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Gold9472
03-13-2006, 09:50 AM
Pakistan weekly spills 9/11 beans

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1060313/asp/nation/story_5962372.asp

OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
3/12/2006

New Delhi, March 12: The Pakistan foreign office had paid tens of thousands of dollars to lobbyists in the US to get anti-Pakistan references dropped from the 9/11 inquiry commission report, The Friday Times has claimed.

The Pakistani weekly said its story is based on disclosures made by foreign service officials to the Public Accounts Committee at a secret meeting in Islamabad on Tuesday.

It claimed that some of the commission members were also bribed to prevent them from including damaging information about Pakistan.

The magazine said the PAC grilled officials in the presence of foreign secretary Riaz Mohammad Khan and special secretary Sher Afghan on the money paid to lobbyists.

“The disclosure sheds doubt on the integrity and honesty of the members of the 9/11 inquiry commission and, above all, the authenticity of the information in their final report,” it said.

The report quoted an officer as saying that dramatic changes were made in the final draft of the inquiry commission after the lobbyists got to work. The panel was formed to probe the September 11 terror attack and make suggestions to fight terrorism.

After the commission tipped the lobbyists about the damaging revelations on Pakistan’s role in 9/11, they contacted the panel members and asked them to go soft on the country. The Friday Times claimed that a lot of money was used to silence these members.

According to the report, the lobbyists also helped Pakistan win the sympathy of 75 US Congressmen as part of its strategy to guard Islamabad’s interests in Washington. “US softened towards Pakistan only because of the efforts of the foreign office,” an official was quoted as saying in the report.

The Pakistan foreign office defended the decision to hire the lobbyists, saying it was an established practice in the US.

An observer at the Islamabad meeting said money could play an important role in buying powerful people. The remark came in response to comments made by some US officials after 9/11 that “Pakistanis will sell their mothers for a dollar”.

Pakistan had emerged as front-runner in the fight against terrorism unleashed by the US after the terror strikes. Washington pumped in billions of dollars to win President Pervez Musharraf’s support in launching a crackdown on al Qaida network thriving on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Gold9472
03-13-2006, 11:01 AM
rawstory.com just posted this...

http://home.comcast.net/~gold9472/rawstory911.gif

Gold9472
03-14-2006, 09:00 AM
You know what infuriates me about this besides the obvious? The Commission was allegedly lobbied to omit certain things from the report. The Commission was also lobbied by the family members to seek the truth. Obviously, we know who and what was more important to them.

Partridge
03-14-2006, 01:42 PM
I can imagine the conversations went something like this...

Pakistani: Hey, you know the way you'll be leaving out everything that doesn't tie in with the offical fiction...?

American: Er... yeah...

P: Well, we'd really appreciate it if you could leave us out too, cos y'know, people might start asking questions about the SIS and CIA relations and well, that wouldn't look good for either of us would it...?

A: Ummmm....

P: Ok ok, we'll give you MONEY! How does 10 grand wired to your account by the cheif of SIS sound?

A: DEAL!

Gold9472
03-14-2006, 01:52 PM
Good, except it's not SIS... it's ISI... :)

PhilosophyGenius
03-14-2006, 03:09 PM
I guess this explains all the other omisions in the report, since it's so easy doing so.

Partridge
03-14-2006, 07:25 PM
Good, except it's not SIS... it's ISI... :)
D'oh!

Gold9472
03-14-2006, 07:35 PM
D'oh!

Hey, don't worry about it. In this world of acronyms, it's hard to keep up. Remember that episode of the Simpsons where Homer went to that concert... I think it was ELO, I can't remember... He said something like, "ELO, REM, ELP... we had no time for names back then", or something like that.