Cover-ups

As William Engdahl pointed out, “if the Bush administration had been unprepared for the shock of September 11, 2001, they certainly wasted no time in preparing their response, the war on terror. Terror was to replace communism as the new global image of “the enemy”.²¹⁵ On September 18, 2001, Niaz Naik, former Pakistani foreign secretary, told the BBC he had been informed by senior US officials at a mid-July Berlin meeting that “military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October.”²¹⁶ Ultimately, the invasion of Afghanistan was a furtherance of the initial plans devised by Brzezinski to gain control over Central Asia.

Former CIA official Robert Baer, who was Case Officer in the Directorate of Operations for the agency from 1976 to 1997 and who received the Career Intelligence Medal, observed that, “did bin Laden act alone, through his own al-Qaeda network, in launching the attacks? About that I’m far more certain and emphatic: no.”²¹⁷

Rather, there are numerous instances of evidence that point to complicity in the attacks at the highest levels. Sibel Edmonds, an FBI translator, says the agency covered up evidence warning of the 9-11 attack. She tried to blow the whistle on the cover-up of intelligence naming some of the culprits who orchestrated the 9/11 attacks, but she is now under two gag orders which forbid her from testifying in court or mentioning the names of the people or the countries involved. She has nevertheless been quoted saying: “My translations of the 9/11 intercepts included [terrorist] money laundering, detailed and date-specific information ... if they were to do real investigations, we would see several significant high-level criminal prosecutions in this country [the US] ... and believe me, they will do everything to cover this up”.²¹⁸

Days before September 11, a delegation headed by Lt. Gen. Mahmoud Ahmed, Director-General of the Pakistani ISI, was in Washington for top-level meetings in the White House, the Pentagon, the NSC, and with George Tenet, then head of the CIA, and Marc Grossman, the under-secretary of state for political affairs.

However, just before the commencement of the bombing campaign against Afghanistan, Mahmoud was dismissed from his position, at U.S. instigation. It had been discovered that, at his bidding, $100,000 had been wired to Mohammed Atta, the supposed ring-leader of the 9/11 attacks. The transfer was made through Ahmad Omar Sheikh, who was one of the three militants released in exchange for passengers of the hijacked Indian Airlines plane in 1999.²¹⁹ As to what such a connection implies, in an article for the Guardian, Michael Meacher pointed out that, “the case of Ahmed confirms that parts of the ISI directly supported and financed al-Qaeda, and it has long been established that the ISI has acted as go-between in intelligence operations on behalf of the CIA.”²²⁰

Omar Sheikh is now waiting to be hanged in Pakistan for the murder of Daniel Pearl in 2002, which he did not commit. Both the US government and Pearl’s wife have since acknowledged that he was not responsible, but the Pakistani government refuses to try other suspects in the case because it could reveal too much.

Rather, the New York Times has since reported that “American officials said that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, once al-Qaida’s top operational commander [and the architect of 9/11], personally executed Daniel Pearl ... but he was unlikely to be accused of the crime in an American criminal court because of the risk of divulging classified information”.²²¹ In 1993, according to court affidavits, he was quizzed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) after an agent of al Qaeda was caught entering the US with his driver’s license and a false passport. However, the Mounties released Mohammed when the FBI claimed him as a prized asset, and the former US Army sergeant was free to continue running with al-Qaeda. Mohammed trained Osama bin Laden’s bodyguards and the cell in Kenya responsible for the bombing. The FBI informant was only picked up in late 1998 and sentenced for his part in the crime.²²²

Footnotes:

216 Ibid. p. 253.
217 See No Evil, quoted from Ahmed, The War on Freedom, p. 221
218 “This Made Ashcroft Gag: Translator keeps blowing 9-11 whistle on FBI; U.S. Keeps shutting her up” Village Voice, 24 May 2004.
219 Ibid.
220 Michael Meacher, “The Pakistan Connection: There is Evidence of Foreign Intelligence backing for the 9/11 Hijackers. Why is the US Government so keen to Cover it Up?”, The Guardian, Thursday July 22, 2004.
221 Ibid.
222 Constantine, Alex. "Saudi Entrepreneur Adnan Khashoggi Linked to 911 Terrorists. Part 10: The Brothers’ Keepers".