Enter Daniel Pearl - Part 2 of Truth, Lies, and The Legend of 9/11

February 25, 2008

Enter Daniel Pearl

http://www.911review.org/Wiki/TruthLiesPearl.shtml

Part 2 of Truth, Lies, and The Legend of 9/11: Truth Lies Legend

http://www.911review.org/Wiki/TruthLiesLegend.shtml

We may never know the true motivation that set Daniel Pearl on a quest

that would ultimately lead to his grisly demise. However, thanks to an

invaluable article by Robert Sam Anson in the August 2002 issue of

Vanity Fair, we do know which key player was involved in guiding him

on his quest for knowledge.

Mansoor Ijaz is not a man widely known outside his circle, but his

intimate connections run deep in Washington's power circles. A counter-

terror expert, a member of the Council On Foreign Relations, a Fox

News analyst, as well as a business partner of former CIA Director

Woolsey,James, Ijaz is represented by the public relations firm of

Benador Associates, whose client list reads like a "who's who" of the

propaganda heavy-hitters who were pushing for a war in Iraq - Richard

Perle (former Chairman of the Defense Policy Board), Woolsey (also a

member of the Defense Policy Board), Iraqi scientist ( and chronicler

of Saddam's weapons program) Khidir Khamza, former Washington Times

publisher (and UPI chief) Arnaud De Borchgrave, anti-Saddam author

Laurie Mylroie, Harvard professor/CIA associate Richard Pipes (mentor

of Mylroie, and father of Daniel Pipes), and Frank Gaffney, president

of the hard-right [CSP Center For Security Policy] (of which Perle and

Woolsey are on the advisory council).

The interlocking relationships of members of this clique - or "crew",

in the parlance of organized crime - is indeed a testament to the

power of networking, yet the astonishing scope of their most recent

activities - both in the lead-up to and aftermath of 9/11 - is perhaps

indicative of a more covertly sinister tint in the psychological

makeup of some members of the political "power elite."

Ijaz's frequent writing partner, James Woolsey, for example, was one

of just 17 participants in a July 2001 bio-warfare exercise dubbed

DarkWinter, a simulation of a mass smallpox attack, co-sponsored by

the ANSER Institute of Homeland Security and the Center for Strategic

and International Studies (CSIS). Among the other participants was

Benador client Arnaud De Borchgrave and New York Times journalist

Judith Miller, who had co-authored a book with Benador client Mylroie

in the early '90's. Mylroie's book - an attempt at linking Iraq to

9/11 - was released just weeks after September 11 with a foreword

written by James Woolsey. Around the same time, Judith Miller had just

launched her own well-publicized book on the germ warfare threat -

within a week or two of her own well-publicized role as one of the

very few recipients of an "anthrax" mailing (which turned out not to

be anthrax). (See AnthraxAttacks -ed.)

As for the anthrax threat, a major principal in the company that holds

the exclusive license for the anthrax vaccine is former Chair of the

Joint Chiefs of Staff William Crowe, whose business associate in the

consulting firm Global Options is - you guessed it - James Woolsey.

As for the present smallpox threat, the man charged with overseeing

President Bush's mass vaccination policy was another "Dark Winter"

alumnus, Jerome Hauer. Hauer, a former director of Kroll Associates -

the security firm at the helm when the Twin Towers fell - is also the

man who personally pulled strings in order to get senior FBI official

John O'Neill his job as head of security at the World Trade Center.

O'Neill, who had left a 30-year career in the FBI only two weeks

before September 11, had perished in the rubble of the Twin Towers on

his very first day at the post. Incidentally, O'Neill just happened to

have been the main FBI official in charge of investigating all things

bin Laden.

Given the above social contacts, from Daniel Pearl's point of view,

Mansoor Ijaz was indeed the man to meet. "He [Pearl] wanted me to

introduce him to people who could open doors for him," explained Ijaz

in Vanity Fair. One of those doors opened to Khalid Khawaja, a former

ISI agent whose militant credentials included a longstanding

friendship with Osama bin Laden. But Khawaja was a liberal militant,

counting among his acquaintances both Ijaz and Woolsey, with whom he

carried on a lengthy correspondence.

With Ijaz's letter of reference in hand, Pearl established contact

with Khawaja in Pakistan. As reported by Arshad Sharif in a February

14, 2002 item from Dawn, "Khawaja claimed that he introduced Mr. Pearl

to his contacts and arranged interviews with Taliban diplomats and

other people." According to the "official" record of Pearl's

journalistic quest, he was on the trail of Richard Reid, otherwise

known as the "shoe bomber." According to Anson, Pearl believed that

Reid was a follower of Sheikh Mubarak Ali Shah Gilani, "a leader of an

obscure Muslim militant group named Jamaat ul-Fuqra."

As Khawaja spins the tale, when Pearl asked for an introduction to

Gilani in early January, Khawaja's militant toes went cold. With

Khawaja now purportedly out of the picture, Pearl was left to scrounge

up his own contacts. Eventually, Pearl found a "connected" militant

who went by the name of Chaudry Bashir - but who was, in actual fact,

Omar Saeed clothed in yet another alias. Or so that is the "official"

version. If true, our man Saeed had his terrorist appointment book

just about crammed with militant activities at the time, for he was,

according to Indian intelligence, intimately involved with the man who

took responsibility for the terrorist attack in Calcutta on January

22, 2002 - just one day before Pearl's disappearance.

On that very day, a militant/gangster by the name of Aftab Ansari

called in his claim of responsibility for the carnage. As for his

connection with Omar Saeed, here is how the Times of India reported it

on [WWW] January 22:

"[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."

What was going on here? Apparently, the January 22 Calcutta incident

was the trigger for an update on the "legend" of 9/11 - and FBI

Director Mueller was on scene to play his part in the unfolding drama.

Within hours of the January 22 attack, the Indian Central Bureau of

Investigation (CBI) was circulating news that the main suspect in the

Calcutta attack, Ansari, had sent money to Omar Saeed, who then sent

it on to Mohamed Atta in preparation for the September 11 attacks. No

mention was made of the previously reported involvement of the chief

of Pakistani intelligence. In fact, The Times of India would, within

the next few weeks, back away from its October 9 article linking Omar

Saeed to the Pakistani General - perhaps at the behest of Indian

intelligence. The 9/11 money, in the [WWW] CBI's new version, came

from an August 2001 kidnapping masterminded by Ansari and Asif Reza

Khan. Unfortunately, Khan was not around by this time to confirm it,

as he had already been killed in what was believed to be a [WWW]

staged shootout with Indian police several weeks earlier.

The story at this point gets a bit murky, as it becomes difficult to

distinguish fact from disinformation, but what is clear is the very

real perception of a well-timed and coordinated set-up. The next day -

on January 23, 2002 - Daniel Pearl disappeared off the streets of

Karachi, Pakistan after setting up an appointment to meet Omar Saeed,

alias "Bashir", for the first time. Meanwhile, on that very day, Aftab

Ansari was arrested by UAE authorities at Dubai International Airport

while attempting to board a plane bound for Islamabad. Also on the

very day of Pearl's disappearance, the Los Angeles Times reinstated

Omar Saeed back into "mainstream" view by citing a report by India

Today, which mentioned the new Saeed/Ansari/9/11 Money Trail

connection. The British Independent, on January 24, also gave voice to

the Saeed revelations stemming from the Indian CBI, throwing in, for

good measure, an extensive biography of Omar Saeed. This was followed

by a January 27 item in the Telegraph that also touched upon Saeed's

link to the Calcutta attack.

Why was Omar Saeed suddenly being "resurrected" worldwide within hours

of the January 22 attack, after being mostly forgotten after October

9? It should be pointed out that Saeed's purported links to the Pearl

kidnapping were not yet "known" until February 5, 2002. In that light,

Robert Mueller's subsequent travel itinerary bears closer scrutiny. As

reported by the Los Angeles Times on January 23, "FBI Director Mueller

said Tuesday (i.e. January 22) that Indian authorities provided leads

in the search for Al Qaeda members and cells, based on arrests in

India." There was no word from Mueller, however, on his reported

discussions with the CBI Chief concerning the 9/11 money trail.

The very next day - January 23 - Mueller was in Pakistan, just in time

for the Pearl kidnapping by Omar Saeed. Of course, Mueller could not

have known by then that the person who was mentioned to him the day

before as being the 9/11 paymaster would be involved in the Pearl

kidnapping the very next day. One might even chalk it up to

coincidence - or maybe not. On January 24, Mueller reportedly took up

the matter of Omar Saeed with Pakistan President Musharraf. Was he

discussing CBI Chief Sharma's revelations about Omar Saeed and the

9/11 money trail? As later revealed by an "anonymous" Bush

administration official, Mueller was formally requesting the

extradition of Omar Saeed - for a 1994 kidnapping of an American

tourist.

What, according to the "mainstream" media, prompted this sudden,

rather overdue, request? According to the February 24, 2002 issue of

Newsweek, Saeed was "secretly" indicted back in November 2001 for that

obscure kidnapping. As reported by CNN on February 28, 2002: "Justice

Department officials won't say what prompted that indictment, which

came more than six years after the incident." It also came several

weeks after Saeed was first outed as the 9/11 paymaster.

The possibility also exists that the November 2001 "secret" indictment

was a late February fiction meant to explain Mueller's sudden interest

in Omar Saeed. For good measure, timed with the Newsweek revelation,

Wendy Chamberlin, the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, revealed to CBS

News that she had preceded Mueller's request with an informal approach

to Musharraf concerning Saeed's extradition a few months before. The

reader would be cautioned as to drawing any firm conclusions as to the

true nature of the "secret" November indictment. Instead, one should

focus on the compelling circumstantial evidence of a disinformation

campaign that appears to be organized around a number of conveniently

timed set-ups. According to CNN, Mueller was also the one who first

informed Musharraf of the Pearl kidnapping. So, to recap: only two

days after the Times of India reported Mueller's discussions with the

CBI concerning the Omar Saeed link to 9/11, Mueller reportedly

discussed Omar Saeed only in connection with an obscure 1994

kidnapping, while broaching a new kidnapping that occurred the day

before, which, in a matter of weeks, would publicly be linked

to...Omar Saeed.

Incidentally, the FBI also happened to be instrumental in coordinating

Saeed's eventual capture as the Pearl kidnap mastermind. 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, 2002, "rests heavily on technical FBI evidence, which

traced the e-mails to fellow defendant Fahad Naseem."

Mueller, incidentally, also played a crucial role in arranging for the

deportation of Aftab Ansari from the UAE to India. Ansari, by reason

of the Calcutta bombing, was delivered to Indian custody on February

9, just three days before Omar Saeed was "officially" arrested for the

Pearl kidnapping. In short, these two purported 9/11 partners had been

arrested separately in the same week of February for crimes they had

separately committed in the same week of January.

Meanwhile, Daniel Pearl's chaperone, the "militant" Khalid Khawaja,

was beginning to feel the heat due to his involvement in managing

Pearl's appointment book. For a presumed partisan of bin Laden,

Khawaja seemed to be unduly concerned about the bad press that Pearl's

disappearance was garnering him. According to a February 15, 2002

article in Dawn by Arshad Sharif: "Khawaja said it was on the

intervention of [Mansoor] Ijaz that Newsweek toned down its article

which was allegedly raising an accusing finger on him." In a typical

example of post-9/11 news management, Khawaja - presumed friend of

Osama bin Laden - shared his correspondence from editorGretel Kovach

of Newsweek:

"If it is of any consolation, you may have read in the e-mails I sent

Mansoor that the Newsweek article would have been much stronger in

pointing the finger at you as the person who led Danny into trouble.

Thankfully, I spoke with Mansoor and was able to offer a contrary

account - that you refused Danny's request, and that others tricked

him into thinking he could meet Gilani."

Mansoor Ijaz - fellow propagandist and business partner of the

ubiquitous James Woolsey - wasn't exactly a disinterested party in the

matter, for if it was Khawaja who had led Pearl to his ultimate fate,

so, too, by association, would suspicion lie with Ijaz, who had sent

Pearl on to Khawaja.

Meanwhile, Omar Saeed appeared to be at the very broiling geo-

political center of the Pakistan-India stand-off. With Indian

authorities publicly highlighting Omar Saeed as the poster boy of

Pakistani terrorism, using him as a cudgel to prod the reluctant

Americans into action against the Pakistani ISI, one could read

Mueller's trip to the region as an effort to broker the competing

interests of these incompatible allies in the so-called War on Terror.

Publicly, Mueller was in India on January 22 as part of a U.S.-Indo

Working Group on Counter-Terrorism. But as we do not have access to

the minutes of those meetings, we might surmise that, behind closed

doors, Mueller was negotiating with his Indian counterparts the final

dispensation of Omar Saeed within the overall 9/11 Legend. Not that

negotiations were going particularly smoothly - as evidenced by the

upsurge in daring attacks against Indian interests in the few months

previous. Yet it seems that a quid-pro-quo had been worked out along

the following lines: the Indian authorities would excise the ISI Chief

from their version of 9/11 and instead splice in a less incriminating

"gangster" from Dubai as the partner of paymaster Omar Saeed. In

return, the Americans would redouble their efforts in moving against

terror groups based out of Pakistan.

Mueller, for his part, would deal with this new version of the Omar

Saeed/Money Trail Story in the same manner that he dealt with the

older version - by ignoring it. With the Indian CBI now circulating

this new version of the Omar Saeed/ Money Trail Story to various

mainstream Western newspapers in the wake of the January 22 Calcutta

attack, Mueller would publicly go on record as reserving judgment as

to the true culprits and motives behind that incident - while

assisting India behind-the-scenes in arranging for the deportation and

arrest of Aftab Ansari. And while the Indian press was widely

presenting the Calcutta attack as an Ansari/ISI production, according

to the January 23, 2002 Indian Express, the Indian government was

backing down on pushing an ISI link to Calcutta after consultation

with the U.S. government. Why the apparent U.S. squeamishness

concerning the ISI in regards to the Calcutta attack? Perhaps due to

its proximity to the latest Omar Saeed/Ansari/Money Trail Story being

marketed by the Indians - for if the American aim was to gradually

erase Omar Saeed from the 9/11 paymaster role and place him in a

post-9/11 context, Omar Saeed would have to come by his ISI

connections through a different route, one that would in fact distance

him from his reported role on September 11. In other words, the

Americans would need to muddy the waters over Omar Saeed and the role

of the 9/11 paymaster.

It wouldn't be easy. As reported by Paul Sperry of WorldNetDaily on

January 30, 2002 (i.e. one week before Omar Saeed was first outed as a

suspect in the Pearl kidnapping):

"India's Central Bureau of Investigation is turning up evidence that

is proving inconvenient for the Bush administration as it tries to

maintain its shaky alliance with Pakistan. As administration

officials, led by State Secretary Colin Powell, praise Pakistan for

its help in the war on terrorism, FBI agents responding to Indian

leads are quietly investigating Pakistan-based terrorist groups

connected to al-Qaida and the Sept. 11 hijacking."

In other words, India was apparently putting the screws to the

Americans. If the Americans, for purely pragmatic reasons, had opted

to cozy up to the Musharraf regime, India needed insurance to hedge

against the possibility that its strategic interests would be harmed

through this likely temporary alliance. In that context, it would be

somewhat naive to assume that India just happened to "discover" the

Omar Saeed/ ISI Chief/ 9/11 connection through one of those ubiquitous

cell phone "intercepts" - for as early as September 23, 2001, the

British government was reported as seeking India's help in locating

Omar Saeed. Moreover, in view of the fact that the Mustafa Ahmad

paymaster alias also made its debut on that very day through Bush's

Global Terrorist Executive Order, there is perhaps another plausible

explanation for India's apparent obsession with Omar Saeed and his

activities.

Next: Flashback: Assembling The Legend Truth Lies Flashback

February 22, 2002 The Death of Daniel Pearl: After nearly a month

of pleas for the release of Daniel Pearl and mysterious communiques

indicating that he might still be alive, the US Consulate in Karachi

receives a revolting video which depicts Pearl "confessing"---- "I am

a Jew, my mother is a Jew" just before his throat is cut and his body

decapitated on camera. [His death probably occurred in late January,

about a week after his disappearance. "Worldwide revulsion at murder

of American journalist on video," Independent (UK), February 23, 2002.

On March 22nd Ahmed Omar Sheikh and three other Muslim militants were

charged in a Karachi court with the kidnapping and murder of Pearl.

Not only did Sheikh confess to the kidnapping (not under oath) but

also notes in his handwriting had been found which matched the content

of e-mail messages sent about Pearl. (Seven other suspected

accomplices remained at large.) Sheikh was a leader of the Jaish-e-

Mohammed (Army of Mohammed), a fundamentalist group that was banned by

President Musharraf after 9-11. It had been covertly supported by

ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service. The United States, which had

already indicted Sheikh, asked for his extradition. New York Times,

March 22 and 23, 2002. Initially Musharraf seemed to be unwilling to

hand over Sheikh. He reportedly told US Ambassador Wendy Chamberlain

that he would rather hang Sheikh himself than extradite him,

undoubtedly fearing that the ties between the ISI and terrorist

organizations would be exposed. Times of India, March 28, 2002.

Abdullah Iqbat in Dubai's Gulf News suggests that Daniel Pearl was

really researching exactly those links and also the role of the US in

training the ISI, rather than getting interesting background material

on shoe-bomber Richard Reid. He had been warned by other journalists

of the very sensitive nature of his pursuit. One of Pearl's major

stories had been the "fabrication" by Western sources of certain

Kosovo "atrocities," a subject not likely to endear him to certain

government circles. "Pearl was probing spy agencies' role," Gulf News,

March 25, 2002.]

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February 25, 2008