ISI connection

I'll try to make this brief, yet juicy. In a nutshell, the US supports the ISI (Pakistani intelligence) and together they created Al Qaeda. The US likes to, shall we say, downplay the relationship.

In the 1980s, the CIA and ISI first brought in Osama bin Laden to fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan. In the 1990s, they created and installed the Taliban. The close working relationship continues to this day.

Saeed Sheikh, an ISI agent, wired $100,000 to purported 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta's bank account in Florida, on the orders of General Mahmoud Ahmad, the ISI Director.

Coincidentally, Mahmoud was in Washington on September 11, 2001, in town for meetings with CIA Director George Tenet and other Pentagon, security, and intelligence officials.

Now here's an interesting thing. There are two transcripts of a press conference with Condoleeza Rice, one by the Federal News Service and one by the White House. Check 'em out:

The Federal News Service version:
Q: Are you aware of the reports at the time that the ISI chief was in Washington on September 11th, and on September 10th, $100,000 was wired from Pakistan to these groups in this area? And why 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.

OK. Now the White House version of the question:

Q: Dr. Rice, are you aware of the reports at the time that (inaudible) was in Washington on September 11th...?

The White House version got used on CNN. Here's some more twisted stuff about what you get from the news:

Brian Ross of ABC News reported that he had been told by federal authorities that they had "tracked more than $100,000 from banks in Pakistan...[and that] some of the money...can be traced directly to people connected with Osama bin Laden."

In other words, by conveniently omitting mention of the ISI, the should-have-been-embarrassing story of our cozy pals supporting the terrorists turns into just another vague indictment of Osama bin Laden. Pretty clever, for people who depend on the rest of us to be pretty uninformed.

Source: Griffin, p. 108-118, relying heavily on Michel Chossudovsky's War and Globalisation

You'd think, if the US wanted to get to the bottom of who's responsible for 9/11, that there would be a major investigation of the ISI after the money trail came out. Nope. They tried to quiet things down by asking Ahmad to step down quietly, which he did.

Well, maybe our pals at the ISI were being naughty in a way that we didn't condone. Maybe it's a coincidence that Ahmad was in DC at the time of the attacks. Maybe it's innocent that we've gone out of our way in fishy ways not to mention the ISI. Maybe there are sound diplomatic reasons not to launch a full-scale investigation of ISI links to the terrorists.

But it sounds rather suspicious to me.

Bottom line, me, I give it: