How accurate is this?

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
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No one get a hernia after reading this :rolleyes: Just wondering how accurate it is.

The Pakistan connection, Michael Meacher, 22 July 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.

…] With 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

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It's one of the great 9/11 conspiracy theories. The Bush administration successfully demanded that General Mahmoud Ahmed be removed from his post after the money transfer to Atta was discovered, but has never applied any pressure for their to be any kind of investigation, let alone trial, into his activities.

It's odd that someone who was in contact with the top US leadership during the time of the attacks, who was blamed by the US for helping to finance the attacks to the extent of losing his job, should not be pursued by the US in any way, shape or form.

I'm normally not a fan of conspiracy theories, but something really smells fishy about this whole deal. If the US does not want the guy brought to justice for this alleged money transfer, then it is quite plausible that there is a reason why they don't want him on trial. In fact, the only action the Bush administration took (getting him removed from his post) served to completely remove him from the public eye and fade into virtual anonimity. One might even say, protective anonimity.

There are so many possible takes on this

a) The White House doesn't want to embarass Musharraf
b) The White House used this incident to force Pakistan to back down on supporting the Taliban or face the military consequences of having it revealed that ISI allegedly helped finance 9/11
c) General Mahmoud Ahmed was framed, either by the USA or by Pakistan so that a more favourable ISI Director General could be appointed
d) The White House was complicit in the payments and needed to get General Ahmed out of the spotlight, so extracted his replacement from the post and then kept quiet about him.

Given US sentiments at the time, it's unlike that any evidence of official Pakistani involvement would have less to anything less than full military retaliation - so arm-twisting as suggested in b) is unlikely.
Scenario a) is another possibility, but again, given the sentiments regarding 9/11, it's unlikely that the USA would want to let any foreigner involved in any way to get away without arrest or trial, regardless of the circumstances.
Scenario c) is pretty weak, because as C-in-C of the armed forces, Musharraf could have shaken up the ISI leadership at any time if he felt its objectives were not in line with his own.
Scenario d) is pretty fanciful too. The only way in which I view it as being likely would be if the US intelligence services had no idea that an attack was imminent, and funneled money to Atta via a source Atta may have been willing to trust (the intelligence services of a nation friendly to the Taliban), in an attempt to track Al-Qaeda networking and activities in the USA through giving them financial resources to be active. When 9/11 suddenly happened, they may have realised hat their money was used for and suddenly tried to hide all evidence of the operation.

This is all completely seculative, however. The facts just don't seem to add up straight, something is really not right at all.

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^^ Maddy, out of those 4 options d) seems to be the most likely one. Patta nahi, kyoon?

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MS,

I was visiting my cousin in 2002. At his university, they had a seminar titled "9/11 - Afghanistan, Pakistan and CIA" or something like that. Among the panel was former CIA Pak station chief Milton Bearden. During the Q&A, one reporter asked Bearden about this allegation linking Gen. Mahmoud to 9/11.

Bearden said that he and everyone at CIA were good friends with Gen.Mahmoud and blaming him is a good way to link CIA to 9/11. He said that he himself had taken Mahmoud on tours around the US during his past visits. He did not deny anything but laughed off the whole matter. He also said that Indians (RAW) had started this rumor and we should take it with a pinch of salt.

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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Khilaari: *
He also said that Indians (RAW) had started this rumor and we should take it with a pinch of salt.
[/QUOTE]

It is quite plausible that this is just a rumour, because if someone knew 9/11 would happen and that a military target Washington would be attacke,d why would he want to be in Washington meeting military leaders in the day?

More to the point, as an intelligence officer, he'd have surely realised how easy financial transfers are to track, and the extremely high level of risk involved with orginating the tranfer and then going to the country most likely to be able to identify the transfer occuring and apprehend him.

Like I said, the fact just do not add up and whatever the truth is, it most certainly cannot be taken at face value.