Alex Jones Interviews Former ISI Chief

[8bitagent]

The US government considers former ISI head General Hamid Gul a wanted terrorist in bed with al Qaeda:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamid_Gul# ... sm_Charges

Many conspiracy websites cite Hamid Gul as being involved with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.

But Hamid Gul has come out, to say not only is he not connected to al Qaeda, but that 9/11 and now the Mumbai attacks appear to be the work of Western intelligence agencies:
http://www.thenews.com.pk/updates.asp?id=61968

Hamid Gul, who said days after 9/11 that it was the work of "CIA and Zionist Mossad" appeared on CNN saying both 9/11 and Mumbai was the work of CIA and Zionists:
http://911blogger.com/node/18763

Yesterday, he was on the Alex Jones show reiterating that he thinks the neocons and Zionists orchestrated 9/11...but he also says his good friend General Mahmoud Ahmed(former ISI head) was falsely blamed for the $100,000 wiring to Atta:
http://rss.nfowars.net/20081209_Tue_Alex.mp3

They discuss how they feel Indian RAW is behind Mumbai and other terror attacks in India.

So what's going on?

For years the conspiracy theorist side was saying Pakistani ISI was involved in 9/11 and al Qaeda. The US said "no no no, thats crazy".

Now ITS THE REVERSE! The US government, media, and everyone is saying Pakistani ISI is behind Mumbai, ISI is involved in al Qaeda. And now the conspiracy theorist side is saying ISI is getting falsely blamed.

So...the $100,000 claim is false? Just Indian propaganda? It'd be ironic if the US came out and said it was true.

Its like when the conspiracy side said Russia(when they were in bed with the US) were staging false flag terrorism/inside job terrorism blaming the
Chechens to jumpstart a war.
Now the Russians are innocent, and its the US trying to paint Russia as a bad guy.

It seems like what I predicted a little while back...pretty soon, you will see the US turn on Pakistan, using the ISI links to terrorism. The US already does near daily missile strikes in tribal Pakistan.

But Im not so sure Hamid is so innocent. And not just because he was head of ISI or met with Osama bin Laden in early 2001.

"Osama bin Laden's principal Pakistani adviser prior to 9/11 was retired Gen. Hamid Gul, a former ISI chief who is "strategic adviser" to the coalition of six politico-religious parties that governs two of Pakistan's four provinces. Known as MMA, the coalition also occupies 20 percent of the seats in the federal assembly in Islamabad. Hours after 9/11, Gul publicly accused Israel's Mossad of fomenting the 9/11 plot. Later, Gul said the U.S. Air Force must have been in on the conspiracy as no warplanes were scrambled to shoot down the hijacked airliners.

Gul spent two weeks in Afghanistan immediately prior to 9/11. He denied having met Osama bin Laden during that trip, but has always said he was an "admirer" of the al-Qaida leader. However, he did meet with Mullah Mohammad Omar, the Taliban leader, on several occasions.

Since 9/11, hardly a week goes by without Gul denouncing the U.S. in both the Urdu and English-language media.

In a conversation with this reporter in October 2001, Gul forecast a future Islamist nuclear power that would form a greater Islamic state with a fundamentalist Saudi Arabia after the demise of the monarchy.

Gul worked closely with the CIA during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan when he was in charge of ISI. He was "mildly" fundamentalist in those days, he explained after 9/11, and indifferent to the U.S. But he became passionately anti-American after the U.S. turned its back on Afghanistan following the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, and began punishing Pakistan with economic and military sanctions for its secret nuclear buildup.

A ranking CIA official, speaking not for attribution, said the agency considered Gul to be "the most dangerous man" in Pakistan. A senior Pakistani political leader, also speaking on condition his name not be used, said, "I have reason to believe Hamid Gul was Osama bin Laden's master planner."

http://www.911blogger.com/node/6718

The kicker?

A ranking CIA official, speaking not for attribution, said the agency considered Gul to be "the most dangerous man" in Pakistan. A senior Pakistani political leader, also speaking on condition his name not be used, said, "I have reason to believe Hamid Gul was Osama bin Laden's master planner."

Isn't that a kicker? Alex Jones has bin Laden's pal on his show,
talking about how its all just the US and Mossad doing it.

The other kicker is that al Qaeda's KSM, bin Laden and Zawahiri
are all "oh no no, believe us, we did 9/11! 9/11 theories are all Iranian propaganda".

[8bitagent]

Wow, something is going on.

Mainstream news items are circulating as of yesterday with the headline that Hamid Gul is a high level wanted terrorist financier and helper to
al Qaeda, the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Toiba.

How convenient.

Article also says that authorities believe ISI is linked to the Mumbai massacre, and that the US has sent a special memo specifically stating Gul as a high level threat:

http://www.upi.com/Emerging_Threats/200 ... 228785166/

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Dec. 8 (UPI) -- A former member of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence served as a weapons consultant for al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden, a secret report reveals.

A U.S. report to the U.N. Security Council obtained by the Pakistani media outlet The News (NYSE:WS-A) identifies retired Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul as a financier to militant Taliban elements and al-Qaida fighters in Afghanistan.

"In 2005, Hamid Gul provided general, overarching guidance to the Taliban leadership on operational activities in Afghanistan," the report said.

Further vetting from The Long War Journal finds that Gul served with the outlawed Umman Tameer-e-Nau network as an adviser to the Taliban and al-Qaida for weapons of mass destruction.

UTN is linked to the WAFA Humanitarian Organization, an al-Qaida front used to transfer funds to militant terrorist cells. Its founder, Bashir-ud-Din Mahmood, formerly served as a top official in the Pakistani nuclear program.

The document obtained by The News shows Gul was active as late as 2008 in providing Pakistani militants with advice on how best to coordinate attacks in the tribal regions along the volatile Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Washington has reported Gul, along with four other former ISI officials, to the United Nations in an effort to list the men as international terrorists.

The News report comes amid concerns the Pakistani ISI was linked to the November attacks by the militant Lashkar-e-Toiba in Mumbai, which killed 164 people.

Man, what is going on?

All I know is that Daniel Pearl's wife, his friends and investigators were convinced he was killed because he found out that ISI and al Qaeda are tight. And that Omar Saeed and Khalid Mohamed were working with the ISI, and Pearl found out.

[AlanStrangis]

I think they're just hanging the ISI out to dry.

They've served their purpose in the region, and putting them in the bad guy role (which isn't that hard to do) is a good strategy (for the western elite interests) going forward. Heck, it helps make the President-Elect look downright prescient.

And that $100,000 wire transfer? No biggie. It didn't cause a stir when it first came out, and even if it did now, I'm sure it can be retconned into the new narrative.

I doubt any serious change (in the geopolitical sense) until the populace realizes that the only true voting options are pitchfork or torch.

Hell, here in Canada we have Prime Dictator/Queenie's Boy Stephen Harper getting ready to meet with soon to be crowned Liberal leader and Iraq War supporter Ignatieff.

Too bad for the neocons this couldn't have been orchestrated about 4 years earlier.

Yeah... I'm in a cynical mood today.

[AlanStrangis]

BTW, does anyone know what exactly is required to do a google bomb?

(you know, like when you type miserable failure into google, it gives you GWB)

It would be pretty awesome to set it up so that anyone googling Mumbai attacks gets a link that talks about Ahmed's $100,000 wire transfer and breakfast at the White House, especially given that the western media is framing the ISI this way.

I suspect this might be more effective than declaring yet another YouTube video as 'absolute proof for controlled demolitions'.

[nathan28]

I suspect this might be more effective than declaring yet another YouTube video as 'absolute proof for controlled demolitions'.

But teh free fallz!

8bit, I think you may be learning that hard way that Alex Jones's schtick is just that, a schtick. Sometimes being contrarian is right. And sometimes being contrarian is just being counter-factual. It's clear to me where Jones & Friends fall on this one.

Ask yourself: if Jones came out and said, "Golly, the media got one right", he'd be out of market share.

On edit, after reading Kenoma's post: It's clear that it's not clear what happened in Mumbai. So who knows, maybe the Mossad really is behind this one, and maybe Jones is right. But something tells me Jones just takes the media party line, turns it on its head, and says "Mossad" somewhere in there.

[kenoma]

So...the $100,000 claim is false? Just Indian propaganda? It'd be ironic if the US came out and said it was true.

Yes it's very possible, likely even, that this claim is false, and that it is part of an Indian disinformation strategy. Look at the sources for the claim on the Cooperative Research 911 timeline:

In 2002, French author Bernard-Henri Levy is presented evidence by government officials in New Delhi, India, that Saeed Sheikh makes repeated calls to ISI Director Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed during the summer of 2000. Later, Levy gets unofficial confirmation from sources in Washington regarding these calls that the information he was given in India is correct.

Levy, as everyone knows, is a neo-con hawk, a mediocre writer and pseudo-intellectual power-worshipper puffed up by the Western media because of his consistently pro-US, pro-Israel stance. Nothing he says is to be trusted unless reliably verified by others. He is a very reliable and well-rewarded mouthpiece for power. And that's all he is in this case - he doesn't have anything to back up the claims of Indian intelligence and "sources in Washington".

From the same timeline:

ISI Director Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed is replaced in the face of US pressure after links are discovered between him, Saeed Sheikh, and the funding of the 9/11 attacks. Mahmood instructed Saeed to transfer $100,000 into hijacker Mohamed Atta’s bank account prior to 9/11. This is according to Indian intelligence, which claims the FBI has privately confirmed the story. [Press Trust of India, 10/8/2001; Times of India, 10/9/2001; India Today, 10/15/2001; Daily Excelsior (Jammu), 10/18/2001]

So again, the story is being fed by Indian intelligence via Indian newspapers. There's only one link that still works at Cooperative research, to the Daily Excelsior, a Hindu newspaper based in Jammu & Kashmir:

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.

So the cell phone link between Omar Sheikh and Mahmood Ahmed comes from Indian intelligence, who produced this cell phone number that is the basis for the accusation. Couldn't this whole thing have been forged? If the FBI initially had "reservations" about the Indian investigation,where did their sudden faith in the Indian intelligence come from?

And doesn't this story stink anyway? Isn't it rather odd that the head of the ISI called Omar Sheikh's cellphone to discuss a covert operation? How could he, as an experienced intelligence officer be so sloppy that he would risk such exposure of his relationship with Omar Sheikh? Why would the head of the ISI personally authorize a wire transfer to a field operative? Is he so neurotic that he has to micromanage and personally sign off on every transaction in the ISI's budget?
What is the nature of the "sensational information" that emerged regarding the transfer? Were the cellphones tapped as well? (And what ever happened to this cellphone company's hard disk? What cell phone company was it?)

More from the timeline:

The Times of India reports that Indian intelligence helped the FBI discover the link, and says, “A direct link between the ISI and the WTC attack could have enormous repercussions. The US cannot but suspect whether or not there were other senior Pakistani Army commanders who were in the know of things. Evidence of a larger conspiracy could shake US confidence in Pakistan’s ability to participate in the anti-terrorism coalition.”

Again, it seems that Indian intelligence is the source for this whole story. This quote also gives a sense of the obvious political motivations of the Indian government in pushing the ISI link.

Was the Indian government - which was, at this time, BJP-led - trying to persuade the American government to pursue a policy of destabilizing Pakistan, or even trying to concoct a cassus belli against Pakistan?

We know for a fact that the Indian government and RAW habitually tries to implicate Pakistan and particularly the ISI in terrorist acts, even when it knows they are not responsible. Look for instance at the recent Samjhauta Express investigation, which the Indian government stopped because it implicated army-linked Hindutva terrorists and detracted from their own case for Pakistani involvement. This from the Times of India, 18 Nov 2008:

It was pressure from an embarrassed Centre which forced the ATS to go back on its charge that 60 kg of RDX allegedly pilfered by Lt Col Prasad Purohit was used in the Samjhauta Express blast last year. Even though the ATS' public prosecutor Ajay Misar had told the Nashik court on Saturday that the RDX allegedly stolen by Lt Col Prasad was used in the Samjhauta blast, on Sunday the ATS claimed that he has been misquoted by the media.

Soon after Misar made the sensational charge in Nashik, the intelligence bureau (IB), which is keeping a close tab on the probe, alerted the Centre about the implications of Misar's statement. When the train blast took place, the Centre had blamed Pakistan's ISI for the terror strike on the basis of the bureau's findings.

"But the ATS' charge on Friday would have seriously impaired the Centre's credibility internationally. The central government has been informing its counterparts in the US and other countries about the role of the ISI and here the ATS was claiming that the blast was the handiwork of a serving Indian Army officer.

We have reason to question the credibility of Indian claims about ISI involvement in terrorism.

We tend to find the $100,000 claim persuasive because it appears to have been covered up by the media and the investigations of the FBI and others seem to have been apruptly halted. But this doesn't necessarily make the claim true: there are other logical reasons for a cover-up. It's very possible that an ISI-September 11 link was being prepared as a contingency in the event it proved strategically useful (in the same way that others were trying to immediately implicate Iraq in 9/11). India may have really wanted this, and lobbied hard for the Americans to push that link by providing intelligence of unknown quality. The US may have used the threat of an accusation against the ISI to coerce Pakistan into playing ball in Afghanistan. And Pakistan, knowing the Americans could sell any story they liked to the international media, knowing that a mere accusation based on dodgy evidence would be enough, relented. After that, the ISI story only muddied the waters, and it was mostly suppressed.

And this may have been the purpose of Mahmood Ahmed's visit to Washington in September 2001. We usually infer that he was there as an accomplice of the Americans who played some role in 9/11, but it may have been the other way round. The Americans may have been warning Mahmood Ahmed that something was going to happen which they could convince world opinion was ISI-related: they may have been strong-arming him into co-operation on Afghanistan.

[kenoma]

Added to the fact that there is no consensus on whether the wire transfer supposedly authorized by Mahmood Ahmed occurred in the Summer of 2000 or just prior to 9/11. Why the vagueness about that, if the intelligence is based on hard data from a cell phone company? They could identify the callers but not the date of the call?

[elfismiles]

Fareed Zakaria: Former ISI Head In Pakistan Says 911 Was An Inside Job

Airing Date Dec.07, 2008

Pakistan's former Intelligence Chief, General Hamid Gul, speaks with CNN's Fareed Zakaria

Says 911 was an inside job.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19R9H01IB1s

[kenoma]

What I'm getting at here is that the post-Mumbai, Obama-backed belligerence towards Pakistan forces us to reconsider things. If you go through the Co-operative research timeline, it's quite startling to see how much of the really juicy stuff about Pakistan and the ISI comes directly or indirectly from Indian intelligence sources. And yet it's never really acknowledged that India has its own very obvious motives for discrediting Pakistan by tying it to 9/11, Al Qaeda, global jihad etc. In the timeline, India is always a source, but never a motivated actor in its own right: "Pakistan and ISI" gets its own category, with 375 entries. India and RAW don't get a category at all.

[Jeff]

Kenoma, the Countercurrents piece you linked to in the Mumbai thread is very good and deserves careful attention, but I don't think that or anything I've seen so far merits a revisionist alternative history that lets the ISI off the hook. And it's not all Indian media. Pakistan's Dawn reported Oct 9 2001 that "the general director of the ISI, General Mahmoud Ahmad, was replaced after FBI investigators established a credible link between him and Omar Sheikh.... Informed sources say that American intelligence agencies have proof that it was indeed on instructions from General Mahmoud that Sheikh transferred $100,000 to the account of Mohammed Atta." Pearl's captors demanded the release of F16's to Pakistan. Musharraf said Pearl had been "over inquisitive," and "got over-involved in intelligence games." There's the redaction of Pakistan from the 9/11 report, the lack of curiosity about financing, Randy Glass, the ISI arms purchase for bin Laden and "those towers are coming down."

There's far too much there to throw over. I can imagine the ISI as patsies cut lose, scrambling to cut a deal at least for public opinion, but that doesn't mean they're innocent.

[kenoma]

Thanks Jeff - I should make it clear that I'm not trying to let the ISI 'off the hook' - that they were historically close with the Taliban, Al Qaeda figures, the CIA etc. is undeniable. But I am saying that the Mahmood-Saeed linkage, which is as far as I can see the main plank for the theory that the ISI/Pakistani state were involved at the highest level, is questionable, because it's based exclusively on Indian intelligence

And I do mean exclusively. Interestingly, the Dawn story, which can be found here, doesn't count at all as independent verification of the Mahmood-Saeed link. It's clearly just a condensed summary of the stories that originated with Indian intelligence, via Indian newspapers: the dateline is "NEW DELHI, Oct 8", the story is credited to the "Monitoring Desk", and the report says "The FBI team... was working on the linkages between Sheikh and former ISI chief Gen Mahmud which are believed to have been substantiated, reports PTI website." That's evidently a reference to www.ptinews.com the website of the Press Trust of India, one of the sources already cited in the 9/11 timeline. So we have to read the story in Dawn with that in mind - they are not necessarily lending credence to these reports from India, but rather relaying to a Pakistani audience what the Indian press and government are saying about Pakistan's internal affairs. (This would reflect a very common syndrome in countries with a longstanding enmity toward their neighbours - an almost obsessive interest in what 'the other side' is saying about you).
By the way, I should say that this comes as something of a shock to me - until today I really had no idea how much the Mahmood story was reliant on Indian intelligence. And you don't have to believe that the Mumbai attacks were exclusively an inside job to believe that RAW is not reliable when it comes to allegations of Pakistani involvement in terrorist attacks - there are many cases where such allegations have been proven to be false.

[Jeff]

There are US sources for the Pakistani transaction, especially early days in the investigation, when there was mainstream attention to the 9/11 money trail, before it led to embarrassing places and awkward conclusions.

CNN, Oct 1
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- As much as $100,000 was wired in the past year from Pakistan to Mohamed Atta, the suspected leader of the terrorist hijackings, CNN has been told by law enforcement sources.
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/10/01/i ... tan.funds/

From ABC's This Week, Sept 30
As to September 11, federal authorities have told ABC News they've now 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.

It's all part of what has been a successful FBI effort so far to close in on the hijackers' high command, the money men, the planners, and the mastermind, Sam.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/na ... 93001.html

Then the story breaks that the FBI and Indian intelligence have traced the transactions to Saeed Sheikh and Ahmad, and - not a small fact - Ahmad suddenly resigns, reportedly under US pressure, closing the door to unpleasant and public inquiry.

Levy - and I do have high regard for Who Killed Daniel Pearl? - writes "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."

There's also the redaction of Ahmad from the official transcript of Rice's press conference of May 16 2002, and also from CNN's:

CNN:
QUESTION: Are you aware of the reports at the time that (inaudible) was in Washington on September 11. And on September 10, $ 100,000 was wired from Pakistan to these groups here in this area? And while he was here, was he meeting with you or anybody in the administration?

RICE: I have not seen that report, and he was certainly not meeting with me.

White House:
Q Dr. Rice, are you aware of the reports at the time that -- was in Washington on September 11th, and on September 10th, $ 100,000 was wired to Pakistan to this group here in this area? While he was here meeting with you or anybody in the administration?

DR. RICE: I have not seen that report, and he was certainly not meeting with me.

Federal News Service:
Q Are you aware of the reports at the time that ISI chief was in Washington on September 11th, and on September 10th, $ 100,000 was wired from Pakistan to these groups here in this area? And why he was here? Was he meeting with you or anybody in the administration?

MS. RICE: I have not seen that report, and he was certainly not meeting with me.

Anyway, like I've said, I think there's a there there to the ISI connection, but that doesn't mean there isn't also an Indian deep politics.

[kenoma]

None of the sources you cite seem to me credibly independent of the original Indian story about Mahmood: they all cite the FBI sources who were presumably so impressed by India's investigation.
As for BHL's Daniel Pearl book, well we'll have to agree to disagree on the credibility of M. Levy. This is a man who, as the esteemed French historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet pointed out, believed that Adam's fall occurred on the Seventh Day and maintained that Heinrich Himmler testified at the Nuremberg trials. Many others have had an equally dismissive attitude towards Levy's work. Two French journalists described him as:

A philosopher who’s never taught the subject in any university, a journalist who creates a cocktail mingling the true, the possible, and the totally false, a patch-work filmmaker, a writer without a real literary oeuvre, he is the icon of a media-driven society in which simple appearance weighs more than the substance of things. BHL is thus first and foremost a great communicator, the PR man of the only product he really knows how to sell: himself.

And the highly-respected English historian Perry Anderson wrote:

while individual work of distinctive value continues to be produced [in France], the general condition of intellectual life is suggested by the bizarre prominence of Bernard-Henri Lévy, far the best-known ‘thinker’ under 60 in the country. It would be difficult to imagine a more extraordinary reversal of national standards of taste and intelligence than the attention accorded this crass booby in France’s public sphere, despite innumerable demonstrations of his inability to get a fact or an idea straight. Could such a grotesque flourish in any other major Western culture today?

It's possible that for his Daniel Pearl book M. Levy attained the intellectual credibility that has eluded him all his life. But I find that hard to believe.

[kenoma]

For an example of BHL's fearless forays into the warzone - that never seem to go further than the plushest Hotel lobby - see here

[timetunneler]

Pakistan = Patsy.

Just like Oswald = Patsy. And Tim McVeigh = Patsy.

Patsy, scapegoat, fall guy, whatever you want to call it.

FBI, Mossad, RAW, BND, CIA, Saudi GID, CSIS, ISI are all up to their neck in murder, rape, terror, lies and filth. There is no innocent party.

Pakistan is being asked to play the part of willing sacrifice at the threat of attack by the rest of the gang.

9/11 is not a Pakistan job... it's an Enterpise job. An Octopus job. A collaboration by criminals, mobsters, intelligence agents, pedo-kings, murderers, and other assorted assholes and criminals all spinning webs and cutting deals to keep themselves in the clear.

EDIT : This was in the context of the Mumbai stuff which I also don't believe is all Pakistan but a collaboration of Indian criminals and Paki criminals based on what I've read.

The goal of IT at this moment is to localize all blame here:

Muslim Extremists.

And ignore all the other players.

P.S. to whoever just oddly and coincidently made the weird call to my cell phone just now while I started to write this. Do it again and I'll post your entire fucking cell number here. AREA CODE included. If however you were just another weird coincidence and not some spook... well then...haha! Jokes on me... what the fuck can I say since I can't know either goddamn fucking way now can I? <SIGH> Alright, have fun yall here in smoke, mirrors and bullshit land.