It's no secret that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has supported radical Islamist groups in the past, but the claims that some within the ISI knew about, and even funded the September 11 attacks has still been seized upon by those who say "9/11 was an inside job". Why? It's apparently all down to the "close relationship" between the two agencies. Michel Chossudovsky talks about this here:
The ISI owing “its existence to the CIA” is amply documented, Chossudovsky tells us, so you might expect the quote he uses as an example to be the very best available. But this doesn’t appear to be the case.
First, the ISI was created long before “the early 1980’s”, in fact only the year after the CIA was established in 1947, so it’s hard to see any literal truth in Chossudovsky’s claim:
And second, Chossudovsky’s own quote is short on details. CIA backing? Where, exactly? How much? “Massive amounts of US military aid”? How much? Was this intended to develop the ISI into a “parallel structure wielding enormous power over all aspects of Government”, or could that be an unexpected byproduct?
Chossudovsky does kindly provide a footnoted source for this comment, so perhaps that’ll tell us more.
There’s no URL for the first source provided, unfortunately, but no problem. A quick Google search for the title “The Taliban: Exporting Extremism” delivers multiple copies, including one on IndianEmbassy.org. Read it, though, and you’ll find no real support for Chossudovsky. This is as strong as it gets:
Nothing on CIA “backing” for the ISI, nothing on “massive military aid”, nothing on “parallel structures”, no direct support for the comment its supposedly footnoting at all. Still, we do have the second source: “See also Michel Chossudovsky, Who is Osama bin Laden, Global Outlook, No. 1, 2002”. Yes, it seems Chossudovsky is sourcing comments from himself. Take a look at that page, and we find the following:
We’ve not been able to trace the source document, unfortunately. (Can you? Point us to it.) However, the way this is written suggests Banerjee’s article is a source for the "parallel structure wielding enormous power over all aspects of government" quote: it may have nothing to do with establishing “CIA backing”, or the ISI “owing its existence to the CIA” at all.
Let’s be fair, though. This quote may be referring to earlier parts of the “Who is Osama bin Laden” document, so let’s see what Chossudovsky has to say here:
Here we a direct use of the source quoted earlier. No proof of links between the CIA and ISI, though. Next:
It seems things improve here with talk of “a dramatic increase in arms supplies”: is this the “massive amounts of military aid” referred to by Chossudovsky, earlier? We’d hope not, as the quote seems to be talking about aid intended for Afghanistan, not Pakistan, however in the absence of other candidates perhaps this really is it.
We do finally get some mention of links between the CIA and ISI, too. However, there’s nothing here to suggest there’s anything involved other than collaboration due to a shared goal. “CIA specialists” meeting with the ISI to “plan operations for the Afghan rebels” is barely support for Chossudovsky’s suggestion that of “CIA backing”, and certainly doesn’t help show that “the ISI owes its existence to the CIA”. Let’s keep looking.
Note the unsupported phrasing here. Somehow we’ve moved to the CIA “using” the ISI. How? The previous article suggests only that they’re working together. Chossudovsky may want to prove that the CIA were in charge, but he’s yet to demonstrate it.
Then he tells us the CIA “played a key role in training the Mujahideen”, but he’s not established that yet either (the training, or the “key”). And again, there’s no support in the quote he provides. Maybe there will be something in a moment...?
Chossudovsky once more tells us that “Pakistan’s ISI was used...”. Certainly they were an intermediary for US support, but that doesn’t mean they were subservient or didn’t have reasons of their own for acting as they did.
Here we do have someone appearing to say that the CIA were involved in training. What’s that based on? We have no idea, and that matters, because other very qualified commentators take a very different view. Maloy Krishna Dhar, for instance, is a former Joint Director of the Indian Intelligence Bureau. His book “Fulcrum of Evil: ISI-CIA-Al Qaeda Nexus” is, as you might guess from the title, far from sympathetic to the US, yet his observations are quite clear:
Training to the mujahideen was imparted by the ISI in specially established camps. The ISI resisted all attempts by the CIA to impart direct training to the mujahideen. The objective was simple. Pakistan did not allow the USA to exercise direct control on the fighting arms of the mujahideen, though the political leaders and commanders were often exposed to the CIA and the White House.
Page 247, Fulcrum of Evil, Maloy Krishna Dhar
Gerald Posner, in “Why America Slept: The Failure To Prevent 9/11”, has a similar observation:
Pakistan’s Zia-ul-Haq government had concluded immediately after the Soviet invasion [of Afghanistan] that the crisis in their northern neighbour constituted a national security threat with which they had to deal firmly. As a result, ISI, which had sponsored terrorism against India over the Kasmir dispute since the 1970’s, turned its attantion to the Afghan mujahedeen. General Akhtar Abdul Rahman, chief of the ISI from 1980 to 1987, was intimately involved in his service’s newly created Afghan division. He jealously maintained control over the training and supply of the mujahedeen, frequently infuriating CIA officials who wanted to be more involved in the field with the insurgent fighters.
Page 32, Why America Slept: The Failure To Prevent 9/11, Gerald Posner
Whatever the truth about the training issue, there’s still no support here for the idea that “the ISI owes its existence to the CIA”, or that it’s simply a client agency, doing as it’s told. Still, Chossudovsky ploughs on regardless.
Again, we have repetition of Chossudovsky’s theme, but with no supporting evidence. So he tells us that Milton Beardman saying “we didn’t train Arabs” still means he was playing a specific American role, as opposed to (for example) one for Pakistan. Can his last reference to CIA/ISI links save the day?
Well, no. Although there’s a reference here to relations between the CIA and ISI “growing increasingly warm”, this also demonstrates that the ISI had plans of their own, not always in line with what the CIA wanted to do. And, of course, there’s still no support for Chossudovsky’s claim that we mentioned, what seemed so very long ago, at the top of the page.
So what does Chossudovsky give us? Lots of accusations. Sources that don’t back up what he’s saying, or are just something he said in a previous essay. And the constant repetition of his main themes, as though this might make up for the lack of documentation. Well, we say it doesn’t: he displays minimal supporting evidence for his thesis here, and unless you’re predisposed to take his point of view, it’s hard to see why anyone could find this even faintly convincing.
CIA used the ISI in Bosnia
Chossudovsky also says that the CIA has used the ISI as an intermediary to conceal it’s support for Islamist groups in the past:
This quote is used as supporting evidence:
Read this carefully and you’ll note there’s nothing here about Pakistan or the ISI. Are we to assume that the "stream of "Afghan" Mujahedin" can only have been supplied by Pakistan? If so, a paragraph from the original International Media Corporation article suggests that isn’t true:
Some from Pakistan, then, but still no mention of the ISI. And definitely no support for the original statement. In fact it seems that Iran was far more involved with this affair than Pakistan. Does that mean they should now be viewed as subservient to the CIA? Or could it be that drawing long-term conclusions from a report relating primarily to events in September and October 1994, is just a little simplistic?
None of this means the Pentagon or US were innocent, of course, as Dutch Professor Cees Wiebes pointed out in 2002:
America used Islamists to arm the Bosnian Muslims
The Srebrenica report reveals the Pentagon's role in a dirty war
Richard J Aldrich
Monday April 22, 2002
The Guardian
The official Dutch inquiry into the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, released last week, contains one of the most sensational reports on western intelligence ever published. Officials have been staggered by its findings and the Dutch government has resigned. One of its many volumes is devoted to clandestine activities during the Bosnian war of the early 1990s. For five years, Professor Cees Wiebes of Amsterdam University has had unrestricted access to Dutch intelligence files and has stalked the corridors of secret service headquarters in western capitals, as well as in Bosnia, asking questions.
His findings are set out in "Intelligence and the war in Bosnia, 1992-1995". It includes remarkable material on covert operations, signals interception, human agents and double-crossing by dozens of agencies in one of dirtiest wars of the new world disorder. Now we have the full story of the secret alliance between the Pentagon and radical Islamist groups from the Middle East designed to assist the Bosnian Muslims - some of the same groups that the Pentagon is now fighting in "the war against terrorism". Pentagon operations in Bosnia have delivered their own "blowback".
In the 1980s Washington's secret services had assisted Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran. Then, in 1990, the US fought him in the Gulf. In both Afghanistan and the Gulf, the Pentagon had incurred debts to Islamist groups and their Middle Eastern sponsors. By 1993 these groups, many supported by Iran and Saudi Arabia, were anxious to help Bosnian Muslims fighting in the former Yugoslavia and called in their debts with the Americans. Bill Clinton and the Pentagon were keen to be seen as creditworthy and repaid in the form of an Iran-Contra style operation - in flagrant violation of the UN security council arms embargo against all combatants in the former Yugoslavia.
The result was a vast secret conduit of weapons smuggling though Croatia. This was arranged by the clandestine agencies of the US, Turkey and Iran, together with a range of radical Islamist groups, including Afghan mojahedin and the pro-Iranian Hizbullah. Wiebes reveals that the British intelligence services obtained documents early on in the Bosnian war proving that Iran was making direct deliveries.
Arms purchased by Iran and Turkey with the financial backing of Saudi Arabia made their way by night from the Middle East. Initially aircraft from Iran Air were used, but as the volume increased they were joined by a mysterious fleet of black C-130 Hercules aircraft. The report stresses that the US was "very closely involved" in the airlift. Mojahedin fighters were also flown in, but they were reserved as shock troops for especially hazardous operations.
Light weapons are the familiar currency of secret services seeking to influence such conflicts. The volume of weapons flown into Croatia was enormous, partly because of a steep Croatian "transit tax". Croatian forces creamed off between 20% and 50% of the arms. The report stresses that this entire trade was clearly illicit. The Croats themselves also obtained massive quantities of illegal weapons from Germany, Belgium and Argentina - again in contravention of the UN arms embargo. The German secret services were fully aware of the trade.
Rather than the CIA, the Pentagon's own secret service was the hidden force behind these operations. The UN protection force, UNPROFOR, was dependent on its troop-contributing nations for intelligence, and above all on the sophisticated monitoring capabilities of the US to police the arms embargo. This gave the Pentagon the ability to manipulate the embargo at will: ensuring that American Awacs aircraft covered crucial areas and were able to turn a blind eye to the frequent nightime comings and goings at Tuzla.
Weapons flown in during the spring of 1995 were to turn up only a fortnight later in the besieged and demilitarised enclave at Srebrenica. When these shipments were noticed, Americans pressured UNPROFOR to rewrite reports, and when Norwegian officials protested about the flights, they were reportedly threatened into silence.
Both the CIA and British SIS had a more sophisticated perspective on the conflict than the Pentagon, insisting that no side had clean hands and arguing for caution. James Woolsey, director of the CIA until May 1995, had increasingly found himself out of step with the Clinton White House over his reluctance to develop close relations with the Islamists. The sentiments were reciprocated. In the spring of 1995, when the CIA sent its first head of station to Sarajevo to liaise with Bosnia's security authorities, the Bosnians tipped off Iranian intelligence. The CIA learned that the Iranians had targeted him for liquidation and quickly withdrew him.
Iranian and Afghan veterans' training camps had also been identified in Bosnia. Later, in the Dayton Accords of November 1995, the stipulation appeared that all foreign forces be withdrawn. This was a deliberate attempt to cleanse Bosnia of Iranian-run training camps. The CIA's main opponents in Bosnia were now the mojahedin fighters and their Iranian trainers - whom the Pentagon had been helping to supply months earlier.
Meanwhile, the secret services of Ukraine, Greece and Israel were busy arming the Bosnian Serbs. Mossad was especially active and concluded a deal with the Bosnian Serbs at Pale involving a substantial supply of artillery shells and mortar bombs. In return they secured safe passage for the Jewish population out of the besieged town of Sarajevo. Subsequently, the remaining population was perplexed to find that unexploded mortar bombs landing in Sarajevo sometimes had Hebrew markings.
The broader lessons of the intelligence report on Srebrenica are clear. Those who were able to deploy intelligence power, including the Americans and their enemies, the Bosnian Serbs, were both able to get their way. Conversely, the UN and the Dutch government were "deprived of the means and capacity for obtaining intelligence" for the Srebrenica deployment, helping to explain why they blundered in, and contributed to the terrible events there.
Secret intelligence techniques can be war-winning and life-saving. But they are not being properly applied. How the UN can have good intelligence in the context of multinational peace operations is a vexing question. Removing light weapons from a conflict can be crucial to drawing it down. But the secret services of some states - including Israel and Iran - continue to be a major source of covert supply, pouring petrol on the flames of already bitter conflicts.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,688310,00.html
In this version of the story we have talk of the CIAs "reluctance to develop close relations with the Islamists". There certainly was contact through the Pentagon and intermediaries like Iran, but how involved were they with members of terrorist groups who fought in the Balkans?. Even some books with sympathy for 9/11 “inside job” theories hesitate to offer a definitive answer (our emphasis):
For a detailed analysis of US involvement in the covert arms “pipeline” to Bosnia, see Cees Wiebes, Intelligence and the War in Bosnia, 1992-1995, James Bennett, 2003, pp. 157-213. According to Wiebes’s painstaking research, a number of proscribed international “terrorist” organisations also supplied volunteers to fight alongside the Bosnian army as “shock troops”, including Hamas, Hezbollah and the Algerian FIS. Whether Pentagon officials who provided assistance to the Bosnian Muslims sanctioned or assisted such participation is not clear. But such apparently improbable alliances were not uncommon in the twilight world of covert operations, which were generally informed by a logic and set of ethical standards very different from those proclaimed in the official anti-terrorist anathema, even if the Western public was not aware of the discrepancy.
Footnote #17 to Chapter 11, Page 350, Unknown Soldiers, Matthew Carr
So it’s “not clear” that the US sanctioned the involvement of any proscribed organisation, at least according to this analysis. And with regard to the original claim, there’s once more nothing at all on the CIA using the ISI as a go-between: no support at all.