FROM BCCI- ISI - START OF MUSLIM PERSPECTIVES ON 9/11

[moeen yaseen]

From BCCI to ISI: The Saga of Entrapment Continues
By Abid ullah jan

Released July 20, 2006.

see also www.gv2000.com

In this book, the author digs up the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) issue to show how the Bank became a victim of a grand entrapment process by the U.S. government and how that process continues till this day.

The book shows how ISI, Pakistan's military intelligence agency, has played a role in another frame-up: this time for 9/11. How in the process ISI itself was trapped is another interesting aspect covered in this book.

Pakistan has been blackmailed. But it has yet to face the full consequences of ISI's knowingly or unknowingly playing a role in the 9/11 and getting entrapped in the game of double set up. The book builds the case for general Musharraf to speak up and tell the truth to save Pakistan and humanity from the curse of modern day fascists.

Contents
PREFACE

CHAPTER 1 The Saga of BCCI Closure

CHAPTER 2 The ISI and Operation 9/11

CHAPTER 3 The CIA/ISI Assets

CHAPTER 4 ISI and Mossad Link to 9/11

CHAPTER 5 Putting the Pieces Together

CONCLUSION Time for Pakistani Generals to Tell the Truth

Notes

Preface

"There’s so much more. God, there’s so much more. A lot more."


FBI agent, Robert Wright, who is officially prevented from telling the public about how his supervisors blocked his efforts to investigate al-Qaeda pre-9/11. ‘Called off the trial?’ ABC News, December 19, 2002.

ENTRAPMENT is the illegal and unsavory practice of luring someone into committing a crime, and then prosecuting him for it. Sometimes the entrapped person, organization, or state has no intention or knowledge of the committed crime. The target becomes a victim of a set-up by government agencies, criminal elements, or a collaboration of both, all intent on achieving unstated objectives. Various agencies within the U.S. Government have been using entrapment in diverse ways.

"Frame-ups" in drug "conspiracies" are routine in the United States: there are literally thousands of drug-related conspiracy cases in the United States in which innocent people are implicated and punished. Arnold S. Trebach writes in his book, The Great Drug War: "In many of these cases, the DEA allowed some of its informants to traffic in drugs in exchange for turning in their friends and supplying other information. In too many cases, Gieringer claimed, DEA agents themselves directly engaged in trafficking."1

Trapping innocent people is routine in the United States, and is by no means limited to crimes involving drugs. James Bovard gives numerous examples in his famous book: Lost Rights. Based upon his many years of research he concludes: "During the past fifteen years, law enforcement officials have set up thousands of elaborate schemes to entrap people for ‘crimes’ such as buying plant supplies, asking for a job, or shooting a deer. Dozens of private accountants have become double agents, receiving government kickbacks for betraying their clients to IRS."2

At the highest level, the classic example of entrapment, before Operation 9/11 to frame Osama bin Laden and company, was operation "C-Chase" in 1988, the purpose of which was to frame the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) and force its closure. Operation 9/11 is more complex because during this operation, Pakistan’s military intelligence agency (ISI) was entrapped while playing a role in facilitating 9/11.

Frame-ups are not a new idea for U.S. agencies. During the heyday of the Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO), the FBI routinely used entrapment against members of the civil rights and antiwar movements. In a later, and much publicized, case known as Abscam, the FBI (at the behest of the Justice Department) used agents posing as Arab businessmen to bribe various public officials in return for political favors. Writing in Governing magazine in 1998, Alan Ehrenhalt wrote, "Before the Abscam sting against members of Congress in 1980, the idea of inventing crimes and using them to tempt public officials was virtually unheard of in this country."3

If the FBI and U.S. Justice Department have no problem orchestrating witch hunts against public officials at home, what can we expect of them when it comes to safeguarding the country from the scourge of "international terrorism" from abroad? Especially when the neo-conservatives and religiously motivated officials of the current administration are determined to make invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and beyond their highest priority.

The specter of "Islamic" terrorism gave U.S. agencies and other actors a perfect excuse to return to the good old days of entrapment operations. In their 2001 book, The COINTELPRO Papers, Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall suggest that, following the merging of the CIA and FBI, we can likely expect more spurious terror scams, entrapment scenarios, and heavy-handed surveillance of political "targets" at home.4 Churchill and Vander’s work shows that entrapment and "setting up" are part of the U.S. agencies’ daily routine. At the international level, and as recently as the year 2000, the CIA tried to entrap Iran. Code-named operation Merlin, the CIA used a Russian scientist to sell nuclear blueprints—technical designs for a TBA 480 high-voltage block—to Iranian representatives at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).5

After the BCCI incident, the second historical frame-up involved Operation 9/11. The first part of Operation 9/11 was to plan and execute the actual 9/11 attacks, and the second part was to frame Arabs in Afghanistan to pave the way for a war of aggression and occupation of the country. Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) was not only a partner in the crime but also a victim of the entrapment. We do not know whether the ISI was knowingly involved in the set-up of 9/11 or if it unknowingly played a role in the bigger operation without realizing its full scope. What we do know, from information available in the public domain, is that the ISI was, nevertheless, fully involved in the initial set-up phases of Operation 9/11. Washington has already been blackmailing Pakistan as a result. However, Pakistan has yet to face the full consequences of the ISI’s collaboration with the CIA.

Other than the authors and promoters of the official conspiracy theory surrounding 9/11, most people have concluded that the 9/11 hijackers did not act of their own volition, nor did the World Trade Centre Towers and World Trade Centre 7 building collapse solely due to the impact of "hijacked" planes and subsequent fires. However, a minority of people still accept the ‘official’ version publicized globally by the media. Considering the life-style of Muslims implicated in the 9/11 attacks, and the fact that they are known to have consumed alcohol at a bar the night before 9/11, it is possible that the hijackers may not even have known that they were going to die the next morning—never mind the assertion that they were preparing to die as martyrs the next day. Even Muslims of the weakest faith would not visit nightclubs and consume alcohol when they knew they would shortly die, let alone those who were presented as Muslim fanatics, willing to sacrifice their lives for Islam with an attack on the United States on September 11, 2001.

The evidence discussed in this book suggests that the ‘hijackers’ were used as tools in a carefully planned intelligence operation. The evidence confirms that the Taliban and Osama bin Laden were closely linked to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI). Amply documented, the ISI, in turn, owes its existence to the CIA:

With CIA backing and massive amounts of U.S. military aid, the ISI developed [since the early 1980s] into a parallel structure wielding enormous power over all aspects of government... The ISI had a staff composed of military and intelligence officers, bureaucrats, undercover agents and informers estimated at 150,000.6

The ISI actively collaborates with the CIA. It continues to perform the role of a ‘go-between’ in numerous intelligence operations on behalf of the CIA. The ISI had, and still has, access to considerable funding from the CIA. According to Selig Harrison, a leading American expert on South Asia with access to CIA officials, distribution of these funds has been left to the discretion of the ISI itself with whom "The CIA still has close links." Harrison spoke to an audience of security experts in London at a conference on "Terrorism and regional security: Managing the challenges of Asia" in the last week of February, just before the Taliban’s destruction of the Buddha statues of Bamiyan. As a senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace from 1974 to 1996, he had been in close contact with the CIA.7

The ISI directly supported and financed a number of operations and organizations without realizing the seeds of destruction it was sowing for Pakistan. Mossad (the Israeli government’s intelligence agency) also became involved in these operations, in order to have access to the structure and operations of the ISI and Pakistan’s military. These are the lesser well-known facts.

The growing body of evidence suggests that the ISI was actively involved in part of Operation 9/11, where it was required to use its intelligence assets to frame Osama bin Laden for the planned 9/11 attacks. An elaborate operation was undertaken to develop evidence, linking Arabs to the 9/11 attacks, to pave the way for the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. A transfer of funds to the lead hijacker on the orders of the ISI chief is just one piece of the bigger picture. The FBI had this information—they knew exactly who was transferring funds to whom. Less than two weeks later, Agence France Presse (AFP) confirmed the FBI’s findings. According to the AFP report, the money used to finance the 9/11 attacks had allegedly been "wired to WTC hijacker Mohammed Atta from Pakistan, by Ahmad Umar Sheikh, at the instance of [ISI Chief] General Mahmood [Ahmad]."8 Dennis Lormel, director of the FBI’s Financial Crimes Unit, has confirmed that Saeed Sheikh transferred $100,000 to Mohammed Atta at the behest of General Mahmood Ahmed, head of the ISI, before the New York attacks.9 According to the AFP (quoting the intelligence source): "The evidence we have supplied to the U.S. is of a much wider range and depth than just one piece of paper linking a rogue general to some misplaced act of terrorism."10

The questions remain: What did the U.S. government do with the information provided by the FBI and other sources with regard to the ISI’s involvement in 9/11? Why has there been no meaningful action and investigation? Why are U.S. officials not telling the truth? In a May 16, 2002 press conference on the role of General Mahmood Ahmad, a journalist asked Condoleezza Rice about her awareness of "the reports at the time that the ISI chief was in Washington on September 11th, and on September 10th $100,000 was wired from Pakistan to these groups." She was also asked why General Mahmood was in the United States, and about his meeting with Condoleezza Rice. She replied: "I have not seen that report, and he was certainly not meeting with me."11

Michel Chossudovsky concludes in his June 20, 2005 report, published by the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) that the ISI and CIA have developed close relationships, and that Condoleezza Rice was covering up the ISI Chief’s involvement in 9/11:

Dr. Rice’s statement regarding the ISI chief at her May 16 press conference is an obvious cover-up. While General Ahmad was talking to U.S. officials at the CIA and the Pentagon, he had allegedly also been in contact (through a third party) with the September 11 terrorists. What this suggests is that key individuals within the U.S. military-intelligence establishment knew about these ISI contacts with the September 11 terrorist ‘ring leader’, Mohammed Atta, and failed to act. But this conclusion is, in fact, an understatement. Everything indicates that CIA Director George Tenet and ISI Chief General Mahmood Ahmad had established a close working relationship. General Mahmood had arrived a week prior to September 11 for consultations with George Tenet. Bear in mind that the CIA’s George Tenet, also has a close personal relationship with President Bush. Prior to September 11, Tenet would meet the President nearly every morning at 8:00 a.m. sharp, for about half an hour. A document, known as the President’s Daily Briefing, or PDB, "is prepared at Langley by the CIA’s analytical directorate, and a draft goes home with Tenet each night. Tenet edits it personally and delivers it orally during his early morning meeting with Bush." This practice of "oral intelligence briefings" is unprecedented. Bush’s predecessors at the White House received a written briefing: "With Bush, who liked oral briefings and the CIA director in attendance, a strong relationship had developed. Tenet could be direct, even irreverent and earthy."12

It is hardly coincidence that the U.S. agencies had prior knowledge of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Centre;13 the hijackers of 9/11 were linked to the ISI and CIA, and that the alleged mastermind of 7/7—the July 7, 2005 bombing in London—was an MI6 agent. Former Justice Department prosecutor John Loftus claims alleged London bombing mastermind Haroon Rashid Aswat is a "double agent" who "works for MI6".14 The games of deception played by the various international intelligence agencies, whether the CIA, Mossad, RAW, ISI, or KGB, have taken on a life of their own. Their own governments seem incapable of holding them accountable. The pressing issue for weaker states, such as Pakistan, is that the CIA views its agencies as disposable agents and treats them as pawns. It is only a matter of time before the ISI, in turn, is treated in the same manner as it treats its own agents who are no longer considered "valuable assets".

This book tells the untold story of how the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) was entrapped, and demonstrates that American interests and people are not of concern to those who have set their eyes upon global domination. The story of the BCCI entrapment leads us into the rest of the book, which unravels the role of the ISI, the CIA, and Mossad in Operation 9/11.

The ISI played the part of a worthless pawn in Operation 9/11—as insignificant as the hijackers themselves. The stakes of the game are much higher—the strategic military might of Pakistan and other Muslim states, and the Muslims’ struggle toward self-determination. The ISI was used as simply an individual intelligence asset of the CIA. The question we must ponder is: What will happen when it is time for the chess masters to discard the ISI, particularly when the ISI’s fingerprints are all over the 9/11 crime scene? It matters little if the ISI knew little or nothing about the scope of the crime. The remaining evidence is all that matters.

Since the ISI has been such a valuable asset for the planners of Operation 9/11, it is highly unlikely that the agency itself will ever face the charges laid against them—Pakistan will be held responsible for the ISI’s cooperation in its various dubious activities. It seems that immoral agencies and individuals always undermine the existence of their home nations and bring misery to the world, and Pakistan will soon find itself increasingly bearing the consequences of the ISI/CIA partnership. This vicious cycle will lead to a downward spiral—ISI’s direct or indirect participation in crimes will be used to punish Pakistan. Musharraf’s story be a dull shadow of Saddam’s—a tale of the "good soldier" who salutes, gets promoted, is used and abused, and is finally discarded.



For further details on how his

supporters have blackmailed General

for the ISI's getting in the 9/11 trap, read

From BCCI to ISI.



Or




Pakistan has already experienced how the United States treats its partners in crime when it requires more of them. In March of 2003, the ISI faced severe criticism during a U.S. Senate briefing on the drug trade, a crime in which the CIA has been involved since 1960.15 Questioning two key members of the Bush administration at a hearing of the House Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific, several Congressmen came down hard on Pakistan.16

Nancy Chamberlin, Washington’s ambassador to Pakistan until 2002, was forced to confirm and reconfirm that over the past six years, the ISI’s involvement in the drug trade was "substantial." When asked, as ambassador, did she ever report Pakistan’s involvement with the Taliban and its intelligence unit’s involvement in the opium trade, the former ambassador replied "No, I did not." She was never asked "Why not?", and this is a question that must be asked now. Why was Pakistan not reported? Why has the ISI’s role in 9/11 not been documented? Why did the U.S. government and the 9/11 Commission ignore all the facts relating to the ISI? Is their silence part of a bigger plan? In the chapters of this book we will attempt to shed light upon these questions, and address the future of Pakistan following the saga of the BCCI closure.

This book shows how General Musharraf has become a victim of blackmail for the ISI’s role in Operation 9/11. Subsequently, the General has done more under constant threats than he could against the sovereignty, independence and strategic interests of Pakistan. Despite that, the blackmail continues. Now it is a matter of life and death for General Musharraf, but he still has limited time and razor sharp options to save not only Pakistan but millions of other who are set to suffer and die in the coming Greater War—a war which is the humanity’s common destiny if the truth about Operation 9/11, the ISI’s role in it and the way Pakistan has been blackmailed since then remains hidden from the masses.

Copyright© 2002-05 Independent Centre for Strategic Studies and Analysis (ICSSA).