9-11 And The Smoking Gun: Goss New CIA Boss

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9-11 AND THE SMOKING GUN

Part 2: A real smoking gun

By Pepe Escobar

 

Part 1: 'Independent' commission

 

If the 9-11 Commission is really looking for a smoking

gun, it should look no further than at

Lieutenant-General Mahmoud Ahmad, the director of the

Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) at the

time.

 

In early October 2001, Indian intelligence learned

that Mahmoud had ordered flamboyant Saeed Sheikh - the

convicted mastermind of the kidnapping and killing of

Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl - to wire

US$100,000 from Dubai to one of hijacker Mohamed

Atta's two bank accounts in Florida.

 

A juicy direct connection was also established between

Mahmoud and Republican Congressman Porter Gross and

Democratic Senator Bob Graham. They were all in

Washington together discussing Osama bin Laden over

breakfast when the attacks of September 11, 2001,

happened.

 

Mahmoud's involvement in September 11 might be

dismissed as only Indian propaganda. But Indian

intelligence swears by it, and the US Federal Bureau

of Investigation (FBI) has confirmed the whole story:

Indian intelligence even supplied Saeed's

cellular-phone numbers. Nobody has bothered to check

what really happened. The 9-11 Commission should pose

very specific questions about it to FBI director

Robert Mueller when he testifies this month.

 

In December 2002, Graham said he was " surprised at the

evidence that there were foreign governments involved

in facilitating the activities of at least some of the

[september 11] terrorists in the United States ... It

will become public at some point when it's turned over

to the archives, but that's 20 or 30 years from now. "

He could not but be referring to Pakistan and Mahmoud.

If Mahmoud was really involved in September 11, this

means the Pakistani ISI - " the state within the state "

- knew all about it. And if the intelligence elite in

Pakistan knew it, an intelligence elite in Saudi

Arabia knew it, as well as an intelligence elite in

the US.

 

Get Osama bin Laden

On August 22, 2001, Asia Times Online reported Get

Osama! Now! Or else ...

 

 

On September 9, the legendary " Lion of the Panjshir " ,

Ahmed Shah Masoud, the key Northern Alliance

commander, was assassinated by two suicide bombers

posing as journalists in his base in northern

Afghanistan. The Northern Alliance tells Washington

that the ISI may be involved. Masoud himself had told

this correspondent, two weeks before he was killed, of

the incestuous link between bin Laden and al-Qaeda,

the Taliban and the ISI. A 2002 Asia Times Online

investigation would later establish that Masoud was

killed as a gift from al-Qaeda to the Taliban, with

heavy involvement by Abdul Sayyaf, an Afghan

mujahideen commander very close to the ISI and the

Saudis. From Washington's perspective, this was also a

gift. Masoud was the crucial Afghan nationalist

leader, supported by Russia and Iran; after the

Taliban being smashed he would never have accepted a

feeble, US-sponsored, Hamid Karzai-style government.

 

On September 10, the Pakistani daily The News reported

that the Mahmoud visit to the United States " triggered

speculation about the agenda of his mysterious

meetings at the Pentagon and National Security

Council " . If he'd been to the National Security

Council, he had certainly met Rice. Mahmoud did meet

with his counterpart, Central Intelligence Agency

(CIA) director George Tenet. Tenet and Deputy

Secretary of State Richard Armitage had been in

Islamabad in May, when Tenet had " unusually long "

meetings with Musharraf. Armitage for his part has

countless friends in the Pakistani military and the

ISI. Mahmoud also met a number of high officials at

the White House and the Pentagon and had a crucial

meeting with Marc Grossman, the under secretary of

state for political affairs. Rice maintains she did

not meet Mahmoud then.

 

On the morning of September 11, Mahmoud was having a

breakfast meeting at the Capitol with Graham and Goss.

Goss spent as many as 10 years working on numerous CIA

clandestine operations. He is very close to Vice

President Dick Cheney. It's interesting to note that

two weeks ago Goss suggested to the Justice Department

to bring perjury charges against the new Cheney

nemesis, Clarke. As it is widely known, Graham and

Goss were co-heads of the joint House-Senate

investigation that proclaimed there was " no smoking

gun " as far as President George W Bush having any

advance knowledge of September 11.

 

According to the Washington Post, and also to sources

in Islamabad, the Mahmoud-Graham-Goss meeting lasted

until the second plane hit Tower 2 of the World Trade

Center. Graham later said they were talking about

terrorism coming from Afghanistan, which means they

were talking about bin Laden.

 

Pakistani intelligence sources told Asia Times Online

that on the afternoon of September 11 itself, as well

as on September 12 and 13, Armitage met with Mahmoud

with a stark choice: either Pakistan would help the US

against al-Qaeda, or it would be bombed back to the

Stone Age. Secretary of State Colin Powell presented

an ultimatum in the form of seven US demands. Pakistan

accepted all of them. One of the demands was for

Musharraf to send Mahmoud to Kandahar again and force

the Taliban to extradite bin Laden. Mahmoud knew in

advance Mullah Omar would refuse. But when he went to

Kandahar the Taliban leader said he would accept, as

long as the Americans proved bin Laden was responsible

for September 11. There was no proof, and Afghanistan

was bombed anyway, a policy already decided well in

advance.

 

It's important to remember than on September 13

Islamabad airport was shut down - allegedly because of

threats against Pakistan's strategic assets. On

September 14, Islamabad declared total support for the

US: the airport was immediately reopened. Mahmoud

remained in Washington until September 16 - when the

war on Afghanistan was more than programmed, and

Pakistan was firmly in the " with us " and not the

" against us " column.

 

Million-dollar questions remain. Did Mahmoud know when

and how the attacks of September 11 would happen? Did

Musharraf know? Could the Bush administration have

prevented September 11? It's hard to believe high

echelons of the CIA and FBI were not aware of the

direct link between the ISI and alleged chief hijacker

Mohammed Atta.

 

On October 7, Mahmoud was demoted from the ISI. By

that time, Washington obviously knew of the connection

between Mahmoud, Saeed Sheikh and Mohamed Atta: the

FBI knew it. The official version is that Mahmoud was

sacrificed because he was too close to the Taliban -

which, it is never enough to remind, are a cherished

creature of the ISI. Two other ISI big shots,

Lieutenant-General Mohammed Aziz Khan and Chief of

General Staff Mohammed Yousouf, are also demoted along

with Mahmoud. Saeed Sheikh was under orders to Khan.

 

The fact remains that even with this

Musharraf-conducted purge of the ISI elite, the bulk

of ISI officers remained, and still are, pro-Taliban.

Other former ISI directors living in Pakistan, such as

the colorful, outspoken Lieutenant-General Hamid Gul,

did not " disappear " and always renew their support for

the Taliban. But as Asia Times Online has reported,

Mahmoud did disappear. He lives in near seclusion in

Rawalpindi. And he is definitely not talking. Graham

and Goss may not be interested in talking to him

either. Because he may be the ultimate September 11

smoking gun.

 

Conclusion

The Karl Rove-designed campaign to re-elect Bush is in

essence anchored on September 11. The Republican

convention in New York will happen in the first week

of September. Bush's speech will be on September 2 -

to force the connection with the three-year

commemoration of September 11.

 

This whole affair is not about whether Clarke

committed " perjury " ; whether Rice was really up to her

job; or whether George W Bush knew something and then

" forgot " about it. The families of September 11

victims, US public opinion, the demonized Islamic

world, the whole world for that matter, all everybody

wants to know is what really happened on September 11.

The only party that does not seem interested in

getting to the bottom of it is the Bush

administration. The official fable of 19 kamikaze

Arabs turning Boeings into missiles with military

precision, armed only with box cutters and a few

flight lessons and directed from an Afghan cave by a

satellite phone-shy bin Laden simply does not hold.

The commission is not asking the really hard

questions. Here are just a few - and they are far from

being the most embarrassing.

 

1) The " stand down " order: Why, despite more than an

hour's warning that an attack was happening, were no

F-16s protecting US airspace? Documents easily

available online reveal why the Pentagon could not

act: because of bureaucracy. Why did the North

American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) claim it

took 25 minutes after the transponder was shut down to

learn that Flight 11 - which hit World Trade Center

Tower 1 - was hijacked? Why did fighters not take off

from Andrews Air Force base just outside Washington to

protect the Pentagon?

 

2) The pre-September 11 suspicious stock option trades

in American Airlines and United Airlines were never

fully investigated. Who profited?

 

3) What happened to the FBI investigation into flight

schools - when it was proved that at least five of the

19 hijackers were trained in US military schools?

 

4) Why did Bush keep reading a pet-goat story for more

than half an hour after the first WTC hit, and 15

minutes after Chief of Staff Andrew Card told him

there had been an attack?

 

5) What really happened to Flight 93? An Associated

Press story last August quoting a congressional report

said the FBI suspected the plane was crashed on

purpose. The FBI has a flight-simulation video of what

happened: the video - as well as the black box -

remain top secret. And as far as four " indestructible "

black boxes are concerned, how come none were found,

unlike Mohammed Atta's intact passport lying in the

WTC rubble?

 

6) Why have no scientific experts examined the

physical and mathematical evidence that a Boeing 757

could not have possibly " disappeared " without a trace

after hitting the Pentagon? For the most exhaustive

and practically incontrovertible analysis available on

the net, see this report.

 

7) What remains of the very tight 1980s bin

Laden-ISI-CIA connection? How much did the CIA know

about what the ISI was up to? And how much did the ISI

know about what al-Qaeda was up to?

 

8) What does Rice really know about the very close

relations between Mahmoud and the top echelons of the

Bush administration?

 

The genie - the crucial information - is still in the

bottle.

 

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