______________________________
ANTIFA INFO-BULLETIN
News * Analysis * Research * Action
______________________________
- AFIB No. 320, November 4, 2001 -
FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL! FREE LEONARD PELTIER!
FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS & PRISONERS OF WAR!
U.S. OUT OF VIEQUES!
The DEA had evidence of over forty heroin syndicates operating in Pakistan
in the mid-1980s during the Afghan war, and there was evidence of more than
200 heroin labs operating in northwest Pakistan. Even though Islamabad
houses one of the largest DEA offices in Asia, no action was ever taken by
the DEA agents against any of these operations. An Interpol officer told
the journalist Lawrence Lifschultz, "It is very strange that the Americans,
with the size of their resources, and the political power they possess in
Pakistan, have failed to break a single case. The explanation cannot be
found in lack of adequate police work. They have some excellent men working
in Pakistan." But working in the same offices as those DEA agents were five
CIA officers who, so one of the DEA agents later told the Washington Post,
ordered them to pull back their operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan for
the duration of the war. -- Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair,
Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the press [London, New York, Verso, 1998] pp.
264-265.
Contents: Number 320
01. THE GREENS/GREEN PARTY USA [Chicago]: Green Party USA Leader Prevented
from Flying to Chicago Meeting by Armed Military Personnel.
02. WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE [London]: Bush Anti-Terror Law Mandates
Sweeping Attacks on Democratic Rights.
03. TAYAD, Association of Solidarity With The Families of Prisoners
[Istanbul]: Death Fast Resisters are Under Siege & Forcible Medical
Intervention.
04. CENTRE FOR RESEARCH ON GLOBALISATION [Montreal]: Cover-up or Complicity
of the Bush Administration? The Role of Pakistan's Military Intelligence
(ISI) in the September 11 Attacks.
05. ANALYSIS: Unleashing the CIA? by William Blum.
06. WALL STREET JOURNAL: Al Qaeda's Balkan Links.
07. SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE: Al Qaeda Terrorist Worked with the FBI.
08. MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: Patriot Games.
* * *
THE GREENS/GREEN PARTY USA
226 South Wabash, 6th floor
PO Box 1406,
Chicago, Illinois 60690
Toll-free Phone: 1-866-GREENS-2
Web: http://www.greenparty.org/
- Friday, 2 November 2001 -
-----
_______________________________________________________________________
GREEN PARTY USA LEADER PREVENTED FROM FLYING
TO CHICAGO MEETING BY ARMED MILITARY PERSONNEL
_______________________________________________________________________
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 2, 2001
"I was targeted because the Green Party USA opposes the bombing of innocent
civilians in Afghanistan." -- Nancy Oden
MEDIA ALERT: Green Party USA will hold press conference in Chicago
Saturday, Nov. 3, 10 a.m. at the J. Ira and Nicki Family Hostel, 24 East
Congress Parkway (at Wabash), 2nd floor.
Armed government agents grabbed Nancy Oden, Green Party USA coordinating
committee member, Thursday at Bangor International Airport in Bangor Maine,
as she attempted to board an American Airlines flight to Chicago.
"An official told me that my name had been flagged in the computer," a
shaken Oden said. "I was targeted because the Green Party USA opposes the
bombing of innocent civilians in Afghanistan."
Oden, a long-time organic farmer and peace activist in northern Maine, was
ordered away from the plane. Military personnel with automatic weapons
surrounded Oden and instructed all airlines to deny her passage on ANY
flight. "I was told that the airport was closed to me until further notice
and that my ticket would not be refunded," Oden said.
Oden is scheduled to speak in Chicago Friday night on a panel concerning
pesticides as weapons of war. She had helped to coordinate the Green Party
USA's antiwar efforts these past few months, and was to report on these to
The Greens national committee. "Not only did they stop me at the airport
but some mysterious party had called the hotel and cancelled my
reservation," Oden said.
The Greens National Committee -- the governing body of the Green Party USA
-- is meeting in Chicago Nov. 2-4 to hammer out the details of national
campaigns against bio-chemical warfare, the spraying of toxic pesticides,
genetic engineering, and the Party's involvement in the burgeoning peace
movement.
"I am shocked that US military prevented one of our prominent Green Party
members from attending the meeting in Chicago," said Elizabeth Fattah, a
GPUSA representative from Pennsylvania who drove to Chicago. "I am outraged
at the way the Bill of Rights is being trampled upon."
Chicago Green activist Lionel Trepanier concluded, "The attack on the right
of association of an opposition political party is chilling. The harassment
of peace activists is reprehensible."
For further information, please call 1-866-GREENS-2 (toll-free)
The Green Party USA statement on the war against Afghanistan is at
http://www.greenparty.org/911.html. They are the original Green Party in
the U.S. since 1986.
Courtesy of People Against Racist Terror, part2001@usa.net
*****
WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE
Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)
Web: http://www.wsws.org/
E-Mail: editor@wsws.org
- Wednesday, 31 October 2001 -
-----
____________________________________________________________________
BUSH "ANTI-TERROR" LAW MANDATES SWEEPING ATTACKS ON DEMOCRATIC RIGHTS
____________________________________________________________________
News & Analysis: North America
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/oct2001/terr-o31.shtml
By Kate Randall
The bill signed into law last Friday by George W. Bush provides, in the
name of combating terrorism, sweeping new powers to US police and
intelligence agencies. It marks a major escalation in the assault on civil
liberties and democratic rights.
Named the USA Patriot Act, the bill passed with overwhelming bipartisan
support. It was pushed through Congress in five weeks--record speed for
legislation that alters many aspects of the criminal justice code. The vote
was 356 to 66 in the House of Representatives and 98 to 1 in the Senate.
Only one senator, Russell D. Feingold, Democrat from Wisconsin, voted
against the measure. Feingold complained of "relentless" pressure from the
administration to move quickly on the bill "without deliberation or
debate."
The Bush administration began its campaign for the bill within a few days
of the September 11 attacks. Many of its provisions attacking basic rights
and constitutional safeguards have long been sought by sections of the
political establishment. The Bush administration seized on the September 11
tragedy to advance the anti-democratic agenda associated most closely with
the Republican right. It met with no serious resistance from Democratic
liberals.
The USA Patriot Act defines domestic terrorism as "an attempt to intimidate
or coerce a civilian population" or change "the policy of the government by
intimidation or coercion." The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
complained that this definition is so broad as to include political dissent
by activists involved in protests against world trade, environmental
policies or other issues. It is clearly broad enough to include labor
strikes or other forms of working class struggle.
The bill provides intelligence and police officials new electronic
surveillance authority and gives police agencies the power to carry out
secret searches. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced Friday that the
government would immediately implement its provisions.
The Bush administration had sought the power to detain indefinitely and
without charges immigrants suspected of terrorist involvement. While
stopping short of this, the bill expands the time a terrorist suspect can
be held in detention without being charged to seven days from the previous
two days. Under some circumstances, however, immigrant detainees can be
held virtually indefinitely.
If an immigrant is taken into custody, ostensibly for deportation purposes,
and the attorney general declares the individual a threat to national
security, the detention can be repeatedly extended for six-month periods.
In addition, a deportee can be held indefinitely if his home country
refuses to take him back.
The attorney general can bring deportation proceedings against an immigrant
on the flimsiest of grounds, including the charge that the individual had
"associated" with an organization or group designated by authorities as
terrorist. Such "guilt by association" opens the way for excluding or
deporting people from the US for ideological reasons, and flouts the basic
rights of freedom of speech and expression.
Non-citizens, including legal permanent residents, can be denied reentry to
the United States for engaging in speech protected by the First Amendment.
It is left up to the attorney general and the Justice Department to
determine which organizations are "terrorist." An individual can be
detained and deported simply for having crossed paths with a targeted
group.
Ashcroft signaled his intention to utilize the full strength of the
legislation in a speech last week in Washington to the US Conference of
Mayors: "Let the terrorists among us be warned. If you overstay your visas
even by one day, we will arrest you. If you violate a local law, we will
... work to make sure that you are put in jail and ... kept in custody as
long as possible. We will use every available statute. We will seek every
prosecutorial advantage."
Roving wiretaps and secret searches
Expanded powers of surveillance in intelligence investigations include
"roving wiretaps" covering multiple telephones. A judge can authorize
surveillance not simply of a telephone line, but all phones used by a
suspected terrorist, including cellular phones.
Existing rules governing the type of information that can be monitored in
phone calls are now extended to electronic mail. A warrant can authorize
surveillance not only of the content of e-mail, but also allow authorities
to follow the addresses of incoming and outgoing e-mail, and the times
messages are sent. Internet service providers can be ordered to provide
authorities with the name, address and credit card information of customers
who sign up for accounts with anonymous or screen names. The administration
sought permanent authority for these increased powers of surveillance, but
the final bill calls for their expiration after four years, at which time
Congress will have the ability to renew them.
One of the most ominous provisions of the bill is the authorization of
secret searches. Using a secret warrant, the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) can break into homes or businesses to conduct such
searches, without notifying suspects until after the fact. The government
is not required to inform the suspect the content of that which was found
or seized. Federal agents do not need probable cause to obtain this type of
search warrant, only suspicion of involvement in a crime, and these
regulations can be applied to routine criminal investigations unrelated to
terrorism. Federal officials will also be allowed to obtain nationwide
search warrants for terrorism investigations.
These provisions clearly contravene protections against arbitrary searches
and seizures laid down in the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution.
The bill also allows for intelligence wiretaps even if
intelligence-gathering is only a minor reason for seeking the warrant.
Warrants for intelligence gathering are governed by much looser standards
than those obtained in criminal cases, and are often issued in secrecy.
Another provision of the law allows the FBI to share information collected
during grand jury proceedings with the Central Intelligence Agency, giving
the CIA domestic information it has been restricted from receiving in the
past.
Credit, medical and student records can be retrieved secretly by federal
agencies on anyone suspected of involvement in terrorism, after approval by
a secret court, regardless of state privacy laws. Senator Feingold pointed
out that this provision could be used to obtain the business or medical
records of someone "who might have sat on an airplane" with a suspected
terrorist.
There are also banking provisions aimed at alleged money laundering by
suspected terrorist groups. These include measures allowing the secretary
of the treasury to impose sanctions on countries that refuse to provide
information to American investigators on large depositors at US banks.
American banks will also be banned from conducting business with so-called
shell banks, institutions that have no physical facilities and are not part
of a regulated banking system.
Criminal sentences for committing acts of terrorism, or harboring or
financing suspected terrorists or their organizations, are increased. It is
now illegal for individuals or groups to possess biological substances that
could be used in a terrorist attack for any purpose other than a "peaceful"
one, as defined by the government. A terrorist attack on a mass transit
system now becomes a federal crime.
Over 1,000 detained in federal dragnet
In the course of the government dragnet since September 11, the FBI, the
Immigration and Naturalization Service and other law enforcement agencies
have rounded up more than 1,000 suspects. On Monday, a coalition of civil
rights groups called on the Justice Department to release the names of
those detained or arrested since the terror attacks.
The 20-member coalition--including the ACLU, the American Immigration
Lawyers Association, Amnesty International, and Arab-American and Muslim
organizations--has filed a Freedom of Information request demanding the
government release not only the identities of the detainees, but also the
nature of the charges filed against them, the dates they were detained and
where they are being held.
Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies,
declared, "The secret detention of more than 800 people over the past few
weeks is frighteningly close to the practice of 'disappearing' people in
Latin America."
The new "anti-terror" law is designed to legitimize and expand precisely
such police-state practices.
Copyright 1998-2001 World Socialist Web Site. All rights reserved.
*****
TAYAD
(Association of Solidarity With The Families of Prisoners)
Ordek Kasap Mah.
Ibrahim Muteferrika Cad.
Lale Apartmani. No:6/1
Findikzade/Fatih/Istanbul
Tel/Fax: (0090) 212 5323700
E-Mail: hucre_iskencedir@hotmail.com
Web: http://www.hucreiskencedir.cjb.net
- Monday, 29 October 2001 -
-----
____________________________________________________________________
DEATH FAST RESISTERS ARE UNDER SIEGE & FORCIBLE MEDICAL INTERVENTION
____________________________________________________________________
The Death Fast is in its Fourth season...74 MARTYRS. THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE
BETWEEN THE PRISONS AND OUTSIDE THE PRISONS. THE ENTIRE TURKEY IS LIKE THE
F-TYPE PRISONS. WE WILL CONTINUE TO RESIST! Under the Threat of the CS
Bombs and Machine Guns, THE DEATH FAST RESISTANCE CONTINUES ON ITS 375TH
DAY In Hospitals, F-Type Prisons and Shantytowns
No. 401, October 29, 2001
THE POLICE SIEGE IN ARMUTLU, ARBITRARY DETENTIONS OF THOSE WHO GO TO
ARMUTLU NEIGHBOURHOOD AND FORCIBLE MEDICAL INTERVENTION IN HOSPITALS ARE
STILL CONTINUING
The Police are continuing to terrorise the Armutlu neighbourhood of
Istanbul. The people in cafes and visitors are arbitrarily detained. On
October 26, Friday, a man called Baki YILDIRIM was detained without a
reason while he was in a café. He was taken to Istanbul Police HQ the
Anti-Terror Branch and was released the next day On October 28, Sunday 13
visitors came from Bursa City to see the Death Fast resisters and during
their return trip they were detained in Rumelihisari Police station and
hours later were released without charge. The Death Fast resistance is
continuing within its second year despite oppression and deceits. With
these arbitrary detentions the state is trying to intimidate the Death Fast
resisters in Armutlu. The state is hopeless. It tries to carry the tyranny
in F-type prisons to the outside. But they have achieved nothing with these
methods. The Death Fast resistance is continuing both in prisons and in
shantytowns with an increasing determination. Armutlu neighbourhood is
facing another possible attack. Our sons and daughters in F-type prisons
are transferred to hospitals to be subjected to forcible medical
intervention. GÜLBAHAR ÜNLÜ, TÜLAY KORKMAZ, TÜLIN DOGAN, SEMRA BASYIGIT,
ESAT UÇKAN, FAIK ÖNDER, HAKKI SEKER, MAHMUT ÖZTÜRKMEN and LÜTFI TOPAL are
still under forcible medical intervention. They will also be left mentally
handicapped. With each bottle of serum they will be turned into living dead
who have no memory, who cannot think and who have no past or future. The
days are coming for the Eight teams of Death Fast volunteers. As long as
our demands receive no positive respond, our loved ones have no hesitation
to begin their turn of Death Fast resistance. Unless the state changes
their attitude our Death Fast resistance will continue. The solution is the
acceptance of our demands. The Death Fast resistance is continuing with its
glory both in the prisons and outside the prisons.
TAYAD Families
LONDON TAYAD COMMITTEE
E-MAIL: TAYADlondon1@aol.com
Tel: +(44) 7799 473577
*****
CENTRE FOR RESEARCH ON GLOBALISATION
Behind the News, Analysis, Commentary and Intelligence on the New World Order
Web: http://globalresearch.ca/
Friday, 2 November 2001
-----
____________________________________________________________________
COVER-UP OR COMPLICITY OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION?
The Role of Pakistan's Military Intelligence Agency (ISI) in the September
11 attacks
____________________________________________________________________
by Michel Chossudovsky
Professor of Economics, University of Ottawa
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO111A.html
Two days after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the
Pentagon, a delegation led by the head of Pakistan's military intelligence
agency (ISI) Lt. Gen. Mahmoud Ahmed, was in Washington for high level talks
at the State Department.1
Most US media conveyed the impression that Islamabad had put together a
delegation at Washington's behest, and that the invitation to the meeting
had been transmitted to the Pakistan government "after" the tragic events
of September 11.
But this is not what happened!
Pakistan's chief spy Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad "was in the US when the
attacks occurred."2 According to the New York Times, "he happened to be
here on a regular visit of consultations."3
Not a word was mentioned regarding the nature of his "business" in the US
in the week prior to the terrorist attacks. According to Newsweek, he was
"on a visit to Washington at the time of the attack, and, like most other
visitors, is still stuck there," unable to return home because of the
freeze on international airline travel.4
General Ahmad had in fact arrived in the US on the 4th of September, a full
week before the attacks.5 Bear in mind that the purpose of his meeting at
the State Department on the 13th was only made public "after" the September
11 terrorist attacks, when the Bush Administration took the decision to
formally seek the "cooperation" of Pakistan in its "campaign against
international terrorism."
The press reports confirm that Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad had two meetings
with Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, respectively on the 12th
and 13th.6 After September 11, he also met Senator Joseph Biden, chairman
of the powerful Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate.
Confirmed by several press reports, however, he also had "a regular visit
of consultations" with US officials during the week prior to September
11--i.e. meetings with his US counterparts at the CIA and the Pentagon.7
What was the nature of these routine "consultations"? Were they in any way
related to the subsequent "post-September 11 consultations" pertaining to
Pakistan's decision to cooperate with Washington, held behind closed doors
at the State Department on September 12 and 13? Was the planning of war
being discussed between Pakistani and US officials?
"The ISI-Osama-Taliban Axis"
On the 9th of September, 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 Northern Alliance had confirmed in an official statement
that:
"a 'Pakistani ISI-Osama-Taliban axis' [was responsible] of plotting the
assassination by two Arab suicide bombers.... 'We believe that this is a
triangle between Osama bin Laden, ISI, which is the intelligence section of
the Pakistani army, and the Taliban,'"8
More generally, the complicity of the ISI in the "ISI-Osama-Taliban axis"
was a matter of public record, confirmed by congressional transcripts and
numerous intelligence reports.9
The Bush Administration Cooperates with Pakistan's Military-Intelligence
The Bush Administration consciously took the decision in "the post
September 11 consultations" at the State Department 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, the Western media --in the face of mounting evidence--had
remained silent on the insidious role of Pakistan's Military Intelligence
agency (ISI). The assassination of Masood was mentioned, but its political
significance in relation to September 11 and the subsequent decision to go
to war against Afghanistan, was barely touched upon.
Without discussion or debate, Pakistan had been heralded as a "friend" and
ally of America.
In an utterly twisted logic, the US media had concluded in chorus that:
"US officials had sought cooperation from Pakistan [precisely] because it
is the original backer of the Taliban, the hard-line Islamic leadership of
Afghanistan accused by Washington of harboring bin Laden."10
>From The Horse's Mouth
Nobody seemed to have noticed the obtrusive and unsubtle falsehoods behind
the Administration's "campaign against international terrorism", with
perhaps the exception of an inquisitive journalist who questioned Colin
Powell at the outset of his State department briefing on Thursday September
13th:
"[Does] the U.S. see Pakistan as an ally or, as the 'Patterns of Global
Terrorism' pointed out, a place where terrorist groups get training. Or is
it a mixture?"11
"Patterns of Global Terrorism" referred by the journalist (at
http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/pgtrpt/2000/) is a publication of the US
State Department which confirms that the government of President Pervez
Musharraf has links to international terrorism:
"The United States remains concerned about reports of continued Pakistani
support for the Taliban's military operations in Afghanistan. Credible
reporting indicates that Pakistan is providing the Taliban with materiel,
fuel, funding, technical assistance, and military advisers. Pakistan has
not prevented large numbers of Pakistani nationals from moving into
Afghanistan to fight for the Taliban. Islamabad also failed to take
effective steps to curb the activities of certain madrassas, or religious
schools, that serve as recruiting grounds for terrorism."12
Behind Close Doors at the State Department
The Bush Administration had sought the "cooperation" of those, who were
directly supporting and abetting the terrorists. Absurd, but at the same
time consistent with Washington's broader strategic and economic objectives
in Central Asia.
The meeting behind closed doors at the State Department on September 13
between Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Lt. General Mahmoud
Ahmad was shrouded in secrecy. Remember President Bush was not even
involved in these crucial negotiations:
"Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage handed over [to ISI chief
Mahmoud Ahmad] a list of specific steps Washington wanted Pakistan to
take".13 "After a telephone conversation between [Secretary of State Colin]
Powell and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, State Department spokesman
Richard Boucher said Pakistan had promised to cooperate." 14 President
George W. Bush later confirmed (also on the morning of September 13th) that
the Pakistan government had accepted "to cooperate and to participate as we
hunt down those people who committed this unbelievable, despicable act on
America''.15
Former Iran-Contragate Officials Call the Shots
Bear in mind that Richard Armitage had served as Assistant Secretary of
Defense for International Security under the Reagan Administration. "He
worked closely with Oliver North and was involved in the Iran-contra arms
smuggling scandal."16
In many regards, the pattern of Bush Junior appointments replicate the
Iran-Contragate team of the Reagan and Bush senior administrations:
"The same kind of appointments are being made in foreign policy. Bush has
been choosing people from the most dubious part of the Republican stable of
the 1980s, those engaged in the Iran-Contra affair... Armitage served as
Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs in the
Reagan years, but a 1989 appointment in the elder Bush administration was
withdrawn before hearings because of controversy over Iran-Contra and other
scandals."17
Armitage was one of the main architects behind US covert to the Mujahedin
and the "militant Islamic base, both during the Afghan-Soviet war as well
as in its aftermath. US covert support was financed by the Golden Crescent
drug trade.
This pattern has not been fundamentally altered. It still constitutes an
integral part of US foreign policy by the Bush Administration and the basis
of CIA covert operations.
Pakistan's Chief Spy on Mission to Afghanistan
On September 13th, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf confirmed that he
would send chief spy Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad to meet the Taliban and
negotiate the extradition of Osama bin Laden. This decision was at
Washington's behest, most probably agreed upon during the meeting between
Dick Armitage and General Mahmoud at the State Department.
Pakistan's chief spy is rapidly whisked back from Washington to Islamabad:
"At American urging, Ahmed traveled ... to Kandahar, Afghanistan. There he
delivered the bluntest of demands. Turn over bin Laden without conditions,
he told Taliban leader Mohammad Omar, or face certain war with the United
States and its allies."18
Mahmoud's meetings on two separate missions with the Taliban were reported
as a "failure." Yet this "failure" to extradite Osama was part of
Washington's design, providing a pretext for a military intervention which
was already in the pipeline. If Osama had been extradited, the main
justification for waging a war "against international terrorism" would no
longer hold. And the evidence suggests that this war had been planned well
in advance of September 11, in response to broad strategic and economic
objectives.
Meanwhile, senior Pentagon and State Department officials had been rushed
to Islamabad to put the finishing touches on America's war plans. And on
Sunday prior to the onslaught of the bombing of major cities in Afghanistan
by the US Air Force (October 7th), Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad was sacked
from his position as head of the ISI in what was described as a routine
"reshuffling."
"The Missing Link"
In the days following Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad's dismissal, a report
published in the Times of India, which went virtually unnoticed by the
Western media, revealed the links between Pakistan's Chief spy Lt. General
Mahmoud Ahmad and the presumed "ring leader" of the WTC attacks Mohamed
Atta. In many regards, the Times of India report constitutes "the missing
link" to an understanding of who was behind the terrorist attacks of
September 11:
"While the Pakistani Inter Services Public Relations claimed that former
ISI director-general Lt-Gen Mahmoud Ahmad sought retirement after being
superseded on Monday [8 October], the day the US started bombing
Afghanistan], the truth is more shocking. Top sources confirmed here on
Tuesday [October 9], that the general lost his job because of the
"evidence" India produced to show his links to one of the suicide bombers
that wrecked the World Trade Centre. The US authorities sought his removal
after confirming the fact that $100,000 were wired to WTC hijacker Mohammed
Atta from Pakistan by Ahmad Umar Sheikh at the instance of Gen. Mahmoud.
Senior government sources have confirmed that India contributed
significantly to establishing the link between the money transfer and the
role played by the dismissed ISI chief. While they did not provide details,
they said that Indian inputs, including Sheikh's mobile phone number,
helped the FBI in tracing and establishing the link.
"A direct link between the ISI and the WTC attack could have enormous
repercussions. The US cannot but suspect whether or not there were other
senior Pakistani Army commanders who were in the know of things. Evidence
of a larger conspiracy could shake US confidence in Pakistan's ability to
participate in the anti-terrorism coalition."19
According to FBI files, Mohamed Atta was "the lead hijacker of the first
jet airliner to slam into the World Trade Center and, apparently, the lead
conspirator".20
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. Agence France Press (AFP) confirms in this regard that:
"A highly-placed government source told AFP that the 'damning link' between
the General and the transfer of funds to Atta was part of evidence which
India has officially sent to the US. '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,' the source said." 21
Pakistan's Military-Intelligence Agency behind September 11?
The revelation of the Times of India article has several implications. The
report not only points to the links between ISI Chief General Ahmad and
terrorist ringleader Mohamed Atta, it also indicates that other ISI
officials might have had contacts with the terrorists. Moreover, it
suggests that the September 11 attacks were not an act of "individual
terrorism" organised by a separate Al Qaeda cell, but rather they were part
of coordinated military-intelligence operation, emanating from Pakistan's
ISI.
The Times of India report also sheds light on the nature of General Ahmad's
"business activities" in the US during the week prior to September 11,
raising the distinct possibility of ISI contacts with Mohamed Atta in the
US in the week "prior" to the attacks on the WTC, precisely at the time
when General Mahmoud and his delegation were on a so-called "regular visit
of consultations" with US officials. Remember, Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad
arrived in the US on the 4th of September.
US Approved Appointee
In assessing the alleged links between the terrorists and the ISI, it
should be understood that Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad as head of the ISI was
a "US approved appointee". As head of the ISI since 1999, he was in liaison
with his US counterparts in the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)
and the Pentagon. Also bear in mind that Pakistan's ISI remained throughout
the entire post Cold War era until the present, the launch pad for CIA
covert operations in the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Balkans.22
In other words, General Mahmoud Ahmad as head of the ISI was serving US
foreign policy interests. His dismissal on the orders of Washington was not
the result of a fundamental political disagreement. Without US support
channeled through the Pakistani ISI, the Taliban would not have been able
to form a government in 1996. Jane Defense Weekly confirms in this regard
that "half of Taliban manpower and equipment originate[d] in Pakistan under
the ISI," which in turn was supported by the US.23 Moreover, the
assassination of the leader of the Northern Alliance General Ahmad Shah
Masood--in which the ISI is alleged to have been implicated--was not in
contradiction with US foreign policy objectives. Since the late 1980s, the
US had consistently sought to side-track and weaken Masood who was
perceived as a nationalist reformer, by providing support to both to the
Taliban and the Hezb-I-Islami group led by Gulbuddin Hektmayar against
Masood.
Corroborated by Congressional Transcripts
Corroborated by the House of Representatives Internaitonal Relations
Committee, US support funneled through the ISI to the Taliban and Osama bin
Laden has been a consistent policy of the US Administration since the end
of the Cold War:
"...[T]he United States has been part and parcel to supporting the Taliban
all along, and still is let me add... You have a military government [of
President Musharraf] in Pakistan now that is arming the Taliban to the
teeth....Let me note; that [US] aid has always gone to Taliban areas... We
have been supporting the Taliban, because all our aid goes to the Taliban
areas. And when people from the outside try to put aid into areas not
controlled by the Taliban, they are thwarted by our own State Department...
At that same moment, Pakistan initiated a major resupply effort, which
eventually saw the defeat, and caused the defeat, of almost all of the
anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan."24
Cover-up and Complicity
The existence of an "ISI-Osama-Taliban axis" is a matter of public record.
The links between the ISI and agencies of the US government including the
CIA are also a matter of public record.
Pakistan's ISI has been used by successive US adminstrations as "a
go-between." Pakistan's military-intelligence apparatus, constitutes the
core institutional support to both Osama's Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
Without this institutional support, there would be no Taliban government in
Kabul. In turn, without the unbending support of the US government. there
would be no powerful military-intelligence apparatus in Pakistan.
Senior officials in the State Department were fully cognizant of General
Mahmoud Ahmad's role. In the wake of September 11, the Bush Administration
consciously sought the "cooperation" of the ISI which had been supporting
and abetting Osama bin Laden and the Taliban.
In other words, the Bush Administration's relations with Pakistan's
ISI--including its "consultations" with General Mahmoud Ahmad in the week
prior to September 11--raise the issue of "cover-up" as well as
"complicity". While Ahmad was talking to US officials at the CIA and the
Pentagon, the ISI allegedly had contacts with the September 11 terrorists.
According to the Indian government intelligence report (referred to in the
Times of India), the perpetrators of the September 11 attacks had links to
Pakistan's ISI, which in turn has links to agencies of the US government.
What this suggests is that key individuals within the US
military-intelligence establishment might have known about ISI contacts
with the September 11 terrorist "ring-leader" Mohamed Atta and failed to
act.
Whether this amounts to the outright complicity of the Bush Administration
remains to be firmly established.
What is crystal clear, however, is that this war is not a "campaign against
international terrorism". It is a war of conquest with devastating
consequences for the future of humanity. And the American people have been
consciously and deliberately misled by their government.
Ultimately the truth must prevail. The falsehoods behind America's war
against the people of Afghanistan must be unveiled.
Notes
1. Guardian, 15 September 2001.
2. Reuters, 13 September 2001.
3. The New York Times, 13 September 2001.
4. Newsweek, 14 September 2001.
5. The Daily Telegraph, London, 14 September 2001.
6. The New York Times, September 13th 2001 confirms the meeting on the 12th
of September.
7. The New York Times, 13 September 2001.
8. The Northern Alliance's statement was released on 14 September 2001,
quoted in Reuters 15 September 2001.
9. For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, "Osamagate", Centre for
Research on Globalisation (CRG), at globalresearch.ca, October 2001.
10. Reuters 13 September 2001.
11. Journalist's question to Secretary of State Colin Powell, State
Department Briefing, 13 September 2001.
12. US State Department, "Patterns of Global Terrorism", State Department,
http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/pgtrpt/2000/, Washington 2000.
13. Reuters, 13 September 2001.
14. Ibid.
15. Presidential Papers, Remarks in a Telephone Conversation With New York
City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and New York Governor George Pataki and an
Exchange With Reporters, 13 September 2001.
16. The Guardian, 15 September 2001.
17. United Press International, Face-off: Bush's foreign policy warriors,
by Peter Roff and James Chapin, UPI, 18 July 2001.
18. Washington Post, 23 September 2001.
19. Times of India, Delhi, 9 October 2001, at:
http://www.timesofindia.com/articleshow.asp?catkey=-2128936835&art_id=1454238160
&sType=1).
20. The Weekly Standard, Vol. 7, No 7, October 2001.
21. AFP, 10 October 2001.
22. For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, "Who is Osama bin Laden",
Centre for Research on Globalisation, 12 September 2001.
23. Quoted in the Christian Science Monitor, 3 September 1998.
24. US House of Representatives: Statement by Rep. Dana Rohrbacher, Hearing
of The House International Relations Committee on "Global Terrorism And
South Asia", Washington, July 12, 2000.
Copyright, Michel Chossudovsky, Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG),
November 2001. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to post this text
on non-commercial community internet sites, provided the source and the URL
are indicated, the essay remains intact and the copyright note is
displayed. To publish this text in printed and/or other forms, including
commercial Internet sites and excerpts, contact the Centre for Research on
Globalisation (CRG) at editor@globalresearch.ca, fax 1-514-4256224.
*****
____________________________________________________________________
UNLEASHING THE CIA?
____________________________________________________________________
by William Blum, BBlum6@aol.com
- Tuesday, 30 October 2001 -
The old joke goes that in the waning days of the Second World War, when
Hitler was told of yet another defeat on the battlefield, he slammed his
fist into his desk and declared: "That does it! No more Mr. Nice Guy!"
We've been treated in the past couple of weeks to one press story after
another about how the Bush administration seeks to "unleash" the CIA from
its restrictions concerning things like political assassination and dealing
with "unsavory" characters. The nature of the September 11 attack was such,
we are told, that we have to remove our kid gloves and put on
depleted-uranium-tipped brass knuckles.
The policies whose "revisions" are being discussed and leaked are
principally a 25-year ban on the CIA and other agencies of the government
from engaging in assassination, and a policy of the past five years or so
of barring the CIA from employing real nasty killers and torturers abroad,
or at least not without express approval from high up.
Why are they telling us these tales at this time? Is it to comfort the
American public into believing that the government is holding nothing back
in its campaign of making us more secure? Or can they actually believe that
such announcements will put the fear of Allah in the Taliban leadership?
The fact is that since Gerald Ford signed a presidential order in 1976,
which stated that "No employee of the United States shall engage in, or
conspire to engage in, political assassination", the United States has
plotted, on more than a dozen occasions, to administer what the CIA at one
time called "suicide involuntarily administered". The last known attempt
was the firing of missiles into the home of Slobodan Milosevic in 1999;
amongst other attempts during this period was the arranging by the CIA, in
1985, for a car bomb to kill one sheikh Fadlallah in Beirut; 80 people were
killed in the explosion, the sheikh not being among their number.
Moreover, in 1984, President Reagan cancelled his own executive order,
which had reiterated Ford's, with a new order which was actually called by
the press a "license to kill" -- a license to kill anyone deemed a
"terrorist". After the Fadlallah travesty, the license to kill was
cancelled, only to be reinstated a few months later following a hijacking
of a TWA plane.
President Bush, the elder, added a new twist in 1989. He issued a
"memorandum of law" that would allow "accidental" killing if it was a
byproduct of legal action: "A decision by the President to employ overt
military force ... would not constitute assassination if U.S. forces were
employed against the combatant forces of another nation, a guerrilla force,
or a terrorist or other organization whose actions pose a threat to the
security of the United States." In other words, assassination was okay as
long as we said "oops!"
It can thus be seen that all this talk we are being fed of late about
giving the CIA "new" powers to engage in "targeted killings" is little more
than spin, the native language of politicians.
The same can be said for the public now being told that because of the
terrorist crisis, the CIA is going to be allowed to revert to the good ol'
days when they could cozy up to the most despicable human rights violators
without getting permission from headquarters. It's hard to imagine that in
recent years that even if an Agency officer felt moved to ask for such
permission that it would have been refused. A CIA officer could not have
set foot in Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Indonesia, Turkey, Kosovo or Croatia
without tripping over an unindicted war criminal-cum-US ally. As I write
this, the Agency is sleeping with the Northern Alliance of Afghanistan, a
band of torturers, kidnappers and rapists so depraved that the people of
Afghanistan at first welcomed the Taliban as heroes for conquering these
worthies.
To top it all off, we are told that the finest legal minds of the Justice
Department, State Department, Pentagon, etc. have put their fine minds
together and have decided that the new marching orders are -- will wonders
never cease? -- LEGAL!
All these announcements are designed not only to make Americans feel safer,
but to give us a nice, warm, fuzzy feeling that our leaders are so
honorable that they engage in protracted debates and soul searching before
endorsing any policies not fit for our children's schoolbooks.
William Blum is the author of "Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA
Interventions Since World War II" and "Rogue State: A Guide to the World's
Only Superpower". Portions of the books can be read at:
http://members.aol.com/superogue/homepage.htm (with a link to Killing Hope)
*****
____________________________________________________________________
AL QAEDA'S BALKAN LINKS
____________________________________________________________________
WALL STREET JOURNAL EUROPE
Thursday, November 1, 2001
http://freedomofpress.tripod.com/wsj5.html
By Marcia Christoff Kurop, a former editor of the Washington-based weekly
newspaper Defense News.
The Balkans' uncharacteristically silent exit from the world stage as the
most prominent international hot spot of the last decade belies its status
as a major recruiting and training center of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda
network. By feeding off the region's impoverished republics and taking root
in the unsettled diplomatic aftermath of the Bosnia and Kosovo conflicts,
al Qaeda, along with Iranian Revolutionary Guard-sponsored terrorists, have
burrowed their way into Europe's backyard.
For the past 10 years, the most senior leaders of al Qaeda have visited the
Balkans, including bin Laden himself on three occasions between 1994 and
1996. The Egyptian surgeon turned terrorist leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri has
operated terrorist training camps, weapons of mass destruction factories
and money-laundering and drug-trading networks throughout Albania, Kosovo,
Macedonia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Bosnia. This has gone on for a decade. Many
recruits to the Balkan wars came originally from Chechnya, a jihad in which
Al Qaeda has also played a part.
These activities have been exhaustively researched by Yossef Bodansky, the
former director of the U.S. House of Representatives' Task Force on
Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare. The February testimony of an Islamist
ringleader associated with the East Africa bombings have also helped throw
light on these actions.
They have however been disguised under the cover of dozens of
"humanitarian" agencies spread throughout Bosnia, Kosovo and Albania.
Funding has come from now-defunct banks such as the Albanian-Arab Islamic
Bank and from bin Laden's so-called Advisory and Reformation Committee. One
of his largest Islamist front agencies, it was established in London in
1994.
Narco-Jihad Culture
The overnight rise of heroin trafficking through Kosovo -- now the most
important Balkan route between Southeast Asia and Europe after Turkey --
helped also to fund terrorist activity directly associated with al Qaeda
and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Opium poppies, which barely existed in
the Balkans before 1995, have become the No. 1 drug cultivated in the
Balkans after marijuana. Operatives of two al Qaeda-sponsored Islamist
cells who were arrested in Bosnia on Oct. 23 were linked to the heroin
trade, underscoring the narco-jihad culture of today's post-war Balkans.
These drug rings in turn form part of an estimated $8 billion a year
Taliban annual income from global drug trafficking, predominantly in
heroin. According to Mr. Bodansky, the terrorism expert, bin Laden
administers much of that trade through Russian mafia groups for a
commission of 10% to 15% -- or around $1 billion annually.
The settling of Afghan-trained mujahideen in the Balkans began around 1992,
when recruits were brought into Bosnia by the ruling Islamic party of
Bosnia, the Party of Democratic Action, from Chechnya, Saudi Arabia, Egypt,
Pakistan, as well as Italy, Germany and Turkey. They were all given
journalists' credentials to avoid explicit detection by the West. Others
were married immediately to Bosnian Muslim women and incorporated into
regular army ranks.
Intelligence services of the Nordic-Polish SFOR (previously IFOR) sector
alerted the U.S. of their presence in 1992 while the number of mujahideen
operating in Bosnia alone continued to grow from a few hundred to around
6,000 in 1995. Though the Clinton administration had been briefed
extensively by the State Department in 1993 on the growing Islamist threat
in former Yugoslavia, little was done to follow through.
The Bosnian Embassy in Vienna issued a passport to bin Laden in 1993,
according to various reports in the Yugoslav press at the time. The reports
add that bin Laden then visited a terrorist camp in Zenica, Bosnia in 1994.
The Bosnian government denies all of this, but admits that some passport
records have been lost. Around that time, bin Laden directed al Qaeda
"senior commanders" to incorporate the Balkans into an complete
southeastern approach to Europe, an area stretching from the Caucasus to
Italy. Al Zawahiri, the Egyptian surgeon reputed to be the second in
command of the entire al Qaeda network, headed up this southeastern
frontline.
By 1994, major Balkan terrorist training camps included Zenica, and
Malisevo and Mitrovica in Kosovo. Elaborate command-and-control centers
were further established in Croatia, and Tetovo, Macedonia as well as
around Sofia, Bulgaria, according to the U.S. Congress's task force on
terrorism. In Albania, the main training camp included even the property of
former Albanian premier Sali Berisha in Tropje, Albania, who was then very
close to the Kosovo Liberation Army.
Not even stalwart NATO ally Turkey escaped the network. Areas beyond
government control were also visited by bin Laden in 1996 according to
London-based Jane's Intelligence Review. The government has been battling
two terrorist groups: Jund al Islam, whose assassinated Syrian leader was
one of bin Laden's closets confidantes, and the Kurdish PKK, whose leader,
Abdullah Ocalan, merged his group's activities with those of Iran's
Hezbollah in 1998.
Furthermore, as revealed in the February 2001 East Africa bombing trial
testimony of Jamal al Fadl -- an al Qaeda operative in charge of weapons
development in Sudan -- uranium used in "dirty bombs" that release lethal
radioactive material, had been tested in 1994 by members of the Sudan-based
Islamic National Front in the town of Hilat Koko, in Turkish-held northern
Cyprus. Cyprus, both its north and southern sides, has also become a center
for offshore money laundering by Arab banks fronting al Qaeda funds into
the Balkans. The CIA puts al Qaeda's specific Balkan-directed funds --
those tied to the "humanitarian" agencies and local banks and not
explicitly counting the significant drug profits added to that -- at around
$500 million to $700 million between 1992 and 1998.
So where was the U.S. in all this? It was not until 1995 that the Clinton
administration was forced to start pursuing the Islamist network in the
Balkans. Not quite a month after the Dayton accords had been signed in
November 1995, an influx of Iranian arms came into Bosnia with the apparent
tacit approval of the administration, in violation of U.N. sanctions. While
publicly pressing Bosnian President Alia Izebegovic to purge remaining
Islamist elements, the administration was loath to confront Sarajevo and
Tehran over their presence.
Instead, Islamist groups went quietly underground as the windfall of
weapons landed in their hands. They later joined up with a new Islamist
center in Sofia established as a kind of rear guard by the al Zawahiri.
Following the Zagreb arrest and extradition of renowned Egyptian militant
Faud Qassim, an al Zawahiri favorite, the Sofia-based militants planned the
deployment in Bosnia of terrorists capable of planning and leading possible
major terrorist strikes against U.S. and SFOR facilities, according to al
Fadl's testimony to the House Task Force on Terrorism.
Islamist infiltration of the Kosovo Liberation Army advanced, meanwhile.
Bin Laden is said to have visited Albania in 1996 and 1997, according to
the murder-trial testimony of an Algerian-born French national, Claude
Kader, himself an Afghanistan-trained mujahideen fronting at the
Albanian-Arab Islamic Bank. He recruited some Albanians to fight with the
KLA in Kosovo, according to the Paris-based Observatoire Geopolitique des
Drogues.
Controversial Relationship
By early 1998 the U.S. had already entered into its controversial
relationship with the KLA to help fight off Serbian oppression of that
province. While in February the U.S. gave into KLA demands to remove it
from the State Department's terrorism list, the gesture amounted to little.
That summer the CIA and CIA-modernized Albanian intelligence (SHIK) were
engaged in one of the largest seizures of Islamic Jihad cells operating in
Kosovo.
Fearing terrorist reprisal from al Qaeda, the U.S. temporarily closed its
embassy in Tirana and a trip to Albania by then Defense Secretary William
Cohen was canceled out of fear of an assassination attempt. Meanwhile,
Albanian separatism in Kosovo and Metohija was formally characterized as a
"jihad" in October 1998 at an annual international Islamic conference in
Pakistan.
Nonetheless, the 25,000 strong KLA continued to receive official NATO/U.S.
arms and training support and, at the talks in Rambouillet, France, then
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright shook hands with "freedom fighter"
Hashim Thaci, a KLA leader. As this was taking place, Europol (the European
Police Organization based in The Hague) was preparing a scathing report on
the connection between the KLA and international drug gangs. Even Robert
Gelbard, America's special envoy to Bosnia, officially described the KLA as
Islamic terrorists.
With the future status of Kosovo still in question, the only real
development that may be said to be taking place there is the rise of
Wahhabi Islam -- the puritanical Saudi variety favored by bin Laden -- and
the fastest growing variety of Islam in the Balkans. Today, in general, the
Balkans are left without the money, political resources, or institutional
strength to fight a war on terrorism. And that, for the Balkan Islamists,
is a Godsend.
Copyright 2001 Wall Street Journal. All rights reserved.
*****
____________________________________________________________________
AL QAEDA TERRORIST WORKED WITH FBI
Ex-Silicon Valley resident plotted embassy attacks
____________________________________________________________________
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Front Page
Sunday, November 4, 2001; Page A-1
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2001/11/04/MN117081.DTL
Lance Williams and Erin McCormick, Chronicle Staff Writers
A former U.S. Army sergeant who trained Osama bin Laden's bodyguards and
helped plan the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya was a U.S.
government informant during much of his terrorist career, according to
sources familiar with his case.
Ali Mohamed, an Egyptian-born U.S. citizen and longtime Silicon Valley
resident who pleaded guilty last year to terrorism charges, approached the
Central Intelligence Agency more than 15 years ago and offered to inform on
Middle Eastern terrorist groups, a U.S. government official said.
Later, according to the sources, Mohamed spent years as an FBI informant
while concealing his own deep involvement in the al Qaeda terrorist band:
training bin Laden's bodyguards and Islamic guerrillas in camps in
Afghanistan and the Sudan; bringing Ayman al-Zawahiri, who is bin Laden's
chief deputy, to the Bay Area on a covert fund-raising mission; and
planning the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, in which more
than 200 people died.
The story of Mohamed's dual roles as FBI informant and bin Laden terrorist
-- and the freedom he had to operate unchecked in the United States --
illustrates the problems facing U.S. intelligence services as they attempt
to penetrate the shadowy, close-knit world of al Qaeda, experts said.
Mohamed "clearly was a double agent," Larry C. Johnson, a former deputy
director in the State Department's Office of Counter Terrorism and a
onetime CIA employee, said in an interview.
Johnson said the CIA had found Mohamed unreliable and severed its
relationship with him shortly after Mohamed approached the agency in 1984.
Johnson faulted the FBI for later using Mohamed as an informant, saying the
bureau should have recognized that the man was a high-ranking terrorist,
deeply involved in plotting violence against the United States and its
allies.
"It's possible that the FBI thought they had control of him and were trying
to use him, but what's clear is that they did not have control," Johnson
said. "The FBI assumed he was their source, but his loyalties lay
elsewhere."
The affair was "a study in incompetence, in how not to run an agent,"
Johnson said.
FBI spokesman Joseph Valiquette declined to comment on Mohamed, as did a
spokesman for Manhattan U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White, whose office
prosecuted the case of the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and
Tanzania.
A law enforcement source familiar with the case said the FBI had followed
appropriate procedures in attempting to obtain crucial information from
Mohamed, whom he conceded was "double-dealing" and difficult.
"When you operate assets and informants, they're holding the cards," this
source said. "They can choose to be 100 percent honest or 10 percent
honest. You don't have much control over them.
"Maybe (the informant) gives you a great kernel of information, and then
you can't find him for eight weeks. Is that a management problem? Hindsight
is 20/20."
Mohamed, 49, is a former Egyptian Army major, fluent in Arabic and English,
who after his arrest became known as bin Laden's "California connection."
Last year, when he pleaded guilty in the embassy bombing case, he told a
federal judge that he first was drawn to terrorism in 1981, when he joined
Egyptian Islamic Jihad, a fundamentalist group implicated in that year's
assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.
For almost as long as he was a terrorist, Mohamed also was in contact with
U.S. intelligence, according to court records and sources.
In 1984, he quit the Egyptian Army to work as a counterterrorism security
expert for EgyptAir. After that, he offered to become a CIA informant, said
the U.S. government official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
"The agency tried him out, but because he told other possible terrorists or
people possibly associated with terrorist groups that he was working for
the CIA, clearly he was not suitable," the official said.
The CIA cut off contact with Mohamed and put his name on a "watch list"
aimed at blocking his entrance to the United States, according to the
official.
Nevertheless, Mohamed got a visa one year later. He ultimately became a
U.S. citizen after marrying a Santa Clara woman. In 1986, he joined the
U.S. Army as an enlisted man. He was posted to Fort Bragg, N.C., home of
the elite Special Forces.
There he worked as a supply sergeant for a Green Beret unit, then as an
instructor on Middle Eastern affairs in the John F. Kennedy special warfare
school.
Mohamed's behavior and his background were so unusual that his commanding
officer, Lt. Col. Robert Anderson, became convinced that he was both a
"dangerous fanatic" and an operative of U.S. intelligence.
Anderson, now a businessman in North Carolina, said that on their first
meeting in 1988, Mohamed told him, "Anwar Sadat was a traitor and he had to
die."
Later that year, Anderson said, Mohamed announced that -- contrary to all
Army regulations -- he intended to go on vacation to Afghanistan to join
the Islamic guerrillas in their civil war against the Soviets. A month
later, he returned, boasting that he had killed two Soviet soldiers and
giving away as souvenirs what he claimed were their uniform belts.
Anderson said he wrote detailed reports aimed at getting Army intelligence
to investigate Mohamed -- and have him court-martialed and deported -- but
the reports were ignored.
"I think you or I would have a better chance of winning Powerball (a
lottery), than an Egyptian major in the unit that assassinated Sadat would
have getting a visa, getting to California . . . getting into the Army and
getting assigned to a Special Forces unit," he said. "That just doesn't
happen. "
It was equally unthinkable that an ordinary American GI would go unpunished
after fighting in a foreign war, he said.
Anderson said all this convinced him that Mohamed was "sponsored" by a U.S.
intelligence service. "I assumed the CIA," he said.
In 1989, Mohamed left the Army and returned to Santa Clara, where he worked
as a security guard and at a home computer business.
Between then and his 1998 arrest, he said in court last year, Mohamed was
deeply involved in bin Laden's al Qaeda. He spent months abroad, training
bin Laden's fighters in camps in Afghanistan and Sudan. While in Africa, he
scouted the U.S. Embassy in Kenya, target of the 1998 bombing. In this
country, he helped al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's top aide, enter the country
with a fake passport and tour U.S. mosques, raising money later funneled to
al Qaeda.
According to Steven Emerson, a terrorism expert and author who has written
about the case, Mohamed by the early 1990s had also established himself as
an FBI informant.
"He agreed to serve (the FBI) and provide information, but in fact he was
working for the bad guys and insulating himself from scrutiny from other
law enforcement agencies," Emerson said in an interview.
One particularly troubling aspect of the case, Emerson says, was that
Mohamed's role as an FBI informant gave bin Laden important insights into
U.S. efforts to penetrate al Qaeda.
The case shows "the sophistication of the bin Laden network, and how they
were toying with us," he said.
Some information about the nature of Mohamed's contacts with the FBI and
other law-enforcement agencies is contained in an FBI affidavit filed in
U.S. District Court in New York at the time of his 1998 arrest. The
document describes contacts between Mohamed and the FBI and Defense
Department officials.
At times, Mohamed made alarming admissions about his links to the al Qaeda
terrorists, seemingly without fear of being arrested. Mohamed willfully
deceived the agents about his activities, according to the affidavit.
In 1993, the affidavit says, Mohamed was questioned by the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police after a bin Laden aide was caught trying to enter the United
States with Mohamed's driver's license and a false passport.
Mohamed acknowledged traveling to Vancouver to help the terrorist sneak
into the United States and admitted working closely with bin Laden's group.
Yet he was so unconcerned about being arrested that he told the Mounties he
hoped the interview wouldn't hurt his chances of getting a job as an FBI
interpreter.
(According to the affidavit, he had indeed applied for the FBI position but
never got it.)
Later that year, Mohamed -- again seemingly without concern for
consequences -- told the FBI that he had trained bin Laden followers in
intelligence and anti-hijacking techniques in Afghanistan, the affidavit
says.
In January 1995, Mohamed applied for a U.S. security clearance, in hopes of
becoming a security guard with a Santa Clara defense contractor. His
application failed to mention ever traveling to Pakistan or Afghanistan,
trips he had told the FBI about earlier. In three interviews with Defense
Department officials, who conducted a background check on him, he claimed
he had never been a terrorist.
"I have never belonged to a terrorist organization, but I have been
approached by organizations that could be called terrorist," he told the
interviewers.
According to the affidavit, he told FBI agents in 1997 that he had trained
bin Laden's bodyguards, saying he loved bin Laden and believed in him.
Mohamed also said it was "obvious" that the United States was the enemy of
Muslim people.
In August 1998, after the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed,
he told the FBI that he knew who did it, but refused to provide the names.
Two weeks later, after lying to a U.S. grand jury investigating the embassy
bombings, he was arrested. He pleaded guilty last year, but he has never
been sentenced and is once again believed to be providing information to
the government -- this time from a prison cell.
"There's a hell of a lot (U.S. officials) didn't know about Ali Mohamed,"
said Harvey Kushner, a terrorism expert and criminology professor at the
University of Long Island. "He infiltrated our armed services and duped
them."
Yet, Kushner said, such duplicitous interactions may be a necessary
component of intelligence work.
"I hate to say it, but these relationships are something we should be
involved in more of. That's the nasty (part) of covert operations. We're
not dealing with people we can trust."
Copyright 2001 San Francisco Chronicle
*****
____________________________________________________________________
PATRIOT GAMES
____________________________________________________________________
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
[Col. Writ. 10/31/01]
Source: Afrikan Frontline Network, nattyreb1@home.com
- Saturday, 3 November 2001 -
One of the great attractions of patriotism - it fulfills our worst wishes.
In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat.
Bully and cheat, what's more, with a feeling that we are profoundly
virtuous. -- Aldous Huxley, British Writer [1894-1963]
In times of government and media-declared war, elite pressures combine to
compel people to express or reflect one's patriotism.
The question immediately arises: what *is* patriotism?
Love of country? Love of one's people? Or, blind, yielding obedience to
government dictates?
Is it the supine surrender of one's will to that of those in political
power? Or is it the conviction that one must speak truth to power -- yea,
even unpopular, unheralded truth?
Questions such as these are not easily answered, for there is no one,
single response. They are answered individually, in the silence of the
soul. How one answers depends where one is in national life, or where one
comes from.
An American citizen, elected to a high place of Congress, dares to refuse
to surrender her political independence to the nation's chief executive,
urging caution as she casts a lone vote. She is threatened with death, not
from foreign terrorists, but from domestic ones!
A nationally known broadcaster announces that he is at the disposal of his
Commander-in-Chief, "just tell me where to go, Mr. President, and I'm
there" (or words to that effect), tears welling up over his stage make-up.
Consider, shall we say, these two extremes of public behavior. Which is
more, well, patriotic?
One retains her political independence, saying, in effect, "I was not
elected to surrender my powers to legislate to the executive, but to
represent my constituency, and the principle of separation of powers,
without which, democracy is illusory."
The other publicly surrenders, saying, in effect, "I will not pretend to
objectivity. You are my Commander; I am the commanded. My journalism is at
your service, Sire."
The one is Congresswoman Barbara Jackson Lee, member of the House of
Representatives, 9th Congressional district, a Democrat from California.
The other is CBS network anchor Dan Rather, the multi-million dollar,
unelected corporate journalist.
Which is more popular?
Which is more American?
The U.S. Constitution has no provision (to this writer's knowledge) for a
national legislator to surrender her independence to the executive - even
in times of war.
As for the "Commander in Chief" reference, despite Dan's journalistic
genuflection, the Constitution's Article II states that the President is
Commander in Chief of "the Army and Navy of the United States," and, under
certain conditions, "the Militia." Unless Dan enlists, anchors aren't
included.
A free person is not patriotic because he surrenders his freedom. He is
either free, or he ain't. Which are you?
THEY ARE PLANNING TO MURDER MUMIA!!
SAVE THE DATE - DECEMBER 8TH FOR MUMIA!
PLEASE PASS THE WORD!
"We are fighting the last battle to Free Mumia, and need support now more
than ever. We need donations of money, calling cards, copy cards, etc. and
we really need manpower. We need people to be in the streets every day
putting out information, demonstrating, raising money, and doing whatever
you can to help."
PLEASE CONTACT: International Concerned Family & Friends of MAJ; P.O. Box
19709, Philadelphia, PA 19143; Tel: 215-476-8812; Fax: 215-476-6180;
E-mail: icffmaj@aol.com; Web: http://www.mumia.org AND OFFER YOUR SERVICES!
Send our brotha some LOVE and LIGHT at:
Mumia Abu-Jamal
AM 8335
SCI-Greene
175 Progress Drive
Waynesburg, PA 15370
!! PEOPLE GET READY !!
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++++ stop the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal ++++
++++ if you agree copy these 3 sentences in your own sig ++++
++++ see: http://www.xs4all.nl/~tank/spg-l/sigaction.htm ++++
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