The AM-PAKT Affair - Part II by Ellen W. Horowitz Aug 16, '04 / 29 Av 5764
[Part one of this article can be read at http://www.israelnn.com/article.php3?id=4051]
"Oh what a tangled web we weave..." (Sir Walter Scott)
Michael Moore must have scraped the bottom of the editing-room barrel in order to salvage a seemingly insignificant scrap of an interview that has Porter Goss, nominee for CIA Director, confessing that he's language-challenged and unqualified for a job in the CIA: "I don't have the language skills. ...We're looking for Arabists today."
An "honest" statement from a politician who clearly had a communication problem with the former head of Pakistani intelligence - who he just happened to be having breakfast with on the morning of 9/11 - the same man who had ordered $100,000 to be wired into hijacker Mohammed Atta's account a few weeks earlier.
Senator Bob Graham, chairman of the US Senate select committee on intelligence, must have also misunderstood the ISI chief's intentions on that fateful morning because after the attack occurred, he told reporters that Mahmud Ahmed, director general of Pakistan's intelligence service, was "very empathetic, sympathetic to the people of the United States." (Vero Beach Press Journal, September 12, 2001)
But, in truth, one has to wonder if the heart of Al-Qaeda's paymaster wasn't leaping for joy as Atta's plane hit the tower.
A few days after the attack, in a PBS interview, Graham remained remarkably sympathetic, understanding and diplomatic towards the Pakistani leadership, while admitting the Taliban-US connection:
"I was in Pakistan two weeks ago, met with the President and other leading officials of that nation. They are in a very difficult situation. The Taliban started in Pakistan. There are parts of the Pakistani population that feel a strong affinity for the Taliban. Pakistan has been the United States' ally for most of the period of the Cold War and was a major staging ground for our support in Afghanistan when we were attempting to eject the Soviet Union." (PBS Newshour "Congressional Action", September 14, 2001)
About two weeks before the attack, Graham had led a three-member Congressional delegation, including (you guessed it) Porter Goss and Jon Kyle to Islamabad to review aspects of Pakistan-US relations. The delegation met the ambassador to Pakistan from Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia, Abdul Salam Zaeef (at that time, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were the only three countries that recognized the Taliban regime).
"The Afghan Islamic Press reported that the staffers discussed the extradition of Osama bin Laden, a Saudi millionaire living in Afghanistan who is wanted in the United States... Zaeef assured US delegation that the Taliban would never allow bin Laden to use Afghanistan to launch attacks on the US or any other country." (Agence France Presse -AFP, August 28, 2001)
Methinks this goes beyond a language and comprehension problem, but nonetheless, after decades of wheeling and dealing with Pakistani intelligence services, the U.S. Government discovers that they need to hire more Arabic language experts to work in the FBI and CIA. But what good is a translator if her superiors slap a gag order on her ever time she discovers pertinent information?
"Sibel Edmonds is a former FBI translator. She blew the whistle on the cover-up of intelligence that names some of the culprits who orchestrated the 9/11 attacks. These culprits are protected by the Justice Department, the State Department, the FBI, the White House and the Senate Judiciary Committee. They are foreign nationals and Americans. Ms. Edmonds is under two gag orders that forbid her to testify in court or mention the names of the people or the countries involved." (Baltimore Chronicle, May 7, 2004)
"The case has proved to be a growing concern to the FBI because it touches on three potential vulnerabilities for the bureau: its ability to translate sensitive counterterrorism material, its treatment of whistle-blowers, and its decisions to classify potentially embarrassing material as secret." (New York Times, July 30, 2003)
Daniel Ellsberg, the former US defense department whistleblower who has accompanied Edmonds in court, has stated: "It seems to me quite plausible that Pakistan was quite involved in this... 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." (The Guardian, Tuesday, Jul 27, 2004)
I urge you to read the excerpts of the interview ( http://baltimorechronicle.com/050704SibelEdmonds.shtml) that Jim Hogue conducted with Ms. Edmonds and stay with this case. As US citizens, you must understand what's at risk here. It's a shame and embarrassment, because the very foundations of the US system of justice and checks and balances has collapsed under unspeakable corruption, and dumb-downed American citizens are the last to know. The world teeters on the brink, because accountability doesn't count when the careers, fortunes and reputations of the-powers-that-be are at stake. We're not much safer since 9/11 and although the cold war is over, things remain very, very hot.
Why is the congress being so careful to avoid this particular scandal? Well, besides the already mentioned political egos at stake, this is a bi-partisan disaster and nobody's in a position to throw the first stone. And, it would be utterly humiliating for the US government to come forth to publicly acknowledge that in their race to end the cold war and maintain superpower hegemony, America behaved in a rather zealous and, occasionally, reckless manner. As a result, they ended up bolstering a nuclear power in an unstable and volatile region, promoting global Jihad, and toying with and endangering their good friends and fellow democracies, Israel and India.
Up until recently, nuclear Pakistan continued to enjoy immunity as it disseminated weapons and technology to at least a few of those nations appearing on America's list of states sponsoring terrorism. This list, which includes Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria, remained unchanged from 1993 up until recently, when Afghanistan was given the honor. It's incredible negligence that the defense establishment failed to include Pakistan or Saudi Arabia on that list - they just never seemed to rate as part of the "axis of evil" - even though they have been running the show. Security issues should have certainly been separated from global political and economic concerns.
Things like this don't happen in a vacuum, so let's go back about 25 years....
Noble Prize-winning former President Carter specialized in creating foreign policy nightmares. Michel Chossudovsky discloses that Carter's National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, confirms that it was the US and not the Soviet Union that triggered the Soviet- Afghan war:
"According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise. Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention." (Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Le Nouvel Observateur, 15-21 November 1998)
When asked if he regrets having supported Islamic fundamentalism and giving arms and advice to terrorists, Brzezinski responds: "What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war? "
Well, only history will tell, Mr. Brzezinski.
And how can we forget that, "In 1979, President Jimmy Carter allowed the Shah of Iran to be deposed by a mob of Islamic fanatics. A few months later, Muslims stormed the U.S. Embassy in Iran and took American Embassy staff hostage." (Ann Coulter, FrontPageMag April 1, 2004)
And speaking of history, Ms. Edmond's delayed and gagged case sheds incredible light on what would have happened had Jonathan Pollard gone through "proper" American channels once he discovered that the US intelligence community had reneged on their agreement with Israel and were withholding crucial security information, in violation of established US-Israel understandings.
The materials that Pollard passed on to Israel 20 years ago take on a startling relevance in this post 9/11 era. His information and actions saved Israel from catastrophe.
The information included data on Soviet arms shipments to Syria, Iraqi and Syrian chemical weapons, the Pakistani atomic bomb project, Libyan air defense systems, as well as planned terrorist attacks against Israeli civilian targets. Time was of the essence and waiting-out gag orders was probably not an option.
There's something else that Pollard gave Israel, which may clue us into why Porter Goss, George Tenent and Casper Weinberger are so reluctant to see him released. It seems, according to an article that appeared in the June 2003 issue of Moment magazine, that Pollard gave Israel the 1984 list of Arab intelligence agents, including Osama Bin Laden.
According to the author, Attorney John Loftus, former prosecutor for the United States Department of Justice, "Pollard's file shows that, contrary to what Congress was told, US intelligence knew perfectly well that they were laundering money through Saudi Arabia to fund known terrorists in their drive to oust the Russians from Afghanistan. To protect themselves from charges of negligence, senior members of US intelligence covered up the Saudi-Al-Qaeda connection right up to 9/11."
Here's what Goss, the man who had breakfast on 9/11 with the hijackers' paymaster, had to say about Pollard: "He is one of the worst traitors in our nation's history. There is absolutely no reason to let this guy out of jail. None."
I believe that what lawmakers Goss, Graham, Kyle and every other president and advisor since Carter dread is the possibility of a disclosure of the money trail. It would be a supreme shame and heads would definitely roll.
But heads are already rolling all over the Middle East, starting with Daniel Pearl's. And people with foresight and conscience, like Pollard, sit in prison or get slapped with gag orders and lose their jobs, like Sibel Edwards. And a lot of people are losing their lives.
Israel is painfully familiar with this phenomenon. Since the inception of Oslo, we've seen it happen time and time again. Last Friday, a Palestinian "policeman", who was issued an Israeli gun, ambushed and killed Shlomo Miller, father of seven. That's right, our Israeli leaders armed them as part of a "peace" agreement, and the CIA helped train the butchers who have turned our world upside down. And we're barred from utterly destroying the terrorist infrastructure, because either:
1) America is afraid that the monster that she birthed and nurtured over the years will be unleashed unless Israel shows restraint and capitulates; or
2) America fears that Israel will stand-up as a sovereign nation and take unilateral action to defend herself, like she did in 1981 when she destroyed Iraq's nuclear reactor. An action the world now thanks us for.
In the meantime, a few months before elections, Senator Graham, a Democrat, was rather pressed to get the nomination of Republican Goss approved as Director of the CIA.
"I will be urging my colleagues to see that this nomination is considered as expeditiously as possible... His support for the Joint Inquiry's recommended reforms of our Intelligence Community give me confidence that he will be a vigorous and visionary leader." (Miami Herald, August 10, 2004)
It would be a mistake for the American people to allow the Senate to endorse the nomination of Porter Goss as Director of the CIA, and not because of the little celluloid scrap that Michael Moore found.
