http://inn.globalfreepress.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=586
Update (08/02): Pakistan
Daily Times responding on Meacher
Guardian -July 23 Taipei Times -July 27
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
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
COMMENT:
Al
Qaeda: a US connection? —Shaukat Qadir
Daily Times -August 2
Intelligence organisations are by definition, non-transparent and secretive; consequently, even while collaborating, they do not share all information; also as a consequence of their secrecy they often give rise to such theories, founded and unfounded The question about the connection between Al Qaeda (more specifically, Osama bin Laden) and the US refuses to die. On July 27, 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 begins with the claim that Omer Sheikh, under sentence
of death for the murder of US reporter Daniel Pearl, is actually
innocent, though he provides no evidence of Sheikh’s
innocence or someone else’s guilt. He then goes on to make a
rather preposterous accusation that former DG-ISI, Lt-Gen (retd)
Mahmood Ahmed was the actual financier of the 9/11 attack and had used
Omer Sheikh to transfer funds to Mohammed Atta, the lead
hijacker.
Again, Meacher makes the allegation without substantiating it. Lt-Gen
Mahmood may have a lot to answer for, but not this.
Meacher goes on to weave the tapestry from facts and fiction and argues
that there is collaboration between the CIA,
perhaps even the State Department, and the ISI to cover up all such
facts.
In other words, the US and Pakistan governments have colluded to hide facts to prevent the disclosure of their involvement in the cloak-and-dagger stuff they have been indulging in in Afghanistan since the Soviets invaded that country. Conspiracy theories are generally fantastic, but this one must be ranked among fairytales. Even so, this is not the first time such accusations have been made.
In his speech in the House of Representatives on September 5, 2001 US congressman, Ron Paul stated, “Osama bin Laden, a wealthy man, left Saudi Arabia in 1979 to join American-sponsored so-called freedom fighters in Afghanistan. He received financial assistance, weapons and training from our CIA, just as his allies in Kosovo continue to receive the same from us today”.
Earlier, during his testimony before a congressional committee on July 12, 1999, on “The Locus of Terrorism”, Michael Sheehan, the State Department spokesman, was asked again and again about the US government’s role in supporting the Taliban. Not only did he continuously evade the question, but when pinned down said he would only do so in-camera.
By then, of course the Taliban had begun to be viewed as supportive of Al Qaeda and Osama. Representative Dana Rohrabacher did not mince his words when he stated in the same session that “Bill Richardson and Rick Inderfurth, high-ranking members of this administration [he was talking about the Clinton administration], personally visited the region to discourage the opposition from attacking the Taliban when they were vulnerable.
So what we hear about terrorism are crocodile tears from this
administration, let us remember this administration is responsible for
the Taliban. But none of the terrorism, which we will hear about today,
by Mr bin Laden or others, would be taking place with Afghanistan as
their home base if it weren’t for the policies of this
administration”.
Meacher, therefore, is not alone in his views and, while some of it may
seem fantastic, there are some facts that do raise questions.
For instance, he writes, “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 September 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 September 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.”
This deserves a response. Meacher also establishes a link between the CIA and the ISI, which really needs no establishing. However, his inference from this connection is not that easy to swallow: that anything known to the ISI is due to the CIA connection. Intelligence organisations are by definition, non-transparent and secretive; consequently, even while collaborating, they do not share all information; also as a consequence of their secrecy they often give rise to such theories, founded and unfounded.
The CIA and the ISI are guilty of many errors of judgment and conspiracies that backfired on them. There is little doubt that both these agencies collaborated in strengthening the Taliban until 1997 and, while the US policy began to tilt against the Taliban after they had arrested Emma Bonino and nineteen journalists with her, for photographing an Afghan woman, the CIA continued to play along with the ISI, supporting the Taliban in the hope that they could prevail over the Northern Alliance.
The two agencies also have a lot to account for in their errors of commission and omission, not only in Afghanistan but elsewhere also. I do hope that someday they will reveal what was going on. But to build from this a case that Pakistan was the principal financier for the 9/11 attack and imply that the CIA collaborated in it and is now covering up seems too far-fetched.
The author is a retired brigadier.
He is also former vice president and founder of the Islamabad Policy
Research Institute (IPRI)
Truth Lies Pearl - 9/11 Review
Christina Rocca - 9/11 Encyclopedia