Here I just wrote about not engaging in tinfoil hat stuff and now I’m doing it.

This is a weird one for sure.  From an Indian paper, the Hindustan Times:

Pakistan is alleged to have spent “tens of thousands of dollars” through its lobbyists in the United States to get some findings against it by the 9/11 Inquiry Commission dropped from its report, a media report has claimed.

According to a report in The Friday Times, Pakistan Foreign Office disclosed this to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) at a “secret meeting” held earlier this month.

The 9/11 Commission, set up to probe the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, had published a lengthy report which “left out some information relating to Pakistan because the commission’s members were paid by Pakistan to prevent them from including damaging information”, the Pakistani weekly said.

The original allegation comes from the “Friday Times”, which is subscription only, so there’s no way to find out if this is true.

That doesn’t mean that some blogs can’t speculate on it:

For example, prior to Sept. 11 the chief of the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI allegedly approved a $100,000 wire transfer to a certain Mohamed Atta. Yet the same ISI chief, Mahmud Ahmed, was in Washington for a working visit to his counterparts in the US government for more than a week prior to Sept. 11. On the morning of 9/11 itself, he was having breakfast at the Capitol with the future congressional investigators of the September 11th events. These alleged investigators, Porter Goss and Bob Graham, somehow failed to mention anything about the Pakistani connection in their report, in the same way that the 9/11 Commission later closed its eyes to the same facts. Were bribes really necessary to whitewash all this?

What makes this even more ominous is that the New York Times wrote an article about Jack Abramoff, detailing how in 1997 he was a registered lobbyist for the Pakistani government.  Was he an agent for them when the 9/11 Commission was underway?

The problem is that it may be next to impossible to actually find this out.

The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) was a law passed in 1938 requiring American companies working for foreign governments to officialy report this to the American government. The Department of Justice (DOJ) is responsible for maintaining this information.

In previous years this information was readily available to the public.  Recently however, a lack of funding has led to strange difficulties:

WASHINGTON, June 28, 2004 — Justice Department officials say a huge database that serves as the public’s lone window on lobbying activities by foreign governments has been allowed to decay to a point they cannot even make a copy of its contents.

Responding to a recent Freedom of Information request from the Center for Public Integrity, the Justice Department’s Foreign Agent Registration Unit said it was unable to copy its records electronically because their computer system was “so fragile.” In a letter, the head of the unit’s Freedom of Information office said that simply attempting to make an electronic copy of the database “could result in a major loss of data, which would be devastating.”

The database details millions of dollars spent on lobbying activities by foreign governments, companies, and foundations.

Those activities include everything from wining and dining lawmakers to broadcasting issue ads on American television and radio stations.

This remains true today.  If you want to access FARA records, you have to go in person to the DOJ in Washington, DC.

Getting a hard copy of the information costs 50 cents a page, which can make it extremely expensive as documents can be several hundred pages long.

FARA records during the Clinton administration can be found online at least as late as 1998. The latest FARA reports online (not registration info, but reports to Congress) date back to 2003.

In 2005, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee were debating asking the GAO to conduct an inquiry due to widespread non-compliance of filing as foreign agents. As far as I am able to tell, the GAO never investigated and the DOJ’s FARA files are still being maintained on the same old computer system.

Because of the above, it is difficult and expensive to collect information on which lobbying firms or individuals are registered agents of foreign governments. More on this here.  Therefore if the reports about Pakistan hiring lobbyists is true, it would be extremely difficult to even find out who those individuals/companies are.

The full version of the 9/11 Commission report is huge (over 7 megabytes, PDF, 585 pages) but I decided to take a look at what it said about Pakistan.  There’s a lot of background on Pakistan but I wanted to get to some relevant stuff that connects Pakistan to Osama and 9/11.

The page numbers (XX) are from the official version.  Since there’s a copy lock on the orginal, I had to jury rig a solution to get the extracts (thanks to my reader in Austria!).  In fact, the truth is I had to crack the password the government put on the PDF, which is in itself puzzling.  Luckily the encryption on these things is pitiful, although it makes me feel like a criminal.

[Referring to the 1998 missile strike on Osama’s training camps in Afghanistan]  Later on August 20, Navy vessels in the Arabian Sea fired their cruise mis-siles.Though most of them hit their intended targets, neither Bin Ladin nor any other terrorist leader was killed. Berger told us that an after-action review by Director Tenet concluded that the strikes had killed 20­30 people in the camps but probably missed Bin Ladin by a few hours. Since the missiles headed for Afghanistan had had to cross Pakistan, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was sent to meet with Pakistan’s army chief of staff to assure him the missiles were not coming from India. Officials in Washington speculated that one or another Pakistani official might have sent a warning to the Taliban or Bin Ladin. (117)

For a brief moment, it had seemed as if the August strikes might have shocked the Taliban into thinking of giving up Bin Ladin. On August 22, the reclusive Mullah Omar told a working-level State Department official that the strikes were counterproductive but added that he would be open to a dialogue with the United States on Bin Ladin’s presence in Afghanistan.63 Meeting in Islamabad with William Milam, the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan,Taliban delegates said it was against their culture to expel someone seeking sanctuary but asked what would happen to Bin Ladin should he be sent to Saudi Arabia.64 Yet in September 1998, when the Saudi emissary, Prince Turki, asked Mullah Omar whether he would keep his earlier promise to expel Bin Ladin, the Taliban leader said no. Both sides shouted at each other, with Mullah Omar denouncing the Saudi government. Riyadh then suspended its diplomatic relations with the Taliban regime. (Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates were the only countries that recognized the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.) Crown Prince Abdullah told President Clinton and Vice President Gore about this when he visited Washington in late September. His account confirmed reports that the U.S. government had received independently. (121-122)

The other diplomatic route to get at Bin Ladin in Afghanistan ran through Islamabad. In the summer before the embassy bombings, the State Department had been heavily focused on rising tensions between India and Pakistan and did not aggressively challenge Pakistan on Afghanistan and Bin Ladin. But State Department counterterrorism officials wanted a stronger position; the department’s acting counterterrorism coordinator advised Secretary Albright to designate Pakistan as a state sponsor of terrorism, noting that despite high-level Pakistani assurances, the country’s military intelligence service continued “activities in support of international terrorism” by supporting attacks on civilian targets in Kashmir.This recommendation was opposed by the State Department’s South Asia bureau, which was concerned that it would damage already sensitive relations with Pakistan in the wake of the May 1998 nuclear tests by both Pakistan and India. Secretary Albright rejected the recommendation on August 5, 1998, just wo days before the embassy bombings. She told us that, in general, putting the Pakistanis on the terrorist list would eliminate any influence the United States had over them. (122-123)

Pakistan’s military intelligence service, known as the ISID (Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate), was the Taliban’s primary patron, which made progress difficult. (123)

The State Department urged President Clinton to engage the Pakistanis. Accepting this advice, President Clinton invited Sharif to Washington, where they talked mostly about India but also discussed Bin Ladin.After Sharif went home, the President called him and raised the Bin Ladin subject again. This effort elicited from Sharif a promise to talk with the Taliban. Mullah Omar’s position showed no sign of softening. (123)

Working with Russia (a country involved in an ongoing campaign against Chechen separatists, some of whom received support from Bin Ladin), the United States persuaded the United Nations to adopt Security Council Resolution 1333, which included an embargo on arms shipments to the Taliban, in December 2000. The aim of the resolution was to hit the Taliban where it was most sensitive-on the battlefield against the Northern Alliance–and criminalize giving them arms and providing military “advisers,” which Pakistan had been doing. Yet the passage of the resolution had no visible effect on Omar, nor did it halt the flow of Pakistani military assistance to the Taliban. (125-126)

President Clinton contacted Sharif again in June 1999, partly to discuss the crisis with India but also to urge Sharif, “in the strongest way I can,” to persuade the Taliban to expel Bin Ladin. The President suggested that Pakistan use its control over oil supplies to the Taliban and over Afghan imports through Karachi. Sharif suggested instead that Pakistani forces might try to capture Bin Ladin themselves. Though no one in Washington thought this was likely to happen, President Clinton gave the idea his blessing. The President met with Sharif in Washington in early July. Though the meeting’s main purpose was to seal the Pakistani prime minister’s decision to withdraw from the Kargil confrontation in Kashmir, President Clinton complained about Pakistan’s failure to take effective action with respect to the Taliban and Bin Ladin. Sharif came back to his earlier proposal and won approval for U.S. assistance in training a Pakistani special forces team for an operation against Bin Ladin. Then, in October 19, Sharif was deposed by General Per-vez Musharraf, and the plan was terminated. (126)

Berger suggested sending one U-2 flight, but Clarke opposed even this. It would require Pakistani approval, he wrote; and “Pak[istan’s] intel[ligence service] is in bed with” Bin Ladin and would warn him that the United States was getting ready for a bombing campaign: “Armed with that knowledge, old wily Usama will likely boogie to Baghdad.” (134)

In our interviews, some military officers repeatedly invoked the analogy of Desert One and the failed 1980 hostage rescue mission in Iran. They were dubious about a quick strike approach to using Special Operations Forces,which they thought complicated and risky. Such efforts would have required bases in the region, but all the options were unappealing. Pro-Taliban elements of Pakistan’s military might warn Bin Ladin or his associates of pending oper-ations. (136)

The special training session at Mes Aynak was rigorous and spared no expense.The course focused on physical fitness, firearms, close quarters combat, shooting from a motorcycle, and night operations. Although the subjects taught differed little from those offered at other camps, the course placed extraordinary physical and mental demands on its participants, who received the best food and other amenities to enhance their strength and morale. Upon completing the advanced training at Mes Aynak, Hazmi, Khallad, and Abu Bara went to Karachi, Pakistan.There KSM instructed them on Western culture and travel. Much of his activity in mid-1999 had revolved around the collection of training and informational materials for the participants in the planes operation. For instance, he collected Western aviation magazines; telephone directories for American cities such as San Diego and Long Beach, California; brochures for schools; and airline timetables, and he conducted Internet searches on U.S. flight schools. He alo purchased flight simulator soft-ware and a few movies depicting hijackings.To house his students, KSM rented a safehouse in Karachi with money provided by Bin Ladin. In early December 1999, Khallad and Abu Bara arrived in Karachi. Hazmi joined them there a few days later. On his way to Karachi, Hazmi spent a night in Quetta at a safehouse where, according to KSM, an Egyptian named Mohamed Atta simultaneously stayed on his way to Afghanistan for jihad training.  (157)

In early 2000, the United States began a high-level effort to persuade Pakistan to use its influence over the Taliban. In January 2000, Assistant Secretary of State Karl Inderfurth and the State Department’s counterterrorism coordinator, Michael Sheehan, met with General Musharraf in Islamabad, dangling before him the possibility of a presidential visit in March as a reward for Pakistani cooperation. Such a visit was coveted by Musharraf, partly as a sign of his government’s legitimacy. He told the two envoys that he would meet with Mullah Omar and press him on Bin Ladin.They left, however, reporting to Washington that Pakistan was unlikely in fact to do anything,”given what it sees as the benefits of Taliban control of Afghanistan. (183)

President Clinton told us that when he pulled Musharraf aside for a brief, one-on-one meeting, he pleaded with the general for help regarding Bin Ladin.”I offered him the moon when I went to see him, in terms of better relations with the United States, if he’d help us get Bin Ladin and deal with another issue or two.” The U.S. effort continued. (183)

By September, the United States was becoming openly critical of Pakistan for supporting a Taliban military offensive aimed at completing the conquest of Afghanistan. In December, taking a step proposed by the State Department some months earlier, the United States led a campaign for new UN sanctions, which resulted in UN Security Council Resolution 1333, again calling for Bin Ladin’s expulsion and forbidding any country to provide the Taliban with arms or military assistance. This, too, had little if any effect. The Taliban did not expel Bin Ladin. Pakistani arms continued to flow across the border. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told us, “We did not have a strong hand to play with the Pakistanis. Because of the sanctions required by U.S. law, we had few carrots to offer.” Congress had blocked most economic and military aid to Pakistan because of that country’s nuclear arms program and Musharraf ‘s coup. Sheehan was critical of Musharraf, telling us that the Pakistani leader “blew a chance to rmake Pakistan. (183)

In February 2001, President Bush wrote General Musharraf on a number of matters. He emphasized that Bin Ladin and al Qaeda were “a direct threat to the United States and its interests that must be addressed.” He urged Musharraf to use his influence with the Taliban on Bin Ladin and al Qaeda. Powell and Armitage reviewed the possibility of acquiring more carrots to dangle in front of Pakistan. Given the generally negative view of Pakistan on Capitol Hill, the idea of lifting sanctions may have seemed far-fetched, but perhaps no more so than the idea of persuading Musharraf to antagonize the Islamists in his own government and nation. On June 18, Rice met with the visiting Pakistani foreign minister, Abdul Sattar. She “really let him have it” about al Qaeda, she told us. Other evidence corroborates her account. But, as she was upbraiding Sattar, Rice recalled thinking that the Pakistani diplomat seemed to have heard it all before. Sattar urged senior U.S. policymakers to engage the Taliban, arguing that such a course would take time but would produce results. In late June, the deputies agreed to review U.S. objectives. Clarke urged Hadley to split off all other issues in U.S.-Pakistani relations and just focus on demanding that Pakistan move vigorously against terrorism–to push the Pakistanis to do before an al Qaeda attack what Washington would demand that they do after. He had made similar requests in the Clinton administration; he had no more success with Rice than he had with Berger. (207)

Mullah Omar is reported to have opposed this course of action [attacking the United States] for ideo-logical reasons rather than out of fear of U.S. retaliation. He is said to have preferred for al Qaeda to attack Jews, not necessarily the United States. KSM contends that Omar faced pressure from the Pakistani government to keep al Qaeda from engaging in operations outside Afghanistan. (251)

[There’s a long segment showing how post 9/11, the Pak government did everything possible to help the USA]

[The following is from the summary section of the report]

On terrorism, Pakistan helped nurture the Taliban.The Pakistani army and intelligence services, especially below the top ranks, have long been ambivalent about confronting Islamist extremists. Many in the government have sympathized with or provided support to the extremists. Musharraf agreed that Bin Ladin was bad. But before 9/11, preserving good relations with the Taliban took precedence. (368)

Immediately after 9/11, confronted by the United States with a stark choice, Pakistan made a strategic decision. Its government stood aside and allowed the U.S.-led coalition to destroy the Taliban regime. In other ways, Pakistan actively assisted: its authorities arrested more than 500 al Qaeda operatives and Taliban members, and Pakistani forces played a leading part in tracking down KSM, Abu Zubaydah, and other key al Qaeda figures. (368)

Recommendation: If Musharraf stands for enlightened moderation in a fight for his life and for the life of his country, the United States should be willing to make hard choices too, and make the difficult long-term commitment to the future of Pakistan. Sustaining the current scale of aid to Pakistan, the United States should support Pakistan’s government in its struggle against extremists with a comprehensive effort that extends from military aid to support for better education, so long as Pakistan’s leaders remain willing to make difficult choices of their own. (369)

Well it isn’t quite a whitewash but it does make it sound like Pakistan’s leadership had to “struggle” between a natural inclination to support the Taliban and the need to appease the west.  Until after 9/11, when the dictator Musharraf suddenly because “worth it” despite his undemocratic leadership.  And now of course Pakistan is the bestest ally in the world.

All the other references to Pakistan were to the various terrorists going in and out of Pakistan, training in Pakistan and operating safe houses in Pakistan, without any mention of connection to the Pak army or government.

And that’s it.  

What is missing is the long-running allegation that the ISI (referred to as the ISID in the 9/11 report) wired Mohammed Atta money.  Interestingly enough, a person who could’ve testified about this, Sam Karmilowicz, offered to testify to the 9/11 Commission but was turned down.

Kamilowicz had been working for the U.S. State Department in the Philippines in 1994 when the “Bojinka Plot” was discovered.  In short, this was a plan by several Al-Qaeda members to place bombs aboard planes and explode them simultaneously.  Karmilowicz was later told by CNN’s Indonesia bureau chief that one of the Bojinka Plot men was connected to the ISI, a man named Tareq (Tariq) Javed Rana.

Here is what Karmilowicz said about not being asked to testify in front of the 9/11 Commission:

What I think this story reveals is that the 9-11 Commission and the U.S. government deliberately withheld information from the U.S. public (and everyone else for that matter) that linked Al Qaeda operatives to persons who had close ties to Pakistani government officials, including members of Pakistan’s ISI. One can only guess whether that was to save embarrassment or to hide illegal conduct.

One thing is for certain, i.e., the FBI, Secret Service, and CIA have deceived, and continue to deceive, the public concerning Rana’s connection to Al Qaeda and the facts regarding the 9-11 attack.

Another interesting fact supporting the whitewashing or minimization of the Pak government’s involvement in 9/11 is that Dietrich Snell, who later became Senior Counsel for the 9/11 Commission was also the man who prosecuted Abdul Hakim Murad, one of the Bojinka Plot men.  There are reports that Murad wanted to plea down his sentence in exchange for revealing an Al-Qaeda plan to use airplanes as missiles.

Karmilowicz said Snell minimized this information, including Tariq Rana’s ISI connections, purely to cover up his past incompetence.  And if that wasn’t tinfoil hat enough for you, there are allegations that Daniel Pearl, the WSJ reporter killed in Pakistan in 2002 was executed by members of the ISI because Pearl was trying to track down ISI connections to Al-Qaeda.

Aside from all the conspiracy stuff, I will say that the 9/11 Commission does make very little mention of Pakistan’s government and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.  It was absolutely impossible for the Taliban to exist as they did without covert and overt support from Pakistan and Al-Qaeda could not have operated as they did in Afghanistan without the Taliban.

I have no idea why this link was downplayed but if the Pak papers can provide more proof that the 9/11 Commission was manipulated (or even bribed), that will be one hell of a shocking revelation.

Crossposted from Flogging the Simian

Peace