Latest revision as of 20:29, 1 July 2012
One of the main supposed "smoking guns" of 9/11 is the claim that Lt General Mahmoud Ahmad, Pakistani intelligence chief, had $100,000 wired to Mohamed Atta. This primarily comes from a 9th October 2001 report in the India Times:
However, it’s worth noting that all the key points here come from unnamed “top sources” and “senior Government sources”, with nothing we can verify. Nafeez Ahmed, in “The War On Truth”, tells us “the transaction was also confirmed by German intelligence” (page 139), but if you check his source then it paints quote a different picture.
Even though there’s something for here for “inside job” theorists, in the final question of why the UK and US haven’t pursued Sheikh more vigorously, this account isn’t often retold online. And it’s not difficult to see why. This story appeared a few days after the India Times version, but it says the breakthrough came from an informer to German intelligence, that Masood Azhar may have sent the money, doesn’t directly mention the ISI as being behind the wire transfer, and says the whole story is “very speculative”.
And there was to be yet another variation in an India Abroad article, in November 2001:
Here Saeed Sheikh sent the money, but this time only to a German intermediary, and again there's no mention of ISI involvement.
Obviously these accounts don't completely invalidate the first. But the variations should be enough to make us at least question the initial India Times report.
It's also interesting to read more up-to-date stories. This one, again from the Times of India, still talks of Sheikh sending money to Atta - but there's no longer any mention of the ISI or General Ahmad:
What is the basis for researchers appearing to accept the first Times of India account, then frequently failing to even mention the later versions? Apart from the first version being the one that fits most closely with their theories?
Objective sources?
We've been asked why the Times of India would make up their first story. The simple answer, we believe, is that they didn't, they reported what their source told them. However, relations between the countries were so poor that it's definitely unwise to take any such report at face value, especially as India has long linked the ISI to terrorism. Here’s a piece from 2003, for instance:
Note the widespread nature of the concern here, far more than simply about problems in Kashmir. Rather, the author believes that these groups want India to entirely disintegrate. And General Ahmad, linked by India to the 9/11 attacks, is specifically named as calling for attacks on Indian temples. If this were known after September 11 2001 then it does suggest that India might feel they would benefit from his being removed. And a report from the time Ahmad was removed from his ISI post does accuse him of links to terrorism:
Another report from India points out that it’s strongly in their interests to keep a wedge between Pakistan and the US, to limit any alliance, and the ISI-Atta link is a key part of that:
The Indian Prime Minister summed up the position just a few weeks after 9/11:
Vajpayee clearly feels aggrieved that Pakistan receives substantial US funding and support, not least because be believes they then sponsor terrorism against India. The incentive to persuade the US to see the Indian side of things is obvious. We’ve no idea whether India let this influence their intelligence on Atta and the ISI, but it's certainly not impossible that one individual could have leaked a story aimed at doing just that.
Of course, there's another oddity here. If India really believe that the ISI helped to fund the 9/11 attacks, then why are their politicians not pointing it out at every opportunity? Must they now be included in the ever-expanding conspiracy, as complicit in covering up the truth? Or could it be that India isn't making this accusation, because they don't have the evidence to back it up?
US confirmation
We're not alone in questioning the credibility of the Indian reports, however those supporting the central "ISI funded Atta" claim say the link has been officially confirmed elsewhere, too.
Nafeez Ahmed, for instance, gives us the following report in The War On Truth:
The Pakistani newspaper Dawn cited “informed sources” in Pakistan confirming that “Director General of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Lt Gen Mahmud Ahmed has been replaced after the FBI investigators established credible links between him and Umar Sheikh.” When the FBI traced calls made between Gen. Mahmoud Ahmad and Ahmed Omar Sheikh Saeed’s cellular phone, a pattern linking the ISI chief with Sheikh clearly emerged. The US intelligence community believed that “it was at General Mahmud’s instruction that Sheikh had transferred 100,000 US dollars into the account of Mohammed Atta.”
Page 139, Chapter 6
The War On Truth, Nafeez Ahmed
Sounds like a detailed confirmation of all the key details in the Times of India story, right? But now let’s look at the exact Dawn report:
Yes, that’s the full story. We’ve not edited it at all.
Note first that this is from the “Monitoring Desk”. This is normally about watching the media and printing articles of interest that appear elsewhere, not necessarily investigating it yourself. Which would suggest that Dawn were simply reproducing the original story (as they use a New Delhi byline), not independently verifying it at all.
And a look at the allegations in the story seems to confirm that interpretation. At the end of the second paragraph, Dawn make it clear they’re reporting an allegation on from the “PTI website”. And the “it adds” at the end of the third paragraph shows that, again, they’re just quoting that story (and so Nafeez Ahmed’s claim that “informed sources” in Pakistan confirmed the ISI-Atta story may be incorrect, as it could just be referring to the Indian sources we know already).
So what is the “PTI website”? Dawn don’t say, but our best guess would be the Press Trust of India (www.ptinews.com), a top Indian news agency. If so, that would suggest the PTI carried an early version of the story around the 7th of October, Dawn reproduced it on the 8th, then the India Times ran their fuller version, complete with talk of tracing Sheikh’s mobile phone calls, on the 9th. We can’t verify that, unfortunately (the PTI site doesn’t have a searchable archive), but even if we’re wrong it’s clear that Dawn are not offering the independent confirmation of the ISI-Atta link that Nafeez Ahmed claims.
Fortunately Ahmed has another highly-placed source for us to consider.
The Wall Street Journal also cited “senior government sources” in the United States who confirmed that Gen. Mahmoud was ordered to resign due to the evidence of his wiring $100,000 to chief hijacker Atta.
Page 139, Chapter 6
The War On Truth, Nafeez Ahmed
The Wall Street Journal? Very impressive, but again, let’s look at what they actually said.
Is this looking familiar?
First, this comes from a page entitled “OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today”. It’s about reproducing news from elsewhere, not producing stories yourselves.
And second, it’s quite clearly commenting on the Times of India story. In fact, everything after “Now the Times of India says Ahmad is connected to the Sept. 11 attacks” is a quote from the Times. Check the original version yourself:
Top sources confirmed here on Tuesday, 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 Mahumd.
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.
Originally at timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/articleshow?art_id=1454238160 (now dead)
There’s no independent investigation or verification here. And so when Nafeez Ahmed says”The Wall Street Journal also cited “senior government sources” in the United States”, they're actually just citing the same unknown Indian sources behind the Times of India story.
Ahmed presses on regardless, though.
German intelligence has also confirmed the transaction.Page 139, Chapter 6
The War On Truth, Nafeez Ahmed
This is cleverly written, because you may well take it to mean “they’ve confirmed that Sheikh was asked by the ISI chief to send $100,000 to Atta”, but that’s not the case at all:
The German story says Sheikh "may" have sent the money, however this is "very speculative", and there's no mention of the ISI here at all. As confirmations go, this seems remarkably weak.
Nafeez Ahmed has still another account, however.
The revelations were also reported by Agence France Press, which received information from “a highly placed [Indian] government source” that “the evidence we have supplied to the US is of a much wider range and depth than just one piece of paper linking a rogue general to some misplaced act of terrorism”.Page 139, Chapter 6
The War On Truth, Nafeez Ahmed
As previously, we wanted to go back to the source. This proved difficult, as copies on official news sites seem to have disappeared now, so the best we could find was someone’s private archive. Here’s what it contained:
India Accuses Ex Pakistan Spy Chief Of Links to US Attacker: Report
Agence France-Presse
October 10, 2001
NEW DELHI - Former Pakistani intelligence chief Lieutenant General Mahmood Ahmad was sacked after arch rival India said it had provided evidence linking him to the US terror attacks, a report said Wednesday.
The Times of India newspaper reported the general lost his job after India said he had ordered money to be wired to Mohammad Atta who hijacked one of the planes that crashed into the World Tade Center in New York on September 11.
Earlier this week Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf announced Lieutenant General Ehsanul Haq was taking over as new head of the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency.
"The US authorities sought General Mahmood Ahmad's removal after confirming the fact that 100,000 dollars were wired to hijacker Mohammad Atta from Pakistan by Ahmad Umar Sheikh at the instance of the general," said the newspaper, which attributed the report to unnamed Indian government sources.
"India contributed significantly to establishing the link between the money transfer and the role played by the dismissed Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief.
"Indian inputs, including Sheikh's mobile phone number, helped US federal agents to trace and establish the necessary links."
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.
Pakistan has given it support for the US-led war on terrorism and offered Washington use of the country's airspace, as well as intelligence sharing and logistical help.
http://s3.amazonaws.com/911timeline/2001/afp101001.html
Once again, this is primarily repeating the original story from India. There is a new quote from “a highly placed government source”, but that’s hardly independent confirmation (and in fact it could well be the same source who delivered the story to the Times of India, especially as it appeared the very next day).
Other supposed confirmations also prove a disappointment when you look into them. We’ve come across references to a Sander Hicks page, for instance:
The Wall Street Journal have another “partial” confirmation? Not quite. Hurry along to that page and you’ll find Hicks doesn’t make such a big deal of it:
Read that carefully and you’ll note he’s only saying this is “veiled confirmation” that $110K was received through wire transfers, something very uncontroversial that is accepted by anyone. The interesting part is whether this was sent from Sheikh, and despite Hicks’ “sounds like it was”, there’s zero supporting evidence in the article itself:
Informal Money-Movement System in UAE Is Likely Uncontrollable
By Paul Beckett, The Wall Street Journal, 933 words
Nov 12, 2001
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- When Hassam Khan Afridi, a Pakistani immigrant here, wants to send money to his family back home, he calls the owners of a textiles store in the nearby city of Sharjah. They send a fax to a contact among Mr. Afridi's Hassam Khel tribe near Peshawar, Pakistan. A few days later, Mr. Afridi's father walks to a local shop or to the guest room of a neighbor's home and picks up the cash.
This system, known as hawala, operates semilegitimately here out of the backrooms of restaurants and shops. Few, if any, records are kept and cash may not even change hands for individual transactions. That informality, U.S. officials say, makes it an important channel for the movement of terrorist funds and for the sponsorship of terrorist groups, including Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
Yet, while tightening controls on mainstream financial institutions as part of the international crackdown on terrorist finances in recent weeks, the UAE is reluctant to take any concrete action against hawala. That is despite the fact that this small Gulf nation has emerged as an important transit point for much of the money traced in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
Why the reluctance? Hawala is the cheapest, most convenient and most-popular way for the UAE's two million foreign laborers to send money back to their families in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and a host of other nations in Southeast Asia and Africa. That creates such a huge demand that any clampdown on existing hawala dealers would simply cause others to spring up in their place, UAE government officials say.
"It would be very difficult to find them," concedes Sultan bin Nasser Al Suweidi, governor of the UAE central bank. "And if there is a great incentive in using it and people believe they are not doing any illegal activity, they will go ahead and use it. We will not be able to control it."
Indeed, often these blue-collar workers, who perform the workaday jobs that support the wealthy population of about one million UAE citizens, have no viable alternative for sending money home. "You could say the banks are not really keen to have in their halls these dirty laborers whose shoes are full of dust," Mr. Al Suweidi says. And the nation's 105 licensed wire-transfer houses typically offer a much worse exchange rate than the hawala dealers do. So, Mr. Al Suweidi says, "These people use hawala to maximize the benefits to their families and to improve themselves."
The government's inaction over hawala stands in marked contrast to its tightening of controls in other parts of its financial sector in the wake of the UAE's emergence as an unwitting financial hub for the terrorists involved in the attacks on Washington and New York.
Last year, a total of more than $110,000 was transferred from a UAE exchange house via Citibank in New York to a SunTrust Banks Inc. account in Florida jointly held by two of the suspected hijackers, Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi. And in the days before the attacks, three of the suspected hijackers sent a total of about $15,000 back to the UAE, where a suspected lieutenant of Mr. bin Laden's collected it and then fled the country. Two of the transfers -- one for $5,000 and one for $5,400 -- were sent from Western Union outlets in Boston. They were collected at a branch of the Al Ansari Exchange in Sharjah, according to Mohammed Al Ansari, the company's managing director.
Since then, the UAE has criminalized money laundering. The central bank now requires exchange houses to get government-issued identification from customers for any transaction over about $550. It also has shut down one exchange house for poor record-keeping. It has imposed stricter record-keeping rules on banks, too.
Moreover, the government has complied with several U.S. requests to freeze bank accounts and has won plaudits for its cooperation with the U.S. The latest example: The central bank last week froze 12 accounts allegedly related to the Al Barakaat network, identified by U.S. authorities as a channel for funding terrorist groups including al Qaeda. Much of the money sent from the Al Barakaat network in the U.S. was sent to Dubai before being forwarded to other places, U.S. authorities say. Al Barakaat officials have denied the company has any links to Mr. bin Laden or al Qaeda.
But when it comes to hawala, Mr. Al Suweidi, the central-bank governor, says there is little the UAE can do on its own. He says the best way to clean it up is for other countries in the region to abolish controls that restrict the flow of currency and make such an underground transfer network necessary. Only then, he says, will legitimate wire-transfer and banking services become an attractive alternative. He adds that the central bank stands ready to participate in any regionwide discussion on the issue.
Yet, even if those currency controls were abolished, hawala won't be likely to disappear. Mr. Alfridi, a driver who moved to the UAE six years ago, says he uses hawala because it is much more convenient than standing in line at a wire-transfer house. Moreover, he says, there are no banks near where his family lives. He estimates that 95% of the people he knows in the UAE use hawala. "People who send money [this way] are middle class and poor people," Mr. Alfridi says. "People who are rich use the banking system."
voxpopnet.com (Web Archive copy)
Nothing here about Sheikh or Pakistan, let alone Ahmad. The closest connection you might make is that Sheikh is supposed to have sent Atta $100,000, and this $110,000 is a similar amount... But then some accounts say Sheikh sent this money in 2001, not 2000 (see here), suggesting this article may be talking about someone else.
In addition, an exhibit in the Moussaoui trial reveals that the $110,000 referred to here was made up of several smaller transfers, over a period of weeks ($9,985 on July 19th 2000; $9,485 on August 7th 2000; $19,985 on August 30th 2000; $69,985 on September 18th 2000), while most accounts we’ve seen suggest Sheikh sent his money in one block. And while Hicks lack of commentary on the article might make you think the origins of these transfers are a mystery, it’s worth noting that the US has said since 2002 that all these transfers were sent by Ammar Al Baluchi, aka “Abdul Aziz Ali using a variety of aliases”: he was arrested in 2003 and is currently in Guantanamo. Which doesn’t make the allegation true, obviously, but is a point to consider. Perhaps we’ll find out more if the suggested trials for Guantanamo inmates ever occur.
Dennis Lormel
When debating this issue online you'll often hear that "the FBI have confirmed the ISI link". British MP Michael Meacher made this specific accusation in a 2005 Guardian article:
Confirmation of an ISI link by a top FBI official would plainly offer extremely solid backing to the story. There's only one problem: Lormel said nothing of the kind. Here's what he told the House Committee on Financial Services, October 3rd, 2001:
(We've snipped this to zoom in on the core issue for this page, but there's much more. Please go read the whole thing if you're looking for the bigger picture.)
There's no confirmation of an ISI link here, then, and Lormel doesn't say that Sheikh was involved either. John J LaFalce said that "apparently Mohamed Atta received a wire transfer of $100,000 from a bank account in Pakistan under the control of one of bin Laden’s lieutenants", but Lormel doesn't even confirm that: all he tells us is that Atta received over $100,000 from multiple accounts in the UAE.
The message here is obvious: make sure you look very closely at apparent confirmations of this story. As we’ve seen, they frequently turn out to be less impressive than they at first appear. This doesn’t mean there’s no confirmation at all, though, and we’ll look at those stories next.
Further briefings
The claim that ISI chief Mahmoud Ahmad ordered Saeed Sheikh to wire $100,000 to Mohammed Atta is usually supported by references to stories in Pakistan’s Dawn magazine, the Wall Street Journal, and the AFP. But as we’ve seen elsewhere, these all place major reliance either on the original Times of India story, or unnamed Indian sources, not necessarily the people to offer an objective analysis of Pakistan or the ISI. That doesn’t mean they should be automatically dismissed, of course, just treated with caution, so with that in mind let’s take a look at other attempted confirmations that we’ve found.
This Daily Excelsior story, for instance, appears to offer more background to the story:
NEW DELHI: The US Administration has called for "quiet" investigations by America’s intelligence establishment in close cooperation with its allies outside the United States of a set of reports, all accusing Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of having played its role while facilitating the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.
Even as Pakistan President and military ruler, Gen. Parvez Musharraf, has tried to divert Washington’s attention by sacking the ISI chief, Gen. Mehmood Ahmed, America’s FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) and CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) seem determined to investigate the allegations against the ISI.
The FBI investigators have come across what has been termed as the "most damaging evidence" vis-à-vis the former ISI chief’s connection with Omar Sheikh, the Pakistan-born British national, who was released by the Government of India along with Masood Azhar and Mushtaq Zargar towards the end of 1999 to seek the freedom of passengers of the hijacked plane of Indian Airlines at Kandahar in Afghanistan.
The FBI investigators are reported to have conceded that India’s inputs proved to be "vital". A highly-placed intelligence source told EXCELSIOR that the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) provided the critical lead, which was vigorously pursued by the FBI investigators in Pakistan for more than 10 days until the cat was out of the bag.
The critical lead, the source elaborated, was the cellphone number of Omar Sheikh. In the initial stages, America’s intelligence establishment was found having certain reservations on India’s inputs. The scenario changed after the RAW made available Omar Sheikh’s cellphone number-0300 94587772.
The FBI’s examination of the hard disk of the cellphone company Omar Sheikh had subscribed to led to the discovery of the "link" between him and the deposed chief of the Pakistani ISI, Gen. Mehmood Ahmed. And as the FBI investigators delved deep, sensational information surfaced with regard to the transfer of 100,000 dollars to Mohammed Atta, one of the Kamikaze pilots who flew his Boeing into the World Trade Centre. Gen. Mehmood Ahmed, the FBI investigators found, fully knew about the transfer of money to Atta...
The CIA as well as the FBI investigators, report said, had accepted Indian intelligence community’s inputs that it was with the full support of the former ISI chief (Gen. Mehmood Ahmed) that Omar Sheikh and Masood Azhar launched Jaish-e-Mohammed after the Kandahar hijacking episode. The FBI investigators, reports added, had also come across evidence with regard to the contact the two militants had developed with Osama bin Laden after their release...
Omar was seen in Karachi a fortnight before the September 11 strikes. America’s intelligence community as well as India’s RAW treat him as the "crucial link" in the probe into the September 11 attacks. He has gone underground since the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. Is he hiding in Afghanistan?
http://web.archive.org/web/20011108121949/http://www.dailyexcelsior.com/01oct18/news.htm
On the plus side, the inclusion of Sheikh’s phone number suggests the reporter has some inside knowledge. As is the naming of RAW, the section of Indian Intelligence supposedly involved in the investigation.
On the negative side, it’s hard to tell what the “hard disk of the cellphone company” will tell anyone. If we assume that’s shorthand for examining their records, it’s still unclear how these could prove that Ahmed “fully knew about the transfer of money to Atta”, nor does the story explain how this was determined.
The Excelsior piece does make it worth reproducing part of another article, though, that otherwise might have been too dubious to mention. Not least because it comes from an article in the Bharat Rakshak Monitor, that’s apparently been “developed from a discussion conducted at the Bharat-Rakshak Forum”, appears to be written with the aim of blaming Pakistan for everything, and the key claims it contains of interest to us are unsourced. The first paragraph does provide more detail than we’ve seen so far, though:
The first paragraph here tells us that the money was transferred to Atta in Germany, which is a new claim: previous information suggests the hijackers didn’t receive this level of financial support until after they arrived in the US. And this time it seems they’re hinting that the cell phone call was monitored as it happens: it could have been later, but talking of “shadowing Saeed in a bookstore” suggests a closer watch on events than we’ve seen previously.
As we’ve mentioned, this is too unreliable a source to take as anything but someone’s hypothesis about what happened (and if it is sourced from an Indian intelligence report somewhere then there are still the reliability issues we’ve discussed before), but there is some support for one of the details elsewhere:
It’s not explictly stated here, but placing the wire transfer and “calls to Atta’s house in Hamburg” in the same paragraph suggests the author is also saying the money was transferred to a German account. Do these calls, even if they occurred, necessarily show contact with Atta, though? Perhaps not. According to the official chronology at least, Atta was primarily in the US from June 2000, while his Hamburg apartment wasn’t “vacant” until February 2001, and was used by others:
What’s the issue? Check the CooperativeResearch 9/11 timeline and you’ll see the “$100,000 funding from United Arab Emirates” placed as occurring between June 29th and September 18th 2000, after Atta had moved to the US and the hijackers had opened bank accounts there. Why, then, does one version of the story talk about transfers to Germany? It could be an early transfer that isn’t documented elsewhere (although if it is, you can forget using the UAE details to prove it’s Sheikh); it could be that the Bharat Rakshak Monitor claim is simply wrong, and the rediff.com story didn’t mean to imply that the transfer occurred to Germany; but it could also be an example that at least parts of these Indian-sourced stories are false, with some of the detail proving less than reliable.
India wasn’t the only country reporting on this story, though. Amir Mir of Pakistan has also weighed in:
As a result of comments like this, Mir is occasionally listed as someone who provides independent confirmation of the story. But his claims here aren't sourced, and careful reading of his 2004 book, "The True Face of Jehadis", reveals no particular "inside knowledge" with regard to this claim:
On the Sunday prior to the onslaught of the bombing of major cities in Afghanistan (7 October 2001), Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmad was sacked from his position as head of the ISI in what was described as q routine reshuffle. In the days following Mahmood's dismissal, some American media reports, quoting US intelligence sources 'revealed' the links between Mahmood Ahmad and the presumed ringleader of the attacks, Mohamed Atta. These reports alleged that it was Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmad who ordered the UK-born Omar Sheikh to send $100,000 to Mohammed Atta. Omar Sheikh had already been convicted in the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
Page 234/ 235, The True Face of Jedahis, Amir Mir
It seems Mir is doing nothing more than repeating Nafeez Ahmed's flawed analysis, assuming the Wall Street Journal piece is US confirmation of the transfer, when in fact it's simply repeating the Times of India story. The statement that "Omar Sheikh had already been convicted in the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl" when this occurred doesn't improve his credibility, either, as Pearl wasn't killed until 2002, some months after these events.
Still, some other details in Mir's piece, for example about Sheikh's claimed foreknowledge of the attacks, also appear in another account of his interrogation:
When the Karachi police took custody of Omar [Saeed Sheikh] from the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) on February 12, he started talking to them freely and voluntarily about his activities since he was released by India in the last week of December, 1999, to terminate the hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane to Kandahar by the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM). This is what he said during interrogation:
“He had since then been functioning from Lahore with the knowledge and permission of the ISI. At Lahore, he was in regular touch with Gen Mohammad Aziz Khan, who was a Corps Commander there, till his appointment as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee on October 8, 2001. He was frequently travelling to Kandahar to meet Mulla Mohammad Omar, the Amir of the Taliban, and Osama bin Laden; and to Dubai.
“He had personally met Mohammad Atta, the mastermind of the September 11 terrorist strikes on the World Trade Centre in New York, during one of his visits to Kandahar and knew of the plans for the September 11 strikes. He had told Lt Gen Ehsanul-Haq, the present DG of the ISI, who was then a Corps Commander at Peshawar, and Gen Aziz Khan about it.
“He had personally accompanied Musharraf and Aziz to the headquarters of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), at Muridke, near Lahore, when they had gone there before Musharraf’s India visit in July last to appeal to the LeT not to oppose his visit to New Delhi.
“He had orchestrated the attacks on the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly on October 1, 2001, and on the Indian Parliament in New Delhi on December 13, 2001, and the firing incident outside the American Centre in Kolkata on January 22, 2002. He knew Aftab Ansari, the mafia leader, who is presently under interrogation in India in connection with the Kolkata incident. All these attacks were organised with the knowledge and approval of the ISI.
“Peral was kidnapped and murdered because he was making enquires about the links of the Pakistani military intelligence establishment with bin Laden and wanted to meet people who would have knowledge of the present whereabouts of bin Laden. They suspected that Pearl was being used by the USA’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to recruit people who might be prepared to betray bin Laden and help in his capture. “More spectacular terrorist acts against the US were in the offing.
Sindhi officers of the Karachi police, who had been extremely resentful of the manner in which Musharraf, a Mohajir, had made them work under the supervision of Army monitors much junior to them in rank, leaked to the media what Omar Shaikh told them about his involvement in the terrorist attacks in India. Kamran Khan of the News of Islamabad reported about this in his periodic column. This set off a wave of panic in the GHQ at Rawalpindi and in the ISI headquarters, who tried to discredit Kamran Khan’s story by saying that Omar Shaikh had been tutored to say all this about his involvement in the terrorist attacks in India. Though they did not specify who had tutored him, the insinuation was that India had tutored him to discredit Pakistan and Musharraf.
They then pressured the owner of News to sack the Editor of the paper and three of his journalists, including Kamran Khan, who had been publishing a lot of reports on the Pearl case which cast doubts on Musharraf’s sincerity.
Musharraf spoke to the father of Omar Shaikh and requested him to persuade his son not to make such statements which harmed Pakistan’s supreme national interest. The father was allowed to talk to his son over phone and, on his appeal, Omar Shaikh agreed to retract his earlier statements and deny ever having said these things. In fact, in keeping with his promise to his father, he did retract, but subsequently, he again started saying that he stood by whatever he had stated earlier.
Musharraf then ordered the Karachi police not to interrogate him any longer and to treat him well. The military intelligence establishment is in a dilemma. It is determined not to extradite him to the USA lest he repeat before the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) what he had told the Karachi police. At the same time they don’t want to try him in Pakistan either. Amongst the various options reportedly being considered are to have him declared as insane and unfit for trial and extradition or, if need be, to eliminate him and show him as having been killed when a attempt was made to free him by the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, the banned Sunni extremist organisation, which has recently stepped up its anti-Shia activities in Karachi.
http://www.jammu-kashmir.com/archives/archives2002/kashmir20020410e.html
This account also requires a source “health warning”: there's no telling how Sheikh might have been "persuaded" to speak, it documents problems between the Karachi police and Musharraf that lead to this story reaching the press in the first place, and it’s been retold by Jammu-Kashmir, who aren’t the most objective source on Pakistan. Still, let’s suppose it is entirely true: what can we learn from these confessions?
One interesting new point here is the suggestion that Sheikh met Atta personally, and so learned of the attacks in advance. This information was then communicated to the ISI, and others.
What’s noticeable absent, though, is any mention of General Mahmoud Ahmad, or Sheikh actually wiring funds to Atta. Why should that be? The confession is actually more incriminating than the original claims, both for himself and the ISI, so it’s hard to see why that part of the story should be left out.
We could speculate that Sheikh was saying just enough to get the attention of the Government, but leaving out key information: a form of threat, if you like, to ensure he at least gained better treatment in prison. But that really is just speculation. We might just as well argue that he was telling the whole truth, or the entire story was made up by an unknown Pakistani source, because there’s just as much evidence for both of those scenarios.
Information supporting the simpler, “Ahmed told Sheikh to wire $100,000 to Atta” story has continued to appear elsewhere, though. Here’s what Bernard-Henri Levy had to say in his book “Who Killed Danny Pearl?”:
I see a note--but one I’m not allowed to take with me--which apparently is based on the contents of an FBI report: 0300 94587772... Omar’s cell phone number... the tracing of all his calls between July and October 2001 on that line. And among the numbers called, the number of General Mehmood Ahmed, who, until right after September 11, was the general director of the ISI...
Page 254, “Who Killed Danny Pearl”, Bernard-Henri Levy
The hypothesis... is no longer that Omar [Saeed Sheikh] is the financier of September 11, but that Omar is operating on orders from the ISI. The hypothesis is no longer just that Omar is linked to al-Qaeda and a most spectacular terrorist operation, but that there is an Omar whose role is even greater than that--to facilitate a collusion between al-Qaeda and the ISI, working together towards the destruction of the Twin Towers.
For Indian agencies, the connection is not in doubt. In New Delhi I saw the results of decoding the telephone chip of Pearl’s killer, showing, during the summer of 2000, at the time of the money transfer, repeated calls to General Mahmoud Ahmad. The FBI, of course, is more diplomatic, but I’ve spoken with people in Washington who confirm unofficially that the cell phone number decoded by RAW--0300 94587772--is Omar’s, and that the list of calls made from it are the same as were shown to me in India. So, if Omar is proved to be the originator of the transfers it would be difficult to deny that it was done with the knowledge of the head of ISI.
Page 322/ 323, “Who Killed Danny Pearl”, Bernard-Henri Levy
One oddity here is that even in the same book, there’s no clear agreement over timings: on one page Levy talks about contact between Sheikh and Mahmoud Ahmed in the summer of 2000, on another he mentions calls between July and October 2001. This need not necessarily be a conflict, as Levy may have been shown details of both 2000 and 2001 calls in New Delhi, but it’s another illustration of just how unclear these stories can be.
Another problem may come in taking Levy’s word for anything at all. William Dalrymple’s review of “Who Killed Danny Pearl” in the New York Review of Books was laced with comments like this:
None of these related to the passages we’ve highlighted, but Dalrymple is a heavyweight commentator and his concerns can’t be entirely dismissed.
Still, if we can trust Levy on his conversations with “people in Washington” then at least we do have some confirmation of this story, outside of India. And these tell us that Sheikh was in touch with Mahmoud Ahmad. Whether that in itself proves that any particular action of Sheikh’s was “at the instance of Ahmad” is another matter, and as you might expect, that’s not a conclusion drawn by Levy’s Washington contacts. But if you accept that he spoke to knowledgeable people, and reliably reported what they said, then it does provide a little extra credibility to the background of the Ahmad-Sheikh-Atta story. Although proof, and even consistency between the accounts, still seems a very long way off.