February 06, 2008

MUST READ: THE SAUDI PAKISTAN LINK TO 911

Fully reprinted from Gerald Posner at HuffPo:
On December 5, the CIA's director, General Michael V. Hayden, issued a statement disclosing that in 2005 at least two videotapes of interrogations with al Qaeda prisoners were destroyed. The tapes, which the CIA did not provide to either the 9/11 Commission, nor to a federal court in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, were destroyed, claimed Hayden, to protect the safety of undercover operatives.

Hayden did not disclose one of the al Qaeda suspects whose tapes were destroyed. But he did identify the other. It was Abu Zubaydah, the top ranking terror suspect when he was tracked and captured in Pakistan in 2003. In September 2006, at a press conference in which he defended American interrogation techniques, President Bush also mentioned Abu Zubaydah by name. Bush acknowledged that Zubaydah, who was wounded when captured, did not initially cooperate with his interrogators, but that eventually when he did talk, his information was, according to Bush, "quite important."

In my 2003 New York Times bestseller, Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11, I discussed Abu Zubaydah at length in Chapter 19, "The Interrogation." There I set forth how Zubaydah initially refused to help his American captors. Also, disclosed was how U.S. intelligence established a so-called "fake flag" operation, in which the wounded Zubaydah was transferred to Afghanistan under the ruse that he had actually been turned over to the Saudis. The Saudis had him on a wanted list, and the Americans believed that Zubaydah, fearful of torture and death at the hands of the Saudis, would start talking when confronted by U.S. agents playing the role of Saudi intelligence officers.

Instead, when confronted by his "Saudi" interrogators, Zubaydah showed no fear. Instead, according to the two U.S. intelligence sources that provided me the details, he seemed relieved. The man who had been reluctant to even confirm his identity to his U.S. captors, suddenly talked animatedly. He was happy to see them, he said, because he feared the Americans would kill him. He then asked his interrogators to call a senior member of the Saudi royal family. And Zubaydah provided a private home number and a cell phone number from memory. "He will tell you what to do," Zubaydah assured them

That man was Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul-Aziz, one of King Fahd's nephews, and the chairman of the largest Saudi publishing empire. Later, American investigators would determine that Prince Ahmed had been in the U.S. on 9/11.

American interrogators used painkillers to induce Zubaydah to talk -- they gave him the meds when he cooperated, and withdrew them when he was quiet. They also utilized a thiopental sodium drip (a so-called truth serum). Several hours after he first fingered Prince Ahmed, his captors challenged the information, and said that since he had disparaged the Saudi royal family, he would be executed. It was at that point that some of the secrets of 9/11 came pouring out. In a short monologue, that one investigator told me was the "Rosetta Stone" of 9/11, Zubaydah laid out details of how he and the al Qaeda hierarchy had been supported at high levels inside the Saudi and Pakistan governments.

He named two other Saudi princes, and also the chief of Pakistan's air force, as his major contacts. Moreover, he stunned his interrogators, by charging that two of the men, the King's nephew, and the Pakistani Air Force chief, knew a major terror operation was planned for America on 9/11.

It would be nice to further investigate the men named by Zubaydah, but that is not possible. All four identified by Zubaydah are now dead. As for the three Saudi princes, the King's 43-year-old nephew, Prince Ahmed, died of either a heart attack or blood clot, depending on which report you believe, after having liposuction in Riyadh's top hospital; the second, 41-year-old Prince Sultan bin Faisal bin Turki al-Saud, died the following day in a one car accident, on his way to the funeral of Prince Ahmed; and one week later, the third Saudi prince named by Zubaydah, 25-year-old Prince Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir, died, according to the Saudi Royal Court, "of thirst." The head of Pakistan's Air Force, Mushaf Ali Mir, was the last to go. He died, together with his wife and fifteen of his top aides, when his plane blew up -- suspected as sabotage -- in February 2003. Pakistan's investigation of the explosion -- if one was even done -- has never been made public.

Zubaydah is the only top al Queda operative who has secretly linked two of America's closest allies in the war on terror -- Saudi Arabia and Pakistan -- to the 9/11 attacks. Why does Bush, and the CIA, continue to protect the Saudi Royal family and the Pakistani military, from the implications of Zubaydah's confessions? It is, or course, because the Bush administration desperately needs Pakistani and Saudi help, not only to keep Afghanistan from spinning completely out of control, but also as counterweights to the growing power of Iran. The Sunni governments in Riyadh and Islamabad have as much to fear from a resurgent Iran as does the Bush administration. But does this mean that leads about the origins of 9/11 should not be aggressively pursued? Of course not. But this is precisely what the Bush administration is doing. And now the cover-up is enhanced by the CIA's destruction of Zubaydah's interrogation tapes.

The American public deserves no less than the complete truth about 9/11. And those CIA officials now complicit in hiding the truth by destroying key evidence should be held responsible.
One assumes that this (if all true, and how do you prove that now except by getting the torturers themselves to confess to what they heard?) is the real reason why the CIA torture tapes were destroyed.

But what about the Israeli link? What about those Mossad agents dancing on the rooftops? Well, if a handful of Saudi princes and even the head of Pakistan's Air Force knew what was going down, we can assume that others, probably including Mossad, also had some idea. It sounds like a pretty "noisy" operation.

And given all this Saudi involvement, we must ask (again) why so many prominent Saudis were given free passage out of the USA after 9/11. And how did the USA end up in a bogus "war" with both Saudis and Pakistanis on their side?

4 comments:

Bukko Boomeranger said...

Gandhi, how does Posner's version of Zubaydah being a smooth operator, even under torture, square with Ron Suskind's depiction of him as a mentally ill al Qaeda travel agent with multiple personalities? I side with Suskind because I rate his credibility a lot higher than Posner's.

That said, the sources you cite raise many interesting questions. As a sceptic, I'm also sceptical of conspiracy theories. I do not think we have heard all there is to hear about Sept. 11 (as the Zelikow revelations and other things prove) so I am keeping my mind receptive to new information.

Mrs. Bukko, who's a full-on "Bush and Cheney did it" believer, doesn't usually read the blogs I do. But I dragged her over the the glowing Internets tube and made her read your link about the Israeli connection. Now she dials up your blog without me even telling her! Another fan, mate.

If you're reading this, honey, I only fed the cats a little dry food before I went to work this morning. I didn't want a repeat of the crapping in the bathtub incident.

That last bit was not meant for you, G, so please ignore it ;)

Jaraparilla said...

Isn't it sad that things are now so messed up that we anti-Bush bloggers/writers/readers even have to be suspicious of each other? But that's where we are at - nothing makes sense, everything is a conspiracy, and there are dark forces at work trying to muddy the waters.

I was wondering the same thing about this version of events. Fingering the Saudis and Pakistan for 9/11 squares with the official Bin Laden version, but doesn't tie in with the Mossad-did-it theory. Is Posner (a former war supporter) muddying the waters, or is this a lie coming from his source (who was supposedly present at the interrogations)? OR is it the truth?

Will we ever know?

It seems I now have at least three readers on this blog, including you and Mrs Bukko, so maybe if we all put our Thinking Caps on... (not the Tin Foil ones, which are only for parties)!

Jaraparilla said...

"Fingering the Saudis and Pakistan for 9/11 squares with the official Bin Laden version, but doesn't tie in with the Mossad-did-it theory"..

I should have said "doesn't SEEM to tie in..."

Who knows, eh?

And what is it about bloggers and cats?

Bukko Boomeranger said...

If you have a cat, you have time to waste on the computer. If you have a dog, you utilise that time taking it for walks (i.e. for outdoor shitting.) BUT AT LEAST THE DOG'S NOT DOING IT IN THE GODDAMN BATHTUB!

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