It seems that lately, every trail of questionable activity leads back to Pakistan's intelligence agency, ISI. Drug smuggling, money laundering, the arms trade, CIA involvement, al Qaeda involvement, Indian mafia involvement, nuclear proliferation -- they've got it all.
The story begins in 1979-80, when the CIA poured into Pakistan in order to arm the Afghan insurgents against the Soviets and pumped up the local opium trade to support their operations. It continues through the 1980's and the operations of BCCI, which was founded in Pakistan. It is deeply entangled with the events of 9/11. And it is at the heart of the recent revelations of Pakistan's role in nuclear proliferation -- and why the US has taken no serious action against those involved.
I've posted bits and pieces of this story on various scattered threads. I'm going to try to bring them all together here. However, a good place to start is with an article from a year and a half ago which pulls together an extraordinary number of scattered facts to create an extremely disquieting picture:
Sept. 11's Smoking Gun: The Many Faces of Saeed Sheikh
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/main/essaysaeed.htmlThe article is far too long and too tightly reasoned to do justice to with a few brief quotes. It centers on Saeed Shiekh, a Moslem radical who by 1994 was both on ISI's payroll and working with al Qaeda. Many people in the Pakistani government believed he was a CIA asset as well.
He was arrested in India in 1994 while attempting to kidnap Western tourists (the ISI paid his legal fees,) and remained in jail until 1999, when al Qaeda hijacked an Indian Airlines plane and exchanged it for his freedom and that of a couple of other Pakistani terrorists. He spent the next two years living openly in Lahore, Pakistan under ISI protection. During this period, he kept up his connections with Moslem mafiosi in India, providing them with weapons and training in exchange for a cut of the profits of their kidnapping racket.
Saeed Sheikh also appears to have been the al Qaeda "paymaster" who was sending large sums of money to Mohammed Atta -- some of it probably obtained from the Indian mafia -- apparently at the direction of General Mahmood Ahmed, head of the ISI.
But the really interesting part of the story is what happened around September 11, 2001:
On October 7, 2001, Pakistani President Musharraf fired Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed, the head of the ISI. The next day, some newspapers, mostly in India but also in Pakistan, shockingly said he was fired for his role in the 9/11 attacks. For instance, a Pakistani newspaper stated, "Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed has been replaced after the FBI investigators established credible links between him and Umar Sheikh, one of the three militants released in exchange for passengers of the hijacked Indian Airlines plane in 1999... Informed sources said there were enough indications with the US intelligence agencies that it was at Gen. Mahmood's instruction that Sheikh had transferred 100,000 US dollars into the account of Mohammed Atta..."
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The relationship between the US and the ISI is hard to fathom. On September 4, 2001, ISI Director Mahmood Ahmed arrived in Washington, D.C. On September 10, a Pakistani newspaper reported on the visit, saying that it had "triggered speculation about the agenda of his mysterious meetings at the Pentagon and National Security Council" as well as meetings with CIA Director George Tenet, unspecified officials at the White House and the Pentagon, and his "most important meeting" with Mark Grossman, US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. The article suggested that "of course, Osama bin Laden" was the focus of some discussions. Prophetically, the article added, "What added interest to his visit is the history of such visits. Last time predecessor was here, the domestic politics turned topsy-turvy within days. That this is not the first visit by Mahmood in the last three months shows the urgency of the ongoing parleys." In May 2001, both CIA Director George Tenet and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage had visited South Asia. It's not known if they met with Mahmood or anyone else in the ISI, but according to credible news reports, Tenet had "unusually long" consultations with President Musharraf. It is also worth noting that Armitage is known for his "large circle of friends in the Pakistani military and ISI" as well as his connections to the Iran-Contra affair.
Of course everyone knows that politics did turn very "topsy-turvy" one day after the Karachi News article on September 10. But what many don't know is that on the morning of September 11, Lt. Gen. Mahmood was at a breakfast meeting at the Capitol with the chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, Senator Bob Graham (D) and Representative Porter Goss (R). The meeting was said to have lasted at least until the second plane hit the World Trade Center. Goss is a self-admitted 10-year veteran of the CIA's clandestine operations wing. Goss and Graham were later the heads of the joint House-Senate investigation into the September 11 attacks, and Goss in particular made headlines for saying there was no "smoking gun" indicating that the government had sufficient foreknowledge to prevent the September 11 attacks.
On September 12 and 13, Lt. Gen. Mahmood met with Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, Senator Joseph Biden, the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Secretary of State Colin Powell. An agreement on Pakistan's collaboration in the new "war on terror" was negotiated between Mahmood and Armitage. All these meetings coordinated Pakistan's response to September 11. Isn't it strange that the terms of Pakistan's commitment to fight al-Qaeda were negotiated with the man who may have given orders to send $100,000 to the September 11 hijackers?What strikes me as particularly interesting -- and disturbing -- is that Richard Armitage and Porter Goss are the two men who have been mentioned most prominently as possible successors to George Tenet as director of the CIA. And both of them seem to have been up to their necks in whatever was going on with the ISI and 9/11. According to the article, all sorts of coverup and disinformation have been going on concerning these matters. Is it possible that Armitage and Goss are being considered precisely for their ability to continue the coverup?
In addition, the Plame indictment threads have raised the possibility that Valerie Plame was outed not merely to discredit her husband, but also because her investigations of weapons proliferation were getting too close to secrets that someone in the administration wanted concealed. Is it possible that those secrets involve the ISI as well?
More coming -- stay tuned.