Crimes of the State Blog
http://crimesofthestate.blogspot.com/
(Revised 5/22/07)
Many people don't understand or choose not to believe that evidence exists of multiple wire transfers in excess of $100,000 to alleged "lead hijacker" Mohammed Atta prior to 9/11, and that these wire transfers are linked to the then head of Pakistani intelligence (ISI). This has blatantly been covered up by the Bush regime, by the Congressional Joint Inquiry, and by the 9/11 Commission, which this article will clearly show.
This is a complex area, and is clearly the subject of a vigorous disinformation campaign. Many aliases have appeared in US newspapers which don't correlate to the names given in previous reports regarding: just who IS this "Al Qaeda paymaster?" [1]
If you have some time, definitely read the Cooperative Research compendium of news accounts regarding Ahmed Omar Sayed Sheikh. [2] As you can imagine, his name can be spelled in numerous ways, as can any of his aliases. This has been a source of much confusion.
Let's clarify what this information about wire transfers proves.
1) At a minimum it proves cover up by high level US government officials, a cover up of the financial sponsors of the September 11th 2001 attacks on America.
a) FBI Director Robert Mueller admitted to the Congressional inquiry that many wire transfers were sent in 2000 and 2001 from several bank accounts in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to and from alleged 9/11 hijackers. Aliases linked to those bank accounts were provided as well as the specific money amounts.[3]
b) The 9/11 Commission Report stated bluntly:
"To date the U.S. government has not been able to determine the origin of the money used for the 9/11 attacks. Ultimately the question is of little practical significance." -THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT, p 172.[4]
c) Senator Bob Graham, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has said that "foreign governments," plural, assisted the purported 9/11 attackers.[5] Graham refuses to name these governments.
d) Orwellian transcript-- Condoleezza Rice was confronted by the press on May 16, 2002. The transcript of that encounter has been altered, doctored both on CNN and in the "FDCH Federal Department and Agency Documents REGULATORY INTELLIGENCE DATA." The words "ISI chief" disappeared from history, down the memory hole. This is black and white proof of cover up.[6]
e) Numerous press reports, which were confirmed by US officials, linked the Atta money transfers to "Saeed Sheikh", and then to Pakistani ISI.[7] Yet this has never, ever been addressed by the U.S. government, nor explained by any "investigation" into the 9/11 attacks. They have literally pretended that these news articles were never written.
2) The U.S. State Department confirmed that "Shaykh Sai'id (aka, Mustafa Muhammad Ahmad)" was linked to terrorist funding in Bush's Executive Order 13224,"a powerful tool to impede terrorist funding," in the attached "ANNEX."[8]
The 9/11 Commission Report has no reference to the Mustafa Ahmad alias at all, and it does not address the wire transfers at all. A "Sheikh Saeed" is mentioned on page 251, referenced to Khalid Sheikh Mohammad's interrogations, whose testimony is suspect [9] (reported dead, reported not at location of his alleged capture, held incommunicado and potentially subject to torture for years in secret detention centers). The 9/11 Commission dutifully reports:
"Al Qaeda's chief financial manager, Sheikh Saeed, argued that Al Qaeda should defer to the Taliban's wishes."
"Another [unnamed] source says that Sheikh Saeed opposed the [9/11] operation both out of deference to [Mullah] Omar and because he feared the U.S. response to an attack." --(emphasis added) 9/11 Commission Report, p251.
While this is acknowledgement of Sheikh Saeed's existence as a "chief financial manager", there is no reference to any financial link between Sheikh Saeed and the 9/11 attacks themselves. None.
The only other mention of Shekh Saeed is the following passage referenced in footnote 59 of Chapter 2:
"He [Bin Laden] appointed a new financial manager, whom his followers saw as miserly."
Notice that this supposedly authoritative "investigation" doesn't bother to name this "new financial manager" here, or to explain what he did.
The footnote 59 of Chapter 2 says:
"CIA analytic report, "Shaykh Sa'id: Al Qa'ida's Loyal Senior Accountant," CTC 2003-30072H July 2, 2003."
Notice the name is spelled differently from the version on page 251 of the same report, leaving open the possibility for official denial that they are the same person?
Notice also that a "CTC" Counter Terrorism Center report was written on this man. Can someone file a FOIA request for this report?
The "CTC" is coincidentally where a memo was deliberately withheld from alerting the FBI about two other purported hijackers: Al Mihdhar and Al Hazmi.
Searching for wire transfers in the 9/11 Commission Report turned up the following:
"For Atta and Shehhi's enrolling at Jones Aviation see FBI report, "Hijackers Timeline" Dec. 5 2003 (Sept. 23 2000 entry citing SunTrust Financial records)."
Well I can't "see FBI report" because it doesn't appear to be on the Internet. Another FOIA is needed.
If the 9/11 Commission saw this FBI report, then they are aware of the SunTrust Financial wire transfers, and yet chose not to include them in their "final" report -- at all. This is more evidence of cover up.
This was all right in the Washington Post,[10] just a couple of days before the Indian intelligence service and Indian press threw a monkey wrench into the official 9/11 story:
"U.S. Ties Hijackers' Money to Al Qaeda
Investigators See Cash Trail as Key
By Dan Eggen and Kathleen Day
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, October 7, 2001; Page A01(...)
The ties to al Qaeda, the group led by Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden, include transfers of thousands of dollars from hijacking leader Mohamed Atta to al Qaeda's chief financial lieutenant in the Middle East days before the New York and Washington attacks.
(...)
The operation was kicked off with a $100,000 transfer into a U.S. bank account last year that has been traced to the United Arab Emirates. A source familiar with the investigation said the transfer may have been arranged by the financial lieutenant, Mustafa Muhammad Ahmed.
(...)
More than half of the criminal investigation team at FBI headquarters in Washington is dedicated to tracking the money, with many working from folding tables and chairs in the hallways.
(...)
The funding for the attack began at least a year ago with a single deposit of more than $100,000 to a U.S. account controlled by Atta. Dennis M. Lormel, chief of the FBI's financial crimes section, testified at a congressional hearing last week that the transfer has been traced back to an account in the United Arab Emirates.
In the following months, scores of cash infusions flowed into about a dozen accounts at SunTrust Bank in Florida and several other U.S. banks.
(...)
The FBI has told Congress that terrorists rely heavily on wire transfers...
(...)
Another key figure on the money trail is Ahmed, also known as Shaykh Saiid.
(...)
Ahmed is suspected of being the paymaster who oversaw the financial end, sources said. Ahmed was named by Bush as a suspected associate of terrorists, and is the subject of a global manhunt.
Ahmed got as much as $15,000 from Atta and two other hijackers, Al-Shehhi and Waleed M. Alshehri, in the three days before the attacks. Officials in the United Arab Emirates have said they believe Ahmed left there Sept. 11 for Pakistan." (emphasis added)
The FBI has said that the hijackers returned money back to the paymaster so they would not be seen as "thieves" before their martrydom. Seems plausible.
Going back to the Congressional Joint Inquiry report (p 141), we run into obfuscation about "Mustafa Ahmed Alhawsawi", which they present as a different Al Qaeda operative than "Mustafa Ahmad",[11] one who is also mysteriously later "captured" with Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, and never seen again. Witnesses reported that neither man was at the location of this alleged capture.
Another alleged "paymaster," Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, is tied to some wire transfers as well, further clouding the picture.
3) The Pakistani ISI chief, Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad was fired immediately when the Indian government and press went public with the ISI / Omar Saeed Sheikh / Mohammad Atta connection.[12]
Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad, head of ISI on 9/11/01U.S. pressure on Pakistan to remove the ISI chief was cited in the press reports. The ISI chief was never "Wanted by the FBI" however for ordering the funds that reportedly financed the 9/11 attacks. Until this matter is clearly resolved, there has simply been no credible public investigation into the attacks of September 11th 2001.
Indian intelligence exposed (to its own detriment) its surveillance of the ISI chief's cell phone and calls, [12, 13] in order to convince the Americans that Pakistan, and in particular the ISI, was a source of international terrorism (which of course, it is).
Implications: What does it mean?
Either--
a) ISI chief ordered operative Sheikh to wire money to Atta and co.
or
b) Sheikh wired money independently, or at some other intelligence service's direction (CIA or MI6).
or
c) Someone other than Sheikh wired the money, which means that the Pakistani ISI chief was fired right then in an unrelated coincidence.
I'm going to go with a or b. Several press reports confirm Sheikh's involvement, including CNN:
"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, whom authorities say used a pseudonym to wire $100,000 to suspected hijacker Mohammad Atta, who then distributed the money in the United States. (emphasis added)" -CNN, 10/8/2001 [14]
The "hijacking" mentioned was of Indian Airlines 814, in December 1999, by men with knives who "stabbed one hostage to death in the early hours of the hijacking" and gained access to the cockpit. [15]
This method of attack is of course the one reported to have happened on 9/11/01.
While the Indian Airlines incident doesn't prove this is what actually transpired on September 11th, it does provide a proof of concept.
Some people aren't convinced that actual hijackers carried out the 9/11 attacks, and instead the planes were remote controlled, the communications from them faked. I do not take a position on this question due to a lack of irrefutable proof either way. This article deals with evidence, not speculation.
The ISI Chief in DC and the Timeline of the FBI Investigation
ISI Chief Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad arrived in Washington DC on September 4 -- prior to the 9/11 attacks. He met with CIA Director George Tenet, the National Security Council, Pentagon officials, White House officials and specifically Marc Grossman the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs[16] and a prominent member of the Project for a New American Century.
This timeline is instructive:
"September 11, 2001:
The World Trade Center is destroyed. That morning, Pakistani ISI Chief Mahmud Ahmad is sitting down for breakfast in Washington, D.C. with Sen. Bob Graham and Rep. Porter Goss - both of whom will later head the Congressional Committee to investigate the events surrounding September 11
September 18, 2001:
CBS News reports: "...agents have uncovered a money trail that they hope will lead to the hijackers' accomplices."
September 30, 2001:
ABC News "This Week" reports that the $100,000 money trail "can be traced directly to people linked to Osama bin Laden."
October 1, 2001:
Judith Miller of the New York Times reveals that the money was wired by someone using the alias "Mustafa Ahmad". The Guardian reports that Mustafa Ahmad is the alias for a "Sheikh Saeed."
That day, an attack is launched on the Kashmiri provincial legislature, increasing tensions between India and Pakistan.
October 3, 2001:
British Prime Minister Tony Blair releases his report detailing the "persuasive case" against bin Laden, yet no explicit mention is made of the "smoking gun" money trail.
New York Newsday reporters Riley and Brune reveal that Mustafa Ahmad is an alias for a "Shaykh Sai-id, who has been identified as a high-ranking bin Laden financial lieutenant." They also identify him as an Egyptian linked to the 1998 Tanzania Embassy bombing.
October 6-8, 2001:
Maria Ressa of CNN reports that 9/11 paymaster Mustafa Ahmad is an alias for a "Sheikh Syed", a 28-year old Pakistani former student at the London School of Economics who was released from an Indian prison in 1999 after being bartered for hostages taken in an airline hijacking that was "strikingly similar to the four hijackings carried out on September 11." Ressa also links "Syed" (hereafter known as Omar Saeed) to the October 1 attack on the Kashmiri legislature.
The invasion of Afghanistan begins.
Pakistani ISI General Mahmud Ahmad (not to be confused with the 9/11 paymaster alias "Mustafa Ahmad") is suddenly dismissed by Pakistani President Musharraf.
October 9, 2001:
The Times of India reports that General Ahmad was dismissed "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 [Omar Saeed] at the instance of General Mahmud [Ahmad]."
From this date, an intensive cover-up effort is set in motion. Omar Saeed [Sheikh] mostly disappears from the Western mainstream media until his re-emergence in Britain's Telegraph, January 27, 2002." -TIMELINE: Daniel Pearl and The Paymaster of 9/11, by Chaim Kupferberg [17]
Just who is this Omar Saeed Sheikh / Mustafa Ahmad guy?
Well, he's in a Pakistani prison right now, convicted of murdering Daniel Pearl of the Wall Street Journal.
They were supposed to execute Omar Saeed Sheikh, which would really prevent him from talking about these things, but Omar Saeed Sheikh has powerful allies in Pakistan who want him to remain alive, and even free.
"As the London Times has put it, Saeed Sheikh “is no ordinary terrorist but a man who has connections that reach high into Pakistan’s military and intelligence elite and into the innermost circles of Osama Bin Laden and the al-Qaeda organization.” [London Times, 4/21/02]
"In 1993 he emerged in Pakistan as a member of a militant group fighting for the liberation of Kashmir from India... it appears Saeed [Sheikh] was put on the ISI payroll around this time, to help the Pakistani cause in Kashmir. [ABC News, 2/7/02]
In 1994, Saeed [Sheikh] began training at a training camp in Afghanistan. He soon was teaching the classes. [Los Angeles Times, 2/9/02]
[Saeed Sheikh] developed close ties with al-Qaeda while training there. By the end of the year he was known as Osama bin Laden’s “favored son” or “my special son.” [London Times, 8/21/02, Vanity Fair, 8/02], --The Many Faces of Saeed Sheikh, Paul Thompson [18]
Sheikh went on to prison in India. He was released after other terrorists hijacked an Indian Airlines passenger jet (814) and flew it to Afghanistan. Omar Saeed Sheikh and two other "militants" were traded for the Indian passengers.
An ISI Colonel escorted Saeed Sheikh to a safe house in Pakistan.
Saeed Sheikh then lived openly in Pakistan, attending parties of high level government officials there.
Sheikh then is allowed to return to Britain, twice, in 2000 and 2001, even though he was a known international terrorist who had kidnapped British citizens in 1994.
Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf told that Omar Saeed Sheikh worked for British MI6.
"Pakistan's President General Pervez Musharraf has disclosed that Omar Sheikh, who alledgedly kidnapped and murdered American journalist Daniel Pearl and is now facing the death penalty, was actually an agent for the British Secret Agency MI6. Musharraf claims that Omar Sheikh had executed certain missions on MI6's behest before coming to Pakistan and visiting Afghanistan to meet Osama and Mullah Om." --INN World Report, January 16, 2007[19]
Others in Pakistan claim that Omar Sheikh is CIA.
"There are many in Musharraf's government who believe that Saeed Sheikh's power comes not from the ISI, but from his connections with our own CIA." --Pittsburgh Tribune, Did Pearl die because Pakistan deceived CIA?, March 3, 2002 [20]
"There are those who might doubt the word of Musharraf, and who can blame them? But in fact I documented Omar Sheikh Saeed's simultaneous intelligence connections to the CIA, ISI and MI6 in The War on Truth and The London Bombings. Details have come forth from an intriguing combination of American, British and Pakistani government sources." --Nafeez M. Ahmed, Pakistan and the Terror Nexus [21]
Perhaps Omar Sheikh belongs to all three agencies? Four including Al Qaeda? Who knows?
Not the American people. That's for sure. The American people do not know much about Omar Saeed Sheikh / Mustafa Ahmad, although he apparently financed the September 11th attacks, trained some of the hijackers in Afghanistan, worked for Pakistani ISI, British MI6 and U.S. CIA.
And none of this can be talked about in the Congress. Nor in the presidential debates. Nor on mainstream television nor on corporate radio.
Quite a neat trick.
"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."
--Keyser Soze, The Usual Suspects
Notes.
1. Cooperative Research, Mustafa Ahmed Al Hisawi, http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?entity=mustafa_ahmed_al-hisawi
2. Cooperative Research, Sept. 11's Smoking Gun: The Many Faces of Saeed Sheikh, .http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/essay.jsp?article=essaysaeed
3.STATEMENT FOR THE RECORD FBI DIRECTOR ROBERT S. MUELLER III JOINT INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE INQUIRY, http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2002_hr/092602mueller.html
4. 9/11 Commission Report, http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf
5. PBS, Interview with Bob Graham, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/congress/july-dec02/intelligence_12-11.html
6. Michel Chossudovsky, Center for Research on Globalisation, NEW REVELATIONS ON 9-11, http://www.prisonplanet.com/new_revelations_on_911.htm
7.Cooperative Research, Saeed Sheikh, .http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/essay.jsp?article=essaysaeed
8. US State Department,Executive Order 13224, http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/fs/2002/16181.htm
9. Taking Aim, Ralph Schoenman and Mya Shone, 070320 A Study in Disinformation: The Fake Confession of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, http://takingaimradio.com/mp3/takingaim070320.mp3
10. Washington Post, U.S. Ties Hijackers' Money to Al Qaeda, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A17934-2001Oct6¬Found=true
11. Congressional Reports: Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001, page 141, http://www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/creports/911.html
12. Times of India, India helped FBI trace ISI-terrorist links, 9 Oct, 2001 l 2308 hrs ISTlMANOJ JOSHI/TIMES NEWS NETWORK, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/articleshow?art_id=1454238160
13. Who Killed Daniel Pearl? (Paperback), by Bernard-Henri Levy, pp. 320-24, http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0974960942/centerforcoop-20
14.CNN, India wants terror spotlight on Kashmir, October 8, 2001, http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/south/10/08/india.ressa/
15. BBC, Indian hijack drama over, 31 December, 1999, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/584729.stm
16. Cooperative Research, ISI Director Mahmood Ahmed, http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&the_isi:_a_more_detailed_look=mahmoodAhmed
17. TIMELINE: Daniel Pearl and The Paymaster of 9/11, by Chaim Kupferberg, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/KUP209C.html
18. Cooperative Research, Sept. 11's Smoking Gun: The Many Faces of Saeed Sheikh, .http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/essay.jsp?article=essaysaeed
19. INN World Report, January 16, 2007, http://www.innworldreport.net/archives/2007/01/2007-01-16.html
20. Pittsburgh Tribune, Did Pearl die because Pakistan deceived CIA?, March 3, 2002, http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_20141.html
21. Nafeez M. Ahmed, Pakistan and the Terror Nexus, http://nafeez.blogspot.com/2006/09/pakistan-and-terror-nexus.html