George Will - 9/11 Conspiracy Theorist?

Okay, maybe not, but I was surprised to stumble across this today from one of his Washington Post columns:

"It is not fantasy that there have been many reports that the then-head of Pakistani intelligence was responsible for $100,000 being wired to Mohamed Atta, the lead 9/11 hijacker."

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/georgewill/gw20031005.shtml

It's interesting how the story of that connection hangs in the air, but no reporter ever gets to the bottom of it. For instance, I also stumbled across this today in the Wall Street Journal, of all places:

"It is a fact that Gen. Mahmood Ahmed, then head of the ISI, wired $100,000 to Mohamed Atta before 9/11 through an intermediary. (This was reported in the Journal on Oct. 10, 2001.)"

http://www.melvillehousebooks.com/pearlclips/opinion.html

It's like an uncomfortable truth that many people are aware of, but no one really wants to figure out. Amazing, isn't it, that this vital fact would be mentioned in book review asides in newspapers like the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, and not blared from their front pages? Even the original Wall Street Journal story referred to above above was given the strange title "Our Friends, the Pakistanis" and buried in the back pages.

was heavily involved with the Taliban, and the Taliban was married to Al Quaida as far as training, recruitment, and resources go.

It could very well be that Atta was on the ISI bankroll.

Definately cause for concern, however may or may not mean Pakistan had prior knowlege of the 9-11 plan.

...of not only Pakistani foreknowledge but full on involvement in 9/11 that I don't even know where to begin. You should read my book, for starters. Here's a couple of entries, to give you a flavor:

June 16, 2004: 9/11 Commission Figure Says Pakistan Was "Up to Their Eyeballs" with Taliban and al-Qaeda
"An unnamed senior staff member" on the 9/11 Commission tells the Los Angeles Times that, before 9/11, Pakistani officials were "up to their eyeballs" in collaboration with the Taliban and al-Qaeda. As an example, this source says of bin Laden moving to Afghanistan in 1996, "He wouldn't go back there without Pakistan's approval and support, and had to comply with their rules and regulations." From "day one," the ISI helped al-Qaeda set up an infrastructure, and jointly operated terrorist training camps. The article further notes that what the commission will publicly say on this is just the "tip of the iceberg" of the material they've been given on the matter. (Los Angeles Times, 6/14/04) In fact, the commission's final report released a month later will barely mention the ISI at all. (9/11 Commission Final Report, 7/24/04)

July 22, 2004: Evidence the ISI Was "Fully Involved" in the 9/11 Plot Is Ignored
UPI reports that the 9/11 Commission has been given a document from a high-level, publicly anonymous source claiming that the Pakistani “ISI was fully involved in devising and helping the entire (9/11 plot).” The document blames General Hamid Gul, a former ISI Director, as being a central participant in the plot. It notes that Gul is a self-avowed “admirer” of bin Laden. An anonymous, ranking CIA official says the CIA considers Gul to be “the most dangerous man” in Pakistan. A senior Pakistani political leader says, “I have reason to believe Hamid Gul was Osama bin Laden’s master planner.” The document further suggests that Pakistan’s appearance of fighting al-Qaeda is merely an elaborate charade, and top military and intelligence officials in Pakistan still closely sympathize with bin Laden’s ideology. (UPI, 7/22/04) However, the 9/11 Commission final report released a month later will fail to mention any of this. (9/11 Commission Final Report, 7/24/04)

And speaking of Gul, here's an interesting entry hinting at some curious inside info he was somehow getting from the US:

July 1999: Ex-ISI Head Is Providing Taliban Information on US Missile Launches
The US gains information that former ISI head Hamid Gul contacts Taliban leaders at this time and advises them that the US is not planning to attack Afghanistan to get bin Laden. He assures them that he will provide them three or four hours warning of any future US missile launch, as he did “last time.” Counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke later suggests Gul gave al-Qaeda warning about the missile strike in August 1998. (NEW YORKER, 7/28/03)

It's this kind of thing that inspires a comment by Daniel Ellsberg noted in this entry:

July 22, 2004: Prominent Figures See Ties Between the ISI, 9/11, and Even the CIA
Michael Meacher, a British Member of Parliament, and a Cabinet Minister in Tony Blair’s government until 2003, writes in the Guardian, “Significantly, (Saeed) Sheikh is ... the man who, on the instructions of General Mahmood Ahmed, the then head of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), wired $100,000 before the 9/11 attacks to Mohamed Atta, the lead hijacker. It is extraordinary that neither Ahmed nor Sheikh have been charged and brought to trial on this count. Why not?” Daniel Ellsberg, the “Pentagon Papers” whistleblower during the Nixon presidency, states in the same article, “It seems to me quite plausible that Pakistan was quite involved in <9/11> ... To say Pakistan is, to me, to say CIA because ... it’s hard to say that the ISI knew something that the CIA had no knowledge of.” (Guardian, 7/22/04)

I could go on and on. It's amazing what gets reported, but not widely reported in the US.

have you read this book? The author was the commander of the Afghan Bureau of the ISI.

http://www.afghanbooks.com/beartrap/english/03.htm

You should. The latter parts detail the rift between the CIA and the ISI as to how the Mujahadeen should be managed in the latter part of the war against the Soviets. It details the feud between Massoud (who's group became the Northern Alliance) and Hekmatyar (Talaban), and the ISI's involvement.

It is no secret that the ISI propagated the Taliban. And the information you posted certainly could indicate a large rift between Pakistan's Musharraf and the ISI. I belive you detail Ahmed's sacking for being too close to the Taliban.

"But according to one diplomat: “To remove the top two or three doesn't matter at all. The philosophy remains…. a parallel government of its own. If you go through the officer list, almost all of the ISI regulars would say, of the Taliban, ‘They are my boys.”

I'll can certainly buy that without a vast CIA/ISI 9-11 conspiricy.

But I'm aware of a rift at that time. The US-ISI relationship certainly has had its ups and downs, but it's been an indispensible relationship and the US works with the ISI even today, despite the ISI's dubious loyalties.

Re: Musharraf, I highly doubt he was clueless about 9/11 and what the ISI was doing. For one thing, he and Mahmood Ahmed go waaaaay back as personal friends. For another, if he was really clueless and upset about it, he would have acted differently after 9/11, but there's been no serious purge of the ISI even till today. He's extremely politically savvy, and never could have survived so long if he was clueless about such major things.

Musharraf always has played a double game. On one hand, he has to please the US, who is his sugar daddy of sorts. On the other hand, he wants things the US doesn't want, like victory in Kashmir, and he has to keep the support of his populace, who are literally the most pro-bin Laden populace on the planet, with something like 80 to 90% of the people in favor of bin Laden and his ideas (a poll just a week or two ago confirms this, by the way). So he's at once very pro-al-Qaeda (for local consumption) and very anti-al-Qaeda (for US consumption). A pretty neat trick to pull off, but he's managed so far. He's done things like faked assassination attempts to make it seem like al-Qaeda is out to get him, and periodic captures of major al-Qaeda figures. He reportedly keeps a hand gun on his person at all times because he's walking such a razor fine line.

As for CIA ties to the 9/11 plot via the ISI, that is admittedly conjecture at this time. But I see it as a much more fruitful line of investigation than, say, arguing if a plane hit the Pentagon or not.

the 9/11 attacks to "Al Qaeda"-- since the money went through Omar Saeed or whatever his name is.

But the fact is, the money was wired JUST two or three days before the attacks, and it is not clear why Atta would need so much money at that time. If Atta was going to kill himself, why would he worry about paying off debts? And it is not like he had big expenditures at that point.

So I think the $100,000 is just setting up a money trail for their intelligence legend.

People get distracted so far afield. One must assess all the physical evidence to decide what really happened, before looking around the planet for criminals who could have committed the crime. Once you understand the physical evidence issues of the WTC and Pentagon, you realize that Atta and his friends could not have created these disasters with or without the hundred grand.

Gee, do you think Atta used that hundred grand to wire WTC buildings 1,2, and 7 with enough explosives to blow those buildings to smithereens? No, Atta OBVIOUSLY WASN'T IN A POSITION TO COMMITT THAT CRIME. Who was? Well, there's Marvin Bush, Larry Silverstein...notice that using real criminology and physics keeps us pretty close to home here. We never needed to invade any foreign countries to find the real criminals!

Indeed, about the only explanation of the hundred grand would be to set up an intelligence legend.

it wasn't just a few days before. Here's an entry I made the other day and haven't posted anywhere yet:

Summer 2000: "Saeed Sheikh Frequently Calls the ISI Director"
In 2002, French author Bernard-Henri Levy is presented evidence by government officials in New Delhi, India, that Saeed Shiekh makes repeated calls to ISI Director Mahmood Ahmed during the summer of 2000. Later, Levy gets unofficial confirmation from sources in Washington regarding these calls that the information he was given in India is correct. He notes that someone in the United Arab Emirates using a variety of aliases sends Mohamed Atta slightly over $100,000 between June and September of this year, and the timing of these phone calls and the money transfers may have been the source of news reports that Mahmood Ahmed ordered Saeed Sheikh to send $100,000 to Mohamed Atta. However, he also notes that there is evidence of Sheikh sending Atta $100,000 in August 2001, so the reports could refer to that, or both $100,000 transfers could involve Mahmood Ahmed, Saeed Sheikh, and Mohamed Atta. (Who Killed Daniel Pearl? by Bernard-Henri Levy, pp. 320-324)

I should point out that people mistakenly think of US culpability and ISI/al-Qaeda culpability in 9/11 as mutually exclusive ideas. There could very well be multiple participants. I'm reminded of a book about Watergate which I forget the title of, but it made a good argument that Nixon used the Iranian secret service, Savak, for some of his dirtiest dirty tricks in the US. He got more plausible deniablity, and Savak in return was allowed to kill anti-Shah figures in the US, and killed about 300 during the Nixon administration.

Who knows what kinds of intrigues and deals go on behind the scenes?

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Though I don't believe any of the aircraft that struck the World Trade Center or the Pentagon were piloted by the so-called "terrorists," and I don't believe Osama bin Laden was behind 9/11, this article by Michael Chossudovsky, published 2 November 2001, provides information about the relationship between the U.S. and the "ISI-Osama-Taliban axis."

------------------------

The Role of Pakistan's Military Intelligence (ISI) in the September 11 Attacks

by Michel Chossudovsky
Professor of Economics, University of Ottawa
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO111A.html (complete article)

Excerpt:

On the 9th of September while General Ahmad was in the US, the leader of the Northern Alliance Commander Ahmad Shah Masood was assassinated. The Northern Alliance had informed the Bush Administration that the ISI was allegedly implicated in the assassination.

The Bush Administration consciously took the decision in "the post September 11 consultations" with Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad to directly "cooperate" with Pakistan's military intelligence (ISI) despite its links to Osama bin Laden and the Taliban and its alleged role in the assassination of Commander Masood, which coincidentally occurred two days before the terrorist attacks.

Meanwhile, senior Pentagon and State Department officials had been rushed to Islamabad to put the finishing touches on America's war plans. And on the Sunday prior to the onslaught of the bombing of major cities in Afghanistan (October 7th), Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad was sacked from his position as head of the ISI in what was described as a routine "reshuffling."

In the days following General Ahmad's dismissal, a report published in the Times of India, revealed the links between Pakistan's Chief spy Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad and the presumed "ring leader" of the WTC attacks Mohamed Atta. The Times of India article was based on an official intelligence report of the Delhi government that had been transmitted through official channels to Washington. Quoting an Indian government source Agence France Press (AFP) confirms in this regard that: "The evidence we have supplied to the US is of a much wider range and depth than just one piece of paper linking a rogue general to some misplaced act of terrorism."

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