General Mahmoud as head of Pakistan's Intelligence Services

[TRUTH]

In examining potential signs of pre-911 war planning the Centre for Research on Globalisation confirms that Sir David Manning was not the only 'interesting' foreign visitor to Washington both immediately prior and during the 911 attacks. To do nothing to reduce speculation in this area, it also transpires that the head of Pakistan's intelligence services, the ISI, 'happened' (according to the BBC) to be in Washington at the time.

It is of course, Pakistan, which has been the US's other key ally in the subsequent strikes on neighbouring Afghanistan. A lengthy visit to Washington by Lt General Mahmoud Ahmad, is an event not to be taken lightly. As one Pakistani commentator put it in a prophetic article in the Karachi News on Sept 10:

"ISI Chief Lt-Gen. Mahmoud's week-long presence 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. But the most important meeting was with Marc Grossman, U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. One can safely guess that the discussions must have centred around Afghanistan . . . and Osama bin Laden. 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." (The later remark relates to General Musharraf's seizing of power in a coup in October 1999)

There are a number of things to note about General Mahmoud as head of Pakistan's Intelligence Services:

* The head of the ISI is a Pakistani appointment which, by treaty, requires the approval of the CIA. In effect the post is a CIA appointment.
* For years the CIA has used the ISI as a conduit to pump billions of dollars into militant Islamic groups in Afghanistan both prior to and following the Soviet invasion of 1979. This process eventually gave rise to the ascendency of the Taliban who the US initially backed but then irrevocably fell out with in the summer of 2001.
* According to various commentators the ties between the CIA and the ISI have not been severed following the end of the cold war.
* General Mahmoud was sacked in October 2001. According to the Times of India 9 October this followed the discovery that prior to 911 the General had ordered Ahmad Omar Sheikh to wire $100,000 to the alleged World Trade Centre lead hijacker Mohammed Atta (no doubt wisely, India, which was instrumental in the discovery, passed the evidence to the FBI, not the CIA. As it happens the head of FBI counter terrorism has since been unexpectedly 'retired'.).
* Omar Sheikh has since been convicted of the murder in Pakistan of Wall St Journal staff writer, Daniel Pearl.

Before taking a look at the Daniel Pearl dimension the simple conclusion is that we have here a disconcerting link connecting the World Trade Centre attacks to a CIA-client intelligence service heavily involved with Islamic militant groups in Afghanistan. The leader of that service was meeting with the CIA and senior members of the Bush administration immediately before, during and after the attacks.

As the Times of India put it: "A direct link between the ISI and the WTC attacks could have enormous repercussions." Almost instantly after 911 Pakistan became the US's principal regional ally in the ensuing invasion of Afghanistan despite being one of the few countries to have recognised the Taliban.

Recent comments by President Musharraf of Pakistan pour more fuel on the fire. According to an Associated Press report relayed in Canada's Toronto Star 5 August: "Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf, a strategic ally in America's war against terrorism, said in an interview he does not believe that Osama bin Laden planned the Sept. 11 attacks against the United States..... Speaking of bin Laden, Musharraf said in the interview: '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 does not say who he thinks was behind the attacks...."

Musharraf had earlier also somewhat enigmatically indicated that Pearl was murdered because "Unfortunately [he] got over-involved". Originally thought to be pursuing an aspect of the Richard Reid shoe bomber story it now seems more likely that Pearl was delving deep into the workings of the ISI according to Pakistani journalists quoted by the Times of India 11 March.

Was Pearl following up on the General Mahmoud sacking story? It would certainly have been very dangerous for him if he had made any progress in pursuing a CIA connection. However, as head of the Wall St Journal's Asian bureau, it is also extremely unlikely that Pearl would have been unaware of this possibility - one already much talked about on the internet since the Times of India report last October. Digging up the detail would have been a journalistic coup.

But the story does not end with the death of Daniel Pearl. Intriguingly it is precisely the same man used by General Mahmoud to wire money to 911 hijacker Mohammed Atta who has now been detained and tried for the murder of Pearl. More importantly, however, this does not explain why this young man - Omar Sheikh - was not previously detained when it became clear last October that he had wired $100,000 to Atta. This is a truly extraordinary circumstance given America's direct control over Musharraf and the CIA's own links with the ISI.

Why did the US government not insist on Pakistan's detention of Sheikh once it became known that he was involved in the funding of lead hijacker Atta? Why was he allowed to roam free in Pakistan when the country was America's principal Asian ally in the 'war against terrorism'?

Indeed, why is Sheikh still not being charged for his alleged involvement in the 911 attacks now that he is finally detained? Why isn't Armitage pursuing this?

There is no outsider better placed than Armitage to command the system within Pakistan. According to a discussion paper produced by the India based South Asia Analysis Group (SAAG): "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." (Produced in May 2001 the SAAG paper was commenting on "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").

Although protesting his innocence in the murder of Pearl, Sheikh was sentenced to death in July. An appeal is now pending. There is little doubt from his personal history that Sheikh has been actively involved in militant Islamic groups of the kind so long supported by the CIA in the region. Because of where it might lead, however, it would certainly be extremely 'difficult' for the Bush administration if the link between Sheikh and CIA-appointed General Mahmoud was to be exposed in detail. The link between Sheikh and 911 is, after all, already seemingly established.

The 911 connection with Mahmoud was in fact raised by an accredited Indian journalist on 16 May at a White House press briefing run by US National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice. The briefing was about what the Bush administration knew pre-911. The journalist asked with whom the head of the ISI had been meeting in Washington around the time of the attacks. Rice denied knowledge and swiftly moved on. Ominously both White House and CNN transcripts of the press briefing omit this reference to Mahmoud in the journalist's question. They simply leave out the relevant words in the case of the White House version, or insert 'inaudible' in the case of CNN. However, the wording is audible on the official video recording of the briefing.

If such embarrassing connections were to have real implications, then 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 that area Sheikh is the prime witness after Mahmoud himself, who no doubt is now enjoying a comfortable pension in return for his silence.

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. Would the White House not like to know the details of that? Would the families of those who died in the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon not like to know too? When are those families going to sue the Bush administration over this?

Sheikh was tried for the murder of Pearl behind closed doors. His father has commented that Sheikh was convicted because of injustice "and some kind of pressure". His brother told the BBC "One of the co-accused complained via his lawyer that the police had been beating him quite brutally for hours, trying to make him sign a confession that pinpointed Omar Sheikh as the mastermind behind the kidnapping and he refused. The police then threatened to bring his mother and sister to the police station and gang rape them, at which point he signed the confession."

A further BBC report elaborates: "...the most controversial decision was to hold the trial behind close doors. Even though the case was about the murder of a reputable foreign journalist, at no time were reporters allowed to cover the proceedings. Pakistan's anti-terrorism law specifically states that the entire process should be complete within seven days, but the Pearl murder case went on for more than three months. Not just that, but during this period, the trial judge and the venue were changed three times.... The main accused, Omar Sheikh, described the evidence against him as 'a tissue of lies', and said it had been fabricated 'to please the Americans'.... "

The BBC reports one man on the street in Hydrabad saying that Pakistanis were expecting the verdict "because Pakistan has to accept the dictates of the US."

The BBC quotes Sheikh's reaction to the verdict via his lawyer: "I will see whether who wants to kill me will first kill me or get himself killed." In addition to Musharaff it is perhaps not difficult to imagine Richard Armitage shifting uneasily in his seat at this point.

Initially the prosecution told the court that it would produce more than 50 witnesses, but according to the BBC in the end only 'a handful' of people testified on behalf of the government, one of which was an FBI agent who gave 'an opinion' on how Pearl's captors used the internet to distribute his photographs and other messages.

'Interestingly' says the BBC, the complainant in the case, Pearl's widow, did not appear at the request of the prosecution. This required an 'extraordinary concession' from the judge. Mrs Pearl had left the country to give birth to their child. Nonetheless, because she often worked with Pearl on his stories she might have provided some interesting evidence as to what he had been investigating and who he had been meeting with in the period leading up to his abduction. Legal sources close to the Pakistani government reportedly confirm that at the very least Pearl was investigating the ISI.

In a statement released by his lawyers during the period of the trial Sheikh described the Sept 11 attacks on America as 'deserved' and warned that new attacks could come because of US military action in Afghanistan and Israel's actions against the Palestinians. Clearly this is a man who would have had little objection to money passing from Pakistan to the 911 hijackers. It increasingly looks like the twenty four year old was used for that purpose and that those who used him now want that trail blanked off.

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 BBC confirms that: "News that a British-born Islamic militant has been found guilty of the murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl has been welcomed by the Foreign Office." Foreign Office support for the verdict is 'interesting' given that no body or murder weapon has been found, and that one of the main pieces of evidence relied on for the conviction is a confession by Sheikh which he has since retracted claiming it was extracted under torture.

The other principal piece of 'evidence' is testimony from a taxi driver who claims he saw Sheikh meeting with Pearl in Karachi. Sheikh denies it, although if true it would certainly lend considerable weight to speculation that Pearl was on the 911 Mahmoud-Sheikh-ISI-CIA trail. According to Gulf News 25 March "It is ....rumoured that Pearl was in fact especially interested in any role played by the U.S. in training the ISI or backing it in any way". The paper quotes a source 'close to the Pakistan foreign office' as stating "Details of any U.S.-ISI cooperation would of course not be appreciated even in Washington, especially regarding U.S. cooperation in promoting any kind of Islamic militancy".

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. The group which claimed to have abducted Pearl is one which had never been heard of before, neatly limiting the options for pursuing additional leads. Was this group manufactured for the specific purpose of framing Sheikh? And if so, by whom?

The BBC observes that despite strong anti-US feelings in Pakistan "none of the more than 2,000 foreign journalists who converged on Pakistan when US air strikes on Afghanistan began, has been kidnapped or harassed". This suggests Pearl was onto something exceptionally sensitive.

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. Only wishful thinking can support a belief that the situation is any better within the US government, whose reputation for deceit stretches well back to the dark days of the Nixon-Kissinger era and beyond (Nixon and Kissinger even asked foreign leaders to join them in lying to their own Secretary of State, William Rogers, as reported in Time magazine, 5 November 2001).

Despite the absence of a body in the evidence used to convict Sheikh in the murder of Pearl the BBC states that "Apparently one of the main reasons for proceeding with the trial in Pakistan was because of the mounting pressure from the United States".

Meanwhile the enthusiasm of the British government for the trial's guilty verdict brings us neatly back once again to the US's principal western ally in the so-called 'war against terrorism' and indirectly to Sir David Manning.

There is a additional interesting element to Sir David's appointment as an adviser to Tony Blair, taking up his post as it happens just shortly before Sept 11 according to the Observer 20 January 2002. Sir Richard is former British Ambassador to the organisation currently headed by a former British minister and through which Britain typically wages war alongside the US. That organisation is, of course, NATO. (The BBC reports 25 August that it was the British Secretary General of NATO who came up with the idea of using Article 5 of the alliance's treaty for the first time to apply a doctrine that an attack on one NATO country is an attack on all. Lord Robertson, seemingly better prepared for the event, advised Colin Powell on the issue over the phone after the attacks. Initially Powell didn't get the point. Robertson told him: "I have got a draft statement ready".)

According to the Observer 24 February: "In appointing the former ambassador to Nato, Sir David Manning, as foreign affairs adviser just before 11 September, Blair was sending a signal about the importance of the role." Was Blair in fact expecting war?

http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/WATbritain911.htm

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