operatives played a major role in moving the money forward, eventually into the hands of the hijackers located in the US.' John S. Pistole, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counter terrorism division, did not specify how those accounts in Pakistan were funded. He was testifying before the Senate Governmental Affairs committee on Thursday."
Pakistan linked to 9/11 funds
Daily Times (Pakistan), 2 August 2003

"Yousef was captured in Pakistan following the discovery by police in the Philippines in January 1995 of the Manila air plot, which envisioned placing bombs on board a dozen trans-Pacific airliners and setting them off simultaneously. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed—Yousef ’s uncle,then located in Qatar—was a fellow plotter of Yousef ’s in the Manila air plot and had also wired him some money prior to the [1993 World] Trade Center bombing. The U.S. Attorney obtained an indictment against KSM in January 1996, but an official in the government of Qatar probably warned him about it. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed evaded capture (and stayed at large to play a central part in the 9/11 attacks)."
THE 9/11COMMISSION REPORT, JULY 2004 (p.73)

"Bob Baer, a former case officer in the [CIA's] Directorate of Operations, said he provided [subsequently murdered Wall St Journal reporter Daniel] Pearl with unpublished information about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who has since been accused by American officials of being one of the masterminds of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and a top aide to Osama bin Laden. .... According to Baer, he was first informed of Mohammed's role as a key aide to terrorist mastermind bin Laden as early as December 1997 when he met a former police chief from Doha, Qatar, at a dinner in Damascus. In 1997, Baer had left the agency to become a consultant in Beirut. Terrorism was Baer's field and Baer began to meet the ex-Doha police chief from time to time. The ex-Doha police chief, who Baer declined to identify by name, told Baer that during the course of his work he found that there was a bin Laden cell in Qatar, being sheltered by the Qatari government. The two main members of the cell were Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Shawqui Islambuli.....what worried the former police chief was the fact that Mohammed and Islambuli were experts in hijacking commercial planes. The ex-police chief told Baer that Mohammed 'is going to hijack some planes.'.The ex-police chief said his basis for this was evidence developed by police and Qatari intelligence.... Baer sent this information to a friend in the CIA Counter-terrorist Center who forwarded the information to his superiors. Baer heard nothing. 'There was no interest,' he said.... After Pearl's murder [for which Omar Sheikh has been unfairly tried and convicted], Baer said, he took his information about Mohammed to the Justice Department, but again, as with the agency, he never received a call nor did the department express any interest."
UPI Exclusive: Pearl tracked al Qaida
United Press International, 30 September 2002

"....[there] was an article in the August 6 Presidential Daily Brief titled 'Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US.' It was the 36th PDB item briefed so far that year that related to Bin Ladin or al Qaeda, and the first devoted to the possibility of an attack in the United States....[When interviewed by the Commission the President] did not recall discussing the August 6 report with the Attorney General or whether Rice had done so...... No CSG [Counterterrorism Security Group] or other NSC [National Security Council] meeting was held to discuss the possible threat of a strike in the United States as a result of this report. We have found no indication of any further discussion before September 11 among the President and his top advisers of the possibility of a threat of an al Qaeda attack in the United States. DCI Tenet visited President Bush in Crawford,Texas, on August 17 and participated in PDB briefings of the President between August 31 (after the President had returned to Washington) and September 10. But Tenet does not recall any discussions with the President of the domestic threat during this period. Most of the intelligence community recognized in the summer of 2001 that the number and severity of threat reports were unprecedented. Many officials told us that they knew something terrible was planned...."
THE 9/11COMMISSION REPORT (p.260 - 261)

"Two veteran FBI investigators say they were ordered to stop investigations into a suspected
terror cell linked to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network and the Sept. 11 attacks.... even after the [1998 African embassy] bombings, Wright said FBI headquarters wanted no arrests."
Called Off the Trail?
ABCNews 19 Dec 2002

"FBI and military intelligence officials in Washington say they were prevented for political reasons from carrying out full investigations into members of the Bin Laden family in the US before the terrorist attacks of September 11.... the restrictions became worse after the Bush administration took over this year".
FBI claims Bin Laden inquiry was frustrated
Guardian, 7 November 2001

"Under the influence of U.S. oil companies, the government of George W. Bush initially blocked U.S. secret service investigations on terrorism .... In the book 'Bin Laden, la verite interdite ('Bin Laden, the forbidden truth), that appeared in Paris on Wednesday, the authors, Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, reveal that the Federal Bureau of Investigation's deputy director John O'Neill resigned in July [2001] in protest over the obstruction.... The two claim the U.S. government's main objective in Afghanistan was to consolidate the position of the Taliban regime to obtain access to the oil and gas reserves in Central Asia. They affirm that until August, the U.S. government saw the Taliban regime 'as a source of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of an oil pipeline across Central Asia', from the rich oilfields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean. Until now, says the book, 'the oil and gas reserves of Central Asia have been controlled by Russia. The Bush government wanted to change all that'. But, confronted with Taliban's refusal to accept U.S. conditions, 'this rationale of energy security changed into a military one', the authors claim. 'At one moment during the negotiations, the U.S. representatives told the Taliban, 'either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs',' Brisard said in an interview in Paris."
U.S. Policy Towards Taliban Influenced by Oil - Say Authors
Inter Press Service, 15 November 2001

"Armitage, who had spent some years of his career in the CIA/DIA and holds the highest Pakistani civil decoration that could be awarded to a foreigner for his role during the Afghan war of the 1980s, has a large circle of friends in the Pakistani military & the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate."
Musharraf: From CIA With Love?
SAPRA News Agency, 27 May 2001

"NewsMax.com has learned that active FBI Special Agent Robert Wright Jr. is about to blow the whistle on his superiors for hindering investigations that might have prevented the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. Judicial Watch, the public interest law firm, scheduled, then postponed, a press conference for Wednesday where Wright, cloaked in anonymity until now, was going to tell the entire story. The shocking details should be out in a few days. Wright complains that when he tried to continue and pursue certain terrorist investigations, he met with retaliation from his bosses and from the Justice Department, which made it clear that it wanted the probes to go no further. Prior to putting off the news conference, Judicial Watch said that 'based on the evidence, the FBI special agent believes that if certain investigations had been allowed to run their course, Osama bin Laden’s network might have been prevented from committing the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks which resulted in the deaths of nearly 3,000 innocents.' Insiders believe that after this full story breaks, Wright’s career will be toast. Only public outrage can save him. Meanwhile, Judicial Watch, which is representing Wright, is requesting a full independent investigation. Assisting the law firm in this case is none other than David Schippers – the same Schippers whose quiet, methodical and damning leadership in the Clinton investigation led to the then-president’s impeachment."
Scandal Inside the FBI: Did G-Men Miss the Boat on 9-11?
NewsMax, 14 March 2002

"A veteran FBI agent Thursday charged that corruption inside the bureau derailed investigations that could have averted the terrorist attacks on America on Sept. 11. His lawyers said the FBI had evidence that the World Trade Center was a possible terrorist target. In a memo written 91 days before Sept. 11, Special Agent Robert G. Wright Jr. warned that Americans would die as a result of the FBI's failure to investigate terrorists living in this country. Wright went public at a press conference even though FBI Director Robert Mueller ordered him to stay in Chicago and threatened him with criminal prosecution if he spoke publicly about the agency's wrongdoing.... The Judicial Watch counsel said the FBI did have intelligence about terrorist activity planned against the World Trade Center and 'other monuments.'"
Agent: FBI Could Have Prevented 9-11
NewsMax, 31 May 2002

"We are writing to inquire and express concern about the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) continued targeting of Special Agent Robert Wright, a situation we had hoped and believed had been resolved after we raised the issue last year... Recent internal documents of the FBI provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee escalate our concerns about retaliation against Agent Wright. According to the documents, after Agent Wright completed his June 2, 2003 press conference, the top two FBI OPR officials at the time discussed their plan to 'take him out,' for his public appearance and comments on a network television news program."
Letter to Director of FBI and the Attorney General, from Senator Chuck Grassley and Senator Patrick Leahy
14 July 2004

"In a dramatic interview with ABCNEWS, FBI special agents and partners Robert Wright and John Vincent say they were called off criminal investigations of suspected terrorists tied to the deadly bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa. U.S. officials say al Qaeda was responsible for the embassy attacks and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.... The suspected terrorist cell in Chicago was the basis of the investigation, yet Wright, who remains with the FBI, says he soon discovered that all the FBI intelligence division wanted him to do was to follow suspected terrorists and file reports — but make no arrests.... 'The supervisor who was there from headquarters was right straight across from me and started yelling at me: 'You will not open criminal investigations. I forbid any of you. You will not open criminal investigations against any of these intelligence subjects,' Wright said. Even though they were on a terrorism task force and said they had proof of criminal activity, Wright said he was told not to pursue the matter.... Yet, even after the bombings, Wright said FBI headquarters wanted no arrests. 'Two months after the embassies are hit in Africa, they wanted to shut down the criminal investigation,' said Wright. 'They wanted to kill it.' ... The move outraged Chicago federal prosecutor Mark Flessner, who was assigned to the case despite efforts Wright and Vincent say were made by superiors to block the probe....'There were powers bigger than I was in the Justice Department and within the FBI that simply were not going to let it [the building of a criminal case] happen. And it didn't happen,' Flessner said. He said he still couldn't figure out why Washington stopped the case... On Sept. 11, 2001, the two agents watched the terror attacks in horror, worried that men they could have stopped years earlier may have been involved.'"
Called Off the Trail?
ABCNews, 19 Dec 2002

"A former translator for the FBI with top-secret security clearance says she has provided information to the panel investigating the 11 September attacks which proves senior officials knew of al-Qa'ida's plans to attack the US with aircraft months before the strikes happened. She said the claim by the National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, that there was no such information was 'an outrageous lie'. Sibel Edmonds said she spent more than three hours in a closed session with the commission's investigators providing information that was circulating within the FBI in the spring and summer of 2001 suggesting that an attack using aircraft was just months away and the terrorists were in place. The Bush administration, meanwhile, has sought to silence her and has obtained a gagging order from a court by citing the rarely used 'state secrets privilege'. She told The Independent yesterday: 'I gave [the commission] details of specific investigation files, the specific dates, specific target information, specific managers in charge of the investigation. I gave them everything so that they could go back and follow up. This is not hearsay. These are things that are documented. These things can be established very easily.'".
'I Saw Papers That Show US Knew al-Qa'ida Would Attack Cities With Airplanes'
Independent, 2 April 2004

"This puzzles me, knowing the detailed information, I, myself, provided to the commission during a three and a half hour tape-recorded briefing; yet, finding only one footnote (footnote 25) briefly stating insufficient translation capability within the Bureau. It is highly curious that the report mentions nothing regarding the 'intentionally blocked translations by certain Middle Eastern Translators, who also breached FBI security, as confirmed by the Senate Judiciary'; nothing regarding 'adamant resistance to investigations of certain terrorist and criminal activities; refusing to transfer them to Counterterrorism from existing counterintelligence investigations, solely based on the vague notion of protecting certain foreign relations'; nothing regarding 'continued efforts to cover up certain highly specific information received prior to September 11, even now, years after 9/11,'; or nothing regarding 'knowingly allowing certain individuals, directly or indirectly related to terrorist activities, to leave the United States months after 9/11, without any interrogation, and per the State Department's request.' I am highly puzzled and curious. This puzzles me, having first hand knowledge of on going intelligence received and processed by the FBI since 1997, which contained specific information implicating certain high level government and elected officials in criminal activities directly and indirectly related to terrorist money laundering, narcotics, and illegal arms sales. It is highly curious that the report omitted all this information, knowing that others in the Congress have been briefed on these issues, having been given the names of targets involved, Special Agents, translators, field offices, and files."
'Puzzled & Curious' By Sibel Edmonds
BreakForNews.com, 23 July 2004

Sibel Edmonds Web Site - Click Here
Who is Sibel Edmonds, and what is her case about? - Media Reports, Click Here

"... more than four months prior to the September 11 terrorist attacks, in April 2001, a long-term FBI informant/asset who had been providing the bureau with information since 1990, provided two FBI agents and a translator with specific information regarding a terrorist attack being planned by Osama Bin Laden. This asset/informant was previously a high- level intelligence officer in Iran in charge of intelligence from Afghanistan. Through his contacts in Afghanistan he received information that: 1) Osama Bin Laden was planning a major terrorist attack in the United States targeting 4-5 major cities, 2) the attack was going to involve airplanes, 3) some of the individuals in charge of carrying out this attack were already in place in the United States, 4) the attack was going to be carried out soon, in a few months. The agents who received this information reported it to their superior, Special Agent in Charge of Counterterrorism, Thomas Frields, at the FBI Washington Field Office, by filing '302' forms, and the translator, Mr. Behrooz Sarshar, translated and documented this information. No action was taken by the Special Agent in Charge, Thomas Frields, and after 9/11 the agents and the translators were told to ‘keep quiet’ regarding this issue. The translator who was present during the session with the FBI informant, Mr. Behrooz Sarshar, reported this incident to Director Mueller in writing, and later to the Department of Justice Inspector General. The press reported this incident, and in fact the report in the Chicago Tribune on July 21, 2004 stated that FBI officials had confirmed that this information was received in April 2001, and further, the Chicago Tribune quoted an aide to Director Mueller that he (Mueller) was surprised that the Commission never raised this particular issue with him during the hearing (Please refer to Chicago Tribune article, dated July 21, 2004). Mr. Sarshar reported this issue to the 9/11 Commission on February 12, 2004, and provided them with specific dates, location, witness names, and the contact information for that particular Iranian asset and the two special agents who received the information. I provided the 9/11 Commission with a detailed and specific account of this issue, the names of other witnesses, and documents I had seen. Mr. Sarshar also provided the Department of Justice Inspector General with specific information regarding this case.... The new [post 9/11] translation [of the pre 9/11 document] revealed certain information regarding blueprints, pictures, and building material for skyscrapers being sent overseas (country name omitted). It also revealed certain illegal activities in obtaining visas from certain embassies in the Middle East, through network contacts and bribery.... I provided this information to the 9/11 Commission on February 12, 2004, and to the Department of Justice Inspector General in May 2002... To this date the public has not been told of intentional blocking of intelligence... If Counterintelligence receives information that contains money laundering, illegal arms sale, and illegal drug activities, directly linked to terrorist activities; and if that information involves certain nations, certain semi- legit organizations, and ties to certain lucrative or political relations in this country, then, that information is not shared with Counterterrorism, regardless of the possible severe consequences. In certain cases, frustrated FBI agents cited ‘direct pressure by the State Department,’ and in other cases ‘sensitive diplomatic relations’ is cited. I provided the Department of Justice Inspector General and the 9/11 Commission with detailed and specific information and evidence regarding this issue, and the names of other witnesses willing to corroborate this, and the names of certain U.S. officials involved in these transactions and activities.... Why has the 9/11 Commission intentionally omitted this info; although they’ve had it all along?"
Sibel Edmonds
Her own web site, 20 June 2005

"...we fear that the designation of information as classified in some cases [brought forth by Sibel Edmonds] serves to protect the executive branch against embarrassing revelations and full accountability... "
U.S. Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Charles Grassley (R-IA)
Letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft, 9 July 2004

"Former FBI contract translator and whistleblower Sibel Edmonds and her attorneys were ordered removed from the E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse [in Washington] so that a three-judge U.S. Court of Appeals panel could discuss her case in private with Bush administration lawyers.... Criminal evidence in Edmonds’ explosive case is apparently getting too close to Washington officials, since the former contract linguist also told us she would not deny that 'once this issue gets to be...investigated, you will be seeing certain [American] people that we know from this country standing trial; and they will be prosecuted criminally,' revealing the content of the FBI intercepts she heard indicates that recognizable, very high-profile American citizens are linked to the 911 attacks. When we asked how many Americans were named in the intercepts, Edmonds said 'There is direct evidence involving no more than ten American names that I recognized,' further revealing that 'some are heads of government agencies or politicians--but I don’t want to go any further than that,'..... All three judges who removed Edmonds and her attorneys are Republicans: Douglas Ginsburg and David Sentelle, having been appointed by Ronald Reagan, and Karen LeCraft Henderson who was tapped in 1990 by President George W. Bush’s father, former President George H. W. Bush. 'Judge Ginsberg said ‘I am asking the plaintiff and her attorneys to stand outside;’ then they had government officers standing at the door to prevent anyone from listening. And after about 25 minutes, they came out and said ‘we have finished questioning the government attorneys and we don’t need you anymore, so you are free to leave,’ ' said the crestfallen former translator. 'I cannot be present at my own hearing; and not a single paper was there Thursday to cover the story--even though all of my allegations were supported by the FBI Inspector General’s report and my case involves 911 and national security,' said Edmonds.... Edmonds told another paper 'I took [the allegations] to higher levels all the way up to [assistant FBI director] Dale Watson and Director [Robert] Mueller. And, again, I was asked not to take this any further and just let it be. And if I didn’t do that they would retaliate against me,' according to the Baltimore Sun.... When we pressed Edmonds as to whether she would deny that FBI Assistant Director Dale Watson had prior knowledge of the 911 attacks, she quickly said, 'no comment,' carefully adhering to her judicial gag order--and not revealing all she knows.... 'It’s so simple,' Edmonds told TomFlocco.com. 'Nobody is looking at the Department of Defense aspect of the whole 911 cover-up. The FBI is citing two reasons for my gag order: to protect ‘sensitive’ diplomatic relations and to protect foreign U.S. business relationships.'.. In attempting to let the American people how close the 911 cover-up comes to home, Edmonds told us, 'I will say this: the FBI is only a mouthpiece for the State Department. The State Department is the main reason for the cover-up. It has to do with foreign business relationships and who they are...Pakistan, Turkey...espionage in the State Department...preventing an investigation.'...."
Campaign coffers profit from 911, coke and courts
TomFlocco.com, 25 April 2005

"In London's prestigious The Guardian (July 22, 2004), Michael Meacher, a Labor MP writing a piece on 'The Pakistan Connection' has made [the] sensational disclosure that a British Pakistani Islamist Omar Saeed Sheikh, waiting to be hanged in Pakistan for the alleged murder of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002 [is] held by both the US government and Pearl's wife not responsible for the murder while Islamabad refuses to try other suspects newly implicated in Pearl's kidnap and murder for fear the evidence they produce in court might acquit Sheikh. Sheikh is the man who knows too much and Pakistani authorities fear that if he gets out of their hands, he might spill their secret beans since he had been involved in their key operations. According to Meacher Sheikh had been the conduit for transferring US$100,000 by Gen Mahmud Ahmed, the then head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker'. Meacher wants General Mahmud to be questioned and put on trial.... For years the CIA used the ISI as a conduit to pump billions of dollars into militant Islamist groups in Afghanistan, both before and after the Soviet invasion of 1979.... The case of Ahmed confirms that parts of the ISI directly supported and financed Al-Qaeda, and it has long been established that the ISI has acted as go-between in intelligence operations on behalf of the CIA."
Wajid Shamsul Hasan, Former Pakistan High Commissioner to UK
Is Aziz the Continuity Factor For Washington After Musharraf
South Asia Tribune, 29 July 2004

"Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed, Director of Pakistan's secret service, the ISI, is quite possibly the most taboo suspect of all 9/11 suspects. It was reported in early October 2001 that Mahmood ordered Saeed Sheikh to send $100,000 to hijacker Mohamed Atta. Since then hardly a word has been said about this stunning report, and in fact this once very powerful man appears to have completely disappeared from view.... It is believed Mahmood has been living under virtual house arrest in Pakistan ever since..... but no charges have been brought against him, and there is no evidence the US has asked to question him. [Asia Times, 1/5/02] He also has refused to speak to reporters since being fired [AP, 2/21/02]....."
ISI Director Mahmood Ahmed
Centre For Cooperative Research

"Three months before the release of the 9/11 Commission report, commission chief of staff Phil Zelikow asked a prominent Pakistani whether he could 'fill in the gaps about what was happening behind the scenes in Pakistan in the period immediately preceding the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.' He traveled the length and breadth of Pakistan working his sources, which included many former ranking government officials, retired senior officers and ex-ISI personnel. The requested report arrived in Washington too late to be included in the commission's 567-page report, which mentioned Pakistan 311 times. Even if it had arrived in time, it probably would not have been included.... The unpublished addendum to the 9/11 report stated: (1) Former senior ISI officers knew about the 9/11 plot before the attacks took place...... "
Bin Laden's game plan
United Press International, 1 November 2004

"Last Thursday, a senior White House official called Mariane Pearl and Paul Steiger, the managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, to report a new, key development in the investigation into the death of Mariane's husband, Journal reporter Daniel Pearl..... Although American officials first denied that [Khalid Sheikh] Mohammed had anything to do with Pearl's killing, this week they confirmed that they now believe he was responsible. But that revelation raises more questions than it answers. The full investigation into Danny's death could well proceed in directions that will make both Pakistan and U.S. investigators uncomfortable..... Until now, Omar Saeed Sheikh, the young Pakistani London School of Economics dropout who was sentenced to death in July 2002 for organizing the Pearl kidnapping, had been identified as the ringleader of a carefully assembled alliance of extremist Muslim militants working in at least four different terrorist cells. Mohammed would link Omar Sheikh more explicitly to the wider and more sinister al-Qaida network. The question, though, is whether this will lead to an even more troubling connection: between al-Qaida and Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, which has been linked to Omar Sheikh. As Mariane says, 'When the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed name first came up, the obvious questions were what was his link to Omar Sheikh and what was his link to ISI? Those are the questions we have to answer now, and there are more. What is the direct link between Omar Sheikh and 9/11? Is Omar Sheikh a main player in 9/11? Should there be more charges against him?....'... the news that Mohammed killed Pearl doesn't explain his motive. What would make al-Qaida target the Wall Street Journal's Asian bureau chief? There are several theories. Robert Baer, a former case officer with the CIA's directorate of operations, believes Pearl had begun to pursue Mohammed as a story for the Journal. Baer says Pearl called him the day after the Sept. 11 attack to talk about possible culprits, and that he told the reporter about Mohammed's role as a key aide to bin Laden going back to 1997. He also told Pearl, Baer says, that the government of Qatar protected Mohammed and would have information about his activities. After Danny's murder, Baer said that an official in the Qatar government told him that Danny had called the Foreign Ministry for information about Mohammed.... the immediate questions that need to be answered are in Pakistan. And getting straight answers from anyone in ISI -- protected by proxies in the press -- will be difficult.... After Danny originally went missing, Mariane and I hunted through the house looking for clues. I found a photo on Danny's computer of us, shortly after we all met up in Pakistan. He had a particularly befuddled look on his face, and had created an appropriate caption for the photo: 'Clueless in Karachi.' It turned out to be an apt description of all of us in Karachi, and of the complicated nature of relationships between Muslim extremists and their political and financial sponsors that Danny stumbled into. That is what must be explored further in order to learn who planned, financed and pulled off the kidnapping and murder of Danny. Even with the apparent admission of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the job is not done."
Asra Nomani, who was living with Daniel Pearl and his wife Mariane at the time of his death
Who really killed Danny Pearl?
Salon.com, 22 October 2003

"When he was abducted, Pearl was thought to have been investigating Richard Reid, the British shoe- bomber. But the disclosure of Mohammed’s involvement suggests Pearl may have been trailing the Al-Qaeda operations chief."
9/11 mastermind killed Daniel Pearl
Sunday Times, 19 December 2004

"Deep throat, the anonymous source who leaked secrets about President Nixon’s Watergate cover-up to The Washington Post, revealed himself yesterday after more than 30 years of silence, ending one of the greatest political mysteries of modern times. Last night The Washington Post confirmed his identity. Mark Felt, now 91, the deputy director of the FBI in the early 1970s, said in a magazine interview that he was 'the man known as Deep Throat', a key Watergate source for Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the Post reporting team whose coverage of the scandal led to President Nixon’s resignation in 1974. Deep Throat advised Mr Woodward to 'follow the money'."
At long last, Deep Throat steps out of the shadows
London Times, 1 June 2005

FBI Knew The Money Trail Held The Key To 'Watergate'
Today It Also Knows The Money Trail Holds The Key To 9/11
But The Official Kean Commission On 9/11 Refused To Report On It

"To date, the U.S. government has not been able to determine the origin of the money used for the 9/11 attacks. Ultimately the question is of little practical significance."
THE 9/11COMMISSION REPORT, JULY 2004 (p.172)

"... [due to the gagging order] I cannot name any country. And I would emphasize that it's plural. I understand the Saudis have been named because fifteen of the nineteen hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. However, the names of people from other countries, and semi-legit organizations from other countries, to this day, have not been made public.... And specifically with that and their ties to people here in this country today [I have been gagged against]... [but] I can tell you that the issue, on one side, boils down to money -- a lot of money. And it boils down to people and their connections with this money, and that's the portion [of the story] that... has not been mentioned to this day. Because then it starts touching some people in high places.... this money travels. And you start trying to go to the root of it and it's getting into somebody's political campaign, and somebody's lobbying. And people don't want to be traced back to this money."
Sibel Edmonds Interview
Baltimore Chronicle, 7 May 2004

Post 9/11 Bush Moves To Muzzle FBI
With Top 'Intelligence' Appointment
For Iran-Contra Era Covert Operations Veteran John Negroponte

"President Bush ordered another shake-up of the nation's intelligence services yesterday, forming new national security divisions within both the FBI and the Justice Department and, for the first time, putting a broad swath of the FBI under the authority of the nation's spy chief. Building on previous changes mandated by Congress, the reorganization cements the authority of the new director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte, over most of the FBI's $3 billion intelligence budget. It also gives him the clear authority to approve hiring of the FBI's top national security official and, through that official, to communicate with FBI agents and analysts in the field on intelligence matters. The plan represents a particularly sharp rebuke to the historically independent FBI... The new FBI national security official will be 'dual-hatted' and will report to both [FBI Director] Mueller and Negroponte...."
Bush Approves Spy Agency Changes
Washington Post, 30 June 2005

"Bush’s Latin American team reads like a roster of 'America’s Most Disgraced Diplomats.' They include John Negroponte.... Negroponte served as Reagan’s Ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985. He was personally responsible for carrying out the Reagan administration’s illegal policy of training and arming Contra rebels inside Honduras for the purpose of overthrowing Nicaragua’s Sandinista government [as part of the Iran-Contra scandal]. He also oversaw the build-up of the Honduran military, while turning a blind eye to their campaigns of death and torture."
Bill Press: The wrong team for Latin America
CNN, 7 September 2001

"To date, the U.S. government has not been able to determine the origin of the money used for the 9/11 attacks. Ultimately the question is of little practical significance."
THE 9/11COMMISSION REPORT, JULY 2004 (p.172)

"In discussing my second 9/11 book, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, I have often said, only half in jest, that a better title might have been 'a 571-page lie.'... omissions are implicit lies partly because they show that the Commission did not honor its stated intention 'to provide the fullest possible account of the events surrounding 9/11.' They are also lies insofar as the Commission could avoid telling an explicit lie about the issue in question only by not mentioning it....."
Dr. David Ray Griffin
9/11 Visibility Project
Sunday, 22 May 2005

Professor David Ray Griffin Speaks At University Of Madison Wisconsin On 9/11 Commission Cover-up
(As Broadcast on C-SPAN)
Click Here

"The revelation of Deep Throat's identity and the resurrected interest in Watergate brought back a flood of memories for former Democratic Sen. George McGovern, the 1972 political opponent of all the president's men. McGovern, who now lives part time on Marco Island, told the Daily News on Thursday that the Watergate story is resounding with the public now because the country is in a time of shaken confidence. 'It was a real trauma for the American people to discover this skullduggery was going on all the way up to the president,' McGovern said of Watergate. 'They're looking to see if there's some clue of this skullduggery going on today.' He added: 'I sometimes wish we had a Deep Throat in the administration today' because such a person might reveal why the nation went to war in Iraq."
[George] McGovern: White House Needs a 'Deep Throat' Today
Naples Daily News, 3 June 2005

"The Bush Administration began making plans for an invasion of Iraq, including the use of American troops, within days of President Bush's inauguration in January of 2001 -- not eight months later after the 9/11 attacks, as has been previously reported. That's what former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill says in his first interview about his time as a White House insider.... In the book, O'Neill is quoted as saying he was surprised that no one in a National Security Council meeting questioned why Iraq should be invaded. 'It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying 'Go find me a way to do this,' says O'Neill in the book.... "
Saddam Ouster Planned Early '01?
CBS News, 10 January 2003

It's Official:
Impossible To Attack Afghanistan (Intimately Linked To Al Qaeda),
Let Alone Iraq (Not Remotely Linked To Al Qaeda), Without 9/11

"Every official we questioned about the possibility of an invasion of Afghanistan said that it was almost unthinkable, absent a provocation such as 9/11 .... because they believed the public would not support it."
THE 9/11COMMISSION REPORT (p 137)

"CBS News has learned that barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq — even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks.... Now, nearly one year later, there is still very little evidence Iraq was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. But if these notes are accurate, that didn't matter to Rumsfeld."
Plans For Iraq Attack Began On 9/11
CBSNews, 4 September 2002

"[At Camp David on 15 September 2001] the Iraq strategy's principal advocate in the group was Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. He had been the department's third-ranking official under Cheney during the Gulf War and believed that the abrupt and incomplete end to the ground campaign, with Hussein still in power, had been a mistake. The Bush administration had been seeking to undermine Hussein from the start, with Wolfowitz pushing efforts to aid opposition groups and Powell seeking support for a new set of sanctions. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz had been examining military options in Iraq for months but nothing had emerged. ....Wolfowitz argued that the real source of all the trouble and terrorism was probably Hussein. The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 created an opportunity to strike.....Rumsfeld had helped raise the Iraq issue in previous meetings, but not as vehemently as his deputy. Now, Rumsfeld asked again: Is this the time to attack Iraq?.... Wolfowitz had persisted in making his arguments about Iraq and other issues, and had annoyed some of his colleagues by showing up at meetings that were called for principals only-not for deputies."
At Camp David, Advise and Dissent
Washington Post, 31 January 2002

"George Bush asked for Tony Blair's backing to remove Saddam Hussein from power just nine days after the 11 September attacks, over a private dinner at the White House, a US magazine reported last night. Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British ambassador to Washington, was at the dinner table as Mr Blair replied that he would rather concentrate on ousting the Taliban and restoring peace in Afghanistan. In a 25,000-word article in this month's American edition of Vanity Fair, Sir Christopher recounts Mr Bush as responding: 'I agree with you Tony. We must deal with this first. But when we have dealt with Afghanistan, we must come back to Iraq.' Mr Blair, Sir Christopher writes, 'said nothing to demur' at the prospect. Sir Christopher's account presents a new challenge to Mr Blair's assertion that no decision was taken on the invasion of Iraq until just days before operations began, in March 2003. It implies regime change in Iraq was US policy immediately after 11 September."
Blair Told US Was Targeting Saddam 'Just Days After 9/11'
Independent, 4 April 2004

"President Bush told the nation last night that the war in Iraq was difficult but winnable. Only the first is clearly true..... We did not expect Mr. Bush would apologize for the misinformation that helped lead us into this war, or for the catastrophic mistakes his team made in running the military operation. But we had hoped he would resist the temptation to raise the bloody flag of 9/11 over and over again to justify a war in a country that had nothing whatsoever to do with the terrorist attacks.....Sadly, Mr. Bush wasted his opportunity last night, giving a speech that only answered questions no one was asking."
President Bush's Speech About Iraq
New York Times, 29 June 2005

"Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, a key ally in the U.S. fight against terrorism, is not convinced that Osama bin Laden was the mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks, according to a report on Sunday. 'I didn't think it possible that Osama sitting up there in the mountains could do it,' Musharraf said in an interview in the Aug. 12 edition of the New Yorker magazine, nearly a year after hijacked planes killed more than 3,000 people in New York, Washington and in Pennsylvania. 'He was perhaps the sponsor, the financier, the motivating force. But those who executed it were much more modern. They knew the U.S., they knew aviation. I don't think he has the intelligence or the minute planning. The planner was someone else,' Musharraf said about the Saudi-born militant."
Musharraf not convinced that Osama bin Laden was the mastermind behind 9/11
Reuters, 4 August 2002

"Three professional staff members of the United State's Independent National Commission investigating the Sept 11 terrorist attacks to draw possible linkages are currently in Pakistan but their visit has been kept under wraps, Dawn has learnt.... The three professional staff members of the 10-member commission arrived here last week to meet officials in key government institutions and to interview individuals that they deem relevant to their inquiry.... This is the first visit by staff members of the high-profile commission to Pakistan since it was formed in late 2002. The members of the commission have already received some official briefings in Islamabad and Rawalpindi, and have been travelling all over Pakistan. There has been no official word about their arrival from either a government office or the US embassy in Islamabad. None of the officials Dawn contacted were willing to even talk about the visit."
9/11 probe body's visit kept under wraps
Dawn (Pakistan), 28 October 2003

"... [due to the gagging order] I cannot comment on that [the allegation that the transfer of money to Atta in conjunction with the presence of Pakistan's ISI chief in Washington during the week of 911 is the missing link]. But I can tell that once, and if, and when this issue gets to be, under real terms, investigated, you will be seeing certain people that we know from this country standing trial; and they will be prosecuted criminally.... At the very least, as early as May/June 2001, we could have issued a red code alert to the public, and we would have issued this very urgent warning system, which would, in return, have increased our Airport and INS security.... they had those four pieces [of information about the terrorists before 911].... and far more than that, believe me, far more than that. And that has not been made public. And for them to say that we did not have any specific information is just outrageous."
Sibel Edmonds Interview
Baltimore Chronicle, 7 May 2004

"Whether the bombers [in London on 7 July 2005] were British Muslims who had hidden their identity so well that they were unknown to the intelligence services, or a more seasoned group based on the Continent, they constitute the thinking and practice of a new al-Qaeda that has developed since September 11, 2001. ..... The old al-Qaeda's hero is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who planned the September 11 attacks, recruited the personnel and arranged the logistics while travelling around the world with false passports, in multiple disguises and womanising in bars. He was arrested in Pakistan in 2003 while trying to rebuild the organisation from its by then scattered members. The new al-Qaeda's hero is Ahmed Omar Sheikh, a British Muslim educated at the London School of Economics who is facing a death sentence in a Karachi jail for murdering the American journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002."
New terror groups pay homage to bin Laden but work alone
Daily Telegraph, 11 July 2005

“In Pakistan, intelligence agents arrested the head of an Islamic religious school last night where the [July London] suicide bomber Shehzad Tanweer is alleged to have first made contact with al-Qaeda figures. The head of the madrassa was among four men seized at the start of a crackdown ordered in Pakistan by President Musharraf after the London bombings....This complicated network points to al-Qaeda’s high command having a hand in picking members of the cell who carried out the attacks on three Tube trains and a bus. It also raised questions over why Western intelligence agencies failed to detect this network. Officials in Pakistan have discovered that Tanweer also contacted members of two outlawed local groups, including Osama Nazir, a leader of Jaish-e-Mohammed..... Jaish is known to operate a network in Britain and one of its earlier recruits was the former LSE student, Ahmed Omar Sheikh, who masterminded the kidnap and murder of the US journalist, Daniel Pearl.”
Egyptian chemist and head of Pakistani religious school held
London Times, 16 July 2005

"The Times has learnt from Pakistani security sources that while in Pakistan some of the Tube bombers met leading figures from an outlawed terror group called Jaish-e-Mohammed, which has been actively recruiting Britons from universities and colleges since the early 1990s....In the past Jaish has boasted of many British Muslim volunteers in its ranks. Among them is Ahmed Omar Sheikh, a former LSE student and public schoolboy from Woodford, northeast London, who abandoned his studies in 1993. He is now facing a death sentence in Pakistan for the abduction and murder of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter."
'Holy warrior' casts light on dark links to Pakistan
London Times, 18 July 2005

"That three of the suspected perpetrators of the bomb attacks on London on July 7 were British youths of Pakistani origin should not only have been no surprise to British intelligence, it should have been anticipated: the radicalization of Britain's Muslim youth of Pakistani origin began in the mid-1990s with the full knowledge and complicity of British and US intelligence agencies. In the mid-1990s, the Pakistan-based jihadi group Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM - previously known as the Harkat-ul-Ansar, HUA ) sent a contingent to help Bosnian Muslims in their fight against the Serbs. They were sent by the government of Benazir Bhutto at the request of the Bill Clinton administration. The contingent, which was raised and trained by Lieutenant General (retired) Hamid Gul, former director general of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), who himself used to visit Bosnia, included a large number of British Muslims of Pakistani origin. According to estimates, about 200 Muslims of Pakistani origin living in the United Kingdom went to Pakistan, received training in the camps of the HUA, and joined the HUA in Bosnia with the blessings of London and Washington. Among them was Omar Sheikh, who went on to mastermind the murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002....By the time of the Serbian crisis, these Arabs of Afghanistan vintage had already started creating mayhem beyond Afghanistan, notably in Indian-held Kashmir, so Western intelligence wanted to avoid the use of Arabs in Bosnia. They turned to Pakistanis, particularly Pakistanis living in Britain and other countries in Western Europe. Thus began the radicalization process of Muslim youth of Pakistani origin in western Europe...Reports from Pakistan indicate that Omar continues to be active from jail, reportedly keeping in touch with friends and followers in the UK. Statements purported to have been issued by him from jail calling on the Muslims of the world to retaliate against the US for descecration of the Holy Koran are disseminated every Friday in many Pakistani mosques controlled by jihadi organizations."
How London brought terror on itself
Asia Times, 16 July 2005

"Reports that three of the London suicide bombers visited Karachi will not come as a surprise to anyone. Pakistan's largest city is the place where the American reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and beheaded on camera by militants believed to be linked to al-Qa'ida...The man who arranged it was a Briton of Pakistani origin: Omar Saeed Sheikh."
Karachi: A city of violence, murder and Islamic militancy
Belfast Telegraph, 19 July 2005

"Police are now trying to discover exactly where the three men went and who they met in Karachi. One crucial part of the inquiry [into the July 2005 London bombings] will be to find out if any of them met al-Qaeda militants linked to US journalist Daniel Pearl's killer Ahmed Omar Sheikh. The British Muslim, who studied at the London School of Economics, became an al-Qaeda hero for slaying Pearl in Karachi in 2002. He is now facing a death sentence."
TWO SUICIDE BOMBERS.... ON THEIR WAY TO TERROR SCHOOL
Mirror, 19 July 2005

"Director General of Pakistan's Inter- Services Intelligence (ISI) Lt Gen Mahmud Ahmed has been replaced after the FBI investigators established credible links between him and Umar Sheikh, one of the three militants released in exchange for passengers of the hijacked Indian Airlines plane in 1999. The FBI team, which had sought adequate inputs about various terrorists including Sheikh from the intelligence agencies, was working on the linkages between Sheikh and former ISI chief Gen Mahmud which are believed to have been substantiated, reports PTI website. Informed sources said there were enough indications with the US intelligence agencies that it was at Gen Mahmud's instruction that Sheikh had transferred 100,000 US dollars into the account of Mohammed Atta, one of the lead terrorists in strikes at the World Trade Centre on Sept 11, it adds."
Gen Mahmud's exit due to links with Umar Sheikh
Dawn (Pakistan), 9 October 2001

"[British Pakistani Omar] Sheikh turns out to be one of Osama bin Laden's chief money men. About a year before the Sept. 11 attacks, Sheikh wired $100,000 from Pakistan to Atta from an account in the United Arab Emirates capital of Dubai. .... Sheikh picked up an unspent residual of more than $25,000 from Atta and three other hijackers in Dubai right before the attacks, then fled back to Karachi, Pakistan. The 28-year-old Sheikh is a leader in Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed (J-e-M), an Islamic militant group.... The Indian government thinks Pakistan's military spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), has sponsored and protected Azhar and his prot�g�, Sheikh....But here's what's really disturbing. According to accounts in both The Times of India and India Today, former ISI chief Lt. Gen. Mahmud Ahmad instructed Sheikh to send the $100,000 to Atta.... The Times (of India) says Ahmad lost his job only after India shared with the FBI evidence showing a link between the general and Sheikh's wiring of funds to Atta. J-e-M's accounts were frozen not long after Dennis M. Lormel, director of FBI's financial crimes unit, confirmed the $100,000 transaction, if not the source. 'They wired over $100,000 into Mr. [Mohamed] Atta a year ago,' he testified in October, not identifying who 'they' were. The Bush administration has said the money trail is a crucial link in uncovering the support network for the 19 hijackers, and then destroying that network...."
Did ally Pakistan play role in 9-11?
WorldNetDaily, 30 January 2002

"The identities of the four London bombers are now known...According to Metropolitan Police anti-terrorist branch chief Peter Clarke, all the exhaustive work to date is just the start of the long task of identifying those responsible for sending the four to London. 'There are a number of things we need to establish,' he told reporters. 'Who supported them? Who financed them? Who trained them? Who encouraged them?' Of these questions, the second could well prove to be the key to cracking the network open....On several occasions in the UK recently, this kind of probe has been the factor which has moved a suspect from being overlooked as a casual acquaintance to becoming a focus for the security services. Following the money is now a priority and is the responsibility of the UK's National Terrorist Finance Investigative Unit (NTFIU)... And elsewhere in law enforcement, it seems likely that the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS), too, has thrown its staff into the hunt for the funding behind the bombers. The NCIS has a small terrorist finance team, which develops intelligence for the NTFIU to exploit. Far more numerous are its regular financial intelligence staff."
The bombers' money trail
BBC Online, 18 July 2005

"..... it is precisely the same man used by [the head of Pakistani Intelligence Services] General Mahmoud to wire money to 911 hijacker Mohammed Atta who has now been detained and tried for the murder of Pearl.....why is Sheikh still not being charged for his alleged involvement in the 911 attacks now that he is finally detained?.... In this respect the clamour from the Bush administration to spare Sheikh's life so that he can give evidence as to General Mahmoud's and his own involvement in the transfer of 911 money to Mohammed Atta is deafening by virtue of its total absence... Sheikh is a British born and educated Pakistani. He is a British Citizen. But this has not resulted in the British government securing an open trial for him.... The possibility that Sheikh has been framed (certainly he is an ideal candidate given his previous involvement with militant groups) in order to engineer his execution cannot be discounted.... Given the widespread culture of deception and lying uncovered within the British Foreign Office during the Scott inquiry into the UK's illegal supply of arms to Saddam Hussein, the omens do not look good."
What Did Britain Know About 911?
'Fight Smart', 28 Aug 2002

"Three months before the release of the 9/11 Commission report, commission chief of staff Phil Zelikow asked a prominent Pakistani whether he could 'fill in the gaps about what was happening behind the scenes in Pakistan in the period immediately preceding the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.' He traveled the length and breadth of Pakistan working his sources, which included many former ranking government officials, retired senior officers and ex-ISI personnel. The requested report arrived in Washington too late to be included in the commission's 567-page report, which mentioned Pakistan 311 times. Even if it had arrived in time, it probably would not have been included.... The unpublished addendum to the 9/11 report stated: (1) Former senior ISI officers knew about the 9/11 plot before the attacks took place...... "
Bin Laden's game plan
United Press International, 1 November 2004

Why Are These People So Important? The FBI Knows Who Was Involved In The Funding Of 9/11 But The 9/11 Commission Report Covered This Up
Name	Position	Last Known Status	No of mentions in 9/11 Report	Relevance To 9/11	More Information
John O'Neill	FBI head of counter terrorism until summer of 2001	Dead (Killed in World Trade Centre 11 September 2001.)	None	Was blocked by Bush Administrationf from investigating al Qaeda pre-911. He resigned in protest July 2001. His evidence, including captured al Qaeda documentation, is held by former Federal prosecutor John Loftus. Loftus was not called to present this evidence.	Click Here
John Pistole	FBI Deputy Assistant Director, Counter Terrorism Division	Alive	None	John Pistole gave evidence to the Senate Committee Governmental Affairs in the summer of 2003 that the FBI had "traced the origin of the funding of 9/11 back to financial accounts in Pakistan, where high-ranking and well-known Al Qaeda operatives played a major role in moving the money forward, eventually into the hands of the hijackers located in the US." Pistole's important claims were not dealt with in the 9/11 report, but only in the footnotes of a post-final report publication by the 9/11 Commission staff released on a Saturday in August 2004, and unlikely to have been read by many. Yet the post-publication 9/11 staff report does not say that Pistole has withdrawn his original claim, only that others at the FBI 'disagree with it'. Why doesn't the staff report confirm that the 9/11 Commission has spoken to Pistole himself and that he has withdrawn the claim? Moreover this 153 page staff report, which deals exclusively with "Terrorist Financing" even though discretely published after the 9/11 report itself, does not refer on a single occasion to the widely reported 9/11 financing allegations levied against Pakistan's Lt General Mahmood Ahmed, and British Pakistani Omar Sheikh. They are not even mentioned for the purposes of dismissing such claims, despite their grave nature. Senator Bob Graham, Chairman of the Senate Select Committee On Intelligence, has said that "I think there is very compelling evidence that at least some of the terrorists were assisted not just in financing -- although that was part of it -- by a sovereign foreign government .... I do not believe we got the full cooperation that we needed. As an example, as of today there are 13 requests outstanding with the FBI alone for additional information which would help us follow the trail -- including the trail of foreign government involvement. That agency and others have been reticent to come forward." Pistole is listed in an Appendix to the 9/11 Commission report as having given testimony at its Tenth Public Hearing 13 April 2004. However, the official record kept on the Commission's web site does not provide any record of questioning carried out by the Commission. All that is provided is a copy of a formal written statement. This statement does not refer to Pistole's claim (made in testimony given to the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs summer 2003) at which he disclosed that 9/11 funding had been traced back to accounts in Pakistan. The statement refers to Omar Sheikh in the context of the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl, but not to his alleged involvement in the funding of the 9/11 hijackers [paragraph ammended 25/7/05]. A report on Pistole' summer 2003 testimony by Pakistan's Daily Times newspaper states "Pistole’s testimony did not make reference to reports that some of the financial support of the hijackers came from Saudi Arabia.... President Bush has refused to declassify the 28 pages held back form the congressional report on 9/11 attacks despite a rushed visit to Washington by Saudi Foreign Minister Saud bin Faisal. Saudi Arabia insists that the classified pages that are being used to malign the Kingdom should be declassified. Faisal said Saudi Arabia had nothing to hide. Because of the blunt US refusal, there is growing tension between the two allies." The question therefore also remains as to whether those classified pages contain any reference to Pakistan. This is particularly so given that the Chairman of the Senate Select Committee On Intelligence, Senator Bob Graham, has made a televised public statement indicating that he has seen classified evidence that more than one foreign government was "involved in facilitating the activities of at least some of the terrorists in the United States".	Click Here
Robert Wright	FBI Chicago special agent prevented by superiors from arresting al Qaeda suspects pre-911	Alive (Subject to FBI gagging order.)	None	Explicitly forbidden by superiors from arresting al Qaeda suspects pre-911. Now a gagging order prevents him from disclosing full details.	Click Here
Sibel Edmonds	FBI translator	Alive (Subject to Justice Department gagging order.)	One (footnote)	A footnote only (No 25, p 473) which merely refers to insufficient translation capability within the Bureau FBI and does not report on her evidence given to the Commision lasting three and a half hours. Edmonds claims to have seen FBI documenation which identifies participants in 9/11 which the Bush administration is protecting. These include both foreign and American citizens. A government gagging order prevents her from disclosing more details.	Click Here
Lt General Mahmoud Ahmed	Director General of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, 1999–2001	Alive (Believed to be living in Rawalapindi with the knowledge of the Pakistani government. Not being pursued by US and Pakistani governments for his alleged involvement in 9/11.)	Three (referred to as 'Mahmud Ahmed', including in one foonote)	None of these references relate to Mahmud's activities in the lead up to 9/11. Alleged to have ordered transfer of funds to lead hijacker Mohammed Atta via British Pakistani operative Omar Sheikh. All we learn about Ahmed's activities from the report is that: "The same day [13 September in Washington], Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage met with the Pakistani ambassador to the United States, Maleeha Lodhi, and the visiting head of Pakistan’s military intelligence service, Mahmud Ahmed.... On the same day [18 September], Deputy Secretary of State Armitage was called by Mahmud Ahmed regarding a two-day visit to Afghanistan during which the Pakistani intelligence chief had met with Mullah Omar and conveyed the U.S. demands." No mention is made of Ahmed's involvement in the funding of 9/11 or his meetings with Bush administration offcials in the days immediately before the attacks.	Click Here
Omar Sheikh	British Pakistani, alleged to be an ISI agent	Sentenced to death (Wrongly detained and convicted in Pakistan for alleged murder of Daniel Pearl. Case subject to appeal. Not being pursued by US, Pakistani, and British Governments for his alleged involvment in 9/11.)	None	Alleged by the FBI to have passed $100,000 to lead hijacker Mohammed Atta, on the instructions of the head of Pakistan's Intelligence Services, Lt General Mahmoud Ahmed	Click Here
Daniel Pearl	Reporter for Wall St Journal	Dead (Killed in Pakistan February 2002 whilst investigating perpetrators and financiers of 9/11)	None	Believed to have been killed as a result of investigating Pakistan's ISI's role in 9/11 following a tip off from former CIA agent Robert Baer. No mention in 9/11 report that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (now reported to be in US custody) is now thought to be the killer of Daniel Pear. This is despite the fact that, KSM as the alleged mastermind of 9/11, is referred to on numerous occasions in the 9/11 report.	Click Here
Robert Baer	Former lead CIA agent in Middle East, and counter-terrorism expert	Alive (Understood to be working as a private consultant on terrorism.)	None	1) Bob Baer passed information to the CIA pre-911 that al Qaeda leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was going to hijack planes, and that there was 'no interest' in this information from the CIA. The 911 Commission report claims the US missed 10 chances to stop the hijackers but this key case of an explicit al Qaeda hijacking tip off from a former agent and terrorism expert does not get a mention. 2) Passed this information on to Wall St Journal reporter Daniel Pearl who began investigation after 9/11	Click Here
Other Key Figures
Michael Springmann	Former state department employee in visa section of US Consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia	Alive	None	In an interview with Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio Springmann has claimed knowledge of a CIA operation in the Visa section of the US Consultate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, which has brought large numbers of people from the middle east to the US, issuing them visas and training them to be terrorists. It is now known that the majority of the September 11 hijackers were granted US entry visas via the US consulate in Jeddah (Sibel Edmonds has since reported that the FBI are aware of "certain illegal activities in obtaining visas from certain embassies in the Middle East"). Many of the Visa applications for the hijackers had obvious defects but were still approved.	Click Here
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed	Alleged "Mastermind" of 9/11 and murderer of Daniel Pearl	Alive (Reported to have been arrested in Pakistan March 2003 and handed over to US authorities. Not being tried for his alleged murder of Daniel Pearl.)	Numerous.	But there is no mention of the fact that the US government has been quietly forced to admit that he is the likely murderer of Daniel Pearl, who is believed to have been have been on the trail of Pakistan's ISI at the time in connection with 9/11 (i.e. Pearl was not killed by Omar Sheikh who has been sentenced to death in Pakistan for the crime). US goverment is not bringing KSM to justice for his alleged role in the murder of Daniel Pearl, despite being reported to be in US detention. Neither is there any mention of the key claim by former CIA agent Bob Baer that he had passed information to the CIA pre-911 that KSM was going to hijack planes, and that there was 'no interest' in this information from the CIA. The 911 Commission report claims the US missed 10 chances to stop the hijackers but this key case of an explicit al Qaeda hijacking tip-off from a former CIA agent and terrorism expert is not referred to.	Click Here

"A top FBI counter-terrorism official told the US Senate governmental affairs committee on Thursday that investigators have 'traced the origin of the funding of 9/11 back to financial accounts in Pakistan.' John S Pistole, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counter-terrorism division, however, did not specify how those accounts in Pakistan were funded, or the role of Pakistani elements. The Times of India first reported on October 10, 2001 that India told the US that some $100,000 had been wired to the leader of the hijackers, Mahmud Atta, by British-born terrorist Ahmad Saeed Umar Sheikh. Indian authorities also told the US that the trail led back from Sheikh to the then chief of ISI, Lt Gen Mahmud Ahmad who was subsequently forced to retire by Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf. The FBI had been provided with the details, including Sheikh’s mobile numbers. But Pistole’s testimony is silent on these issues.... The FBI has estimated the September 11 attacks cost between $175,000 and $250,000. That money — which paid for flight training, travel and other expenses — flowed to the hijackers through associates in Germany and the United Arab Emirates. Those associates reported to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who managed much of the planning for the attacks from Pakistan, US officials have said. The Bush Administration is being cagey about declassifying 28 secret pages in a recent report on the 9/11 incident which officials say outline connections between Saudi charities, royal family members and terrorism. US authorities are silent about the role some Pakistanis may have played in the conspiracy. The role of Sheikh and Lt Gen Ahmad has yet to see the light of the day. Sheikh, wanted for kidnapping and terrorist conspiracy in India, has since been sentenced to death in Pakistan for the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl."
9/11 funds came from Pakistan, says FBI
Times of India, 1 August 2003

"Two veteran FBI investigators say they were ordered to stop investigations into a suspected
terror cell linked to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network and the Sept. 11 attacks.... even after the [1998 African embassy] bombings, Wright said FBI headquarters wanted no arrests."
Called Off the Trail?
ABCNews 19 Dec 2002

"In June 2001, [***** ] disseminated a report to all Intelligence Community agencies, [**** ], military commanders, and components in the Treasury and Justice Departments emphasizing KSM’s ties to Bin Ladin as well as his continuing travel to the United States. The report explained that KSM appears to be one of Bin Ladin’s most trusted lieutenants and was active in recruiting people to travel outside Afghanistan, including to the United States, on behalf of Bin Ladin. According to the report, he traveled frequently to the United States, including as recently as May 2001, and routinely told others that he could arrange their entry into the United States as well. Reportedly, these individuals were expected to establish contact with colleagues already there. The clear implication of his comments, according to the report, was that they would be engaged in planning terrorist-related activities. Although this particular report was sent from the CIA to the FBI, neither agency apparently recognized the significance of a Bin Ladin lieutenant sending terrorists to the United States and asking them to establish contacts with colleagues already there... CTC [Counterterrorist Center] questioned this report at the time and commented: 'We doubt the real [KSM] would do this…because if it is [KSM], we have both a significant threat and an opportunity to pick him up.'"
REPORT OF THE JOINT INQUIRY INTO THE TERRORIST ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 –
BY THE HOUSE PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE AND THE
SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE
24 July 2003

"[911 hijackers] Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar had numerous contacts with a long-time FBI counterterrorism informant while they were living in San Diego, California... In its November 18, 2002 written response to the [911 Congressional] Joint Inquiry, the FBI has acknowledged that there are 'significant inconsistencies' in the informant’s statements about these [counterterrorism] contacts [with the 911 hijackers before the attacks]. The FBI investigation regarding this issue is continuing.... The [Bush] Administration has to date objected to the Inquiry’s efforts to interview the informant in order to attempt to resolve those inconsistencies. The Administration also would not agree to allow the FBI to serve a Committee subpoena and deposition notice on the informant. Instead, written interrogatories from the Joint Inquiry were, at the suggestion of the FBI, provided to the informant. Through an attorney, the informant has declined to respond to those interrogatories and has indicated that, if subpoenaed, the informant would request a grant of immunity prior to testifying."
REPORT OF THE JOINT INQUIRY INTO THE TERRORIST ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 –
BY THE HOUSE PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE AND THE
SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE
24 July 2003

"Loftus recently received an FBI translation of a highly classified and encrypted Al Qaida document, circa 1997-1998, which was retrieved and decrypted from a computer laptop following the Embassy bombing in Africa. The document was written by Osama Bin Laden’s military commander, Mohammed Atef, under his nom de guerre, Abu Haf, and reveals extensive knowledge of the supposedly secret pipeline negotiations [in Afghanistan], and their potential economic worth to the Taliban, Pakistan and the U.S.... in January 2001, Vice President Cheney allegedly reinstated the intelligence block and expanded it to effectively preclude any investigations whatsoever of Saudi-Taliban-Afghan oil connections. Former FBI counter-terrorism chief John O’Neil resigned from the FBI in disgust, stating that he was ordered not to investigate Saudi-Al Qaida connections because of the Enron pipeline deal. Loftus has confirmed that it was O’Neill who originally discovered the AL Qaida pipeline memo after the Embassy bombings in Africa. O’Neill gave an overview of the Enron block to two French authors who will soon be publishing in the United States. The FBI is currently investigating Loftus’ links to John O’Neill, and is also refusing FBI agent Robert Wright permission to publish his own findings about the Enron block. Loftus asserts that the Enron block, which remained in force from January 2001 until August 2001 when the pipeline deal collapsed, is the reason that none of FBI agent Rowley’s requests for investigations were ever approved. As numerous British and French authors have concluded, the information provided by European intelligence sources prior to 9/11 was so extensive, that it is no longer possible for either CIA or the FBI to assert a defense of incompetence. It is time for Congress to face the truth: In order to give Enron one last desperate chance to complete the Taliban pipeline and save itself from bankruptcy, senior levels of US intelligence were ordered to keep their eyes shut and their subordinates ignorant. The Enron cover-up confirms that 9/11 was not an intelligence failure or a law enforcement failure (at least not entirely). Instead, it was a foreign policy failure of the highest order. If Congress ever combines its Enron investigation with 9/11, Cheney’s whole house of cards will collapse".
What Congress Does Not Know about Enron and 9/11
Press Release, former federal prosecutor, John Loftus, 31 May 2002

"After the 9/11 attacks, when American forces began capturing Taliban and al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan, [FBI Director] Mueller made a key decision: He refused to allow his agents to be present at any of the interrogations by the CIA and military personnel at secret locations around the world and at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The decision angered FBI agents who had worked on previous terrorism investigations involving some of these same shady characters--including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks...."
Dodging a peck of trouble
US News, 28 March 2005

"In London's prestigious The Guardian (July 22, 2004), Michael Meacher, a Labor MP writing a piece on 'The Pakistan Connection' has made [the] sensational disclosure that a British Pakistani Islamist Omar Saeed Sheikh, waiting to be hanged in Pakistan for the alleged murder of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002 [is] held by both the US government and Pearl's wife not responsible for the murder while Islamabad refuses to try other suspects newly implicated in Pearl's kidnap and murder for fear the evidence they produce in court might acquit Sheikh. Sheikh is the man who knows too much and Pakistani authorities fear that if he gets out of their hands, he might spill their secret beans since he had been involved in their key operations. According to Meacher Sheikh had been the conduit for transferring US$100,000 by Gen Mahmud Ahmed, the then head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker'. Meacher wants General Mahmud to be questioned and put on trial....."
Wajid Shamsul Hasan, Former Pakistan High Commissioner to UK
Is Aziz the Continuity Factor For Washington After Musharraf
South Asia Tribune (US/Pakistan), 29 July 2004

"A tidal wave of controversy has been ignited by a leading member of the UK's ruling Labour Party who highlights the role of a Washington-funded ISI chief in sending money to the 9/11 hijackers in the United States..... Many in Europe and the rest of the world find there are too many unanswered questions about 9/11 and Mr Meacher's extraordinary collation will fan the flames of their suspicions."
Pak hand seen in bank-rolling 9/11 hijackers
Decclan Herald (India), 23 July 2004

"The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (also known as the 9-11 Commission), an independent, bipartisan commission created by congressional legislation and the signature of President George W. Bush in late 2002, is chartered to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. On July 22, 2004 the Commission released its public report........"
National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States

Also On 22 July 2004 The Guardian Published
A Report Containing Key Material Missing
From The Official 'Full And Complete Account' Of 9/11

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1266317,00.html

The Pakistan connection

There is evidence of foreign intelligence backing for the 9/11 hijackers. Why is the US government so keen to cover it up?

Michael Meacher
Thursday July 22, 2004
The Guardian

Omar Sheikh, a British-born Islamist militant, is waiting to be hanged in Pakistan for a murder he almost certainly didn't commit - of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002. Both the US government and Pearl's wife have since acknowledged that Sheikh was not responsible. Yet the Pakistani government is refusing to try other suspects newly implicated in Pearl's kidnap and murder for fear the evidence they produce in court might acquit Sheikh and reveal too much.

Significantly, Sheikh is also the man who, on the instructions of General Mahmoud Ahmed, the then head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), wired $100,000 before the 9/11 attacks to Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker. It is extraordinary that neither Ahmed nor Sheikh have been charged and brought to trial on this count. Why not?

Ahmed, the paymaster for the hijackers, was actually in Washington on 9/11, and had a series of pre-9/11 top-level meetings in the White House, the Pentagon, the national security council, and with George Tenet, then head of the CIA, and Marc Grossman, the under-secretary of state for political affairs. When Ahmed was exposed by the Wall Street Journal as having sent the money to the hijackers, he was forced to "retire" by President Pervez Musharraf. Why hasn't the US demanded that he be questioned and tried in court?

Another person who must know a great deal about what led up to 9/11 is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, allegedly arrested in Rawalpindi on March 1 2003. A joint Senate-House intelligence select committee inquiry in July 2003 stated: "KSM appears to be one of Bin Laden's most trusted lieutenants and was active in recruiting people to travel outside Afghanistan, including to the US, on behalf of Bin Laden." According to the report, the clear implication was that they would be engaged in planning terrorist-related activities.

The report was sent from the CIA to the FBI, but neither agency apparently recognised the significance of a Bin Laden lieutenant sending terrorists to the US and asking them to establish contacts with colleagues already there. Yet the New York Times has since noted that "American officials said that KSM, once al-Qaida's top operational commander, personally executed Daniel Pearl ... but he was unlikely to be accused of the crime in an American criminal court because of the risk of divulging classified information". Indeed, he may never be brought to trial.

A fourth witness is Sibel Edmonds. She is a 33-year-old Turkish-American former FBI translator of intelligence, fluent in Farsi, the language spoken mainly in Iran and Afghanistan, who had top-secret security clearance. She tried to blow the whistle on the cover-up of intelligence that names some of the culprits who orchestrated the 9/11 attacks, but is now under two gagging orders that forbid her from testifying in court or mentioning the names of the people or the countries involved. She has been quoted as saying: "My translations of the 9/11 intercepts included [terrorist] money laundering, detailed and date-specific information ... if they were to do real investigations, we would see several significant high-level criminal prosecutions in this country [the US] ... and believe me, they will do everything to cover this up".

Furthermore, the trial in the US of Zacharias Moussaoui (allegedly the 20th hijacker) is in danger of collapse apparently because of "the CIA's reluctance to allow key lieutenants of Osama bin Laden to testify at the trial". Two of the alleged conspirators have already been set free in Germany for the same reason.

The FBI, illegally, continues to refuse the to release of their agent Robert Wright's 500-page manuscript Fatal Betrayals of the Intelligence Mission, and has even refused to turn the manuscript over to Senator Shelby, vice-chairman of the joint intelligence committee charged with investigating America's 9/11 intelligence failures. And the US government still refuses to declassify 28 secret pages of a recent report on 9/11.

It has been rumoured that Pearl was especially interested in any role played by the US in training or backing the ISI. Daniel Ellsberg, the former US defence department whistleblower who has accompanied Edmonds in court, has stated: "It seems to me quite plausible that Pakistan was quite involved in this ... To say Pakistan is, to me, to say CIA because ... it's hard to say that the ISI knew something that the CIA had no knowledge of." Ahmed's close relations with the CIA would seem to confirm this. For years the CIA used the ISI as a conduit to pump billions of dollars into militant Islamist groups in Afghanistan, both before and after the Soviet invasion of 1979.

W ith CIA backing, the ISI has developed, since the early 1980s, into a parallel structure, a state within a state, with staff and informers estimated by some at 150,000. It wields enormous power over all aspects of government. The case of Ahmed confirms that parts of the ISI directly supported and financed al-Qaida, and it has long been established that the ISI has acted as go-between in intelligence operations on behalf of the CIA.

Senator Bob Graham, chairman of the Senate select committee on intelligence, has said: "I think there is very compelling evidence that at least some of the terrorists were assisted, not just in financing ... by a sovereign foreign government." In that context, Horst Ehmke, former coordinator of the West German secret services, observed: "Terrorists could not have carried out such an operation with four hijacked planes without the support of a secret service."

That might give meaning to the reaction on 9/11 of Richard Clarke, the White House counter-terrorism chief, when he saw the passenger lists later on the day itself: "I was stunned ... that there were al-Qaida operatives on board using names that the FBI knew were al-Qaida." It was just that, as Dale Watson, head of counter-terrorism at the FBI told him, the "CIA forgot to tell us about them".

� Michael Meacher is Labour MP for Oldham West and Royton. He was environment minister 1997-2003
massonm@parliament.uk

RESPONSE TO GUARDIAN ARTICLE FROM PAKISTAN HIGH COMMISSION IN LONDON
Letters, The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,,1272276,00.html

Pearl claim

Friday July 30, 2004
The Guardian

Michael Meacher (The Pakistan connection, July 22) claims that Khalid Sheikh Mohammad "almost certainly" did not kill the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

He makes this accusation without citing his sources, ignoring the fact that Mohammad has been convicted in a court of law.

Meacher also claims that Mohammad wired $100,000 to the lead hijacker Mohammad Atta before the 9/11 attacks on the instructions of Gen Mahmood Ahmed, the then head of ISI, but does not cite any evidence for this either.

The article seems to be based on Daniel Ellsberg's idea that "it seems quite plausible that Pakistan was involved in this".
Javed Akhtar
High Commission for Pakistan

MEACHER PUTS RECORD STRAIGHT
Letters, The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,,1275320,00.html

The facts about Pakistan

Wednesday August 4, 2004
The Guardian

The letter from the Pakistan high commission (Letters, July 30) about my article on the background to the September 11 attacks is factually wrong on every count.

As anyone can check, I said that Omar Sheikh, not Khalid Sheikh Mohammad as alleged by the Pakistan commission, "almost certainly" did not kill Pearl. The letter claims I did not cite my sources. I did - I stated that both the US government and Pearl's wife acknowledged that Omar Sheikh was not responsible.

The letter also claims I stated that Mohammad wired $100,000 to the lead hijacker Mohammad Atta before the 9/11 attacks. I did not: I said that Omar Sheikh wired this money, on the instructions of General Mahmood Ahmed, then head of the Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

The letter goes on that I did not cite evidence for this either. I did - I stated the source was the Wall Street Journal (on October 10-11 2001), and it has been corroborated by the FBI.

Finally, I did not say that the Pakistan government was involved, but rather that the Pakistan ISI was, which is not the same thing at all, and that the ISI is known to have very close links with certain elements within the CIA.
Michael Meacher MP
Lab, Oldham West and Royton

KSM Murdered Daniel Pearl
United Press International, 30 September 2002
TIME magazine, 3 Feb 2003
BBC, 22 October 2003
New York Times, 22 October 2003
Salon.com, 22 October 2003
Sunday Times (Pakistan), 19 December 2004
Daily Times (Pakistan), 21 December 2004
Newsline (Pakistan), April 2005
Agence France Presse, 1 June 2005

“The Daniel Pearl case is where nexus is fully exposed”
Anonymous Senior Police Official, Pakistan
Agence France Presse, 1 June 2005

NOMANI REPORT SUPPORTS MEACHER ACCOUNT
Asra Nomani is a journalist for Salon.Com. Daniel and Marianne Pearl were staying with her in Karachi at the time of Daniel's abduction. Her report for Salon.com 22 October 2003 supports much of the account given by Michael Meacher in the Guardian 22 July 2004.

"Last Thursday, a senior White House official called Mariane Pearl and Paul Steiger, the managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, to report a new, key development in the investigation into the death of Mariane's husband, Journal reporter Daniel Pearl..... Although American officials first denied that [Khalid Sheikh] Mohammed had anything to do with Pearl's killing, this week they confirmed that they now believe he was responsible. But that revelation raises more questions than it answers. The full investigation into Danny's death could well proceed in directions that will make both Pakistan and U.S. investigators uncomfortable..... Until now, Omar Saeed Sheikh, the young Pakistani London School of Economics dropout who was sentenced to death in July 2002 for organizing the Pearl kidnapping, had been identified as the ringleader of a carefully assembled alliance of extremist Muslim militants working in at least four different terrorist cells. Mohammed would link Omar Sheikh more explicitly to the wider and more sinister al-Qaida network. The question, though, is whether this will lead to an even more troubling connection: between al-Qaida and Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, which has been linked to Omar Sheikh. As Mariane says, 'When the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed name first came up, the obvious questions were what was his link to Omar Sheikh and what was his link to ISI? Those are the questions we have to answer now, and there are more. What is the direct link between Omar Sheikh and 9/11? Is Omar Sheikh a main player in 9/11? Should there be more charges against him?....'... the news that Mohammed killed Pearl doesn't explain his motive. What would make al-Qaida target the Wall Street Journal's Asian bureau chief? There are several theories. Robert Baer, a former case officer with the CIA's directorate of operations, believes Pearl had begun to pursue Mohammed as a story for the Journal. Baer says Pearl called him the day after the Sept. 11 attack to talk about possible culprits, and that he told the reporter about Mohammed's role as a key aide to bin Laden going back to 1997. He also told Pearl, Baer says, that the government of Qatar protected Mohammed and would have information about his activities. After Danny's murder, Baer said that an official in the Qatar government told him that Danny had called the Foreign Ministry for information about Mohammed.... the immediate questions that need to be answered are in Pakistan. And getting straight answers from anyone in ISI -- protected by proxies in the press -- will be difficult.... After Danny originally went missing, Mariane and I hunted through the house looking for clues. I found a photo on Danny's computer of us, shortly after we all met up in Pakistan. He had a particularly befuddled look on his face, and had created an appropriate caption for the photo: 'Clueless in Karachi.' It turned out to be an apt description of all of us in Karachi, and of the complicated nature of relationships between Muslim extremists and their political and financial sponsors that Danny stumbled into. That is what must be explored further in order to learn who planned, financed and pulled off the kidnapping and murder of Danny. Even with the apparent admission of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the job is not done."
Asra Nomani
Who really killed Danny Pearl?
Salon.com, 22 October 2003
To read the full Salon.com article by Nomani - Click Here

"...while Omar may have been our original target [in our search for Danny], in truth he's just one in a massively complicated chain... ultimately he is a tool. But whose? It's become clear that Omar doesn't know where Danny is. That's never been his role. He was the lure; others are the captors.... who is overseeing it all? Who pulls the strings?..."
'A Mighty Heart' by Mariane Pearl, widow of Daniel
Virago Press, 2003

The Original KSM 'Arrest'
Hot Pakistan and 911 - The Mysterious Case of the Bush Administration, Lt General Mahmoud, Omar Sheikh and KSM - Click Here Hot

FBI REPORT SUPPORTS MEACHER ACCOUNT
"Senior Al Qaeda operative Khalid Sheikh Mohammed personally carried out the execution of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, according to an FBI analysis of the video-taped beheading of the journalist, The Sunday Times has reported. Mohammed, who is believed to have been the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, was captured in Pakistan in March 2003..... At the time of his abduction, it was thought that Pearl was investigating British shoe-bomber Richard Reid. But the disclosure of Mohammed’s involvement suggests that Pearl may have been trailing the Al Qaeda operations chief."
Khalid Sheikh slit Pearl’s throat: FBI
Daily Times (Pakistan), 21 December 2004

"An FBI analysis of the video showing the beheading of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter, has revealed that the knife was wielded by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of September 11..... When he was abducted, Pearl was thought to have been investigating Richard Reid, the British shoe- bomber. But the disclosure of Mohammed’s involvement suggests Pearl may have been trailing the Al-Qaeda operations chief."
9/11 mastermind killed Daniel Pearl
Sunday Times, 19 December 2004

FORMER CIA AGENT REPORT SUPPORTS MEACHER ACCOUNT
"Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was investigating the man who allegedly planned the Sept. 11 airplane hijackings and attacks on New York and Washington when he was kidnapped and murdered in Pakistan, according to two former Central Intelligence Agency officials. Bob Baer, a former case officer in the agency's Directorate of Operations, said he provided Pearl with unpublished information about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who has since been accused by American officials of being one of the masterminds of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and a top aide to Osama bin Laden. Mohammed is currently the operational chief of al Qaida, other U.S. intelligence officials said. Next to bin Laden, Mohammed is one of the most wanted terrorists in the world. 'I was working with Pearl,' said Baer, who has written a book about his time as a CIA official and has acted as a consultant and source for numerous media outlets. 'We had a joint project. Mohammed was the story he was working on, not Richard Reid.'... Shortly after Pearl's kidnapping and subsequent murder in Karachi, Pakistan last winter, it was reported he was tracing the background of Reid, who was seized on a Boston-bound American Airlines jet from Paris allegedly trying to ignite explosive in his shoes. According to that account, [Pearl] had gone to Karachi to contact a man called Sheik Mubarek Gilani to get information on Reid. Baer said that instead Pearl was onto bigger and more dangerous game. 'I urged him to go to Pakistan to look into Shaikh Mohammed.'.... Pakistani intelligence sources told UPI that Mohammed, the man Pearl was actually trying to track down, also had links to Gilani and his party.... On July 15, an anti-terrorism court in the southern Pakistani city of Hyderabad convicted four men for kidnapping and murdering Pearl. The suspected ringleader, British-born Pakistani Ahmad Omar Saeed Shaikh, better known as Shaikh Omar, was sentenced to death while three others were sent to jail for life. Throughout the trial, Omar maintained that -- although he knew how and by who Pearl had been killed -- he was not himself responsible.... According to Baer, he was first informed of Mohammed's role as a key aide to terrorist mastermind bin Laden as early as December 1997 when he met a former police chief from Doha, Qatar, at a dinner in Damascus. In 1997, Baer had left the agency to become a consultant in Beirut. Terrorism was Baer's field and Baer began to meet the ex-Doha police chief from time to time.... The ex-police chief told Baer that Mohammed 'is going to hijack some planes.' The ex-police chief said his basis for this was evidence developed by police and Qatari intelligence.... Baer sent this information to a friend in the CIA Counter-terrorist Center who forwarded the information to his superiors. Baer heard nothing. 'There was no interest,' he said. Baer said he was frustrated and called Pearl.... Baer said to his annoyance, Pearl did not begin to work on the story. Nothing was done until the day of the Sept. 11 attacks when Pearl called to talk to Baer. Baer said he gave Pearl all the old information he had and new information he had since obtained -- for example, that there are files on Mohammed in the Qatari Embassy in London. Baer said he and Pearl then 'began to work together' -- in other words, Pearl would get info and check it out with Baer and Baer would feed Pearl what he was getting. It was 'a joint project,' said Baer. Baer was giving direction, but Pearl's contacts were not confined to Baer. After Pearl's murder, Baer said, he took his information about Mohammed to the Justice Department, but again, as with the agency, he never received a call nor did the department express any interest."
UPI Exclusive: Pearl tracked al Qaida
United Press International, 30 September 2002

Click here for full UPI report including the original disclosure that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the killer of Pearl not Omar Sheikh

TIME MAGAZINE REPORT SUPPORTS MEACHER ACCOUNT
"Pakistani police sources tell TIME that at least one witness says Pearl's throat was slit by a top al-Qaeda terrorist, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed..... Fazal Karim has identified Mohammed as the man who drew the knife across Pearl's throat, two men who participated in Karim's interrogation tell TIME. Karim's testimony may weaken the government's case that [Omar] Saeed [Sheikh] was both ringleader of the plot and Pearl's executioner... Despite this fresh evidence, Pakistani police working on the Pearl case noticed a distinct cooling in their superiors' interest..."
Who Killed Pearl?
TIME magazine, 3 Feb 2003

BUT 9/11 COMMISSION NOT INTERESTED IN INVESTIGATING
PAKISTAN'S ROLE IN THE FUNDING OF 9/11 ATTACKS
"To date, the U.S. government has not been able to determine the origin of the money used for the 9/11 attacks. Ultimately the question is of little practical significance."
THE 9/11COMMISSION REPORT (p.172)

What Was Daniel Pearl Doing In Pakistan? - Click Here

More Media References For Omar Sheikh, Pearl, Lt Gen Ahmed, And KSM saga - Click Here

"The question about the connection between Al Qaeda (more specifically, Osama bin Laden) and the US refuses to die. On [July 22], the British newspaper The Guardian carried an article 'The Pakistan connection and the US silence over an execution' by Michael Meacher, a British Labour Party MP and a former minister for environment.... Meacher..... is not alone in his views and, while some of it may seem fantastic, there are some facts that do raise questions."
Shaukat Qadir, former vice president and founder of the Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI)
Al Qaeda: a US connection?
Daily Times (Pakistan), 31 July 2004

"Business as usual. That's the message of today's 9-11 Commission report. No one is held accountable for anything.... While the media focus on Iran's recently discovered possible involvement—allowing Al Qaeda people through its porous northern border with Afghanistan—the more likely culprit is Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI..... Getting to the bottom of the close relationship between the U.S. and Pakistan's spy agency could prove dangerous to some reputations.....Writing today in The Guardian (U.K.), Michael Meacher, a member of the British Parliament and former environment minister, pointed out that Omar Sheikh, who's about to hang for the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, wired $100,000 before the 9-11 attacks to lead hijacker Mohammed Atta—on the orders of General Mahmoud Ahmed, then head of the ISI. And it turns out, Meacher writes, that General Ahmed was in D.C. on September 11, 2001: He had just had a series of meetings 'in the White House, the Pentagon, the National Security Council, and with George Tenet . . . and Marc Grossman, the undersecretary of state for political affairs. When Ahmed was exposed by The Wall Street Journal as having sent the money to the hijackers, he was forced to 'retire' by President Pervez Musharraf. Why hasn't the U.S. demanded that he be questioned and tried in court?' Then Meacher zooms in on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a bin Laden lieutenant often identified in reports as 'KSM.' He was arrested in Pakistan in March 2003. A congressional report has identified him as having been 'active in recruiting people to travel outside Afghanistan, including to the U.S., on behalf of bin Laden.' [Quoting directly from the Congressional report] Meacher wryly notes that, although the CIA and FBI were both aware of that, 'neither agency apparently recognized the significance of a bin Laden lieutenant sending terrorists to the U.S. and asking them to establish contacts with colleagues already there.' And he points out that The New York Times has already written that 'American officials said that KSM, once Al Qaeda's top operational commander, personally executed Daniel Pearl . . . but he was unlikely to be accused of the crime in an American criminal court because of the risk of divulging classified information.' Meacher adds, 'Indeed, he may never be brought to trial.' Bottom line: Some events preceding 9-11 implicate too many people high up in both the Clinton and Bush administrations for either Kerry or Bush to raise the issue in an election campaign."
Reading Between the Lines
Village Voice, 22 July 2004

"I want to suggest something very simple: everybody knows that we went to war [in Iraq] because it was decided a long time ago, perhaps even before the election of President Bush, that the middle east was due for a reorganisation, and 9/11—that horrific occasion—provided, as Rumsfeld so clearly indicated, a new focus for decisions on such matters."
John Gummer MP, former Conservative Minister
House of Commons Debate on the Butler report, 20 July 2004

"The facts, which I think are no longer seriously in dispute, are stark. The United States went to war over Iraq both because of oil and for reasons of American control of the middle east region, set out clearly in a 'Project for the New American Century' document published for the Bush election team in September 2000. As we now know from United States Treasury Secretary O'Neill, that war was planned from the first days of the Bush Administration. Then 9/11 provided the pretext for launching it, as the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) said."
Michael Meacher MP, former Labour Minister
House of Commons Debate on the Butler report, 20 July 2004

Daniel Pearl
A Man Willing To Go Where The 911 Commission Wouldn't
And Whose Story
The Commission Swept Under The Carpet

Daniel Pearl photographed by his captors holding a copy of Pakistan's
English language Dawn newspaper in 2002 in order to demonstrate his abduction.
In 2004 Dawn web site reproduced Meacher article on 9/11 Pearl saga cover-up under the title '9/11's Pakistan connection'

"A tidal wave of controversy has been ignited by a leading member of the UK's ruling Labour Party who highlights [in an article in the Guardian 22 July] the role of a Washington-funded ISI chief in sending money to the 9/11 hijackers in the United States ..... Many in Europe and the rest of the world find there are too many unanswered questions about 9/11 and Mr Meacher's extraordinary collation will fan the flames of their suspicions."
Pak hand seen in bank-rolling 9/11 hijackers
Decclan Herald (India), 23 July 2004

Within Two Days Of Original Publication Of The Meacher Article Pakistan Moves To Make Sudden 'Big Fish' Al Qaeda Arrest
Followed By Further Arrests And Huge Wave Of Media Publicity At Home And Abroad
Promoting Pakistan's 'Committment' To The War Against Terror

Click Here For More Details Of Summer 2004 Arrest Episode

"During Mr. Ghailani's time in Gujrat, a young Pakistani man lived in the house with him, apparently buying food and supplies from a nearby market and allowing the fugitive, a black African, to remain inside and go unnoticed, according to Mr. Hussain, the police chief. Mr. Hussain, who suspended 64 local patrolmen and senior officers for negligence after Mr. Ghailani was arrested, said his officers had received no reports of unusual activity in the neighborhood. The police chief said he was alerted to the presence of a foreign terrorist only when he received an urgent phone call from Pakistani intelligence officials the night of July 24."
Elaborate Qaeda Network Hid 2 Captives in Pakistan
New York Times, 3 August 2004

"Mr Ghailani, who had a $5m (�2.7m) bounty on his head, was arrested on July 25 along with 13 others after a 12-hour gun battle in the eastern city of Gujarat. Police also seized a computer and several disks. 'We got a few emails from Ghailani's computer about [plans for] attacks in the US and UK,' Pakistan's information minister, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, told the Associated Press yesterday. But British government sources said the emails contained no specific threats against Britain...."
Pakistan arrests revealed US targets
Guardian, 3 August 2004

"The timing of the announcement by Pakistan of the arrest of the al Qaeda suspect, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani... is raising a few eyebrows here...
Ghailiani is the first 'big fish' terrorist to be arrested in Pakistan [since] 9/11 mastermind [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] was captured in Rawalpindi in March 2003."
Timing of Ghailani’s arrest considered ‘intriguing’
Daily Times (Pakistan), 31 July 2004

"His [Ghailani's] arrest would be announced at midnight in Pakistan on July 29."
New Cooperation and New Tensions in Terrorist Hunt
New York Times, 17 August 2004

"The release of Mr. Khan's name... was made public in The New York Times on Aug. 2, citing Pakistani intelligence sources..."
New Cooperation and New Tensions in Terrorist Hunt
New York Times, 17 August 2004

"... Pakistani officials insisted Monday that the two recent arrests [of Ghailani and Khan] were evidence of their commitment and success in fighting terrorism."
Elaborate Qaeda Network Hid 2 Captives in Pakistan
New York Times, 3 August 2004

"'Now everyone, even the Western press, has accepted the effectiveness of our intelligence network, which has marked 90 percent success in achieving the goal of nabbing terrorists,' said Musharraf, a key ally in the U.S.-led war on terror."
Pakistan Claims '90 Percent' Success in Terror War
Reuters, 10 August 2004

"Pakistan, a key ally in the U.S.-led war on terror, launched its biggest sweep
to date against the al Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden last month, arresting more than 20 suspects."
Major events in Pakistan's al Qaeda crackdown
Reuters, 12 August 2004

"President George Bush on Friday acknowledging Pakistan’s role in curbing terrorism said that Pakistan was an important ally of the United States in the fight against terrorism. 'The world is safe and Libya is no longer a threat. Pakistan is as an ally in the war on terrorism and is doing all to smoke out terrorists from its territory,' President Bush said this in CNN’s Larry King Live programme."
Pakistan is a key ally in war on terrorism: Bush
Daily Times (Pakistan), 14 August 2004

"....the name of the captured double agent Naeem Noor Khan was leaked the same day the latest terror alert was announced either by an official in Washington or Islamabad. The leak was 'disastrous' for at least one ongoing intelligence operation.... Pakistani journalist Husain Haqqani writes Tuesday that for the Bush administration to have risked playing politics with the timing of arrest of terror suspects is a disturbing enough possibility, but even more disturbing is the prospect that the initiative to gain political advantage from these arrests came not from the Bush administration but from the Musharraf regime."
Terrorism being used to play politics in US and Pakistan
Daily Times (Pakistan), 18 August 2004

"David Wright-Neville, of the Monash Global Terrorism Research Unit, said that if Khan was still an active al Qaeda mole when his name was leaked, his loss was a serious blow. 'If it's true, at the very least it would suggest a breakdown in communication between the Pakistanis and the Americans,' the Melbourne-based security expert said. 'At worst, it smacks of political opportunism and, if that is indeed the case, it suggests that political survival ranks more highly than generating potentially valuable information on the extent of the network."
Al Qaeda mole row reveals disarray
Reuters, 10 August 2004

But The Goal Is For Omar Sheikh To Hang
So That The Secrets Of 9/11 Die With Him

"Pakistan claimed a major breakthrough in counter-terrorist operations against al-Qaeda yesterday after the killing of a senior figure in Osama bin Laden’s organisation..... Mr Farooqi was shot dead on Sunday at his hideout in the town of Nawabshah, 170 miles north of Karachi. He was close to Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the British-born terrorist convicted last year of plotting the kidnap and murder of Mr Pearl, of The Wall Street Journal, in 2002..... Pakistan has now caused 'massive disruption' to the al-Qaeda terrorist operation, according to intelligence and diplomatic sources in London and Islamabad...."
Pakistan celebrates death of al-Qaeda assassin
London Times, 28 September 2004

"Asim Ghafoor, a member of the armed Islamist group Harkat-ul Mujahideen, was shot dead on 17 November 2004 in a clash with police in the western suburbs of Karachi, in southern Pakistan. After Amjad Farooqi, he is the second suspect in the murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl to be killed. Deputy Inspector-general of police, Javed Ali Shah Bukhari, said Ghafoor was an 'associate of Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh', sentenced to death for organising the kidnapping of Pearl. .... According to Agence France-Presse, police would not allow press photographers to take any shots of Ghafoor's body, which, according to a doctor at the Civil Hospital de Karachi, received four bullet wounds to the chest and head."
Daniel Pearl case : security forces kill a second suspect
Reporters Without Borders, 17 November 2004

"The most wanted terrorist Asim Ghafoor, alias Qasim Sukkurwala was killed in an encounter with a team of the Crime Investigation Department (CID) Civil Lines Police early Wednesday in southern Karachi, the official Associated Press of Pakistan reported..... CID had reports that Asim was hiding in a house located in Saeedabad area in Baldia Town for the last couple of days and the department constituted a team to arrest him. When the team surrounded the house, Asim opened fire on the police. The alleged terrorist was seriously injured in the exchange of fire. He later succumbed to lethal wounds, said the police official."
Most wanted terrorist killed in southern Pakistan
Xinhuanet (China), 17 November 2004

"Police in Pakistan have shot dead a suspected Islamic militant wanted in connection with the 2002 kidnapping and murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl. Asim Ghafoor died in a shootout with security forces in the southern city of Karachi, police said. Officials said he was closely linked to Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, on death row for masterminding Pearl's killing. ... Police say they were acting on a tip-off when they raided what they describe as Ghafoor's hideout in western Karachi. He opened fire as he fled but was wounded when police returned fire, and he later died in hospital, said Javed Shah Bokhari, deputy inspector general of Karachi police. Doctors at the hospitals said he had been shot four times in the chest and near his face. There was a reward of 500,000 rupees ($8,333) for Ghafoor's capture. It is not clear what role he might have played in the Pearl killing. The Wall Street Journal correspondent was researching Islamic militancy in Karachi when he was abducted in January 2002. His execution was videotaped, and his remains were found in a shallow grave in the city in May of that year. Three other men were convicted for their role in the kidnap and given life terms. Mr Bokhari said Ghafoor was a close aide to Pakistan's most wanted militant, Amjad Hussain Farooqi, who security forces killed in September."
Karachi police kill Pearl suspect
BBC Online, 17 November 2004

"An Islamic militant wanted in connection with the abduction and beheading of American journalist Daniel Pearl was killed Wednesday in a police raid in Karachi, Pakistan, an officer said. Asim Ghafoor died after a shootout with police and intelligence agents as they tried to arrest him at a hideout in the west of the city, said Javed Shah Bokhari, deputy inspector general of city police..... It was not clear what role Ghafoor might have played in the kidnapping and murder of Pearl, a Wall Street Journal correspondent who disappeared on January 23, 2002, in Karachi while researching a story on Islamic militancy in Pakistan.... Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a British-born Islamic militant, has been sentenced to death for his role in kidnapping Pearl. Three other Pakistani associates have been imprisoned for life. All four have appealed their sentences. Four other suspects wanted in the Pearl case are still at large, said Manzoor Mughal, another police official. Bokhari said Ghafoor was a close aide of Amjad Hussain Farooqi, who was Pakistan's most wanted militant until he was killed September 26 in a shootout with security forces in the southern city of Nawabshah."
Terrorist involved in Pearl kidnapping killed
Associated Press, 17 November 2004

"The killing of Amjad Farooqi, Pakistan’s most wanted man, in a gunbattle on Sunday is a big triumph for the law-enforcment agencies, but some senior security officials are worried that Farooqi’s death might frustrate their efforts..... 'It was very important to catch Amjad Farooqi alive,' said a senior law-enforcement official. Pakistani officials worried that Farooqi’s killing would prevent them from getting the full knowledge about Farooqi’s connections and his actions said that if captured alive Farooqi could have provided crucial information on the plot to kidnap and murder the Wall Street Journal report Daniel Pearl in 2002. Pakistani officials believed that...... Farooqi was an anchor in the Pearl case. 'The gruesome murder of Pearl and its video filming for the world was the work of Amjad Farooqi, Khalid Sheikh Muhammad combine,' said a senior intelligence official who did not want to be identified. Because of Farooqi’s previous connections with Omar Sheikh, the investigators on Musharraf’s case had ordered shifting of Omar Sheikh from his prison cell to a military interrogation cell where he was interrogated for several weeks..... Many Pakistani officials in their background said that capturing Farooqi alive was essential to get to the bottom of the crucial mysteries of recent years such as two attempts to kill President Musharraf in the garrison town of Rawalpindi in space of two weeks only and the kidnapping of an important American journalist and his beheading in Pakistan ...... At least two senior officials, having first hand information about the Sunday operation at the Ghulam Hyder Shah Colony in Nawabshah said that despite three hour long heavy firing and tear gas shelling, Farooqi was not prepared to surrender and he was shot down outside the rented house when he made a desperate attempt to escape. Officials said that they were investigating if indeed it was possible for Farooqi to escape breaking the siege laid by scores of law enforcement and paramilitary troops."
Farooqi’s killing leaves important questions unanswered
PakTribune, 27 September 2004

"Farooqi was regarded as a crucial link between al Qaeda's top leaders and Pakistani militants..... Security personnel ordered Farooqi to remove his shirt as he stood at the gate to the house, recounted neighbour Wakil Rajpar. Farooqi refused and stepped toward them reciting Koranic verses, whereupon he was shot dead, Rajpar told Reuters.... Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao told a news conference in Islamabad on Monday that Farooqi had had ties with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, strikes on the United States."
Pakistan arrests over a dozen suspected militants
Reuters, 28 September 2004

"Amjad Farooqi, terrorist and alleged mastermind of the attacks on President Pervez Musharraf, was killed without any exchange of fire and was empty-handed when he was gunned down on Sunday, eyewitnesses told Daily Times in Nawabshah on Tuesday.... This reporter visited the house in which two accomplices were arrested before Farooqi was killed. Two women and three children were also in the house at the time of the incident. A security official who was witness to the incident but asked not to be named, said Farooqi was unarmed and that there had been no exchange of fire during the action, which lasted from 10am to 1pm. During these three hours the security forces kept firing in the air to warn the inmates to come out of the house, and the bullets that felled the alleged terrorist were the only ones that targeted someone.... There were no pockmarks left by bullets inside or outside. Nor did the building across the road, which houses a clinic, show traces of an exchange of gunfire."
‘Farooqi could have been taken alive’
Daily Times (Pakistan), 29 September 2004

"All accounts from Nawabshah indicate that if the Pakistani authorities had wanted they could have caught Farooqi alive, and questioned him about the role of Pakistani civilian and military officials in the various terrorist incidents of the last three years. These include the kidnapping and murder of journalist Daniel Pearl.... 'The gruesome murder of Pearl and its video filming for the world was the work of Amjad Farooqi-Khalid Sheikh Mohammad combine,' said a senior intelligence official who did not want to be identified..... The truth will now never be known. Somebody in the Pakistani military-intelligence-police establishment did not want the truth to be known. Why? Who was Farooqi? What were his links with the Pakistan army, the Inter-Services Intelligence and others in Pakistan? To which organisation did he belong?"
The curious case of Amjad Farooqi
Rediff (India), 30 September 2004

"Before they could get Farooqi alive, someone in the military-intelligence establishment would seem to have ensured that he would not be captured alive. Who is that somebody?..... One of the most mysterious aspects of the activities of the jihadi organisations in Pakistan is why Musharraf has always been reluctant to or even afraid of taking action against the HuJI."
Who wanted Amjad Farooqi dead?
Rediff (India), 1 October 2004

"Pakistan is a frontline state in the war against terrorism. Most of the leading terrorists have been arrested in Pakistan. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, once described as the CEO of al-Qaida, was arrested in Rawalpindi. Other important leaders continue to be caught in dribs and drabs every six months, including Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian, who was arrested in the Pakistani city of Gujrat last month. This is good and bad news for Islamabad's military ruler. The positive part is that General Pervez Musharraf gets to play good cop and earn Washington's pleasure to continue his dictatorship. The bad part is that eyebrows are raised as to why leading al-Qaida militants found it necessary to hide in a land run by Washington's 'key ally' in the war against terror.... public attention has been focused on five apparent assassination attempts against high-profile targets that have taken place since last December: two attacks on Gen Musharraf, and one each on the Karachi corps commander, the prime minister-designate, Shaukat Aziz, and the Baluchistan chief minister. While the regime insists these were genuine assassination attempts, their pattern suggests something different. At most, they seem to have been attempts to frighten the targets. At worst, if the cynics are to be believed, the attacks were stage-managed for external consumption.... A public commission into these attacks is needed. "
Benazir Bhutto, chairperson of the Pakistan People's party and a former prime minister of Pakistan
Without a war on poverty, we will never defeat terror
Guardian, 9 August 2004

"A group of six army officers, including two colonels, has been detained for suspected links to al-Qaeda. Officials said that one of the six, Major Adil Qudooz, was arrested for giving sanctuary to the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed."
The threat of Pakistan's suicide bombers
BBC Online, 19 November 2004

"Pakistani intelligence has named Qari Usman as one of five men arrested over the weekend in connection with the London bombings, and said he was an associate of Amjad Farooqi, who was killed by Pakistani forces last year, and was also involved in the Pearl kidnapping."
Karachi: A city of violence, murder and Islamic militancy
Belfast Telegraph, 19 July 2005

Were 'Near Miss' Attacks On Mussharaf
Used As Cover To Rub Out Pearl Trial Witnesses?

"Many Pakistani officials in their background said that capturing Farooqi alive was essential to get to the bottom of the crucial mysteries of recent years such as two attempts to kill President Musharraf in the garrison town of Rawalpindi in space of two weeks only and the kidnapping of an important American journalist [Daniel Pearl] and his beheading in Pakistan ...... At least two senior officials, having first hand information about the Sunday operation at the Ghulam Hyder Shah Colony in Nawabshah said that despite three hour long heavy firing and tear gas shelling, Farooqi was not prepared to surrender and he was shot down outside the rented house when he made a desperate attempt to escape. Officials said that they were investigating if indeed it was possible for Farooqi to escape breaking the siege laid by scores of law enforcement and paramilitary troops."
Farooqi’s killing leaves important questions unanswered
PakTribune, 27 September 2004

"Omar has been sentenced to death by a lower court but an appeal is pending in a higher court. On July 14, the hearing was adjourned for the 32nd time."
How London brought terror on itself
Asia Times, 16 July 2005

"Pakistan's Sindh High Court has indefinitely adjourned hearing of an appeal by British-born Ahmed Omar Shaikh against a death sentence in US journalist Daniel Pearl's kidnapping and murder case after the defence claimed to have obtained new evidence to prove innocence of the accused. A bench, comprising Justices Sarmad Jalal Osmany and Azizullah M. Memon which took up the long pending appeals yesterday upheld the request of Shaikh's counsel Abdul Waheed Katpar to enable his client to move an application for recording additional evidence. Shaikh was released from Srinagar prison with founder leader of the banned Islamic outfit Jaish e-Muhammad Maulana Mazoor Azhar in exchange of 150 passengers on board the Indian Airlines plane which was hijacked in Kathmandu and taken to Kandahar in 1998. He was sentenced to death by an anti-terrorism court for his alleged involvement in Pearl's murder."
Daniel Pearl's case hearing put off
Cybernoon (India), 17 March 2005

"British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Shaikh, convicted for the kidnap-slaying of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, has admitted to having met Bin Laden twice in Afghanistan, but says he is more committed to the one-eyed Taliban spiritual supremo, Mulla Omar, whom he considers 'the overall leader of all mujahideen. 'In his first-ever interview given from Adiala jail, which was perforce conducted surreptitiously, with the questionaire being smuggled in and out, Omar said he admires the 'grief' Bin Laden maintains in his heart for the 'plight of Muslims world-wide' and the sacrifices he has made, but said he doesn't necessarily agree entirely with the methods he has chosen to achieve his ends.... In the accompanying interview with Newsline, Omar admits to 'involvement' in the kidnapping of foreigners in India in 1994 for which he served time in that country, and the abduction of Wall Street Journal South-Asia bureau chief, Daniel Pearl, but adds that he 'didn't [physically] take part in the actual events.' This claim ties in with new evidence unearthed by the authorities in which it was revealed that while Omar was part of the conspiracy to kidnap Pearl - which included luring the reporter to the site of the abduction by e-mail, he was not physically present either at the time of the kidnapping, or his murder. Police insiders disclose that local authorities have arrested almost 90 per cent of the militants who took part in the abduction and slaying of Pearl, but since the former have already made a case against Shaikh Omar and four others who are charged along with him, and the new evidence, if pursued, would mean a retrial and the possible opening up of a Pandora's box, none of the men - not even those who have confessed to involvement in the crime - have been charged to date.... according to Pakistani police sources, the government believes that reopening of the case would reveal how badly Pakistan bungled the original investigation. These sources disclosed that the group of militants who have been picked up over the last one-and-a half-years - roughly a dozen men which include veteran militants Fazal Karim, Qari Asad and Imtiaz Siddiqui - were actually arrested for drug-trafficking and other crimes unrelated to Pearl's death... According to their confessional statements the detained militants have revealed that three men including senior Al-Qaeda member Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (now in custody in the US), Abdul Rahman and Nasrullah - both Kuwaiti nationals fluent in Arabic, Balochi and Persian - arrived at the scene at the behest of Saud Memon, who is believed to be Al-Qaeda's chief financier in Pakistan and who owned the house where Pearl was held and took over the operation... Police sources disclosed that senior government officials are petrified if the militants are charged they might reveal information demonstrating how the case against Shaikh Omar, whom Islamabad identified as the ringleader of Pearl's killers, was substantially spurious, since Sheikh's testimony, in which he denied direct involvement in the Pearl case has now been corroborated by the independent accounts of several of the men in custody. In fact, the police now allegedly believe that Pearl's kidnappers actually had planned to release him after receiving the ransom payment. 'Conspiring to kidnap is a heinous crime under Pakistani law and is punishable [with] life imprisonment,' says one Pakistani legal expert familiar with the case. However, Sheikh has been charged with far more serious crimes, which carry the death penalty. Police officials contend that if the government allows the group of men to testify, their evidence could not only possibly exonerate Omar of the murder, but also reveal how once Omar was arrested, the Pakistani police stopped looking for other suspects, stumbling upon the band of men now held only by accident. It is being conjectured in some quarters that the Pakistani government may even have fabricated evidence linking Omar to the killing.... Omar is presently detained in an isolation ward in Hyderabad Jail, where jail officials maintain he is being guarded round-the-clock."
The Mystery Thickens
Newsline (Pakistan), April 2005

"It is two years to the day since Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh, better known as Omar Sheikh, was sentenced to death by an anti-terrorist court in Hyderabad for the abduction and murder of Daniel Pearl. The Wall Street Journal reporter disappeared on 23 January 2002 while he was researching the story of British 'shoe-bomber' Richard Reid. On 17 May, police in Karachi discovered the journalist's decapitated body in the garden of a house in the suburbs of Pakistan's economic capital. On 15 July Omar Sheikh was sentenced to be hanged and his three accomplices to life imprisonment. Since this verdict, there have been fresh developments and it seems to us to be important that your government continues to do everything possible so that those who carried out and those who ordered the killing are identified, arrested and tried...... In connection with this appeal, Reporters Without Borders is also concerned about procedural delays. On 21 January the Sind High Court once again adjourned the appeal entered by the murderers' lawyers in December 2002. Recently, the lawyer for the appellants Fahad Naseem, Salman Saqib and Sheikh Mohammed Adeel and the prosecutor representing the state, failed to appear in court. According to several journalists following the case in Karachi, the government representative did not appear to be in any hurry to expedite the trial. Again our organisation would like to be informed of any reasons that could explain the government's unwillingness to see this appeal process go forward. In the event of an appeal trial, Reporters Without Borders asks you to intervene with the relevant authorities so that journalists can attend the trial hearings. During the first trial, the press was excluded from the proceedings. Independently of this appeal, our organisation wonders if there are to be other charges against people who have been arrested in the past few months. On 16 April 2003, Fazal Karim, one of the chief suspects in the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl, was remanded in custody for drug possession in Thatta district (Sind province). According to several sources, Karim was arrested in July 2002, by Pakistani security forces and the CIA in Karachi, at the same time as other suspects in the investigation into the killing of the Wall Street Journal reporter. According to his lawyer, police then secretly and illegally detained Karim for nearly eight months....... In October 2003, US administration officials told the Wall Street Journal that they suspected a direct responsibility on the part of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, number 3 in the terrorist organisation Al-Qaeda, who was arrested in Pakistan in March 2003. Karim apparently told Pakistani investigators that he saw the al-Qaeda leader slit the journalist's throat. This report that was carried in January by American magazine Time has not been confirmed either by the Pakistanis or the Americans. Reporters Without Borders intends to apply in the next few days to the US government, which is detaining Khalid Sheikh Mohammed secretly, to seek additional information on his implication in the murder of Daniel Pearl...... Finally, Pakistani police said on 16 April 2004 that they had arrested two further suspects in the case. Malik Tasaddaq and Nadir Khan, alias Sajjad, militants in Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, were questioned separately in Punjab province. An intelligence official quoted by Agence France-Presse, said that Tasaddaq, who was arrested in March, reportedly took photos of Daniel Pearl during his captivity. Since the conviction of Omar Sheikh and his three accomplices, at least five other suspects have been picked up in Pakistan. These successes on the part of the security forces should continue before the courts. During the Omar Sheikh trial, investigators said that seven suspects were on the run. Does this mean that there are now only two suspects still at large ? .... Last June, a news website Asia Times Online quoted Pakistani sources as saying that Farooqi had already been arrested by Karachi security forces and would be 'produced' when required. Reporters Without Borders considers that it is necessary for public opinion to know if these men, suspected of having ordered or participated in the murder of Daniel Pearl, will be accused and tried for this crime. It seems to us important that, two years after the trial, the Pakistani government should continue to work for justice to be done in the killing of the journalist. In addition, the authorities have never clarified the fate of the three suspects, who led to the body of Daniel Pearl and who apparently in 2003 made new revelations about the murder. ...... Despite serious concern about exposing Daniel Pearl's relatives and friends to the pain of a new trial, Reporters Without Borders reminds you of the demands of justice in this case. It is your duty, in collaboration with the US authorities, to identify and try all those who had any part in the murder."
Daniel Pearl : an open letter to president Pervez Musharraf
Reporters Without Borders, 15 July 2004

More Media References For Omar Sheikh, Pearl, Lt Gen Ahmed, And KSM saga - Click Here

"....the Bureau [FBI] is being asked by the State Department not to pursue certain investigations or certain people or certain targets of an investigation--simply citing 'diplomatic relations.' And what happens is, instead of targeting those people who are directly related to these illegal terrorist activities, they just let them walk free.... I have seen several, several top targets for these investigations of these terrorist activities that were allowed to leave the country -- I'm not talking about weeks, I'm talking about months after 9/11... I can tell you that there is so much involvement, that if they did let this information out, and if they were to hold real investigations--I'm not talking about this semi-investigation they're holding under this 'Joint Inquiry'--the pure show of the 9/11 Commission that has been getting the mass media's attention. If they were to do real investigations we would see several significant high level criminal prosecutions in this country..."
Sibel Edmonds Interview
Baltimore Chronicle, 7 May 2004

"This puzzles me, knowing the detailed information, I, myself, provided to the commission during a three and a half hour tape-recorded briefing; yet, finding only one footnote (footnote 25) briefly stating insufficient translation capability within the Bureau. It is highly curious that the report mentions nothing regarding the 'intentionally blocked translations by certain Middle Eastern Translators, who also breached FBI security, as confirmed by the Senate Judiciary'; nothing regarding 'adamant resistance to investigations of certain terrorist and criminal activities; refusing to transfer them to Counterterrorism from existing counterintelligence investigations, solely based on the vague notion of protecting certain foreign relations'; nothing regarding 'continued efforts to cover up certain highly specific information received prior to September 11, even now, years after 9/11,'; or nothing regarding 'knowingly allowing certain individuals, directly or indirectly related to terrorist activities, to leave the United States months after 9/11, without any interrogation, and per the State Department's request.' I am highly puzzled and curious. This puzzles me, having first hand knowledge of on going intelligence received and processed by the FBI since 1997, which contained specific information implicating certain high level government and elected officials in criminal activities directly and indirectly related to terrorist money laundering, narcotics, and illegal arms sales. It is highly curious that the report omitted all this information, knowing that others in the Congress have been briefed on these issues, having been given the names of targets involved, Special Agents, translators, field offices, and files."
'Puzzled & Curious' By Sibel Edmonds
BreakForNews.com, 23 July 2004

"Federal investigators are reexamining a recent arms smuggling case in Florida to determine whether agents of the Pakistani government tried to buy missiles and nuclear weapons components in the United States last year for use by terrorists or Pakistan's military. The original criminal case - a sting operation in which intermediaries allegedly tried to buy the weapons from [Randy Glass] a diamond thief-turned-informant for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms - attracted little public notice when arrests were made in June 2001. It resulted in a single guilty plea and the sealing of court files for another defendant..... One reason, informed sources said, was that prosecutors, in an unusual step, removed references to Pakistan from public filings because of diplomatic concerns.... "
U.S. Reopens Arms Case In Probe for Taliban Role
Washington Post, 2 August 2002

"One of the most startling developments during the investigation occurred on July 22, 1999, at the TriBeca Grill in New York where Glass, wearing a wire, met with a man referred to in court documents as Abbas, believed to be a Pakistani government agent brought in by Malik. Glass was informed that they wanted to buy a whole shipload of weapons and they said it was for bin Laden. 'At the meeting Abbas said Americans are the enemy and they will have no problem blowing up this entire restaurant because its full of Americans,' Glass said. 'As we leave the restaurant, Abbas turns and says, 'those towers (the World Trade Center) are coming down.' Despite that information, available to the government two years before the World Trade Center attack, the FBI's terrorism task force didn't appear to take the threat seriously, Glass said."
Con Man Turned Patriot Tells All
Cox News Service, 2 August 2002

"Three months before September 11th, he [Glass] reached out to Florida State Senator Ron Klein and told him about threats against national security.... Klein contacted the office of Florida Senator Bob Graham, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. According to Graham spokesperson Jill Greenberg, case worker Charlie Yonts spoke with Glass last summer, prior to September 11th, Glass claiming he had at least six conversations with the case worker. And while we've been unable to corroborate the nature of those conversations, Greenberg confirms some of that information was passed along to the Senate Intelligence Committee.... Glass says that until recently no one from any intelligence agency had contacted him."
Tip Questions
Newschannel 5, NBC TV, Florida, 7 October 2002

"... we in turn gave that information [from Mr Glass] to the appropriate intelligence agency..... The acutal operations of collection of information, interviewing possible sources, is the responsibility of the F.B.I. if it's a domestic matter or the C.I.A. if it's foreign..... I had a concern about that and a dozen other pieces of information, uh, which were emminating in the summer of 2001.... I cannot say what agency but the agency that we felt was the most appropriate for the nature of the information that he was providing."
Senator Bob Graham, Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee
Tip Questions
Newschannel 5, NBC TV, Florida, 7 October 2002

"I was surprised at the evidence that there were foreign governments involved in facilitating the activities of at least some of the terrorists in the United States. I am stunned that we have not done a better job of pursuing that to determine if other terrorists received similar support and, even more important, if the infrastructure of a foreign government assisting terrorists still exists for the current generation of terrorists who are here planning the next plots. To me that is an extremely significant issue and most of that information is classified, I think overly-classified. I believe the American people should know the extent of the challenge that we face in terms of foreign government involvement. That would motivate the government to take action."
Senator Bob Graham, Chairman of the Senate Select Committee On Intelligence
Improving Intelligence
PBS Online, 11 Dec 2002

"I think there is very compelling evidence that at least some of the terrorists were assisted not just in financing - although that was part of it - by a sovereign foreign government and that we have been derelict in our duty to track that down, make the further case, or find the evidence that would indicate that that is not true and we can look for other reasons why the terrorists were able to function so effectively 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. And, we need to have this information now because it's relevant to the threat that the people of the United States are facing today...."
Senator Bob Graham, Chairman of Senate Intelligence Committee
Public Broadcasting Service, 11 Dec 2002

"Sheikh himself appears to be one of two key figures who might be able to give first hand testimony of central relevance to these matters. The other is the former head of the Pakistani intelligence agency, the ISI, who was suddenly 'retired' in October 2001 once the Indian government and the FBI had reported their claimed discovery of Sheikh's involvement in the 911 attacks (they say that it was ISI chief General Mahmoud who instructed Sheikh to make a large money transfer to lead hijacker Mohammed Atta before the attacks. It is also now known that it was Mahmoud who was meeting with the Bush administration in Washington immediately before and during the attacks)."
The 911 Omar Sheikh Files
'Fight Smart', 2 January 2003

"'The complaints were ordered sanitized by the highest levels of government,' Glass said. The complaints were sealed, but Glass pointed out that his sentencing document June 15 listed threats against the World Trade Center and Americans. The [WTC] towers came down three months later."
Informant: Terrorists Warned Of WTC Collapse
WPBF Channel 25, 5 August 2002

"Randy Glass, the former Boca Raton con man who rubbed elbows with terrorists as a federal informant, testified Wednesday before congressional investigators looking into the terrorist attacks last year. What Glass has to say centers on his role in the probe that resulted in the West Palm Beach arrests of two men as arms brokers trying to finalize a deal to sell stinger antiaircraft missiles, nuclear components and other high-tech weaponry to terrorists linked in court documents to Osama Bin Laden. The special joint inquiry committee created by the House and Senate intelligence committees to review the events of Sept. 11 also is looking into intelligence communication breakdowns. In August 2001, just before Glass started to serve a seven-month sentence for a $6 million jewelry scam, he said he reached out to Sen. Bob Graham and U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler. He said he told staffers for both lawmakers that a Pakistani operative working for the Taliban known as R.G. Abbas made three references to imminent plans to attack the World Trade Center during the probe, which ended in June 2001. At one meeting at New York's Tribeca Grill caught on tape, Abbas pointed to the World Trade Center and said, 'Those towers are coming down,' Glass said. Glass also now says the State Department, in an effort to maintain good diplomatic relations with Pakistan, pulled the plug on the South Florida terrorist probe... Glass spent 3 1/2 hours under oath Wednesday. .... 'I told them I have specific evidence, and I can document it,' Glass said. ..... A federal prosecutor told a judge that Glass had been in contact with agents of the Taliban, the Afghan regime that protected bin Laden. "
Intelligence Panel Hears from Glass
The Palm Beach Post, 17 October 17, 2002

"I felt incredibly uncomfortable. Because I knew that something was going to happen.... I did know there was a plan of attack against the United States and that the World Trade Centre was mentioned."
Undercover FBI informant, Randy Glass,
whose warnings he says were passed onto the intelligence community three months before 911 via State and Federal Senators
Newschannel 5, NBC TV, Florida, 7 October 2002

"[Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee] Graham acknowledged at news conference in Boca Raton last month that Glass had contact with his office before Sept. 11, 2001, about an attack on the World Trade Center."
Intelligence Panel Hears from Glass
The Palm Beach Post, 17 October 2002

"U.S. Rep. Ben Gilman has called for an investigation. 'The government knows about those involved in my case who were never charged, never deported, who actively took part in bringing terrorists into our country to meet with me and undercover agents,' Glass said."
Con Man Turned Patriot Tells All
Cox News Service, 2 August 2002

"The two [Congressional] Joint Inquiry chairmen Sen Bob Graham and Rep Porter Goss were fully cognizant of the 'Pakistani ISI connection' and the role played [in financing 911] by its former head, General Mahmoud Ahmad. Why then did they choose to exclude an examination of the role of the ISI from the Joint Inquiry's 858 page Report?"
Mysterious September 11 Breakfast Meeting on Capitol Hill
Global Outlook, Winter 2003

"The [private] database is the pivotal tool in what those involved say will be the biggest class action in history: a $1 trillion lawsuit on behalf of the families of 1,431 of the people killed on 9/11 and 1,325 of the injured. More than 100 of the clients are British. Yet while investigators building up the database have received government help in 19 countries, from Afghanistan to Syria, they have had none in Britain, according to Ron Motley, the lawyer behind the action. 'We’ve had zero co-operation from the UK,' said Motley, who works from an enormous yacht named Themis after the Greek goddess of justice. 'They just don’t want to help their own citizens.'.... Motley says he has spent $18m of his own money sending investigators round the globe, more than the $15m allocated to the 9/11 Commission into the attacks. He can afford it: his firm made more than $2 billion in a class action against the tobacco industry that was initally regarded as unwinnable and eventually immortalised in the Hollywood film, The Insider. Motley took on the 9/11 case after he was approached by Deena Burnett, whose husband Thomas was on United flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers attacked the hijackers. She wanted answers that she did not believe the government would find. On the basis of what he has discovered so far, Motley argues that the World Trade Center attacks were not only preventable, as the 9/11 Commission suggested, but also entirely predictable. He said: 'I had never researched the foreseeability of someone hijacking an aeroplane and becoming a suicide bomber with the passengers as unwitting victims, but now it’s clear to me that there was a huge amount of evidence that should have forewarned the airlines and the government. I’ve got stacks of information of prior incidents..... There are literally 40 or 50 prior incidents of people hijacking planes with the intent of committing suicide.' It emerged last week that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) received repeated warnings in the months before 9/11 about Al-Qaeda’s desire to attack airlines. A previously undisclosed report by the 9/11 Commission revealed the FAA had warned that if a terrorist wanted to hijack a plane to commit suicide 'in a spectacular explosion', he would probably do so on American soil..... If a trial finally goes ahead, one of the key witnesses will be Niaz Khan, a British Pakistani whose story was reported by The Sunday Times last year. A waiter whose gambling debts led him to be sucked into Al-Qaeda, Khan was sent to hijacking school in Pakistan and then to America, where he was apparently intended to be part of the 9/11 attacks. He turned himself in to the FBI in April 2000 but was released after questioning and returned to Britain, where he remains a free man. 'Niaz is extremely important to the case,' said Motley. 'It will give a jury the opportunity to hear from a person who came to the US to take part in a hijacking and turned himself in. The failure of the British authorities to act on him when he was handed over is inexplicable.”
Breaking the Al-Qaeda Code
Sunday Times, London, 13 February 2005

"..... it is precisely the same man used by [the head of Pakistani Intelligence Services] General Mahmoud to wire money to 911 hijacker Mohammed Atta who has now been detained and tried for the murder of Pearl.....why is Sheikh still not being charged for his alleged involvement in the 911 attacks now that he is finally detained?.... the execution of Sheikh would certainly be useful in dealing with the CIA's problem of how to limit further investigation into any wider role it may have played in the events surrounding 911 via its involvement with the ISI...... In this respect the clamour from the Bush administration to spare Sheikh's life so that he can give evidence as to General Mahmoud's and his own involvement in the transfer of 911 money to Mohammed Atta is deafening by virtue of its total absence... Sheikh is a British born and educated Pakistani. He is a British Citizen. But this has not resulted in the British government securing an open trial for him....The possibility that Sheikh has been framed (certainly he is an ideal candidate given his previous involvement with militant groups) in order to engineer his execution cannot be discounted.... Given the widespread culture of deception and lying uncovered within the British Foreign Office during the Scott inquiry into the UK's illegal supply of arms to Saddam Hussein, the omens do not look good."
What Did Britain Know About 911?
'Fight Smart', 28 Aug 2002

"[Pakistan's] ISI Chief Lt-Gen. [Ahmed] Mahmoud's week-long presence [i.e. immediately before and during 9/11] 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 parleys with unspecified officials at the White House and the Pentagon....... 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."
ISI chief's parleys continue in US
The News (Pakistan), 10 September 2001

"[On 13 September 2001] Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage met with the Pakistani ambassador to the United States, Maleeha Lodhi, and the visiting head of Pakistan’s military intelligence service, Mahmud Ahmed. Armitage said that the United States wanted Pakistan to take seven steps..."
9/11 Commission Report, p331

"It was 10 a.m on September 12 , 2001, a day after the devastating terrorist attacks on New York's World Trade Center and Pentagon headquarters in Washington, when Lt. General Mahmood Ahmed, the then ISI chief, arrived at the State Department for an emergency meeting with the US Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage. The General, who was on an official visit to Washington, was to leave for home, but was left stranded, as all airports had been closed. 'General, we require your country's full support and cooperation,' Armitage told Pakistan's spy master and member of the triumvirate that ruled the country. 'We want to know whether you are with us or not, in our fight against terror,' he added. The meeting was adjourned for the next day after the General had assured Armitage of Pakistan's full support. 'We will tell you tomorrow what you are required to do,' Armitage said as they left the room.... It was 12 p.m on September 13, when General Mahmood returned to the State Department for the second meeting. 'This is not negotiable,' said Armitage, as he handed over a single sheet of paper with seven demands which Bush administration wanted him to accept. The general, who was known for his hard-line pro-Taliban position, glanced through the paper for a few seconds and replied: 'They are all acceptable to us.' The swift response took Armitage by surprise. 'These are very powerful words, General. Do you not want to discuss with your President?' he asked. 'I know the president's mind,' replied General Mahmood. A visibly elated Armitage asked General Mahmood to meet with George Tenet, the CIA chief at his headquarters at Langley. 'He is waiting for you,' said Armitage....The American demands, to which General Mahmood acceded to, in next to no time, required Pakistan to abandon its support for the Taliban regime and provide logistical support to the American forces.... Astonishingly, within a course of a week, the military government took an about-turn to become a lynchpin in the US-led military operation in Afghanistan which ousted the Taliban regime. Pakistan was back as the US's strategic partner in the region and was now involved in a new war against terrorism. Indubitably, the military government did not have any option, but the unconditional and the quick about turn surprised even the American authorities.... There was no consultation with political leaders on the paradigm shift in the strategic discourse of the nation. President Musharraf took his handpicked cabinet into confidence, almost three days after his ISI chief had already consented to the US demands.... President Musharraf was also not very happy with Mahmood's arrogant style, and for not consulting him before agreeing to Armitage's seven-point demand. 'Though the President would have given his consent, he did not like being bypassed,' maintains a senior official.... The shift in Pakistan's Afghan policy and the decision to support the United States brought huge economic and political dividends to President Musharraf's government. From a pariah state, Pakistan became the centre of focus of the international community. Never before have so many head of states travelled to Pakistan as they did, in the few weeks after September 11. Pakistan was, once more, the US's strategic partner. According to senior American sources, the US-led coalition could not have achieved its swift success in Afghanistan without the ISI's intelligence support."
A General Turn Around
Newsline (Pakistan), February 2003

"Some circles in the US see a linkage between the recent high-profile visit of Mr. Richard Armitage, US Deputy Secretary of State, to New Delhi, the unpublicised visit of Mr.George Tenet, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), to Islamabad where he had an unusually long meeting with Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the self-styled Chief Executive of Pakistan, and the surprise decision of the Government of India to invite the General to New Delhi for talks without any longer insisting on the stoppage of Pakistani support to cross-border terrorism as a pre-condition for a resumption of the bilateral dialogue at the political level. Mr. Armitage, who had spent some years of his career in the CIA/DIA and holds the highest Pakistani civil decoration that could be awarded to a foreigner for his role during the Afghan war of the 1980s, has a large circle of friends in the Pakistani military and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate."
MUSHARRAF: FROM CIA WITH LOVE?
South Asia Analysis Group, 25 May 2001

"The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) worked in tandem with Pakistan to create the 'monster' that is today Afghanistan's ruling Taliban, a leading US expert on South Asia said here. 'I warned them that we were creating a monster,' Selig Harrison from the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars said at the conference here last week on 'Terrorism and Regional Security: Managing the Challenges in Asia.' Harrison said: 'The CIA made a historic mistake in encouraging Islamic groups from all over the world to come to Afghanistan.' The US provided $3 billion for building up these Islamic groups, and it accepted Pakistan's demand that they should decide how this money should be spent, Harrison said. Harrison, who spoke before the Taliban assault on the Buddha statues was launched, told the gathering of security experts that he had meetings with CIA leaders at the time when Islamic forces were being strengthened in Afghanistan. 'They told me these people were fanatical, and the more fierce they were the more fiercely they would fight the Soviets,' he said. 'I warned them that we were creating a monster.' Harrison, who has written five books on Asian affairs and US relations with Asia, has had extensive contact with the CIA and political leaders in South Asia. Harrison was a senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace between 1974 and 1996. Harrison who is now senior fellow with The Century Foundation recalled a conversation he had with the late Gen Zia-ul Haq of Pakistan. 'Gen Zia spoke to me about expanding Pakistan's sphere of influence to control Afghanistan, then Uzbekistan and Tajikstan and then Iran and Turkey,' Harrison said. That design continues, he said. Gen.Mohammed Aziz who was involved in that Zia plan has been elevated now to a key position by Chief Executive, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Harrison said. The old associations between the intelligence agencies continue, Harrison said. 'The CIA still has close links with the ISI (Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence).' "
'CIA worked in tandem with Pak to create Taliban'
Times of India, 7 March 2001

"Pakistan's military backed the Taliban in the 1990s as a means to give Pakistan 'strategic depth' if it were attacked by India, according to Pakistani and American military analysts....'"
Some doubt Pakistani vow on Taliban
New York Times, 24 August 2004

"The attainment of 'strategic depth' has been a prime objective of Pakistan's Afghan policy since the days of General Ziaul Haq. In recent years the Taliban replaced Gulbadin Hikmatyar as the instrument of its attainment. Their latest victories, specially their capture of Mazar Sharif, the nerve centre of northern Afghanistan, brings the Pakistani quest close to fulfillment if, that is, such a thing as 'strategic depth' does exist in the real world. Unfortunately, in any meaningful way, it does not.... far from improving the tenuous notion of 'strategic depth', the Taliban's victory is likely to augment Pakistan's political and strategic predicament....Until recently, Pakistan has had good relations with Iran and China. In addition, the present decade has seen the emergence of new states in Central Asia, augmenting the number of Pakistan's potential trading partners and strategic allies..... The Soviet intervention in Afghanistan and Pakistan's support of the anti-communist Mujahideen ended Islamabad's hostile relations with Kabul, and rendered its influence dominant over Afghanistan. Pakistan has misused this gain to its detriment. Its Afghan policy -- the quest for a mirage mis-named 'strategic depth -- has deeply alienated trusty old allies while closing the door to new friendships..... Recently independent states -- Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kirghizia -- that had once looked up to Islamabad for help and guidance now regard it with apprehension.... The Taliban will certainly be assisted by Islamabad to consolidate their precarious conquests.....Afghanistan's reconstruction cost is conservatively estimated at some $40 billion. We cannot muster such amounts even for ourselves, so who will keep the Taliban in business? The strategic dreamers of Islamabad dream of dollar-laden Saudi princes, Emirate sheikhs and American oil tycoons laying trans-national pipelines from Turkmenistan to Karachi."
A mirage mis-named strategic depth
Al-Ahram Weekly On-line, 27 Aug. - 2 Sep. 1998

"....for the foreseeable future oil will remain an essential commodity. Greater attention must therefore be given to increasing supplies of oil in ways that diversify supplies from areas other than the Persian Gulf. The most promising new source of world supplies is the Caspian region, which appears to contain the largest petroleum reserves discovered since the North Sea. This geopolitical crossroad, which includes Iran, Russia, and a number of newly-independent states [i.e. the 'stans'] struggling with post-Soviet modernization and dangers of Islamic extremism, demands more attention by American policymakers."
AMERICA’S NATIONAL INTERESTS
A Report from The Commission on America’s National Interests, July 2000
Co-authored by Richard Armitage et al [pdf]
(Richard Armitage a supporter of the PNAC agenda, became deputy Secretary of State with specific responsibility for Pakistan and other Asian states in 2001)

"Under the influence of U.S. oil companies, the government of George W. Bush initially blocked U.S. secret service investigations on terrorism .... In the book 'Bin Laden, la verite interdite ('Bin Laden, the forbidden truth), that appeared in Paris on Wednesday, the authors, Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, reveal that the Federal Bureau of Investigation's deputy director John O'Neill resigned in July [2001] in protest over the obstruction.... The two claim the U.S. government's main objective in Afghanistan was to consolidate the position of the Taliban regime to obtain access to the oil and gas reserves in Central Asia. They affirm that until August, the U.S. government saw the Taliban regime 'as a source of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of an oil pipeline across Central Asia', from the rich oilfields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean. Until now, says the book, 'the oil and gas reserves of Central Asia have been controlled by Russia. The Bush government wanted to change all that'. But, confronted with Taliban's refusal to accept U.S. conditions, 'this rationale of energy security changed into a military one', the authors claim. 'At one moment during the negotiations, the U.S. representatives told the Taliban, 'either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs',' Brisard said in an interview in Paris."
U.S. Policy Towards Taliban Influenced by Oil - Say Authors
Inter Press Service, 15 November 2001

"Loftus recently received an FBI translation of a highly classified and encrypted Al Qaida document, circa 1997-1998, which was retrieved and decrypted from a computer laptop following the Embassy bombing in Africa. The document was written by Osama Bin Laden’s military commander, Mohammed Atef, under his nom de guerre, Abu Haf, and reveals extensive knowledge of the supposedly secret pipeline negotiations [in Afghanistan], and their potential economic worth to the Taliban, Pakistan and the U.S.... in January 2001, Vice President Cheney allegedly reinstated the intelligence block and expanded it to effectively preclude any investigations whatsoever of Saudi-Taliban-Afghan oil connections. Former FBI counter-terrorism chief John O’Neil resigned from the FBI in disgust, stating that he was ordered not to investigate Saudi-Al Qaida connections because of the Enron pipeline deal. Loftus has confirmed that it was O’Neill who originally discovered the AL Qaida pipeline memo after the Embassy bombings in Africa. O’Neill gave an overview of the Enron block to two French authors who will soon be publishing in the United States. The FBI is currently investigating Loftus’ links to John O’Neill, and is also refusing FBI agent Robert Wright permission to publish his own findings about the Enron block. Loftus asserts that the Enron block, which remained in force from January 2001 until August 2001 when the pipeline deal collapsed, is the reason that none of FBI agent Rowley’s requests for investigations were ever approved. As numerous British and French authors have concluded, the information provided by European intelligence sources prior to 9/11 was so extensive, that it is no longer possible for either CIA or the FBI to assert a defense of incompetence. It is time for Congress to face the truth: In order to give Enron one last desperate chance to complete the Taliban pipeline and save itself from bankruptcy, senior levels of US intelligence were ordered to keep their eyes shut and their subordinates ignorant. The Enron cover-up confirms that 9/11 was not an intelligence failure or a law enforcement failure (at least not entirely). Instead, it was a foreign policy failure of the highest order. If Congress ever combines its Enron investigation with 9/11, Cheney’s whole house of cards will collapse".
What Congress Does Not Know about Enron and 9/11
Press Release, former federal prosecutor, John Loftus, 31 May 2002

"Henry Kissinger, former US secretary of state, on Wednesday warned that the global battle for control of energy resources could become the modern equivalent of the 19th century 'great game' the conflict between the UK and Tsarist Russia for supremacy in central Asia. 'The great game is developing again,' he told a meeting of the US-India Business Council. 'The amount of energy is finite, up to now in relation to demand, and competition for access to energy can become the life and death for many societies. It would be ironic if the direction of pipelines and locations become the modern equivalent of the colonial disputes of the 19th century.' His comments come amid tensions over the building of a $4.5bn (�2.5bn) gas pipeline from Iran to India through Pakistan, which has become a critical part of the two-year India-Pakistan peace process. In March, Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state, expressed objections, reflecting concern about Tehran's development of nuclear weapons."
Kissinger warns of energy conflict
Financial Times, 1 June 2005

"In all this maneuvering from the side of Washington and 10 Downing Street, the strategic issue of geopolitical control over Eurasia looms large. And increasingly it is clear that not only Putin's Russia is an object of the new Washington 'war on tyranny'. It is becoming clear to most now that the grand design in Eurasia on the part of Washington is not to pre-empt Osama bin Laden and his 'cave dwellers'. The current Washington strategy targets many Eurasian former Soviet republics which per se have no known oil or gas reserves. What they do have, however, is strategic military or geopolitical significance for the Washington policy of dominating the future of Eurasia. That policy has China as its geopolitical, economic and military fulcrum. A look at the Eurasian map and at the target countries for various US-sponsored color revolutions makes this unmistakably clear. To the east of the Caspian Sea, Washington in one degree or another today controls Pakistan, Afghanistan, potentially Kyrgystan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. These serve as a potential US-controlled barrier or buffer zone between China and Russian, Caspian and Iranian energy sources. Washington is out to deny China easy land access to either Russia, the Middle East or to the oil and gas fields of the Caspian Sea.... The one power in Eurasia that has the potential to create a strategic combination which could checkmate US global dominance is China. However, China has an Achilles' heel, which Washington understands all too well - oil. Ten years ago China was a net oil exporter. Today China is the second-largest importer behind the US. China's energy demand is growing annually at a rate of more than 30%. China has feverishly been trying to secure long-term oil and gas supplies, especially since the Iraq war made clear to Beijing that Washington was out to control and militarize most of the world's major oil and gas sources... A close look at the map of Eurasia begins to suggest what is so vital here for China, and therefore for Washington's future domination of Eurasia. The goal is not only strategic encirclement of Russia through a series of NATO bases ranging from Camp Bond Steel in Kosovo to Poland, to Georgia, possibly Ukraine and White Russia, which would enable NATO to control energy ties between Russia and the EU. Washington policy now encompasses a series of "democratic" or soft coup projects which would strategically cut China off from access to the vital oil and gas reserves of the Caspian, including Kazakhstan. The earlier Asian Great Silk Road trade routes went through Tashkent in Uzbekistan and Almaty in Kazakhstan for geographically obvious reasons, in a region surrounded by major mountain ranges. Geopolitical control of Uzbekistan, Kyrgystan and Kazakhstan would enable control of any potential pipeline routes between China and Central Asia, just as the encirclement of Russia allows for the control of pipeline and other ties between it and Western Europe, China, India and the Mideast."
Revolution, geopolitics and pipelines
Asia Times, 30 June 2005

"Musharraf's enlistment in the war on terrorism is an extension of Pakistan's long-established willingness to be useful to the United States for the 'right price.' Pakistan's first military ruler, Gen. (later Field Marshal) Ayub Khan (who ruled from 1958 to 1969), told U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Henry Byroade as early as 1953, 'Our army can be your army if you want us.' Ever since, Pakistan's military leadership has seen its alliance with America as its meal ticket. Pakistan now receives $700 million annually in bilateral economic and military assistance, $84 million monthly to defer costs incurred in its anti-terrorist efforts and $1.7 billion in funds from international financial institutions, where U.S. support is crucial. Pakistan has also benefited from debt rescheduling and streamlining of remittances from overseas Pakistani workers. This significant cash inflow has enabled the government to balance its books, create an impression of economic growth and get back in the market for new weapons for the military. As in the past, the economic component of the U.S. aid package is aimed more at ensuring regime survival than at sustained economic growth or real democratic reform. To understand the priorities of the Musharraf regime (and the Bush administration), one need only consider that while the United States has agreed to provide $30 million for madrasa (Islamic seminary) reform and $4 million for 'training of parliamentarians,' Pakistan's military is to get $350 million of the bilateral aid package of $700 million. Pakistani madrasas -- which educate over 1 million students from ages 6 to 22 -- are believed to be a source of Islamic jihadists because of their fundamentalist curriculum, and weaning the seminaries from religious radicalism is a major U.S. policy priority. However, the regular payments to Pakistan for costs incurred in fighting terrorism on America's behalf (which add up to almost $1 billion per year) go almost exclusively into the budget for Pakistan's military and intelligence services..... [this] it conforms to the past pattern of Pakistani military regimes collecting rent from the United States for providing strategic services."
Husain Haqqani, former advisor to former Pakistani Prime Ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif,
and former Pakistan's ambassador to Sri Lanka
Subcontracting the Hunt for bin Laden
Salon.com, 17 August 2004

"India has been agonizing over the real nature of US-Pakistan relations for years. After September 11, New Delhi expected Washington to come down hard on Pakistan, known to be a hub of Islamic extremism and terrorism in the region. Instead, the US came to the rescue of what was then a clearly failing state under a blatant military dictatorship. Even after facts of Pakistani intelligence's involvement in September 11 came to light, the US has been not only forgiving but supportive to an extraordinary degree. As a result, Indian strategists are now finding it difficult to counter conspiracy theorists who continue to claim that the 'war on terrorism' is mere shadow-boxing and that September 11 had been organized by Islamabad with the help of al-Qaeda at US behest after the neo-conservatives ruling the US needed a pretext for fulfilling their imperialist agenda. There used to be few takers for such wild imaginings in India; but apparently things are changing. There are too many discrepancies and inconsistencies in official US claims that even the most incredible conspiratorial claims are beginning to gain credence."
India's US-Pakistan suspicions deepen
Asia Times, 27 January 2005

"[Pakistan's] ISI Chief Lt-Gen. [Ahmad] Mahmoud's week-long presence [immediately before 911] 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 parleys with unspecified officials at the White House and the Pentagon....... 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."
ISI chief's parleys continue in US
The News (Pakistan), 10 September 2001

"Every official we questioned about the possibility of an invasion of Afghanistan said that it was almost unthinkable, absent a provocation such as 9/11...."
THE 9/11COMMISSION REPORT, July 2004 (p 137)

"Award-winning journalist Seymour Hersh claimed in a New Yorker article, the substance of which was not refuted by Washington, that Musharraf is fully cooperating with the United States in penetrating Iranian soil ....The impact of Musharraf's involvement in US Special Forces penetration in Iran is going to be even more devastating..... Already marked for assassination by Islamic extremists, with help from elements in the army he heads, why would Musharraf put his neck even further on the chopping block? What has the ever-generous US offered him now? Can this be best explained by what veteran Indian columnist Inder Malhotra calls America's 'mammoth munificence' toward Pakistan? Or is there more to it than meets the eye? Clearly, as a major regional power, India cannot remain indifferent to what Malhotra called 'these dangerous goings on'. But what exactly are India's worries?.... Another and even more suspicious aspect of US behavior toward Pakistan is what strategic analyst G Parthasarathi, a former Indian high commissioner to Pakistan, calls 'an astonishing measure of American forbearance in dealing with a Pakistani terrorist involved in kidnapping American tourists in India, killing an American journalist in Karachi, the [September 11] attacks on New York and Washington ..... Parthasarathi is referring to Omar Sheikh Mohammad..... Sheikh was later arrested for his involvement in the murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl in Karachi and sentenced to death. Parthasarathi documents the instances of US forbearance toward this terrorist. Even though sentences of anti-terrorism courts in Pakistan are expeditiously confirmed and implemented, he says, Sheikh's appeal still lies pending.... It has now been reported by a respected Lahore-based Pakistani journalist, Amir Mir, continues Parthasarathi, that during his interrogation by US and Pakistani investigators, Sheikh revealed that he had been on the payroll of the Pakistani ISI and that the terrorist attacks on the Kashmir State Assembly building in October 2001 and the Indian parliament in December 2001 had the backing of the ISI. Amir Mir has also confirmed that Sheikh transferred a sum of $100,000 that had been provided to him by then ISI chief General Mahmood Ahmed to Mohammad Atta - the leader of the hijackers involved in the September 11 terrorist attacks. He also alleges that the United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) believes that Omar met Atta during one of his visits to Kandahar and knew of his plans for the September 11 terrorist strikes. On October 9, 2001, the Pakistani daily Dawn reported that the ISI director general, Lieutenant-General Mahmoud Ahmed, was fired after FBI investigators established a link between him and a $100,000 wire transfer to Atta in the summer of 2000. This report was also carried by the Wall Street Journal. Parthasarathi's comment: 'There does appear to be a conspiracy of silence on this score, because Syed Omar Sheikh is evidently a man who knows too much and can embarrass both the Musharraf dispensation and the Bush administration.'"
India's US-Pakistan suspicions deepen
Asia Times, 27 January 2005

"United States Secretary of State, General Collin Powell’s visit to South Asia in mid-March 2004 has proved to be as unsettling for India as his last visit in 2002..... This time around his India visit was a prelude to his Pakistan and Afghanistan visits. However the India visit was a last minute tagged on event to dilute the special focus of his pre-planned visits to Pakistan, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. General Powell did not spring any surprises in New Delhi. His was the constant refrain of support for General Musharraf and Pakistan and whitewashing Pakistan’s sins of Islamic Jehadi terrorism, linkages to 9/11 bombers and nuclear weapons proliferation..... India’s public opinion had learnt to live with this American trend and spasmodic tilts towards Pakistan. What Indians were not prepared for was the springing of his surprise in Islamabad, after leaving India, that the United States had decided to 'designate Pakistan as a major non-NATO ally' in South Asia. Also that the Bush Administration will be making a notification to this effect to the United States Congress. United States had earlier ensnared Pakistan in the last five decades into a mutual Defence Pact and as an alliance member of US-sponsored SEATO and CENTO military alliance. Pakistan was willing to be an American hand-maiden for US strategic interests. Though of strategic concern at that time, India was not overly concerned. On the contrary, such American actions stirred India into action in building a self-reliant and formidable military machine in South Asia. Similarly the United States decision to designate Pakistan as a major non-NATO American ally in South Asia would not materially affect India’s strategic postures. On the contrary India should now accelerate her strategic programmes as have been constantly advocated by this author in his papers on strategic issues. Notwithstanding the above. What is being pressed into focus by the American designation of Pakistan as a major non-NATO American ally in South Asia are a number of nagging issues and associated questions which are analysed below in fair detail..... The current American decision brings into a sharper focus the flawed policy approaches of the United States in South Asia. It refuses to learn from the bitter past of proximity in military relations with Pakistan and of propping military regimes in Pakistan at the expense of democracy in Pakistan. Let the United States remember that 9/11 would not have come about if America had not stoked Islamic Jehadi fines through a willing Pakistan in the 1990 [s].... Both United States and Pakistan suffer from strategic delusions that Pakistan could ever have strategic parity with India.....Coming close on the heels of exposure of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons proliferation to American adversaries, the United States comes out poorly in global and regional perceptions as an unprincipled nation, willing to sup with [the] devil... More importantly, Pakistan’s designation as a 'major non-NATO ally of USA' in South Asia may be a forerunner of Pakistan being made the base for the American project of an 'Asian NATO’ alliance.... The new US designation of Pakistan as a major ally of USA on par with NATO allies would absolve Pakistan from the stigma of all anti-US sins ranging from 9/11 complicity to nuclear weapons proliferation. Having done so, USA could now proceed to build Pakistan military without US Congress impediments.....No plausible imperatives exist for the American designation. When countries all over the world were expecting punitive American action against Pakistan for willful and deliberate proliferation of nuclear weapons technology to countries endangering American national security, the US Administration on the contrary, rewards Pakistan with the designation of a 'major military ally'....Imperatives for this sudden American designation could be surmised as under:

"According to a detailed report filed from Islamabad for the New York Times on Tuesday by two of its correspondents, 'Pakistan’s new spirit of cooperation has been voiced broadly across the Bush administration and has been backed up with both money and military and espionage equipment.' However, it remains a 'delicate' relationship, with Pakistan not have agreed to the direct interrogation of Dr A.Q. Khan by the United States."
Naeem Noor Khan continues to be focus of media interest
Daily Times (Pakistan), 18 August 2004

"Musharraf's enlistment in the war on terrorism is an extension of Pakistan's long-established willingness to be useful to the United States for the 'right price.' Pakistan's first military ruler, Gen. (later Field Marshal) Ayub Khan (who ruled from 1958 to 1969), told U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Henry Byroade as early as 1953, 'Our army can be your army if you want us.' Ever since, Pakistan's military leadership has seen its alliance with America as its meal ticket. Pakistan now receives $700 million annually in bilateral economic and military assistance, $84 million monthly to defer costs incurred in its anti-terrorist efforts and $1.7 billion in funds from international financial institutions, where U.S. support is crucial. Pakistan has also benefited from debt rescheduling and streamlining of remittances from overseas Pakistani workers. This significant cash inflow has enabled the government to balance its books, create an impression of economic growth and get back in the market for new weapons for the military. As in the past, the economic component of the U.S. aid package is aimed more at ensuring regime survival than at sustained economic growth or real democratic reform. To understand the priorities of the Musharraf regime (and the Bush administration), one need only consider that while the United States has agreed to provide $30 million for madrasa (Islamic seminary) reform and $4 million for 'training of parliamentarians,' Pakistan's military is to get $350 million of the bilateral aid package of $700 million. Pakistani madrasas -- which educate over 1 million students from ages 6 to 22 -- are believed to be a source of Islamic jihadists because of their fundamentalist curriculum, and weaning the seminaries from religious radicalism is a major U.S. policy priority. However, the regular payments to Pakistan for costs incurred in fighting terrorism on America's behalf (which add up to almost $1 billion per year) go almost exclusively into the budget for Pakistan's military and intelligence services..... [this] conforms to the past pattern of Pakistani military regimes collecting rent from the United States for providing strategic services."
Husain Haqqani, former advisor to former Pakistani Prime Ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif,
and former Pakistan's ambassador to Sri Lanka
Subcontracting the Hunt for bin Laden
Salon.com, 17 August 2004

"A regional alliance led by China and Russia called Tuesday for the U.S. and its coalition allies in Afghanistan to set a date for withdrawing from several states in Central Asia, reflecting growing unease at America's military presence in the region. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which groups Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, urged a deadline be set for withdrawal of the foreign forces from its member states in light of what it said was a decline in active fighting in Afghanistan. The alliance's move appeared to be an attempt to push the United States out of a region that Moscow regards as historically part of its sphere of influence and in which China seeks a dominant role because of its extensive energy resources.... Moscow's suspicion of the West has increased recently amid speculation the United States is encouraging the overthrow of Central Asia's pro-Russian authoritarian governments. Earlier Tuesday, SCO leaders accused unnamed outside forces of trying to destabilize Central Asia... Russian President Vladimir Putin said ``new regional threats are of a trans-border nature ... There are people who place orders and execute them. Our task is to find them and render them harmless and also to prevent their activity. Islam Karimov, the president of Uzbekistan, said some outside forces were joining radical Islamists 'to create instability and undermine the region economically in order to impose their own development model.'''
China, Russia Call for U.S. to Plan Exit
Associated Press, 5 July 2005

"Russia and China warned other nations Friday against attempts to dominate global affairs and interfere in the domestic issues of sovereign nations in what appeared to be a veiled expression of their irritation with U.S. policy. Presidents Vladimir Putin and Hu Jintao signed a joint declaration after two days of talks calling for a stronger United Nations role in global affairs and opposing attempts 'to impose models of social and political development from outside.' The two leaders also urged other states to renounce 'striving for monopoly and domination in international affairs and attempts to divide nations into leaders and those being led.' While the declaration did not identify any specific country, it echoed similar veiled hints by Moscow and Beijing about U.S. policy in global affairs. After decades of rivalry, Moscow and Beijing have developed what they call a strategic partnership since the 1991 Soviet collapse, pledging their adherence to a 'multipolar world,' a term that refers to their opposition to U.S. domination. China and Russia share a concern about increased U.S. influence in Central Asia since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, which led to American troop deployments in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan for operations in neighboring Afghanistan.....The Russian and Chinese militaries are due to hold their first joint maneuvers later this year — which some observers have seen as Russia's response to cooling relations with the U.S. and other Western nations. China has purchased billions of dollars worth of fighters, missiles, submarines and destroyers after the Soviet collapse, becoming the main customer for struggling Russian defense industries. Now it is eager to tap into Russian oil and gas to fuel its booming economy, and has lobbied hard for priority access over Japan to an oil pipeline carrying Siberian crude to Asian markets."
China, Russia warn of world domination
Associated Press, 1 July 2005

(Added 26/7/05)
"When you land on Khodinka military airfield in Moscow, you see a glass office tower, surrounded by a windowless three-storey fort, overlooking the runway. This glass tower houses the eyes, ears and once feared long arms of the Russian army - the Chief Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian army, known by the abbreviation GRU. During the Cold War these eyes and ears were focused on another glass and concrete fortress - the Pentagon. But now the Russian army is facing a very different threat and the GRU has found a new enemy. The GRU's new nemesis dwells in a grayish concrete office block on the outskirts of Rawalpindi, a bustling Pakistani city near Islamabad. It is the headquarters of the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan's main security service and the grand puppet master behind a host of Islamic insurgent movements all over the world: from Harakat ul-Ansar in Kashmir, Tajikistan, Bosnia, the Taliban in Afghanistan, to Shamil Basayev's forces in Chechnya. GRU's first battle with the ISI was 20 years ago. An elite team of 'spetznaz' (special purpose) commandos boarded a military transport plane on Khodinka airfield and lit an inferno 3,369 kilometres southeast of Moscow by storming the presidential palace in Kabul and assassinating Afghani President Hafezullah Amin. For all nine years and 50 days of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the ISI, teamed up with the CIA, armed, trained and sheltered different factions of Afghan mujaheddin - most of them radical Islamic groups. When the Soviets finally departed, Pakistan was left with an explosive motley of thousands of armed and zealous men with a lot of time on their hands and who knew nothing but how to fight. Sending these restless young men to die for Islamic causes in faraway lands became at once a practical necessity and a means of achieving the geopolitical objectives of Pakistani leadership: creation of a trans-Asian axis stretching from its eastern border with China through Afghanistan, the former Soviet republics of central Asia to the oil- and gas-rich shores of the Caspian Sea. To do that, Pakistan would have to control all of Afghanistan and drive out of central Asia the last remnants of Russian influence. Russia, however, has designs of its own for central Asia and has done everything in its power to create a buffer between pro-Pakistani Taliban forces and former Soviet republics of central Asia, bordering Afghanistan from the north. By some strange twist of fate, the role of this buffer fell on a man the GRU hunted unsuccessfully for nine years - Uzbek warlord Ahmed Shah Massoud, whose forces now control a narrow strip of land along Afghanistan's northern frontier with Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. If it weren't for the military help Shah Massoud is getting from Russian forces stationed in Tajikistan, he would have never survived the Taliban onslaught. To stop the flow of arms to Ahmed Shah Massoud, Pakistanis needed a diversion that would have forced Russians to switch their attention and resources away from central Asia. That diversion soon presented itself in the form of a brewing conflict between Moscow and its rebel Autonomous Republic of Chechnya, which wanted full independence from Russia. It was a perfect opportunity for the Pakistani intelligence. In 1994, Shamil Basayev, a young Chechen field commander, who a year earlier had distinguished himself in Abkhazia - a breakaway republic of the former Soviet Georgia - caught the attention of Pakistani intelligence stationed in the neighbouring oil-rich Azerbaijan, where about 1,500 Afghan mujaheddin under the command of Pakistani officers were fighting Armenians to reclaim for Azeris the rebel Armenian enclave of Nagorno Karabakh. In April 1994, the Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence arranged for Basayev and his trusted lieutenants to undergo intensive Islamic indoctrination and training in guerrilla warfare in the Khost province of Afghanistan at Amir Muawia camp, set up in the early 1980s by the CIA and ISI and run by famous Afghani warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. In July 1994, upon graduating from Amir Muawia, Basayev was transfered to Markaz-i-Dawar camp in Pakistan to undergo training in advanced guerrilla tactics. In Pakistan, Basayev met the highest ranking Pakistani military and intelligence officers: Minister of Defence General Aftab Shahban Mirani, Minister of Interior General Naserullah Babar, and the head of the ISI branch in charge of supporting Islamic causes, General Javed Ashraf, (all now retired). High-level connections soon proved very useful to Basayev. That same summer, the Pakistan-backed Taliban offensive against the government of the Iranian- backed president of Afghanistan, Burhanuddin Rabbani (later expelled), threatened to cut the Chechen drug trade. The Taliban had taken Amir Muawia and other Khost-area camps, disrupting plans to train hundreds of Chechen fighters there. After personal intervention of General Babar, Taliban and government forces allowed shipments of Chechen drugs through their lines while they were slitting each other's throats. The training of Chechen fighters also went as scheduled in Khost-area camps now controlled by one of the largest Kashmiri terrorist groups, the Harkat ul-Ansar. Pakistani intelligence also sent experienced and battle-hardened officers to train Chechen fighters on site. One of the most prominent Pakistani nationals is Abu Abdulla Jafa, who along with Basayev and Jordanian-born Afghan veteran Khattab (he goes by the one name) has organized a 'terrorist academy' in Chechnya, according to U.S. and Russian sources. Russians also suspect that Abu Abdulla Jafa is a career officer of Pakistan's elite Northern Light Infantry Brigade, and the tactical mastermind behind Basayev's August invasions into Dagestan. Russian security services also suspect that Pakistan supplies Chechens with deadly shoulder-launched Stinger anti-aircraft missiles - leftovers of the Afghan war. Meeting in Mogadishu The Russian air force has already lost at least three SU-25 ground attack planes and a half dozen helicopters to Stingers. But Pakistan's involvement in the Chechen conflict goes far beyond supplying Chechens with weapons and expertise: the ISI and its radical Islamic proxies are actually calling the shots in this war. According to a renowned terrorism expert, Yossef Bodansky, director of the U.S. Congress's Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, the master plan for the latest flare-up in Kashmir and in the Caucuses was prepared in August and September 1996, during a secret summit of HizbAllah International in Mogadishu, Somalia. The summit, according to U.S. anti- terrorism experts, was attended by now infamous Osama bin Ladin and high- ranking Iranian and Pakistani intelligence officers. Pakistani ISI General Javed Ashraf was charged with organizing the logistics of transporting Afghan mudjahedeen and Chechen fighters and their weapons from training camps in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan and Lebanon. Saudi terrorist-billionaire bin Ladin undertook the financing of the whole operation. Russian intelligence analysts estimate that the current campaign in Chechnya and Dagestan has cost bin Ladin $25 million. That is one of the reasons that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has so far refused to negotiate with Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov: he knows that the decision to stop fighting is not in the hands of Maskhadov, who one day vows to hand in Basayev and Khattab, but the next day appoints him commander of the eastern front. Russian officials are certain that for the war to stop in Chechnya, the decision must be taken in the gray building in Rawalpindi, by the new military government of General Pervaiz Musharraf."
Who's calling the shots?: Chechen conflict finds Islamic roots in Afghanistan and Pakistan
The Gazette (Montreal), 26 October 1999

"The London bombings have thrown the terror spotlight back on Pakistan.....Thousands of [jihadi] camps and hideouts were set up in Pakistan, sanctioned by Islamist dictator Zia-ul Hag and backed by the US Central Intelligence Agency and the military to train Islamic warriors to fight the Russians. 'This is the legacy of West-sponsored jihad against the Soviets and we are paying the price for having patronised jihad as a state policy for quarter of a century,' a senior police official involved in the anti-terror campaign told AFP."
'Pakistan connection' under scrutiny after London attacks
China Daily, 15 July 2005

"Between 20,000 to 30,000 Muslim militants, [President Mussaraf] said, flocked to Pakistan from all over the world during the US-backed war against the Soviets.... He said all their finances and logistics were routed through Pakistan."
Musharraf looks two ways in extremist fight
BBC Online, 21 July 2005

"... in the [Pakistan] Senate, MMA leader Maulana Samiul Haq stated that many religious leaders had contacts with people now considered terrorists, but these contacts went back to the Afghan war against the Soviet Union and did not mean that the religious leaders and the seminaries were actually supporting terrorist activities now. He stated that the Taliban were created by the CIA and the ISI, after which Pakistani religious elements developed their links with them....The MMA denies the existence of Al Qaeda, denies the participation of the old jihadi organisations in acts of terrorism and often links terrorism in Pakistan to a 'foreign conspiracy against Islam hatched by the United States'.....Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat was recently embarrassed when challenged by the Jamaat-e-Islami to prove that its members were involved in providing shelter to members of Al Qaeda. He refused a debate on the subject in the National Assembly after going public with his accusations...... A number of leaders like Imran Khan also echo the popular view when they say that President Musharraf is arresting and killing his own people at the behest of the United States and his policies are not in the interest of national security...... There is also a kind of policy ambivalence in the presidency about the jihadi organisations....... the president himself seems to be ‘postponing’ their final dispersal till India has agreed to a negotiated solution of the Kashmir dispute.... There is evidence on ground, too, that some of the jihadi leaders are being treated very well despite their persistently anti-government statements ......."
Dangerous moments for endgame
Daily Times (Pakistan), 25 August 2004

"The Dutch government has released a report that details the alliance between the United States and the Islamic effort to help Bosnian Muslims. The report determined that the United States provided a green light to groups on the State Department list of terrorist organizations to operate in Bosnia. ....... For the European Union, the U.S. effort marks a stain that calls into question Washington's war on terrorism. ...... The insurgents were allowed to bring weapons and explosives to Bosnia-Herzegovina and fight Serbs and their allies. The insurgents also were allowed to move further east to Kosovo ....... In short, the Clinton administration thought that the stronger the Muslims in Bosnia, the weaker the Serbian hold over Yugoslavia. Today, there are tens of thousands of Islamic insurgents throughout such countries as Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo, and many of them are moving west to Austria, Hungary, Germany and Switzerland. "
U.S. gave green light to terrorists in Bosnia
WorldNetDaily, 24 April 2002

"...the Clinton Administration's [illegal] policy of facilitating the delivery of arms to the Bosnian Muslims made it the de facto partner of an ongoing international network of governments and organizations pursuing their own agenda in Bosnia: the promotion of Islamic revolution in Europe. That network involves not only Iran but Brunei, Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan (a key ally of Iran), and Turkey, together with front groups supposedly pursuing humanitarian and cultural activities.... [one group] is believed to be connected with such fixtures of the Islamic terror network as Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman (the convicted mastermind behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing) and Osama Binladen, a wealthy Saudi emigre believed to bankroll numerous militant groups."
Clinton-Approved Iranian Arms Transfers Help Turn Bosnia into Militant Islamic Base
Congressional Press Release, US Congress, 16 January 1997

"[Bosnian Muslim leader] Izetbegovic travels to Pakistan to rally Muslim support for Bosnia....Izetbegovic, in Pakistan, appeals for aid from world’s Muslims.... the first three countries Izetbegovic visited after being inaugurated as president were Libya, Iran and Turkey. During a trip to Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey in July 1991, he conveyed the impression that he was looking to conclude an Islamic alliance... From June 1992 so-called mujahedin or ‘holy warriors’ from Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Algeria, Turkey, Bahrein and Qatar fought on the Muslim side in the war in Bosnia. There were only a few hundred of them fighting in the war but, more importantly, their involvement had the blessing of Izetbegovic... the supply of weapons from particularly Pakistan and Iran to Bosnia was not by sea, but mainly by air..... The so-called Air Operations Coordination Center in Sarajevo was manned by personnel from NATO.... Requests for Close Air Support .....went to the Operational section ... in Tuzla. This section consisted almost entirely of Pakistanis.... the officer in charge of operations (the G-3) of Sector North East, [was] the Pakistani Lieutenant-Colonel Rachid Sadiki... As Sarajevo was very much aware of its dependence on Croatia, Izetbegovic visited Teheran again on 14 September 1993 to deepen the defence relationship.... eanwhile Holbrooke was becoming increasingly frustrated that the [illegal arms] Croatian pipeline [to Bosnia] was not progressing well. .... Holbrooke therefore proposed to deliver arms and ammunition to the ABiH [Bosnian Muslim army] via third party countries. Lake, who had always welcomed such covert operations, nonetheless found the plan 'too risky'. The Secretary of State, Christopher, shared this view. They did support ‘lift and strike’ but not ‘lift, arm and strike’. Holbrooke's proposals did lead to a debate within the administration. Clinton and State Department officials considered supplies via Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan. This was not new: in the 1980s, Saudi Arabia had already supplied arms worth $ 500 million via the CIA to the Mujahedin fighters in Afghanistan..... A number of countries are candidates for having supplied directly to Bosnia. Pakistan delivered equipment, as did the Sultan of Brunei, who paid for anti-tank missiles from Malaysia. In January 1993 already, a Pakistani vessel with ten containers of arms, which were destined for the ABiH, was intercepted in the Adriatic Sea. Pakistan definitely defied the United Nations ban on supply of arms to the Bosnian Muslims and sophisticated anti-tank guided missiles were air lifted by the Pakistani intelligence agency, ISI, to help Bosnians fight the Serbs, an ex-ISI Chief has officially admitted in a written petition submitted before a court in Lahore. The document was submitted by Lt. General (Retd) Javed Nasir, who was head of the ISI from March 1992 to May 1993, in a case he filed against the owner and editors of the largest newspaper and TV group of Pakistan, in an anti Terrorism Court. It remains unclear how the missiles were transported to Bosnia and who did it.... As early as 1992 Iran had opened a smuggling route to Bosnia with the assistance of Turkey; this was two years before the Clinton administration gave 'permission' for creating the [illegal arms] Croatian pipeline. Bosnian government officials acknowledged that in 1993 a Turkish pipeline also existed, through which the above-mentioned arms from Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Brunei and Pakistan were smuggled..... NATO officers stated in a British daily newspaper that if the American intelligence services used a cover, 'Turkey would be the obvious choice'. The Turkish air force had C-130s that could reach Tuzla. This was otherwise also true of the Iranian and Pakistani air forces, which were also mentioned as possible third-party countries for supplies via Turkey to Tuzla. The UK Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) was also aware of the American secret arms supplies to the ABiH. According to a British intelligence official, the DIS never made an issue of them, so as not to further damage the sensitive relationship with the US services. An internal DIS analysis concluded that the arms were delivered via 'a different network', and that the entire operation was probably led by the NSC [the US President's National Security Council]. It was stressed that the CIA and DIA were not involved in the Black Flights to Tuzla. Incidentally, the DIS received a direct order from the British government not to investigate this affair. This was not permitted for the simple reason that the matter was too sensitive in the framework of American-British relations.... The Pentagon had likewise identified Cengic as the main link between the supplies from Islamic countries, such as Iran, Turkey and Pakistan.... The conclusion must be that the United States 'turned a blind eye' to the Croatian pipeline, but in the case of the Black Flights to Tuzla Air Base, they deliberately closed their 'eyes' (of the AWAC aircraft) for the direct Turkish flights. US aircraft did not themselves fly to Tuzla, because their discovery would have seriously embarrassed the US government and put transatlantic relations under even greater pressure. Supplies via a third party country were a simpler solution for the United States."
Srebrenica - A Safe Area?
Report Published on Behalf of The Dutch Government, 10 April 2002

"These covert air drops began at the start of 1995.... former UN Commander in Bosnia General Sir Michael Rose was aware that the Americans were secretly bugging his office.....Europe feels it can no longer rely on the US in times of crisis.... there can be no doubt that its origins can be traced back to the results of American mendacity and covert operations during the conflict in Bosnia."
Allies and lies
BBC Online, 22 June 2001

HOT - READ FULL TRANSCRIPT OF 'ALLIES AND LIES' - CLICK HERE - HOT
US Backed Islamic Terrorism In The Balkans - Click Here

(Addendum 24 July 2005)
"Pearl 's kidnapping and murder was orchestrated by Omar Sheikh, a British citizen of Pakistani origin, who had studied for some time in the London School of Economics. He discontinued his studies and joined the HUA during the war in Bosnia , where the HUA had sent a contingent to help the Bosnian Muslims in their fight against the Serbs. This contingent was sent by the Government of Mrs.Benazir Bhutto, who was then the Prime Minister, at the request of the Clinton Administration. The contingent, which was raised and got trained by Lt.Gen.(retd) Hamid Gul, former Director-General of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), who himself used to visit Bosnia, had a large number of British Muslims of Pakistani origin. According to reliable estimates, about 200 Muslims of Pakistani origin living in the UK went to Pakistan , got trained in the camps of the HUA and joined the HUA's contingent in Bosnia with the full knowledge and complicity of the British and American intelligence agencies. These intelligence agencies raised a large corps of jihadi terrorists of Arab origin to help the Afghan Mujahideen in their jihad against the Soviet troops. They similarly raised a large corps of jihadi terrorists to help the Bosnian Mujahideen in their fight against the Serbs. By then, the Arabs of Afghan vintage had already started creating mayhem across the world after the end of the Afghan jihad., So, these agencies wanted to avoid the use of the Arabs in Bosnia . They turned to Pakistanis, particularly Pakistanis living in the UK and other countries of West Europe . Thus began the radicalisation of the Muslim youth of Pakistani origin living in West Europe ."
DANIEL PEARL & THE LONDON BLASTS
South Asia Analysis Group, 15 July 2005

(Addendum 24 July 2005)
"The Dutch government has released a report that details the alliance between the United States and the Islamic effort to help Bosnian Muslims. The report determined that the United States provided a green light to groups on the State Department list of terrorist organizations to operate in Bosnia. This included the Lebanese-based Hezbollah. For the European Union, the U.S. effort marks a stain that calls into question Washington's war on terrorism. For nearly a decade, the Clinton administration helped Islamic insurgents aligned with Chechnya, Iran and Saudi Arabia destabilize the former Yugoslavia. The insurgents were allowed to bring weapons and explosives to Bosnia-Herzegovina and fight Serbs and their allies. The insurgents also were allowed to move further east to Kosovo. The United States was helped by a range of Muslim countries – from Iran and Saudi Arabia to Turkey. In short, the Clinton administration thought that the stronger the Muslims in Bosnia, the weaker the Serbian hold over Yugoslavia. Today, there are tens of thousands of Islamic insurgents throughout such countries as Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo, and many of them are moving west to Austria, Hungary, Germany and Switzerland. The U.S. Defense Department, which helped run the Islamic weapons smuggling operation in Bosnia, now faces a huge blowback problem as many Hezbollah operatives have moved to greener pastures in Western Europe. Over the last decade, Islamic extremism has increased its strength in such countries as Britain, France, Germany and Sweden to the point where their foreign policy is hampered. The Islamic blowback is believed to be vast."
U.S. gave green light to terrorists in Bosnia
WorldNetDaily, 24 April 2002

"Award-winning journalist Seymour Hersh claimed in a New Yorker article, the substance of which was not refuted by Washington, that Musharraf is fully cooperating with the United States in penetrating Iranian soil ....The impact of Musharraf's involvement in US Special Forces penetration in Iran is going to be even more devastating..... Already marked for assassination by Islamic extremists, with help from elements in the army he heads, why would Musharraf put his neck even further on the chopping block? What has the ever-generous US offered him now? Can this be best explained by what veteran Indian columnist Inder Malhotra calls America's 'mammoth munificence' toward Pakistan? Or is there more to it than meets the eye? Clearly, as a major regional power, India cannot remain indifferent to what Malhotra called 'these dangerous goings on'. But what exactly are India's worries?.... Another and even more suspicious aspect of US behavior toward Pakistan is what strategic analyst G Parthasarathi, a former Indian high commissioner to Pakistan, calls 'an astonishing measure of American forbearance in dealing with a Pakistani terrorist involved in kidnapping American tourists in India, killing an American journalist in Karachi, the [September 11] attacks on New York and Washington ..... Parthasarathi is referring to Omar Sheikh Mohammad..... Sheikh was later arrested for his involvement in the murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl in Karachi and sentenced to death. Parthasarathi documents the instances of US forbearance toward this terrorist. Even though sentences of anti-terrorism courts in Pakistan are expeditiously confirmed and implemented, he says, Sheikh's appeal still lies pending.... It has now been reported by a respected Lahore-based Pakistani journalist, Amir Mir, continues Parthasarathi, that during his interrogation by US and Pakistani investigators, Sheikh revealed that he had been on the payroll of the Pakistani ISI and that the terrorist attacks on the Kashmir State Assembly building in October 2001 and the Indian parliament in December 2001 had the backing of the ISI. Amir Mir has also confirmed that Sheikh transferred a sum of $100,000 that had been provided to him by then ISI chief General Mahmood Ahmed to Mohammad Atta - the leader of the hijackers involved in the September 11 terrorist attacks. He also alleges that the United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) believes that Omar met Atta during one of his visits to Kandahar and knew of his plans for the September 11 terrorist strikes. On October 9, 2001, the Pakistani daily Dawn reported that the ISI director general, Lieutenant-General Mahmoud Ahmed, was fired after FBI investigators established a link between him and a $100,000 wire transfer to Atta in the summer of 2000. This report was also carried by the Wall Street Journal. Parthasarathi's comment: 'There does appear to be a conspiracy of silence on this score, because Syed Omar Sheikh is evidently a man who knows too much and can embarrass both the Musharraf dispensation and the Bush administration.'"
India's US-Pakistan suspicions deepen
Asia Times, 27 January 2005

"The Pentagon is considering a massive covert action program to overthrow Iran's ruling ayatollahs... The proposal, sources say, includes ... backing armed Iranian dissidents and employing the services of the Mujahedeen e Khalq [People’s Mujahidin], a group currently branded as terrorist by the United States..."
The Iran Debate
ABC News, 29 May 2003

"The People’s Mujahidin is seen by Washington as a possible instrument for 'regime change' in Tehran....The Marxist movement, which initially supported the Islamic revolution and then broke with the fundamentalist regime, was formally designated last year as 'terrorist' by the State Department and the EU but it is known to have links with the CIA and other US agencies."
France rounds up US-linked Iranian exiles
London Times, 16 June 2003

".... It is bitter irony that the CIA is using a group still labelled as a terrorist organisation, a group trained in the art of explosive assassination by the same intelligence units of the former regime of Saddam Hussein, who are slaughtering American soldiers in Iraq today, to carry out remote bombings in Iran of the sort that the Bush administration condemns on a daily basis inside Iraq. ... [these actions are] exposing as utter hypocrisy the entire underlying notions governing the ongoing global war on terror... history will show that the US-led war with Iran will not have begun once a similar formal statement is offered by the Bush administration, but, rather, had already been under way since June 2005, when the CIA began its programme of MEK-executed terror bombings in Iran."
'The US War With Iran Has Already Begun'
Scott Ritter, 19 June 2005

Outcome Of 9/11 Report Decided
Even Before Commission Had Finished Taking Evidence
"The commission's vice chairman, Democrat Lee Hamilton, told NBC television: 'The more I look at it, the more I see kind of system wide problems, rather than individual responsibility.'"
Commission criticizes US agencies' for 9/11
AFP, 4 April 2004

"I think there is very compelling evidence that at least some of the terrorists were assisted not just in financing -- although that was part of it -- by a sovereign foreign government and that we have been derelict in our duty to track that down, make the further case, or find the evidence that would indicate that that is not true and we can look for other reasons why the terrorists were able to function so effectively 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. And, we need to have this information now because it's relevant to the threat that the people of the United States are facing today.... I do not believe we got the full cooperation that we needed. As an example, as of today there are 13 requests outstanding with the FBI alone for additional information which would help us follow the trail -- including the trail of foreign government involvement. That agency and others have been reticent to come forward."
Senator Bob Graham, Chairman of the Senate Select Committee On Intelligence
Improving Intelligence
PBS Online, 11 Dec 2002

"Republicans handpicked by Cheney also dominate the 9/11 Commission, which is supposed to issue its report by July 26. Although commission chair, Thomas Kean and vice-chair Lee Hamilton have sought to appear nonpartisan, they have already caved in to White House pressure to alter the findings of commission staff. At stake was no less an issue than whether the vice president usurped Bush's power as commander-in-chief in ordering the shoot-down of suspicious airliners on Sept. 11, 2001. The staff found no hard evidence to support Cheney's claim that he called Bush and got his authorization. According to Newsweek, 'some staffers flat out didn't believe a call ever took place,' and an early staff draft reflected deep skepticism. The White House lobbied vigorously to change the offending passage, with spokesman Dan Bartlett insisting, 'We didn't think it was written in a way that clearly reflected the accounting the president and vice president had given to the commission.' Kean and Hamilton backed down and removed some of the offending language. 'The report was watered down,' one staffer admitted to Newsweek."
Ray McGovern, CIA analyst for 27 years, and co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Cheney's Cats Paw - Porter Goss as CIA Director?
CounterPunch, 6 July 2002

"The Bush administration had long delayed agreeing to legislation on the 911 inquiry until it could be sure of finding a chairman whom it could rely upon not to dig too deep. But now [Henry] Kissinger has himself suddenly resigned, throwing the Bush 911 cover-up strategy into disarray - at least for the moment..... The replacement that has already been secured for the Vice Chair of the [911] Commission - Lee Hamilton - is a Democrat previously accused of participating in inquiry cover-ups of alleged wrongdoings by Bush's father during the Reagan era (ominously the official records of previous Presidents have now been subjected to an Executive Order by Bush junior restricting public access to them). The earlier Bush related inquiries in which Hamilton was involved concern the 'October Surprise' and 'Iran-Contra' scandals. And Cheney was in there too - according to the reporter who broke parts of the Iran-Contra story through Newsweek and Associated Press. In a more recent analysis entitled 'Covering Up Iran-Contra' (Consortium News, 5 November 2000 ) he comments on Hamilton's and Cheney's role in that investigation as follows: 'A senior committee source said one of Cheney's top priorities was to block Democrats from deposing Vice President Bush about his Iran-contra knowledge....... Despite surrendering to Cheney's demands time and again, Hamilton failed, in the end, to get a single House Republican to sign the final report. Only three moderate Republicans on the Senate side - dash Warren Rudman, William Cohen and Paul Trible - agreed to sign the report, after extracting more concessions. Cheney and the other Republicans submitted a minority report that denied that any significant wrongdoing had occurred.... The watered-down Iran-contra majority report essentially let Vice President Bush off the hook. Bush's political career was saved..... [and in] 1989, Cheney became Bush's defense secretary. ' In the case of the 'October Surprise' hearings, one senior White House correspondent pointed out at the time that 'Hamilton held a press conference to clear Bush before the investigation into the deal between the Reagan-Bush candidates for presidential office and the Iranians, had even started.' Despite his Democrat background Hamilton's closeness to the Bush Administration is clear. A PTI newswire 21 December 2000 states: 'According to Republican sources, former Democratic Congressman Lee Hamilton's nomination as either Ambassador to the UN or as CIA director is also being considered (by the new Bush Administration)'. Hamilton also holds Central Intelligence Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency awards."
911 Cover-Up Wobbles
'Fight Smart', 15 December 2002

"As the Sept. 11 commission released its final report, a retired CIA analyst criticized the panel for failing to investigate how President Bush reacted to intelligence warnings that al-Qaida was planning an attack on the United States. Ray McGovern, a 27-year CIA veteran, reacted to the commission report as a participant in a news conference called by an advocacy group -- the 9/11 CitizensWatch. McGovern and the group complained that the commission was rife with conflicts of interest, lacked funding and was rushed to an early deadline by the Bush administration. The White House originally rejected calls for the creation of the commission and then sought to limits its scope and duration. The commission's greatest flaw, McGovern said, was its failure to explore what Bush did with the 'copious warnings' from U.S. intelligence agencies that al-Qaida was planning to attack the United States. McGovern said the conflicts of interest in the commission's structure included the fact that the commission's executive director, Philip Zelikow, had once worked for national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. Zelikow also had served as the White House transition chief on intelligence matters when the new administration was preparing to take office in 2001. The group also noted that Jamie Gorelick, a commission member, had served as a high Justice Department official in the Clinton administration and played a role in defining the relationship between the intelligence and law enforcement functions of the FBI."
Panel chided over Bush role
Hearst Newspapers, 23 July 2004

Open Letter To Chairman of 911 Commission
Former FBI Translator Edmonds Alleges Cover-Up

"The translation of our intelligence is being entrusted to individuals with loyalties to our enemies. Important 'chit-chats' and 'chatters' are being intentionally blocked. Why did your report choose to exclude this information and these serious issues despite the evidence and briefings you received? .... Over three years ago, more than four months prior to the September 11 terrorist attacks, in April 2001, a long-term FBI informant/asset who had been providing the bureau with information since 1990, provided two FBI agents and a translator with specific information regarding a terrorist attack being planned by Osama Bin Laden. This asset/informant was previously a high-level intelligence officer in Iran in charge of intelligence from Afghanistan. Through his contacts in Afghanistan he received information that: 1) Osama Bin Laden was planning a major terrorist attack in the United States targeting 4-5 major cities, 2) the attack was going to involve airplanes, 3) some of the individuals in charge of carrying out this attack were already in place in the United States, 4) the attack was going to be carried out soon, in a few months. The agents who received this information reported it to their superior, Special Agent in Charge of Counterterrorism, Thomas Frields, at the FBI Washington Field Office, by filing '302' forms, and the translator translated and documented this information. No action was taken by the Special Agent in Charge, and after 9/11 the agents and the translators were told to 'keep quiet' regarding this issue. The translator who was present during the session with the FBI informant, Mr. Behrooz Sarshar, reported this incident to Director Mueller in writing, and later to the Department of Justice Inspector General....After almost three years since September 11, many officials still refuse to admit to having specific information regarding the terrorists' plans to attack the United States..... After almost three years since September 11, many officials still refuse to admit to having specific information regarding the terrorists' plans to attack the United States. The Phoenix Memo, received months prior to the 9/11 attacks, specifically warned FBI HQ of pilot training and their possible link to terrorist activities against the United States. Four months prior to the terrorist attacks the Iranian asset provided the FBI with specific information regarding the 'use of airplanes', 'major US cities as targets', and 'Osama Bin Laden issuing the order.' Coleen Rowley likewise reported that specific information had been provided to FBI HQ. All this information went to the same place: FBI Headquarters in Washington, DC, and the FBI Washington Field Office, in Washington DC. Yet, your report claims that not having a central place where all intelligence could be gathered as one of the main factors in our intelligence failure. Why did your report choose to exclude the information regarding the Iranian asset and Behrooz Sarshar from its timeline of missed opportunities?... To this date the public has not been told of intentional blocking of intelligence, and has not been told that certain information, despite its direct links, impacts and ties to terrorist related activities, is not given to or shared with Counterterrorism units, their investigations, and countering terrorism related activities. This was the case prior to 9/11, and remains in effect after 9/11. If Counterintelligence receives information that contains money laundering, illegal arms sale, and illegal drug activities, directly linked to terrorist activities; and if that information involves certain nations, certain semi-legit organizations, and ties to certain lucrative or political relations in this country, then, that information is not shared with Counterterrorism, regardless of the possible severe consequences. In certain cases, frustrated FBI agents cited 'direct pressure by the State Department,' and in other cases 'sensitive diplomatic relations' is cited......After almost three years the American people still do not know that thousands of lives can be jeopardized under the unspoken policy of 'protecting certain foreign business relations.' The victims family members still do not realize that information and answers they have sought relentlessly for over two years has been blocked due to the unspoken decisions made and disguised under 'safeguarding certain diplomatic relations.' Your report did not even attempt to address these unspoken practices, although, unlike me, you were not placed under any gag. Your hearings did not include questions regarding these unspoken and unwritten policies and practices. Despite your full awareness and understanding of certain criminal conduct that connects to certain terrorist related activities, committed by certain U.S. officials and high-level government employees, you have not proposed criminal investigations into this conduct, although under the laws of this country you are required to do so..... As you are fully aware, these issues and incidents were found confirmed by a Senior Republican Senator, Charles Grassley, and a Senior Democrat Senator, Patrick Leahy. As you know, according to officials with direct knowledge of the Department of Justice Inspector General's report on my allegations, 'none of my allegations were disproved.' As you are fully aware, even FBI officials 'confirmed all my allegations and denied none' during their unclassified meetings with the Senate Judiciary staff over two years ago. However, neither your commission's hearings, nor your commission's five hundred sixty seven-page report, nor your recommendations include these serious issues, major incidents, and systemic problems. Your report's coverage of FBI translation problems consists of a brief microscopic footnote (Footnote #25)."
Open Letter To Thomas Kean - Chairman Of The 9/11 Commission
From FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds
Reproduced by Asia Times, 5 August 2004

"The CIA inspector general has written a blistering critique of senior CIA officials' performance before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks..... The document singles out a dozen senior officials by title, not name, including former CIA director George J. Tenet ..... The inspector general recommends that CIA Director Porter J. Goss convene an accountability panel to examine the appropriateness of disciplinary action...... Officials aware of Goss's thinking, however, believe that neither he nor the administration is inclined to take any steps against individuals. President Bush awarded Tenet the Medal of Freedom last month. Goss 'wants to tamp this down,' said one person knowledgeable about the debate..... Besides raising the budget issue, the report criticizes the [CIA] directorate of intelligence, which is responsible for analyzing threats, for lacking a comprehensive understanding of Osama bin Laden or his deputies. The directorate, for example, never produced a major study of Sept.11 plotter Khalid Sheik Mohammed."
CIA Leaders Criticized on Pre-9/11 Actions
Washington Post, 8 January 2005

"[Goss] opposed creation of the independent 9/11 Commission whose recommendations he will now be asked to implement. He's a Bush ally whom Vice President Cheney pressured out of a 2002 retirement so he could continue to chair the Intelligence Committee after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks."
CIA nominee was publisher, resort island mayor
USA Today, 10 August 2004

"[Porter] Goss, the man picked by President Bush to head the CIA [following the resignation of George Tenet], was having breakfast with former ISI chief Gen Mahmud Ahmad as the Sept 11 attacks unfolded, says information released by US intelligence officials. Mr Goss, when asked to comment on the meeting, said he was not discussing Osama bin Laden or terrorism with Gen Mahmud Ahmed, but India-Pakistan relations.... Reports in the US media suggest that he was looking after CIA interests in Greece when Greek colonels staged a coup in 1967 and established a brutal regime. Mr. Goss, who studied Greek at Yale, was fluent in this language as well. Goss left the CIA in 1971 after suffering a debilitating infection that left him unable to continue clandestine overseas work.... As chairman of the committee, Mr. Goss won the respect and admiration of America's intelligence community for his efforts to protect them from too much congressional interference. He also co-chaired the joint congressional investigation into the 9/11 attacks. In the course of this probe, Mr. Goss sought a Justice Department investigation of his own joint committee, after a leak to the media of some information supplied to the committee by the Bush administration. The report issued by the congressional joint committee was rejected by the families of victims of the 9/11 attacks who successfully lobbied for the appointment of an independent panel in 2002. Mr. Goss opposed the new panel, until the Bush administration agreed to accept it."
CIA's new boss met former ISI chief on 9/11: officials
Dawn (Pakistan), 14 August 2004

"One can only wish good luck to the new nominee, Porter Goss, who has arrived at an inauspicious moment. If an intelligence czar is appointed, as desired by the 9/11 Commission, the CIA will be cut to size — a far cry from the Cold War days when it was called The Invisible Government."
What ails the CIA
The Daily Times (Pakistan), 26 August 2004

"Some reports have suggested that Ahmad and the ISI had links to -- or foreknowledge about -- 9/11. A money transfer from Karachi to the hijackers in Florida has never been fully explored or explained. Ahmad was never called to account for this ..... Goss himself visited Pakistan just a few days before 9/11 for talks with the then pariah military establishment of Gen. Musharraf."
CIA gets new boss in Porter Goss
Times Of India, 10 August 2004

"..... Incidentally, one of Porter's previous claims to fame was that he spent the early morning of 9/11 power-breakfasting with Pakistani ISI general Mahmoud Ahmad, a gentleman subsequently described by the FBI as Mohammed Atta's money-man...."
Diary
Guardian, 13 August 2004

"[Bush's new nominee for Director of the the CIA] Porter Goss has never spoken publicly about the decade he spent with the CIA, except to say that he was deployed in Miami during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.... It is not known how long Mr Goss stayed in Miami or whether his CIA role went beyond the missile crisis... At the time of Mr Goss’s posting the CIA was ending another of its more infamous covert action projects — dubbed Operation Mongoose — to sabotage President Castro’s Government."
Career began with Castro poison plot
London Times, 11 August 2004

"In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba. Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban �migr�s, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities. The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro... The plans [now avaiable online at the National Security Archive at George Washington University] had the written approval of all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and were presented to President Kennedy's defense secretary, Robert McNamara, in March 1962. But they apparently were rejected by the civilian leadership and have gone undisclosed for nearly 40 years.... "
Firendly Fire - U.S. Military Drafted Plans to Terrorize U.S. Cities to Provoke War With Cuba
ABCNews, 1 May 2001

"Goss ['s]... appointment as director would be the ultimate in politicization. He has long shown himself to be under the spell of Vice President Dick Cheney, and would likely report primarily to him and to White House political adviser Karl Rove rather than to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.... Appointing Goss would administer the coup de grace to intelligence analysts trying to survive while still speaking truth without fear or favor.... With respect to the various investigations into 9/11, Goss was thrust into the limelight by Cheney, who initially opposed any investigation at all. In February 2002, Cheney went so far as to warn that if Congress decided to go ahead with an investigation, administration officials might not show up to testify. When folks started talking about the need for a genuinely independent commission, though, Cheney acquiesced in the establishment of the congressional joint committee as the lesser evil and took reassurance from the fact that Goss could be counted on to keep the lid on--and, when necessary, run rings around co-chair Sen. Bob Graham, (D-FL). Porter Goss performed that task brilliantly, giving clear priority to providing political protection for the president. Goss acquiesced when the White House and CIA refused to allow the joint committee to report out any information on what President Bush had been told before 9/11--ostensibly because it was 'classified.'....As a result, completely absent from the committee's report was any mention of the President's Daily Brief of Aug. 6, 2001, which bore the title "Bin Laden determined to strike in US," even though the press had already reported the title and the gist of that damning piece of evidence. Small wonder that the families of 9/11 victims were outraged and pressed even harder for an independent investigation. "
Ray McGovern, CIA analyst for 27 years, and co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Cheney's Cats Paw - Porter Goss as CIA Director?
CounterPunch, 6 July 2002

"The two [Congressional] Joint Inquiry chairmen Sen Bob Graham and Rep Porter Goss were fully cognizant of the 'Pakistani ISI connection' and the role played [in financing 911] by its former head, General Mahmoud Ahmad. Why then did they choose to exclude an examination of the role of the ISI from the Joint Inquiry's 858 page Report?"
Mysterious September 11 Breakfast Meeting on Capitol Hill
Global Outlook, Winter 2003

"Every official we questioned about the possibility of an invasion of Afghanistan said that it was almost unthinkable, absent a provocation such as 9/11...."
THE 9/11COMMISSION REPORT (p 137)

"To be truthful about it, there was no way we could have got the public consent to have suddenly launched a campaign on Afghanistan but for what happened on September 11..."
Tony Blair Speaking To House of Commons Liaison Committee
'Britain backs US plan for attack on Iraq'
London Times 17 July, 2002

'Protocolgate'
911 Commission Report
The US Air Defence Failure On 911
Who Hijacked The Emergency Response Procedures On 911?
www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/WAT911airresponse.htm
Why Were Cheney And The Secret Service In The Loop
And Rumsfeld, Myers And The President Out On 911?
Click Here

"....the PNAC blueprint of September 2000 states that the process of transforming the US into 'tomorrow's dominant force' is likely to be a long one in the absence of 'some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor'. The 9/11 attacks allowed the US to press the 'go' button for a strategy in accordance with the PNAC agenda which it would otherwise have been politically impossible to implement. "
Michael Meacher, former Blair government Minister - 'This war on terrorism is bogus'
The Guardian, 6 September 2003

"....for the foreseeable future oil will remain an essential commodity. Greater attention must therefore be given to increasing supplies of oil in ways that diversify supplies from areas other than the Persian Gulf. The most promising new source of world supplies is the Caspian region, which appears to contain the largest petroleum reserves discovered since the North Sea. This geopolitical crossroad, which includes Iran, Russia, and a number of newly-independent states [i.e. the 'stans'] struggling with post-Soviet modernization and dangers of Islamic extremism, demands more attention by American policymakers."
AMERICA’S NATIONAL INTERESTS
A Report from The Commission on America’s National Interests, July 2000
Co-authored by Richard Armitage et al [pdf]
(Richard Armitage a supporter of the PNAC agenda, became deputy Secretary of State with specific responsibility for Pakistan and other Asian states in 2001)

"Massive attention has now been given - and rightly so - to the reasons why Britain went to war against Iraq. But far too little attention has focused on why the US went to war, and that throws light on British motives too. The conventional explanation is that after the Twin Towers were hit, retaliation against al-Qaida bases in Afghanistan was a natural first step in launching a global war against terrorism. Then, because Saddam Hussein was alleged by the US and UK governments to retain weapons of mass destruction, the war could be extended to Iraq as well. However this theory does not fit all the facts. The truth may be a great deal murkier. We now know that a blueprint for the creation of a global Pax Americana was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice-president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), Jeb Bush (George Bush's younger brother) and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences, was written in September 2000 by the neoconservative think tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC). The plan shows Bush's cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says 'while the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.' The PNAC blueprint supports an earlier document attributed to Wolfowitz and Libby which said the US must 'discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role'. It refers to key allies such as the UK as 'the most effective and efficient means of exercising American global leadership'. It describes peacekeeping missions as 'demanding American political leadership rather than that of the UN'. It says 'even should Saddam pass from the scene', US bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will remain permanently... as 'Iran may well prove as large a threat to US interests as Iraq has'..... it is clear the US authorities did little or nothing to pre-empt the events of 9/11. It is known that at least 11 countries provided advance warning to the US of the 9/11 attacks. Two senior Mossad experts were sent to Washington in August 2001 to alert the CIA and FBI to a cell of 200 terrorists said to be preparing a big operation (Daily Telegraph, September 16 2001). The list they provided included the names of four of the 9/11 hijackers, none of whom was arrested.....None of this assembled evidence, all of which comes from sources already in the public domain, is compatible with the idea of a real, determined war on terrorism. The catalogue of evidence does, however, fall into place when set against the PNAC blueprint. From this it seems that the so-called 'war on terrorism' is being used largely as bogus cover for achieving wider US strategic geopolitical objectives. Indeed Tony Blair himself hinted at this when he said to the Commons liaison committee: 'To be truthful about it, there was no way we could have got the public consent to have suddenly launched a campaign on Afghanistan but for what happened on September 11' (Times, July 17 2002). Similarly Rumsfeld was so determined to obtain a rationale for an attack on Iraq that on 10 separate occasions he asked the CIA to find evidence linking Iraq to 9/11; the CIA repeatedly came back empty-handed (Time Magazine, May 13 2002)... In fact, 9/11 offered an extremely convenient pretext to put the PNAC plan into action.The evidence again is quite clear that plans for military action against Afghanistan and Iraq were in hand well before 9/11. A report prepared for the US government from the Baker Institute of Public Policy stated in April 2001 that 'the US remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma. Iraq remains a destabilising influence to... the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East'. Submitted to Vice-President Cheney's energy task group, the report recommended that because this was an unacceptable risk to the US, 'military intervention' was necessary (Sunday Herald, October 6 2002). Similar evidence exists in regard to Afghanistan. The BBC reported (September 18 2001) that Niaz Niak, a former Pakistan foreign secretary, was told by senior American officials at a meeting in Berlin in mid-July 2001 that 'military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October'. Until July 2001 the US government saw the Taliban regime as a source of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of hydrocarbon pipelines from the oil and gas fields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean. But, confronted with the Taliban's refusal to accept US conditions, the US representatives told them 'either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs' (Inter Press Service, November 15 2001).... The overriding motivation for this political smokescreen is that the US and the UK are beginning to run out of secure hydrocarbon energy supplies. By 2010 the Muslim world will control as much as 60% of the world's oil production and, even more importantly, 95% of remaining global oil export capacity. As demand is increasing, so supply is decreasing, continually since the 1960s. ... The conclusion of all this analysis must surely be that the 'global war on terrorism' has the hallmarks of a political myth propagated to pave the way for a wholly different agenda - the US goal of world hegemony, built around securing by force command over the oil supplies required to drive the whole project."
Michael Meacher, former Blair government Minister - 'This war on terrorism is bogus'
The Guardian, 6 September 2003

"Every official we questioned about the possibility of an invasion of Afghanistan said that it was almost unthinkable, absent a provocation such as 9/11 .... because they believed the public would not support it."
THE 9/11COMMISSION REPORT (p 137)

"The Bush Administration began making plans for an invasion of Iraq, including the use of American troops, within days of President Bush's inauguration in January of 2001 -- not eight months later after the 9/11 attacks, as has been previously reported. That's what former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill says in his first interview about his time as a White House insider.... In the book, O'Neill is quoted as saying he was surprised that no one in a National Security Council meeting questioned why Iraq should be invaded. 'It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying 'Go find me a way to do this,' says O'Neill in the book.... "
Saddam Ouster Planned Early '01?
CBS News, 10 January 2003

"No one seems to remember anymore that President Bush put Mr. Cheney in charge of not one but two task forces last year. The first, of course, was the energy task force, whose secret deliberations have landed the vice president in court. But even more intriguing is the second. On May 8, 2001, the president charged Mr. Cheney with overseeing a 'national effort' to coordinate all federal programs for responding to domestic attacks in league with a new Office of National Preparedness at the Federal Emergency Management Agency. That day the vice president went on CNN to explain his duty. After noting that 'one of our biggest threats as a nation' may include 'a terrorist organization overseas,' Mr. Cheney said: 'We need to look at this whole area, oftentimes referred to as homeland defense. The president's asked me to take on the responsibility of overseeing all of that, reviewing the plans that are out there today.' Did Mr. Cheney take on that responsibility with the same urgency with which he met with Enron executives to develop energy policy?"
Department of Homeland Insecurity
New York Times, 8 June 2002

"Russian President Vladimir Putin has said publicly that he ordered his intelligence agencies to alert the United States last summer that suicide pilots were training for attacks on U.S. targets."
Clues Alerted White House to Potential Attacks
Fox News, 17 May 2002

What Did The Russians Tell The US Before 911 Which Isn't Referred To In the Commission's Report? - Click Here

"Yesterday the bookshops and newsstands of Washington had been cleaned out of the 9/11 commission report..... [According to the report] George Tenet, Director of the CIA, and other senior officials knew the signs of an imminent huge attack were unprecedented. But although Bush received a briefing on August 6, 2001, entitled Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US, the 36th presidential briefing item on al-Qaeda that year, the commission found no evidence after that date that he discussed the threat with his advisers."
Commission's report on September 11 is already a bestselling thriller
London Times, 24 July 2004

"....[there] was an article in the August 6 Presidential Daily Brief titled 'Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US.' It was the 36th PDB item briefed so far that year that related to Bin Ladin or al Qaeda, and the first devoted to the possibility of an attack in the United States....[When interviewed by the Commission the President] did not recall discussing the August 6 report with the Attorney General or whether Rice had done so...... No CSG [Counterterrorism Security Group] or other NSC [National Security Council] meeting was held to discuss the possible threat of a strike in the United States as a result of this report. We have found no indication of any further discussion before September 11 among the President and his top advisers of the possibility of a threat of an al Qaeda attack in the United States. DCI Tenet visited President Bush in Crawford,Texas, on August 17 and participated in PDB briefings of the President between August 31 (after the President had returned to Washington) and September 10. But Tenet does not recall any discussions with the President of the domestic threat during this period. Most of the intelligence community recognized in the summer of 2001 that the number and severity of threat reports were unprecedented. Many officials told us that they knew something terrible was planned...."
THE 9/11COMMISSION REPORT (p.260 - 261)

"FBI information since that time [1998] indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.... "
Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US
Presidential Daily Brief received by President George W. Bush on August 6, 2001

"On July 27, Clarke informed Rice and Hadley that the spike in intelligence about a near-term al Qaeda attack had stopped. He urged keeping readiness high during the August vacation period, warning that another report suggested an attack had just been postponed for a few months 'but will still happen.'.."
THE 9/11COMMISSION REPORT (p.260)

The 9/11 Commission Report: A 571-Page Lie
by Dr. David Ray Griffin
9/11 Visibility Project
Sunday, May 22, 2005
From: http://www.septembereleventh.org/newsarchive/2005-05-22-571pglie.php

"... [George] McGovern received the Democratic presidential nomination a month after five burglars broke into the Democratic headquarters at the Watergate hotel and office. He said at the time he couldn't get the Congress or many news outlets to take an interest in Watergate. 'It seemed like only these two cub reporters from The Washington Post were interested,' McGovern said."
McGovern: White House Needs a 'Deep Throat' Today
Naples Daily News, 3 June 2005

"Bob Parry tells a story of being at a dinner party with Bobby Inman from the CIA, the editor of Newsweek, and all the muckity-mucks -- this was his big introduction into Washington society. And they were sitting at the dinner table in the midst of the Iran-contra thing, talking about everything but Iran-contra. And Bob said he had the bad taste of bringing up the Iran-contra hearing and mentioning one particularly bad aspect of it. And he said, the editor of Newsweek looked at him and said, 'You know, Bob, there are just some things that it's better the country just doesn't know about.' And all these admirals and generals sitting around the table all nodded their heads in agreement, and they wanted to talk about something else. That's the attitude. That's the attitude in Washington. And that's the attitude of the Washington press corps, and nowadays it's even worse than that, because now, if you play the game right, you get a TV show. Now you've got the McLaughlin Group. Now you get your mug on CNN. You know. And that's how they keep them in line. If you're a rabble rouser, and a shit-stirrer, they don't want your type on television. They want the pundits."
Gary Webb Speaks
Parascope Report, 16 January 1999

"[Felt] thought the Nixon team were Nazis. The threat to the integrity and independence of the bureau was real and seemed uppermost in his mind.... he was protecting the bureau by finding a way, clandestine as it was, to push some of the information from the FBI interviews and files out to the public, to help build public and political pressure to make Nixon and his people answerable. He had nothing but contempt for the Nixon White House and their efforts to manipulate the bureau for political reasons."
Bob Woodward, Washington Post
Washington Post, 2 June 2005

"Who in the top echelons of government had mustered the courage to leak secrets to the press? Who had sought to expose the Nixon administration's conspiracy to obstruct justice through its massive campaign of political espionage and its subsequent cover-up? .... Deep Throat would even warn Woodward and Bernstein that he had reason to believe 'everyone's life is in danger'—meaning Woodward's, Bernstein's, and, presumably, his own.... At a subsequent meeting, according to Felt, Gray asked whether the investigation could be confined to 'these seven subjects,' referring to the five burglars, plus Hunt and Liddy. Felt responded, 'We will be going much higher than these seven. These men are the pawns. We want the ones who moved the pawns.'....."
Watergate's Deep Throat, Associate Director Of The FBI, Mark Felt in 1972
'I'm The Guy They Call Deep Throat'
Vanity Fair, July 2005

"It's been 33 years since cub reporters Woodward and Bernstein pulled down the pants of the Nixon operation and exposed its tie-in to the Watergate burglary. That marks a third of a century since the Washington Post has broken a major investigative story. I got a hint why there's been such a dry spell after I met Mark Hosenball, investigative reporter for the Washington Post's magazine, Newsweek. It was in the summer of 2001. A few months earlier, for the Guardian papers of Britain, I'd discovered that Katherine Harris and Governor Jeb Bush of Florida had removed tens of thousands of African-Americans from voter registries before the 2000 election, thereby fixing the race for George Bush. Hosenball said the Post-Newsweek team 'looked into it and couldn't find anything.' Nothing at all? What I found noteworthy about the Post's investigation was that 'looking into it' involved their reporters chatting with Florida officials -- but not bothering to look at the voter purge list itself. Yes, I admit the Washington Post ran my story -- seven months after the election -- but with the key info siphoned out, such as the Bush crew's destruction of evidence and the salient fact that almost all those purged were Democrats. In other words, the story was drained of anything which might discomfit the new residents of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Let's not pick on the Post alone. Viacom Corporation's CBS News also spiked the story. Why? 'We called Jeb Bush's office,' a CBS producer told me, and Jeb's office denied Jeb did wrong. End of story. During the Clinton years, the Washington Post and Newsweek allowed reporter Mike Isikoff to sniff at the President's zipper and write about our Commander-in-Chief's Lewinsky. But when it came to a big story about dirty energy industry money for Clinton's campaigns, Mike told me his editors didn't 'give a sh--' and so he passed the material for me to print in England. Today, Bob Woodward, rules as the Post's Managing Editor. And how is he 'managing' the news? After the September 11 attack, when we needed an independent press to keep us from hysteria-driven fascism, Woodward was given "access" to the president, writing 'Bush at War', a fawning, puke-making fairy tale of a take-charge president brilliantly leading the war against Terror. Woodward's news-oid story is a symptom of a disease epidemic in US journalism. The illness is called, 'access.' In return for a supposedly 'inside' connection to the powers that be, the journalists in fact become conduits for disinformation sewerage. And woe to any journalist who annoys the politicians and loses 'access.' Career-wise, they're DOA. Here's a good place to tote up part of the investigative reporter body count. There's Bob Parry forced out of the Associated Press for the crime of uncovering Ollie North's arms-for-hostages game. And there's Gary Webb, hounded to suicide for documenting the long-known history of the CIA's love-affair with drug runners. The list goes on. Even the prize-laden Seymour Hersh was, he told me, exiled from the New York Times and now has to write from the refuge of a fashion magazine. And notice someone missing in the Deep Throat extravaganza? Carl Bernstein, the brains and soul of the All-the-President's-Men duo, is notably absent from the staff of the Post or any other US newspaper. But before we get too weepy about the glory days of investigative journalism gone by, we should remember that the golden era was not pure gold. Newspapers are part of the power elite and have never in US history gone out of their way to rock the clubhouse. Let's go back to Hersh's stellar story of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam.The massacre was first uncovered by the greatest investigative reporter of our era, the late Ron Ridenhour. Then a soldier conducting the investigation on his own, Ridenhour turned over his findings to Hersh, hoping to give it a chance for exposure. That wasn't so easy. Ridenhour told me that he and Hersh pushed the story -- with photos! -- at dozens of newspapers. No one would touch it until Ridenhour threatened to read the story from the steps of the Pentagon. It's only gotten worse. After all, Hersh's latest big story, about Abu Ghraib prison, was buried by CBS and other news outlets before Hersh put it in The New Yorker. The Washington Post has no

Wanted 'Dead Or Alive' Evidence Omitted From The Official 9/11 Report From Watergate To 9/11 The Truth Resides Within The Ranks Of The FBI Including 3 Hours Of Personal Testimony From Former FBI Translator Sibel Edmonds Why Was None Of This Covered In The Official 9/11Report? The Omission Of Key Evidence Is The 'Smoking Gun' Clue Of The 9/11 Report Below Are Some of The People Who Held Crucial Missing Elements Of The 9/11Story But Whose Pivotal Knowledge Was Not Reported By The Official 9/11Commission Even Though Known By Witnesses Within The FBI

John O'Neill - FBI (Dead)	John Pistole - FBI (Alive)	Robert Wright - FBI (Alive)	Sibel Edmonds - FBI (Alive)

Lt General Mahmoud - ISI (Alive)	Omar Sheikh - ISI (Death Sentence)	Daniel Pearl - WSJ (Dead)	Robert Baer - Ex CIA (Alive)
Click Here To Read Details Of Their Missing Evidence
"Director General of Pakistan's Inter- Services Intelligence (ISI) Lt Gen Mahmud Ahmed has been replaced after the FBI investigators established credible links between him and Umar Sheikh, one of the three militants released in exchange for passengers of the hijacked Indian Airlines plane in 1999. The FBI team, which had sought adequate inputs about various terrorists including Sheikh from the intelligence agencies, was working on the linkages between Sheikh and former ISI chief Gen Mahmud which are believed to have been substantiated, reports PTI website. Informed sources said there were enough indications with the US intelligence agencies that it was at Gen Mahmud's instruction that Sheikh had transferred 100,000 US dollars into the account of Mohammed Atta, one of the lead terrorists in strikes at the World Trade Centre on Sept 11, it adds." Gen Mahmud's exit due to links with Umar Sheikh Dawn (Pakistan), 9 October 2001 How Did The 9/11 Commission Avoid The Issue Of Disclosing Who Funded 9/11? Simple - By Not Discussing It "To date, the U.S. government has not been able to determine the origin of the money used for the 9/11 attacks. Ultimately the question is of little practical significance." THE 9/11COMMISSION REPORT, JULY 2004 (p.172) Incredibly Analysis Of The Funding Of The 9/11 Plot Is Given Just Three Paragraphs (On p172) Out Of A More Than 500 Page Report Even Though The FBI Had Earlier Told A Senate Committee That It Had Traced The Origins Of The 9/11 Funding To Accounts In Pakistan "An FBI official has told a Senate hearing here that investigators had 'traced the origin of the funding of 9/11 back to financial accounts in Pakistan, where high-ranking and well-known Al Qaeda operatives played a major role in moving the money forward, eventually into the hands of the hijackers located in the US.' John S. Pistole, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counter terrorism division, did not specify how those accounts in Pakistan were funded. He was testifying before the Senate Governmental Affairs committee on Thursday." Pakistan linked to 9/11 funds Daily Times (Pakistan), 2 August 2003

Wanted 'Dead Or Alive' Evidence Omitted From The Official 9/11 Report From Watergate To 9/11 The Truth Resides Within The Ranks Of The FBI Including 3 Hours Of Personal Testimony From Former FBI Translator Sibel Edmonds Why Was None Of This Covered In The Official 9/11Report? The Omission Of Key Evidence Is The 'Smoking Gun' Clue Of The 9/11 Report Below Are Some of The People Who Held Crucial Missing Elements Of The 9/11Story But Whose Pivotal Knowledge Was Not Reported By The Official 9/11Commission Even Though Known By Witnesses Within The FBI

John O'Neill - FBI (Dead)	John Pistole - FBI (Alive)	Robert Wright - FBI (Alive)	Sibel Edmonds - FBI (Alive)

Lt General Mahmoud - ISI (Alive)	Omar Sheikh - ISI (Death Sentence)	Daniel Pearl - WSJ (Dead)	Robert Baer - Ex CIA (Alive)
"Director General of Pakistan's Inter- Services Intelligence (ISI) Lt Gen Mahmud Ahmed has been replaced after the FBI investigators established credible links between him and Umar Sheikh, one of the three militants released in exchange for passengers of the hijacked Indian Airlines plane in 1999. The FBI team, which had sought adequate inputs about various terrorists including Sheikh from the intelligence agencies, was working on the linkages between Sheikh and former ISI chief Gen Mahmud which are believed to have been substantiated, reports PTI website. Informed sources said there were enough indications with the US intelligence agencies that it was at Gen Mahmud's instruction that Sheikh had transferred 100,000 US dollars into the account of Mohammed Atta, one of the lead terrorists in strikes at the World Trade Centre on Sept 11, it adds." Gen Mahmud's exit due to links with Umar Sheikh Dawn (Pakistan), 9 October 2001 How Did The 9/11 Commission Avoid The Issue Of Disclosing Who Funded 9/11? Simple - By Not Discussing It "To date, the U.S. government has not been able to determine the origin of the money used for the 9/11 attacks. Ultimately the question is of little practical significance." THE 9/11COMMISSION REPORT, JULY 2004 (p.172) Incredibly Analysis Of The Funding Of The 9/11 Plot Is Given Just Three Paragraphs (On p172) Out Of A More Than 500 Page Report Even Though The FBI Had Earlier Told A Senate Committee That It Had Traced The Origins Of The 9/11 Funding To Accounts In Pakistan "An FBI official has told a Senate hearing here that investigators had 'traced the origin of the funding of 9/11 back to financial accounts in Pakistan, where high-ranking and well-known Al Qaeda operatives played a major role in moving the money forward, eventually into the hands of the hijackers located in the US.' John S. Pistole, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counter terrorism division, did not specify how those accounts in Pakistan were funded. He was testifying before the Senate Governmental Affairs committee on Thursday." Pakistan linked to 9/11 funds Daily Times (Pakistan), 2 August 2003

The 9/11 Commission Report: A 571-Page Lie

The 9/11 Commission Report: A 571-Page Lie by Dr. David Ray Griffin 9/11 Visibility Project Sunday, May 22, 2005 From: http://www.septembereleventh.org/newsarchive/2005-05-22-571pglie.php

The 9/11 Commission Report: A 571-Page Lie
by Dr. David Ray Griffin
9/11 Visibility Project
Sunday, May 22, 2005
From: http://www.septembereleventh.org/newsarchive/2005-05-22-571pglie.php