9/11 & The Smoking Gun That Turned On Its Tracker

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My first blog on WTCDemolition.com.

This article is long and hard...to follow. I found it intensely interesting. The author must have spent a huge amount of time to put this all together by September 2002, just over a year of the 9/11 attacks. Call me paranoid...but that alone makes me suspicious.

I found it while researching the Pakistani / ISI / Omar Saeed / $100,000 / Atta connection. My contention has always been that the hardcore proponants of the ISI Connection (Jon Gold, John Doraemi, and others) fail to mention many of the facts regarding this case. They are basically ignorant of facts that I found in only a day or two of researching it.

EDIT: Daniel Pearle's father, Judea Pearle, did not actually teach at LSE.

Please try to wade through the entire thing for me.
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Daniel Pearl and the Paymaster of 9/11:
9/11 and The Smoking Gun that Turned On its Tracker
by Chaim Kupferberg

4 September 2002 (revised 21 September 2002)
Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG)
Centre de recherche sur la mondialisation (CRM)
globalresearch.ca

It was supposed to be the key chain of evidence linking the
September 11 hijackers to Osama bin Laden -- a wire transfer of
$100,000 to lead hijacker Mohamed Atta. For a public increasingly
skeptical of evidence culled from passports in the rubble and
flight manuals in the glove compartment, here was the "money"
shot, a financial trail leading to the fall of the Twin Towers.
Yet less than five months later, the man initially fingered as the
paymaster of 9/11 would be sitting in a Pakistani jail, accused of
a wholly different crime -- the murder of Daniel Pearl.

Depending on where or when you have read his name, he is known as
Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh, or Umar Sheikh, or Syed Sheikh(if you
write for CNN). For simplicity's sake, we will refer to him as
Omar Saeed, a Pakistani-born former student of the London School
of Economics who grew up in the suburbs of Great Britain. Under
the alias of Mustafa Mohammed Ahmad, he was reported to have wired
$100,000 to a bank account in Florida belonging to 9/11 hijacker
Mohamed Atta.

"U.S. investigators believe they have found the 'smoking gun'
linking Osama bin Laden to the September 11 terror attacks," wrote
Julian Borger and John Hooper of The Guardian on October 1, 2001.
That very same day, a terror group based in Pakistan, the
Jaish-e-Mohammed, claimed responsibility for a suicide attack
against the provincial legislature in Kashmir, leaving 38 dead --
and Pakistan on the brink of war with India.

As reported by Maria Ressa of CNN on October 8, 2001, here is Omar
Saeed's connection to that incident:

"The Pakistan-based group, Jaish-e-Mohammad, initially
claimed responsibility for the attack. It was formed by
Pakistani cleric Maulana Mazood Azhar, shortly after he
was released from an Indian prison in 1999. Azhar was
one of three jailed Islamic militants freed by Indian
authorities in exchange for passengers of the hijacked
Indian Airlines 814. Indian and U.S. authorities now see
a link between that hijacking and the September 11
attacks in the United States. Freed with Azhar was Ahmed
Umar Syed Sheikh [Omar Saeed], whom authorities say used
a pseudonym to wire $100,000 to suspected hijacker
Mohammad Atta, who then distributed the money in the
United States."

According to a CNN posting dated October 6:

"[Omar Saeed] would still be in prison were it not for
the December 1999 hijacking of Indian Airlines Flight
814 -- an ordeal strikingly similar to the four
hijackings carried out on September 11. The plane, with
178 passengers on board, was en route from Katmandu,
Nepal, to New Delhi, India, when terrorists used knives
to take control of the aircraft, slitting the throat of
one passenger to force the pilots to open the cockpit
door?Because investigators have now determined that
[Omar Saeed] and Mustafa Muhammad Ahmad [the pseudonym]
are the same person, it provides another key link to bin
Laden as the mastermind of the overall [9/11] plot."

Notice the implication here: the bin Laden connection to 9/11 is
considerably strengthened by reason of bin Laden's connection to
Omar Saeed, whose own connection to the 1999 Indian Airlines
hijacking bears a gruesome similarity to the modus operandi
reportedly employed in commandeering the airplanes on September
11. Lest there be any doubt as to Omar Saeed's status in al-Qaida,
terrorism expert Magnus Ranstorp offered this assessment in the
same October 6 article: "He [Omar Saeed] is also linked to the
financial network feeding bin Laden's assets, so therefore he's
quite an important person...because he transfers money between
various operatives, and he's a node between al Qaeda and foot
soldiers on the ground."

That is the testimony from CNN. And, as far as I can tell, CNN's
October 8 article was -- at least for several months --
practically the American "mainstream" media's last mention of Omar
Saeed and his $100,000 deposit for 9/11. For on that very next day
-- October 9 -- The Times of India broke with this bombshell:

"While the Pakistani Inter Services Public Relations
claimed that former ISI [the "Pakistani CIA"]
director-general Lt-Gen Mahmud Ahmad sought retirement
after being superseded on Monday, the truth is more
shocking. 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 Center. The U.S.
authorities sought his removal after confirming the fact
that $100,000 were wired to WTC hijacker Mohammed Atta
from Pakistan by Ahmad Umar Sheikh [Omar Saeed] at the
instance of General Mahmud [Ahmad]. 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 [Omar Saeed's] mobile phone
number, helped the FBI in tracing and establishing the
link."

Thus, courtesy of The Times of India, by October 9, Omar Saeed was
not only tagged as the "bagman" of 9/11, but he was now reported
as acting under the orders of the chief of Pakistani intelligence.
That in itself is not so surprising, as the ISI was long
acknowledged as being the primary backer -- pre-9/11 -- of the
Taliban. Yet why, then, would the U.S. government insist on
nothing more punitive than the general's immediate retirement?
Here is one possible reason, courtesy of the archives of Karachi
News, datelined September 9, 2001 (two days before 9/11, for those
who didn't notice):

"ISI Chief Lt-Gen [Mahmud Ahmad's] week-long presence in
Washington has triggered speculation about the agenda of
his mysterious meetings at the Pentagon and National
Security Council. Officially, State Department sources
say he is on a routine visit in return to CIA Director
George Tenet's earlier visit to Islamabad...What added
interest to his visit is the history of such visits.
Last time Ziauddin Butt, [General Ahmad's] predecessor,
was here during Nawaz Sharif's government, the domestic
politics turned topsy-turvy within days. That this is
not the first visit by [General Ahmad] in the last three
months shows the urgency of the ongoing parleys."

In the light of what followed, one might hazard a guess as to what
was so urgent. Whatever the case, Omar Saeed, by way of General
Mahmud Ahmad, had now garnered his very own -- albeit indirect -
connection to the Pentagon. Under normal circumstances, The Times
of India article could be effectively quashed simply through being
ignored by the mainstream American media (which it was, save for a
brief, almost sluggish, mention from the Wall Street Journal).
Nevertheless, there now remained the sticky matter of dealing with
that $100,000 money trail -- possibly one of the greatest examples
(if the only one) of a smoking gun turning on its tracker.

Put simply, here was the problem: as early as September 18, the
gun was simmering on low heat, gradually drawing flavor as the
days passed. As reported by Jim Stewart of CBS News that day:
"From apartments, homes and cars once belonging to the dead
hijackers, agents have uncovered a money trail that they hope will
lead to the hijackers' accomplices." And, sure enough, by
September 30, it did, when ABC News "This Week" reported:

"...federal authorities have...tracked more than
$100,000 from banks in Pakistan to two banks in Florida
to accounts held by suspected hijack ringleader Mohamed
Atta. As well this morning, TIME magazine is reporting
that some of that money came in the days just before the
attack and can be traced directly to people connected to
Osama bin Laden."

The next day, October 1, 2001, the smoking gun sprouted an alias
-- Mustafa Ahmad, as reported by Judith Miller of the New York
Times (and not to be confused with General Mahmud Ahmad, the ISI
Chief). Similarly, Borger and Hooper of The Guardian that very
same day named bin Laden's paymaster as Mustafa Muhammad Ahmad,
pointing out that this was the alias for a "Sheikh Saeed", who was
reported to have wired the money from the United Arab Emirates
before he left for Pakistan.

The money trail story was now in full swing, yet trouble --
perhaps traces of the brewing ISI revelation -- now seemed to be
lurking in the background. By October 3, 2001, things started to
get unsettlingly murky. For on that day, British Prime Minister
Tony Blair released his infamous report, summarizing -- for a
skeptical public -- the "persuasive" case against bin Laden for
involvement in the events of September 11. Yet amid all the
innuendo that was employed in the report to nail down bin Laden's
culpability, there was nary a mention of that key piece of
evidence - the $100,000 pay-off to the hijackers.

Even more curiously, on that very day, New York Newsday reporters
John Riley and Tom Brune provided an alternative suspect for the
Mustafa Ahmad alias:

"Mustafa Ahmad is an alias used by Shaykh Sai-id, who
has been identified as a high-ranking bin Laden
financial lieutenant. In the wake of the bombing of the
U.S. embassy in Tanzania in 1998, Tanzanian officials
arrested and charged with murder an Egyptian named
Mustafa Ahmed. After alleging that he had confessed to
being a high-level al-Qaida operative, Tanzania then
released him without explanation a few months later,
according to news reports at the time."

Put simply, if Riley and Brune are correct, then "Shaykh Sai-id",
alias Mustafa Ahmad, could not possibly be Omar Saeed, as Omar was
nicely locked away in an Indian prison in 1998. Keep in mind, too,
that this article appears to be one of the first American
references to Mustafa Ahmad as being an alias for a "Shaykh
Sai-id."

A follow-up article by The Guardian's Julian Borger, dated October
5, 2001, does not make matters any clearer. Critiquing Blair's
definitive report on al-Qaida, he wrote:

"It omits mention of a key link in the evidential chain
discovered by U.S. investigators: the money trail
between a group of the hijackers and an al-Qaida
operative in Dubai, known as Mustafa Ahmad. It is not
clear whether it is Ahmad, an al-Qaida paymaster, that
Mr. Blair has in mind when the document claims 'one of
Bin Laden's closest and most senior associates was
responsible for the detailed planning of the attacks.'
He could instead have in mind someone higher up in the
chain of command such as Mohamed Atef or Abu Zubeidah,
both of whom are al-Qaida military commanders."

As to Borger's consideration of Mustafa Ahmad's status in the
al-Qaida hierarchy: "A lower-level al-Qaida figure, known as
Sheikh Saeed, alias Mustafa Mohamed Ahmad, organized money
transfers from Dubai to the hijackers and received return
transfers of unused money before leaving for Pakistan on September
11." By the end of the first week of October, various news
correspondents had apparently provided alternative personas for
the Mustafa Ahmad alias -- and nobody seemed to notice.

That first week of October 2001 was indeed a busy one in the War
Against Terror. It began with a high-profile terror attack in
Kashmir, perpetrated, reportedly, by a group with links to the man
tagged by CNN as paving the money trail to 9/11. Mid-week saw the
release of Tony Blair's much-touted report on the evidence against
bin Laden, conveniently timed for the invasion of Afghanistan by
week's end. If, by late September, the smoking gun was shaping up
to be the starting gun for the race into Afghanistan, at some
point in that first week of October, there was enough smoke
blowing in all directions to keep everyone well and thoroughly
diverted.

On December 18, 2001, the Associated Press -- acting as the
mouthpiece for the mainstream press in absentia -- would
officially (and matter-of-factly) put on record for us the
identity of the paymaster behind 9/11, unveiling him as:

"Shaihk Saiid, also known as Sa'd al-Sharif and Mustafa
Ahmad al-Hisawi. A Saudi, Saiid, 33, is bin Laden's
brother-in-law and financial chief. Saiid has been with
bin Laden since his time in the Sudan. Saiid allegedly
wired money to Atta in preparation for the Sept. 11
attacks, according to court documents."

The "court documents" in question are, presumably, the Zacarias
Mossaoui indictments released earlier that week, listing "Mustafa
Ahmad" as paymaster. With a deft sleight of hand, and seemingly
from out of nowhere, the Associated Press had managed to replace a
28-year old Pakistani militant tied to the ISI (Omar Saeed) with a
33-year old Saudi (Shaihk Saiid) tied - by marriage- to Osama bin
Laden himself.

The Associated Press had gradually edged toward its December 18
announcement, supported by a convenient paper trail -- in
particular, President Bush's Global Terrorist Executive Order,
signed September 23, 2001, in which a "Shaykh Sai'id (aka Mustafa
Muhammad Ahmad)" was mentioned as a financial operative in
al-Qaida, among a list of 27 individuals and entities slated to
have their assets frozen. On October 13, 2001 (four days after The
Times of India bombshell), the Associated Press announced that
"the government [had] widened its financial dragnet," including on
a "new list": "Sa'd Al-Sharif, a brother-in-law of bin Laden and a
senior associate believed to head bin Laden's complex financial
network." Note that the October 13 piece made no mention of any
aliases for Sa'd al-Sharif, nor did it connect him to the -- by
then -- well-publicized money trail. It took a third list,
announced on December 18, for the Associated Press to complete the
syllogism: Sa'd al-Sharif = Shaykh Sai'id = Mustafa Ahmad = 9/11
bagman. By then, however, bin Laden's culpability was long
settled, and any money trail long forgotten.

More conveniently, an alternative home could now be found for that
$100,000 revelation, distancing it from The Times of India and
CNN, circa Oct. 6-8. Now all that remained was to prepare
alternative "lodgings" for Omar Saeed and the retired ISI general.
Sometime in November 2001, the Justice Department complied by
laying out the bedding, "secretly" indicting Omar Saeed for a 1994
kidnapping, and thus setting the stage for his later appearance in
an entirely different performance -- the murder of Daniel Pearl.

The Disinformation Thickens

If, by December 18, the money trail to 9/11 was now a settled
fact, nobody seemed to take much notice. Earlier that week, on
December 13, the Bush Administration had presented a new, more
"sexy", smoking gun -- the certified Osama bin Laden Videotape
Confession. That would probably explain why, five days later, no
headlines were screaming "Bin Laden Brother-In-Law Linked To
9/11!" And perhaps that would be for the better, as such a
headline might have triggered a keen sense of deja vu in anyone
who was able to recall another bin Laden brother-in-law who was
linked to the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 -- Mohammed
Jamal Khalifa. Ramzi Yousef, the alleged terrorist bomber
convicted of that crime, was "said to have received money from bin
Laden's brother-in-law," according to Steve Macko in a July 25,
1997 item from ERRI.

Curiously, it was this particular brother-in-law who was first
mentioned in connection with the events of September 11, as early
as two days after. According to correspondent Jaime Laude of
Philippine Headline News Online, "...the government announced it
is stepping up efforts to hunt down Mohammad Jamal Khalifa, a
brother-in-law of Bin Laden, the prime suspect in Tuesday's
terrorist attacks on the U.S." A CNN article by Maria Ressa, dated
September 28, 2001, linked Khalifa to the terrorist Abu Sayyaf
group in the Philippines, and, through Ramzi Yousef, to the 1993
WTC attack. As reported by Ressa in that article, "Part of the
Osama bin Laden money trail [for September 11] may lead to the
Philippines and the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group." In other words,
if the money trail did lead to Abu Sayyaf, we would possibly be
faced with the following syllogism: Abu Sayyaf = Mohammad Khalifa
= Mustafa Ahmad = 9/11 bagman. As Ressa, by October, had
explicitly tagged Omar Saeed as the alleged paymaster, we can
safely assume that CNN was no longer pursuing the brother-in-law
angle to the money trail.

And what of this other brother-in law -The "Shaihk" With The Many
Aliases? It appears that with the authoritative -- and shockingly
brief -- proclamation from the Associated Press on December 18, no
further commentary on the Man Behind The Money Trail was needed.
The Shaihk's disappearance from the world's headlines was as
sudden as his appearance. In any case, the world was by then
distracted by the December 13 attack by Kashmiri terrorists on the
Indian Parliament in Delhi -- an attack that once more placed
India and Pakistan on the brink.

Coincidentally enough, Omar Saeed was linked to that attack by --
another coincidence -- Maria Ressa, in a CNN article dated June 7,
2002. If, by then, she had already forgotten her previous
designation of Omar Saeed as the 9/11 bagman, her memory was now
jogged by the revelation that "Al Qaeda funded the [1999 Indian
Airlines] hijacking operation" that resulted in Omar Saeed's
release from prison. Omar Saeed, through his purported membership
in Jaish-e-Mohammed, would now find an alternative bin Laden link
(and cover story), courtesy of Maria Ressa and colleagues. As the
above-mentioned July 7 article reports: "Evidence is surfacing
that al Qaeda is controlling key Kashmiri separatist groups and
fueling tensions -- something al Qaeda successfully did in
Chechnya and Southeast Asia." In a June 12 report, Maria Ressa
elaborated: "What Osama Bin Laden has done, intelligence officials
say, is to hijack regional movements and exploit them for his
purpose." The CIA must be green with envy.

One wonders if the October 9 Times of India article might have
aroused bin Laden's wrath toward India, for it was a mere five
days later -- on October 14, 2001 -- that The Times of India
reported:

"Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda terrorist group has now
formally and publicly adopted the Kashmir issue as one
of their causes...In a new video-taped message released
through Al-Jazeera television network, an unnamed
Al-Qaeda spokesman added the Kashmir cause to their
familiar list of grievances that include US presence in
Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian issue, and the situation
in Iraq."

Now that bin Laden's people had formally announced his updated
business plan, he was free to plan some spectacular mischief in
India -- presumably while dodging all those "daisy cutter" bombs
being hurled his way. And his "apparent" agent of choice -- Omar
Saeed, by way of the Jaish-e-Mohammed terror group.

The Developing Cover Story

While CNN's October articles on Omar Saeed linked him to the
September 11 hijackers, it made no mention at all of any links to
ISI Chief Mahmud Ahmad. As to those mainstream news outlets that
neither mentioned Omar Saeed nor the ISI Chief in their reports on
the money trail, frequent reference was made to the paymaster's
alleged pseudonym -- Mustafa Muhammad Ahmad. By fortuitous
happenstance, the pseudonym also had the odd feature of sounding
confusingly similar to the ISI Chief's name. Thus, in the early
days of October, one could read an American article about the
paymaster Mustafa Ahmad and, assuming he came across The Times of
India's piece on ISI General Mahmud Ahmad, conclude that the
Indian article was just an alternative version of the American
articles on Mustafa Ahmad. Assuming a reader caught the anomaly
early on, he would have a hell of a time making his case at any
dinner parties. Mahmud Mustafa? Muhammad Ahmad? This, in
intelligence parlance, would be a textbook example of "muddying
the waters" over the ISI Chief's link to the money trail.

Similarly, bin Laden's brother-in-law, "Shaihk Saiid," bears more
than a passing resemblance to the name Omar Saeed Sheikh. Drop the
"Omar", and one could easily see how a well-intentioned
correspondent (like Maria Ressa) and a well-informed terrorism
expert (like Magnus Ranstorp) could mistaken bin Laden's 33-year
old V.P. of Finance for bin Laden's 28-year old V.P. of Finance In
Kashmir.

Whatever the case, after October 9, Omar Saeed, as a news item,
largely receded into the background while the money trail story
died a slow, subtle death. In the meantime, an explanation was
gradually being elaborated for the ISI Chief's "sudden"
retirement. As early as October 10, 2001, Vernon Loeb and Alan
Sipress of the Washington Post reported that Pakistani President
Pervez Musharraf "ousted several influential intelligence and
military leaders who remained close to the Taliban, most notably
purging Gen. Mahmoud Ahmed of the [ISI], which long served as the
Taliban's patron." Vernon Loeb here seemed to be replicating a
technique that was used to great effect the day after September 11
-- briefly reporting on an anomaly with an authoritative tone that
appeared to say, Move on, folks. Nothing to see here.

For the sake of economy, we will refer to it as the Shrug
Technique of disinformation. Loeb had previously provided a
demonstration of the technique soon after the Twin Towers had
collapsed, in a brief capsule obituary on World Trade Center
security chief John O'Neill, where Loeb blandly informed us that:
a) John O'Neill was formerly the main FBI agent in charge of
investigating all terrorist acts linked to bin Laden; b) O'Neill
was banned from Yemen by Ambassador Bodine; c) O'Neill recently
left a 30-year career in the FBI "under a cloud" to d) take up the
position at the WTC only two weeks before 9/11. Nothing to see
here, folks. Move on.

On October 22, more than a week after President Bush decided to
freeze bin Laden brother-in-law Sa'd al-Sharif's assets
(presumably to accompany his "Shaykh Sai'id" alias, whose assets
were frozen on September 23), Johanna McGeary of Time Magazine
drew a lawyerly distinction between President Musharraf and the
policies of his ISI:

"Most startling was the premature retirement of
[Musharraf's] trusted friend Lieut. General Mahmoud
Ahmad, chief of the formidable...ISI, widely regarded as
the country's invisible government. As a staunch patron
of pro-Taliban policies, Ahmad is thought to have
opposed Pakistan's new alliance with the U.S. Musharraf
had reason to fear that segments of the ISI might thwart
promised cooperation with U.S. intelligence."

In the parlance of propaganda, the above could be termed as an
example of a "limited hangout." It begins with a frank admission
of a fact that, on its surface, appears to be damaging (i.e. ISI
support of the Taliban, and, through them, al-Qaida), yet instead
serves to protect a far more damaging revelation (i.e.
American/CIA influence over the ISI). By conceding the most
transparent evidence against the ISI, one may then resort to the
Shrug Technique to dismiss those who might be inclined to ask
their own questions.

For instance: if President Musharraf "had reason to fear" being
thwarted by segments of his ISI, then why would he send someone so
clearly unreliable as General Ahmad to negotiate the handover of
Osama bin Laden? Tim McGirk, in an April 29, 2002 piece for Time
Magazine, provides the backdrop for that answer:

"The first move Musharraf made to tame the ISI was
dumping its chief, [General Ahmad]. He and [Musharraf]
were close friends and fellow plotters in the 1999 coup
that brought Musharraf to power. But the intelligence
chief proved too radical for Musharraf's purposes.
Former comrades of [General] Ahmed's say he experienced
a battlefield epiphany in the Himalayan peaks during a
1999 summer offensive against India and began to pursue
his own Islamic-extremist agenda. At a cabinet meeting,
he once yelled at an official, 'What do you know? You
don't even go to prayers.' Of more concern than these
outbursts was [General] Ahmed's sympathy for the
Taliban. When the President sent him to Kandahar six
days after Sept. 11 to persuade Taliban chief Mullah
Mohammed Omar to hand over bin Laden, the spymaster
instead secretly told Omar to resist, an ex-Taliban
official told TIME. Word of this double cross reached
Musharraf, who on Oct. 7 replaced [General] Ahmed as ISI
boss."

Apparently, General Ahmad was quite adept at pulling the wool over
one's eyes. According to a September 12, 2001 article from the
Scripps Howard News Service, Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and Rep.
Porter Goss (R-Fla.) were sitting down for breakfast with the ISI
Chief when they received word of the 9/11 attacks. "[He] was very
empathetic, sympathetic to the people of the United States,"
Graham reported of Ahmad. If Ahmad was opposed to any U.S.
alliance, as Johanna McGeary reported, Graham certainly wasn't
seeing past the "love-me" vibes that Ahmad was apparently flashing
him over coffee and danishes -- a considerable oversight for
someone who is Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Incidentally, Graham and Goss are the co-chairmen in charge of the
commission to investigate the events behind September 11. Graham,
a former Florida governor, and Goss, a veteran of the CIA, "are
guarding their intelligence turf, saying they and their staffs are
uniquely qualified to sift through tens of thousands of sensitive
intelligence documents and interview spies and spymasters without
compromising classified sources and methods," according to an
Associated Press item dated May 30, 2002. "Colleagues say Graham
and Goss bring a pragmatic, bipartisan style to intelligence
committee work that leaves politics outside their mostly secret
meetings." We can trust they will give each other a probing,
"independent" grilling as to their itinerary in the days leading
up to 9/11.

The above-referenced article, by Curt Anderson, also contains a
superb demonstration of the Shrug Technique. Witness:

"The morning of Sept. 11, Sen. Bob Graham and Rep.
Porter Goss were doing what the two intelligence
committee chairmen frequently do -- having breakfast
together at the Capitol. With them was then-Pakistani
intelligence chief [Mahmud Ahmad]. [General Ahmad's]
task was to persuade Afghanistan's Taliban leaders to
hand over terror suspect Osama bin Laden. As the three
men talked over the knotty problem, an aide handed Goss
a note saying an airplane had hit the World Trade
Center. A few moments later the Capitol would be
evacuated, and the following month [General Ahmad] was
fired."

Move on, folks. Nothing to see here.

End Game

On January 22, 2002, a terror attack was launched on the American
Cultural Center in Calcutta (which was eventually linked to Omar
Saeed). The next day, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl
disappeared off the streets of Karachi, Pakistan. As the
mainstream media reported it, Pearl was investigating Pakistani
links to Richard Reid, otherwise known as "the shoe bomber." Yet
as Tariq Ali of The Guardian reported on April 5, 2002: "Those
[Pearl] was in touch with say he was working to uncover links
between the intelligence services and terrorism. His newspaper has
been remarkably coy, refusing to disclose the leads Pearl was
pursuing."

Whether Pearl's leads had anything to do with the laptop hard
drive that the Wall Street Journal passed on to the Defense
Department sometime in December 2001 is a question that some have
parsed. The story, according to Wall Street Journal reporters Alan
Cullison and Andrew Higgins, of "how a computer apparently stuffed
with al-Qaida secrets came to light, involves a combination of
happenstance and the opportunism of war..."

As reported by Dan Kennedy of The Boston Phoenix: "The Journal's
foreign editor, John Bussey, says that Cullison had been covering
the Northern Alliance for about a month and a half when his
computer was destroyed." In one of those fortuitous examples of
happenstance, as Cullison went computer shopping in Kabul, he was
informed that a local computer merchant had on sale a genuine
al-Qaida computer, certified by the looter himself, who claimed to
have filched it from the bombed-out headquarters of bin Laden
lieutenant Mohammed Atef. Among the incriminating hard drive
documents that basically confirmed everything ever told to us by
every counterterrorism expert throughout the '90's, Cullison --
who was on the Northern Alliance beat -- was lucky enough to find
the smoking gun implicating al-Qaida in the assassination of
Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud, who was mortally
wounded just two days before September 11.

The smoking gun, as reported by Cullison and Higgins on December
31 2001, was a "letter, written in clumsy French in the name of an
obscure, London-based Islamic information agency." The letter --
carrying the name of Yasser Al-Siri -- involved an interview
request of Massoud. The Northern Alliance leader, as it turned
out, was killed by "two men who posed as journalists to interview
Massoud Sept. 9, both French-speaking Arabs, [who] carried stolen
Belgian passports." As luck would have it, the incriminating
letter also happened to confirm the hunch of Her Majesty's
Government, which had already arrested one Yasser Al-Siri in
London in October, charging him with conspiring to assassinate
Massoud. London. Al-Siri. Clumsy French. Stolen Belgian passports
-- to any aspiring Sherlock Holmes or Perry Mason, al-Qaida is the
gift that keeps on giving.

So where was the Pearl angle in all this? In the July/August 2002
issue of The Columbia Journalism Review, the former president of
NBC News, Lawrence K. Grossman, presented the possibility that
Pearl was kidnapped due to the Wall Street Journal's decision to
publish the laptop documents. He quoted James Goodale, a former
lawyer for the New York Times, as saying, "No matter what, they
should not have published that they cooperated with the
government...I will say flat out what the WSJ did is detrimental
to the safety of U.S. journalists abroad."

Columbia Journalism students take note: what Grossman has authored
is a superbly crafted exercise in disinformation (for an article
that runs barely 1,000 words). You can almost feel the directed
implications cresting over your brain as you read Grossman's
account of what those al-Qaida computer files contained: "... a
remarkably detailed account of its agent Abdul Ra'uff's travels in
Israel and Egypt in search of terrorist targets. Ra'uff's
itinerary matched that of the would-be shoe bomber, Richard C.
Reid...U.S. officials who reviewed the files are convinced that
Ra'uff and Reid are the same person."

Implication #1: The contents of those computer files might have
sent Pearl on his purported quest for the shoe bomber. His quote
of Goodale leads us to Implication #2: The Wall Street Journal's
admitted assistance to the government may have led Pearl's captors
to conclude that Pearl was a CIA agent. Most importantly, Grossman
establishes his bona fides with this little anecdote:

"...The late William Colby, a CIA director, once
confided to a reporter friend of mine, Stanley Karnow,
that several major news organizations actually were
complicit in helping the CIA plant agents posing as
reporters in their overseas bureaus. To this day, the
CIA has refused to make clear that it no longer uses
reporters as agents or agents posing as reporters..."

All of which leads us to Implication #3: He is shocked -- shocked!
-- that propaganda happens here because -- take his word as a
media insider -- it's not the norm.

Note to aspiring investigators: Be careful as to which facts you
"ingest" in constructing your theories. Some stories -- like The
Al-Qaida Computer Tale - serve as nothing more than a red herring
"cluster bomb", meant to forever obscure the truth by forcing an
accommodation with a "well-known fact" -- a sort of modern update
on the "Oswald In Mexico" gambit. Whichever lead Daniel Pearl was
pursuing -- which we may never know -- the important fact to keep
in mind is the man who would eventually be tagged for his murder
-- Omar Saeed Sheikh.

Only four days after the disappearance of Daniel Pearl, Omar Saeed
once more bobbed up into the world's headlines after staying
submerged for more than four months. As reported by Rajeev Syal
and Chris Hastings for The Telegraph on January 27:

"The London School of Economics...has been host to at
least three al-Qa'eda-linked terrorists, The Telegraph
has been told. An intelligence report says that the trio
studied or lectured at the London University college
between 1990 and 1993, when it became a breeding ground
for Islamic extremism...The three -- including one man
called Ahmed Omar Sheikh [Omar Saeed] - have been
revealed as having links with the LSE in an intelligence
file seen by this newspaper and now being studied by
police."

The reason for Omar Saeed's sudden reappearance in this article
had nothing to do with Daniel Pearl. As Syal and Hastings
reported:

"Omar [Saeed], 28, a former mathematics student at the
LSE, is said to have been linked to last week's drive-by
shooting in Calcutta that killed five policemen. He has
also been named as one of the key financiers of Mohammed
Atta, the pilot of one of the jets that hit the World
Trade Centre on September 11."

Unfortunately, Syal and Hastings did not provide the names of the
other two terrorists, but they did report that one of them "was
arrested in Delhi last month for reported involvement in the
recent attack on the Indian Parliament."

As we shall soon see, Omar Saeed's link to the largely forgotten
money trail was now being carefully resurrected, leaving bin
Laden's ever-marginalized brother-in-law off to the sidelines once
more. What had changed in the interim? An October 1 attack on the
provincial legislature in Kashmir, a December 13 attack on the
parliament in Delhi, a January 22 attack in Calcutta, and -- the
coup de grace -- the January 23 kidnapping of Daniel Pearl. If,
after October 9, Omar Saeed had largely gone underground, he was
purportedly a busy little mole in the months following.

While the average news reader would now care less about any arcane
financial dealings, the money trail story was nevertheless "out
there" and ultimately had to be accounted for in a definitive
version. Somebody was playing for the history books. In the months
following October 9, a working "legend" was being elaborated for
Omar Saeed, one that would increasingly distance him from the
implications of his relationship with the ISI chief.

Now, as the purported perpetrator of all sorts of al-Qaida-linked
mischief -- helped along by bin Laden's well-timed October 14 plug
for Kashmir -- Omar Saeed's link with the 9/11 hijackers could be
obscured and/or minimized amid a veritable buffet of terrorist
activity. By the time of Omar Saeed's debutante "outing" as a
suspect in the kidnapping of Daniel Pearl on February 6, 2002, the
Omar Saeed/Money Trail Story was now fully ripened for the Shrug
Technique. On February 10, Time Magazine's Unmesh Kher offhandedly
mentioned Omar Saeed's $100,000 link to 9/11. But more
importantly, that very day, the Associated Press, courtesy of
Kathy Gannon, would officially snub bin Laden's brother-in-law
(and thereby refute itself) by reporting: "Western intelligence
sources believe Saeed sent $100,000 to Mohamed Atta, the suspected
ringleader of the Sept. 11 terrorist hijackings, through a money
transfer system known as hawala that bypasses banks and official
financial institutions." Alas, it appears in retrospect that bin
Laden brother-in-law Sa'd al-Sharif (alias Shaykh Sai'id alias
Mustafa Ahmad al-Hisawi) was merely a "temporary hide-out" for the
money trail.

The February 10 article by Gannon, while making a redemptive stab
at a limited hangout of the truth, nevertheless spoiled its record
by grabbing at another juicy morsel of disinformation: "Kamal
Shah, chief of police in Sindh province...said investigators were
trying to track Saeed. 'We feel we are close,' he said. 'We can't
give you a timeframe. But we don't think we are far off.'"

As far off as the upstairs bathroom, perhaps -- for Saeed had
already been in custody for five days by that time. Saeed
"surrendered Feb.5 in the presence of Ejaz Shah, a former top ISI
official now working as home secretary of Punjab province,"
reported Karl Vick and Kamran Khan of the Washington Post on May
3. On February 12, the Pakistani authorities finally decided to
formally announce the arrest of Omar Saeed. So how did he spend
his week-long secret hideaway with the Pakistani authorities? As
reported by the Associated Press on July 1 2002, "Saeed said
authorities illegally detained him and tortured two of his fellow
defendants in order to give police more time to fabricate a case
against him."

As the Washington Post framed it on May 3: "Officials acknowledge
that Saeed remained in ISI custody for a week while Pakistan's
president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, visited Washington and said he
was 'relatively certain' Pearl was alive."

If Musharraf was being somewhat shifty, he ratcheted it up a notch
on February 9, when he suggested that Indian intelligence played a
hand in Pearl's kidnapping. His evidence, according to a February
9 Washington Post item by Kamran Khan:

"So far, investigators said, the suggestion of an Indian
connection revolves around three phone calls to New
Delhi placed from the same cell phone that was used to
lure Pearl to a restaurant in Karachi on Jan. 23, the
last time he was seen in public. Police sources say they
have traced the calls, with the help of the FBI, to
numbers for an Indian cabinet minister and two members
of parliament. But the sources said they believe those
phone calls were made to mislead investigators into
concluding that India was involved."

In almost an exact mirror image of the October 9 Times of India
allegations, Omar Saeed was now being pawned off on the Indians.

In the same article, on that very day, the disinformation was
coming fast and furious:

"Police today also took the unusual step of turning for
help to the jailed leader of Jaish-i-Muhammad, Masood
Azhar. The sources said they persuaded Azhar to make a
call from his prison cell to Saeed requesting Pearl's
release."

More likely, he used string attached to two styrofoam cups to
reach Saeed in the neighboring cell.

As the "official" story had it soon after Saeed's "official"
arrest on February 12, the case was solved when the authorities
successfully traced a series of e-mails back to one of Saeed's
alleged accomplices, who then confessed that he was only acting
under Saeed's orders. The government's case, as reported by Zarar
Khan of the Associated Press on July 1, "rests heavily on
technical FBI evidence, which traced the e-mails to fellow
defendant Fahad Naseem."

Thus, it would appear that the FBI had a hand in linking Omar
Saeed to the kidnappers of Daniel Pearl. This is an important fact
to consider, for -remember -- The Times of India, on October 9,
had linked Saeed to ISI Chief Ahmad, reporting that Indian
intelligence had supplied evidence to the FBI. In the aftermath,
ISI Chief Ahmad was "quietly retired" at the insistence of the
U.S. government, according to the Oct. 9 Times of India.
Eventually, the American mainstream media -- mostly through Time
Magazine -- would provide the cover story for General Ahmad,
tagging him as "pro-Taliban" yet omitting any suggestions that he
might have been orchestrating payment for the 9/11 hijackers, with
Saeed as his primary agent. And while the mainstream media began
to effectively distance Saeed from the money trail soon thereafter
(while simultaneously "smothering" the money trail story), the
Justice Department waited a month after the October 9 revelations
to finally move against Saeed by issuing an indictment -- but not
by reason of any alleged 9/11 links. According to a CNN item
posted February 28, 2002:

"U.S. officials said that [Omar Saeed] was secretly
indicted in November in connection with the 1994
kidnapping in India of western tourists, including an
American. Justice Department officials won't say what
prompted that indictment, which came more than six years
after the incident."

The revelation -- in February -- that the FBI had already moved
against Saeed back in November was an excellent exercise in
"plausible deniability." The indictment itself would provide a
cover story for any future "limited hangout" concerning Saeed's
links to the money trail. Citing "uncertainty" as to the true
identity of the pseudonymous paymaster Mustafa Ahmad, the Justice
Department could then claim that it played it "safe" in November
by indicting Saeed for an offense to which he could definitely be
linked. Any notion of a "cover-up" could then be dismissed by
evidence for the admitted confusion surrounding the identity of
"Shaykh Sai'id" as Mustafa Ahmad.

By late February, most of the components for the full cover story
were coming together in the mainstream media. Omar Saeed could now
simultaneously be linked to al-Qaida and "rogue" elements in the
ISI, distancing him from President Musharraf and the
post-September 11 "good" ISI. As reported by Nancy Gibbs in a
February 25 article for TIME:

"Pakistani investigators and newspapers in the U.S. have
speculated that rogue elements linked to the ISI wanted
to demonstrate to Musharraf and the world that they were
not so easily tamed...[Musharraf] was able to cut the
extremists loose after Sept. 11 and replace the
hardline, pro-Taliban ISI Chief [General Ahmad]..."

In short, the mainstream media were laying the groundwork for a
possible future "hangout" on explicit links between General
Ahmad's "rogue" ISI clique and Omar Saeed. In this respect, Saeed
and General Ahmad would be portrayed as having a common intention.
As reported by Kamran Khan and Molly Moore of the Washington Post
on February 18:

"Saeed said attacks outside the U.S. cultural center in
Calcutta, the Indian Parliament in New Delhi and a
legislative assembly in Kashmir were aimed at provoking
India into taking action against Pakistan. Extremist
organizers -- some with ties to Saeed -- hoped Musharraf
would be forced to back away from his public stand
against militant activities, Saeed told police."

While the Post item by Khan and Moore also mentioned Saeed's links
to bin Laden -- "Saeed told [police] he had traveled to
Afghanistan 'a few days after September 11' to meet Osama bin
Laden" -- at no point was General Ahmad or the 9/11 money trail
mentioned.

Yet Khan and Moore introduced a seemingly innocuous new "wrinkle"
to the story -- Saeed's admitted "relationship with Aftab Ansari,
the alleged gangster and chief suspect in the shooting outside the
U.S. cultural center in Calcutta...Saeed said he met Ansari while
the two men were jailed in New Delhi's Tihar prison." To anyone
reading that snippet -- unaware of the Saeed/ISI/9/11 Money Trail
link -- the offhand mention of Ansari would barely register. As we
shall shortly see, though, the addition of Ansari to an eventual
"hangout" of the full cover story would be absolutely crucial, for
it also involves the participation of the Times of India.

As we have seen, the Times of India, through its October 9
revelation, set in motion a huge degree of activity surrounding
the evidence implicating bin Laden for September 11. Moreover,
India was repeatedly being led to the brink with Pakistan through
terror attacks that would eventually be linked to Saeed and/or
rogue elements in the ISI. If, theoretically, India had the
"goods" on Pakistan and the U.S. government, apparently other
forces were at work to maintain countervailing pressure on India.
If the October 9 revelation seemed -- on its face -- to be an
attempt by India to soil the reputation of Pakistan, by February
13, the Times of India was explicitly backing away from the
sinister implications of its October 9 outing.

When the news of Saeed's "official" arrest broke on February 12,
here is how the Times of India would describe Saeed's connection
to the 9/11 money trail a day later:

"...there were allegations that [Saeed] had organized at
least one bank remittance to the terrorists who were
responsible for the September 11 strikes in the US and
that Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed had helped him in this
regard. There was, however, no evidence to indicate
whether Ahmed was aware that this amount was meant for
the terrorist strikes in the U.S."

This was a crucial point to emphasize, for it was widely known
that General Ahmad had been involved in several intense
discussions with American officials in the months leading up to
9/11. The importance of any cover story, then, would be to divert
attention and thought from The Implication That Dare Not Speak Its
Name -- that General Ahmad's ISI were the operational commanders
of the 9/11 hijackers, acting themselves as proxies for the U.S.
government/U.K./EU (i.e., the coalition spearheading the War On
Terrorism).

With General Ahmad's involvement in 9/11 thus somewhat obfuscated
by the Times of India on February 13, the Times of India then
proceeded, on February 14, to fully "inoculate" against the virus
that it had released on October 9. Its main vaccine -- Aftab
Ansari:

"Aftab Ansari arranged for $100,000 for Omar [Saeed]
Sheikh, prime accused in the kidnapping of WSJ reporter
Daniel Pearl...Ansari arranged a series of e-mails with
[Saeed] and Asif Reza Khan [who was killed on December
7] in August 2001, where he was asked to help out with a
'noble cause'... Indian officials interrogating Ansari
said that, on August 8, 2001, Ansari asked Khan over
e-mail whether he agreed to part with $100,000 for a
'noble cause' as requested by [Saeed]...on August 11,
Ansari sent an e-mail to Khan saying that 'the amount
mentioned had been sent to [Saeed]'...On August 19,
[Saeed] e-mailed Ansari again, saying, 'The money that
was sent has been passed on.'"

Thus, after attempting to clip ISI General Ahmad out of the
picture on February 13, the Times of India then attempted the next
day to insert Aftab Ansari into the money trail story.
Conveniently, Ansari was deported from the United Arab Emirates to
India only a few days before, where he was arrested for the terror
attack in Calcutta. As the UAE was previously reported by the
American media to be the country from which the pseudonymous
paymaster "Mustafa Ahmad" made the $100,000 wire transfer,
Ansari's link to that country would provide further confirmation
for this developing cover story.

And while Pakistan was not quite let off the hook, the Times of
India -- by way of Ansari -- now more firmly linked the money
trail back to al-Qaida:

"Officials said the e-mails also hint at Ansari's
possible linkages with the al-Qaeda network. The e-mails
also refute Pakistani authorities' rebuttal of their
nexus with the deported gangster. Interestingly, the
mode of communication adopted by them is similar to that
used by Mohammad Atta and other al-Qaeda members to
carry out the September 11 attacks...This gives credence
to the perception that Ansari had arranged $100,000 for
the terror attacks on America, officials said."

In short, by February 14, the Times of India was officially
touting the Saeed/Ansari duo rather than the Saeed/General Ahmad
coupling.

Yet this was not the Times of India's first mention of Ansari in
connection with Omar Saeed and the 9/11 money trail. That first
mention dates, in fact, to Tuesday January 22, 2002 -- the day of
the Calcutta attack, and exactly one day before Daniel Pearl's
disappearance. Here, then, was the Times of India's initial
account of the Saeed/Ansari connection:

"[Indian] CBI Director P C Sharma told visiting FBI
Chief Robert S Mueller that Ansari, who claimed
responsibility for [today's Calcutta] attack, had taken
a ransom of Rs 37.5 million to free shoe baron
Parthapratim Roy Burman through hawala channels to
Dubai, CBI sources said. Out of this amount, Omar
[Saeed] ... had sent $100,000 to Atta through
telegraphic transfer, CBI sources said."

Thus, by January 22, not only was FBI Director Robert Mueller on
scene in India, but he was reportedly apprised of the
Ansari/Saeed/Money Trail by Indian authorities. Conveniently,
Ansari had claimed responsibility for the attack that very day,
and his subsequent deportation to India from Dubai was also
conveniently timed with the subsequent arrest of Omar Saeed for
the kidnapping of Daniel Pearl. As Mueller's FBI was also
reportedly on hand to trace the Pearl kidnapping back to Omar
Saeed, it is reasonable to deduce from these facts an alternative
explanation for Mueller's January 22 visit -- namely, that Mueller
was "on hand" to coordinate this final leg of the Omar Saeed
cover-up story, bringing in Ansari by way of the well-timed
Calcutta attack, and then employing his colleagues in Indian
intelligence to feed the Times of India its corrective "take" on
the Omar Saeed/Money Trail Story.

With the Calcutta operation in place, in conjunction with the
Pearl kidnapping, Omar Saeed would now be nicely set up for his
initial January 27 resurrection in the British Telegraph, to be
followed days later in the American media through his February 5
"outing" in connection with the Pearl kidnapping. I do not mean
to imply by this that the Calcutta attack and the Pearl kidnapping
were conducted for the sole purpose of establishing a cover-up
legend. Far from it. Covert operations -- particularly those
with propaganda value -- are often "loaded up" with a number of
multi-faceted, yet related, objectives. In this way, a "rogue
ISI" element could be established as standing against the
interests of the U.S./Pakistani War On Terrorism, and Omar Saeed
in this light could then be presented as standing at the center of
the very nexus between this rogue ISI and the al-Qaida terror
network that had already declared its opposition to India in
Kashmir.

On July 15, 2002, Omar Saeed was sentenced to die by a Pakistani
court. By this time, all contingencies had long been covered. The
confusion surrounding the identity of the pseudonym Mustafa Ahmad
could provide a "plausible" explanation as to why the media
neglected -- even after Saeed's February 12 "arrest" -- to
consistently link him to the money trail, which by then had long
taken a backseat to the Official Bin Laden Videotape Confession of
December 13. Moreover, by linking Saeed up with all that post-9/11
terror activity, Saeed's pre-9/11 role would be effectively
minimized. Most importantly, the mainstream media would -- as of
this writing -- observe an iron-clad rule for reporting on Saeed
-- that is, never mention Saeed, al-Qaida, the money trail, the
ISI, and General Ahmad in the same article. In those articles that
would mention Saeed's links with the money trail, they would also
now mention his links to al-Qaida but omit any mention of General
Ahmad. Where those articles mentioned Saeed's links with the ISI,
they would omit mention of the money trail and General Ahmad. Of
those articles that mentioned General Ahmad and the ISI, General
Ahmad would be tagged as "pro-Taliban" while "rogue" elements in
his ISI would then be linked to al-Qaida -- with any mention of
Saeed and the money trail safely omitted. Now, with the Ansari
angle credibly in place, it is a safe bet that the mainstream
media -- probably courtesy of Time Magazine -- will one day "put
it all together" for us, detailing how Ansari and Saeed, at the
behest of al-Qaida, organized the money transfers to the hijackers
as rogue elements in the ISI looked the other way, possibly not
realizing that their "pro-Taliban" sympathies would facilitate the
actions of September 11.

The whole cover story, however -- with its endless obfuscations,
diversions, and fallback explanations -- cannot obscure the fact
that it depends on a huge number of coincidences and conveniently
timed set-ups to keep it in place. Moreover, evidence can be
marshaled to show that the mainstream media -- either as willful
agents or as passive mouthpieces of the intelligence apparatus --
planted disinformation that was meant to structure perceptions in
a specific direction. The elaboration of the cover story bears the
marks of its apparent mistakes and missteps.

But more disturbingly, the Omar Saeed/ Money Trail Story
effectively shatters the credibility of the media/intelligence
apparatus that provided virtually all the information on bin Laden
and his al-Qaida network over the years. If this one small element
of the overall 9/11 terror picture shows this much evidence of
information management, one wonders how many other elements in
this tale bear the marks of elaborate orchestration by the parties
who have fed us all the data.

In intelligence operations, a credible "legend" is created through
acting out all elements in the story rather than simply
fabricating them for later use. Thus, "lead" hijacker Mohamed Atta
most likely did receive a wire transfer of $100,000, arranged by
an operative who was connected to al-Qaida, an organization that
was fully financed, structured and "false-flagged" by Pakistanis
and Saudis acting as operative proxy agents/patsies for what
appears to be a globally connected Western elite intelligence
apparatus.

As a crucial element in constructing the "legend" of 9/11, it was
necessary to provide the links between the hijackers and al-Qaida.
The paradox is this -- an apparently sophisticated terror entity
like al-Qaida would be required to maintain an elaborate
evidential trail leading to its hijackers. Put simply, the names
on those boarding passes would have to be the same names linked to
various credit cards, witnesses, apartments, cell phone records,
etc. Whether or not a hijacker by the name of Al-Suqami,
al-Shehhi, or Atta was using a false passport would be largely
irrelevant if it could be shown that someone employing the same
false alias was linked to the same incriminating evidence. The
evidence -- culled from credit card charges, Internet
communications, cell phone calls, and ATM withdrawls -- revealed,
according to a November 4, 2001 article in the New York Times,
"...a picture in which the roles of the 19 hijackers are so
well-defined as to be almost corporate in their organization and
coordination." And that is the paradox. If the names on those
boarding passes were used only once, there would be no evidence at
all linking those hijackers to al-Qaida.

Here was an example of an anomaly "hiding in plain sight." With
the hijackers conveniently sowing a consistent trail of the same
names or aliases all over the place -- establishing a "legend"
that could be corroborated by real witnesses -- the media could
then be used to plant all kinds of disinformation and red herrings
to divert attention from this most obvious anomaly. For example,
where ABC News would report on September 12 that a passport
belonging to a hijacker named Satam Al-Suqami was found in the
rubble of the World Trade Center, the other mainstream outlets
would widely report the discovery of the "mystery passport" days
later -- on September 16 -- as having some kind of evidential
significance. But it was an obvious red herring. At best, it would
signify this -- that a passport was found which bore the same name
as someone whose boarding pass bore the same name as someone
linked to an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan. More "smoke"
would then be wafted over the "mystery" surrounding this discovery
when it was widely reported that FBI honcho Barry Mawn would not
reveal the name on the passport (when all the media had to do was
to check their Sept. 12 file clippings from ABC News).

Other red herrings would follow. The "full" passenger lists, for
instance, would be released without the names of the purported
hijackers on it -- leaving some to sniff that the government had
"something to hide." But quite simply, the main fact worth hiding
is the notion that the hijackers worked so assiduously to build a
convenient evidential trail with their supposed aliases. Take
Mohamed Atta, for example. If he weren't so wedded to spreading
his name like seed, then we would have no money trail story, no
incriminating flight manuals in rented cars, no surveillance
videos, no flight school witnesses -- in fact, nothing at all on
which we could hinge a legend for Mohamed Atta. The mainstream
media repeatedly assured us that the hijackers were quite
meticulous in staying below the radar, following the professional
protocols of the Al-Qaida Handbook. Yet at every step of the way,
they risked blowing their cover, going so far as to book flights
under names that were either already on FBI watch lists or that
could easily be linked to "shady" associates.

By smothering the public with an apparent abundance of evidence,
by conjuring the illusion that thousands of federal agents were
compiling a comprehensive paper trail, the terror "experts"
diverted us from the obvious fact that the 9/11 hijackers --
purportedly the most cunning operatives for the most sophisticated
terror operation in history -- were instead certified morons,
leaving us the gift of their boarding passes as the slim thread
that would tie them to the Potemkin facade that is al-Qaida.

Someone by the name of Marwan Al-Shehhi was careful to rent a
hotel room in Deerfield Beach, taking further care to leave behind
Boeing 757 manuals and "an eight-inch stack of East Coast flight
maps." Someone under the name of Marwan Al-Shehhi was also careful
to use that name in activating his cell phone account so that one
day, on November 4, 2001, Don Van Natta and Kate Zernike of the
New York Times would be able to write: "Mohamed Atta, in seat 8D
in business class, dialed his cellphone ... [reaching] Marwan
Al-Shehhi in seat 6C on United Airlines Flight 175." How Van Natta
and Zernike were also able to report that Atta called Al-Shehhi
his "cousin" on that particular phone call perhaps reveals my
ignorance over what can be divined through paper records of cell
phone calls.

Moreover, it was convenient that someone by the name of Mohamed
Atta took care to fasten his name tag on the luggage that he so
thoughtfully left behind -- in addition to the rented car he
abandoned in the airport parking lot -- so that authorities could
find "a five-page handwritten document in Arabic that
includes...practical reminders to bring 'knives, your will, IDs,
your passport, all your papers.'" The existence of a written
reminder for professional hijackers -- who were presumably
intensively trained to commandeer those airplanes with knives --
to pack blades for their flight bears no rational explanation
(except to confirm to us that, indeed, the hijackers did use sharp
implements to take those planes).

But for all his credit card charges, cell phone calls, and bar tab
receipts, Mohamed Atta was most fastidious in setting up a bank
account in his name, so that he would be able to receive a wire
transfer of $100,000 from someone who could definitively be linked
to al-Qaida. That would be the paper trail, the "money" shot, the
financial link to 9/11. And, best of all, the evidence would be
unimpeachable because the whole transaction was in fact carried
out by this "lead" hijacker who so consistently provided the
evidence in elaborating the "legend" of 9/11. But it was not meant
to be. At some point, the lines crossed, a seam showed, a careless
inconsistency bore its ugly head. Amid the confusion, this
emergent "smoking gun" needed to be aborted.

In the aftermath, new "smoking guns" would emerge, more smoke
would be blown. And what of that illusion -- the one that in those
early days after 9/11 seemed to conjure an image of thousands of
federal agents building a paper forest of evidence implicating the
hijackers? "The hijackers left no paper trail," declared FBI
director Robert Mueller on April 30, 2002. "In our investigations,
we have not uncovered a single piece of paper ... that mentioned
any aspect of the Sept. 11 plot." In other words, they no longer
needed to stand guard and defend the mountains of innuendo and
smoke that was blown in those early days to provide you with the
authorized account of 9/11. Mueller, with his carefully worded
lawyerly formulation - "piece of paper", "mentioned", etc. --
would thus have it both ways: throwing up the innuendo without
legally obligating himself to defend it.

In the end, the smoking gun was not the money trail. Nor was it
the "whistle-blowing" article that appeared to expose it. Instead,
the smoking gun lay in the actions, words, and deceptions of those
who so cynically took it upon themselves to direct our perceptions
-- to tell us what, why, and how we know what we know. For in so
closely managing the flow of information, by weaving in so many
coincidences and synchronicities that could only be explained by
willful orchestration, they exposed the seams of their duplicity,
and in so doing, exposed before our eyes the intricate workings of
a vast, all-pervasive disinformation apparatus that now risks its
own destruction -- for its contours can now be perceived by all
who care to look.

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Copyright Chaim Kupferberg 2002. Chaim Kupferberg is a freelance
researcher and writer. His previous CRG article, The Propaganda
Preparation For 9/11, describes a general media campaign, in the
years leading up to 9/11, to present al-Qaida as a plausibly
sophisticated nemesis with the motive, means, and opportunity to
destroy the World Trade Center.

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The URL of this article is:
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/KUP209A.html

Read more in Global Outlook, September 11: Foreknowledge or Deception?
Stop the Nuclear Threat, Issue no 2, Summer 2002 - order online.

Order by phone from publisher. Call (toll free) 1-888-713-8500.

Copyright © 2002 Chaim Kupferberg
Reprinted for Fair Use Only.