Musharraf: U.S. Threatened To Bomb Pakistan After 9/11

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Pakistan, U.S. seek to defuse 9/11 claim
Musharraf mum, Bush jokes, ex-U.S. envoy says he never said it

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/n...ationworld-hed

By Mark Silva, Washington Bureau. Richard Clough of the Washington Bureau contributed
Published September 23, 2006

WASHINGTON -- With the United States and Pakistan united in a war against terrorism, the suggestion Friday that the U.S. once threatened to bomb the Pakistanis "back to the Stone Age" landed like a diplomatic bombshell.

Acting swiftly to defuse concern over any such threat, the White House dismissed it as a misunderstanding, an ex-deputy secretary of state denied ever using such incendiary words, and President Bush attempted to smooth it over with a joke.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who made the alleged U.S. threat public in a television interview airing this weekend, refused to confirm or deny the claim during a news conference with Bush on Friday. Musharraf cited his vow of silence to an American book publisher that plans to release his memoirs Monday.

"I am launching my book on the 25th and I am honor-bound to Simon & Schuster not to comment on the book before that day," Musharraf said to laughter in the East Room of the White House.

"In other words," Bush interjected, "`Buy the book,' is what he's saying." Afterward, as the two stood shaking hands for photographers, Bush repeated his advice: "Buy the book."

The controversy stems from a reported threat that may or may not be discussed in Musharraf's book, "In the Line of Fire: A Memoir."

"60 Minutes," the CBS weekly newsmagazine, will air an interview with Musharraf on Sunday as part of the publisher's book promotion. In that interview, according to CBS, Musharraf recounts what his intelligence director told him of a conversation with Richard Armitage, then-deputy U.S. secretary of state, after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"The intelligence director told me that [Armitage] said, `Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age,'" Musharraf told CBS.

Armitage: `No military threat'
Armitage has acknowledged delivering a strong message to Pakistan--but not that strong.

"There was no military threat, and I was not authorized to do so," Armitage told The Associated Press.

"It did not happen," he said, adding that he asked the State Department on Friday to read him a cable of his conversation with the intelligence chief. "There was, in no way, that threat," Armitage said, allowing that "it was a strong, straightforward conversation."

The White House said the administration was delivering a "you're with us or you're against us" message to Pakistan, which had supported the Taliban before Sept. 11 and the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan to topple the fundamentalist regime and hunt down the Al Qaeda leaders it was harboring.

"U.S. policy was not to issue bombing threats," White House spokesman Tony Snow said. "U.S. policy was to say to President Musharraf, `You need to make a choice.' . . . At the outset of the war in Afghanistan, the president did make a statement to President Musharraf: `You're going to be with us or you're going to be against us.'"

Bush said he hadn't heard of the reported Armitage threat until Friday.

"The first I heard of this was when I read it in the newspaper today," Bush said. "You know, I was -- I guess I was taken aback by the harshness of the words."

Musharraf's publisher remained as mum as the author about the "Stone Age" remark, declining to say whether it is detailed in the forthcoming book.

"He is honor-bound not to speak about the book," said Carisa Hays, vice president and publicity director at Simon & Schuster, allowing that the publisher arranged the "60 Minutes" interview of Musharraf as the first televised promotion for the book.

Musharraf has been a reliable partner, Bush said. "All I can tell you is that, shortly after 9/11, Secretary [of State] Colin Powell came in and said, `President Musharraf understands the stakes and he wants to join and help root out an enemy that has come and killed 3,000 of our citizens,'" Bush said.

Musharraf, addressing students and faculty later at George Washington University, said: "We joined the war on terror not really for the world as much as for ourselves. . . . We are on board with the free world to fight terrorism."

Maintaining that Americans tend to not consider issues from other countries' perspectives, Musharraf suggested the U.S. could achieve greater success on the world stage if it did. "You must, first of all, come, put your eyes in mine, into the environment of Pakistan or, for that matter, another country."

Still united, 2 leaders say
Musharraf and Bush said they remain united, with the two planning to join Afghan President Hamid Karzai over dinner at the White House on Wednesday.

They face delicate issues. As the nascent Afghan government struggles to suppress a resurgent Taliban within its borders, Karzai has complained that Pakistan is not doing enough to control Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives based within a lawless border region in Pakistan.

Musharraf insisted he is approaching the problem with a "holistic" approach that includes military surveillance in the region, economic incentives for tribal leaders who want to rebuild their provinces, and a "political" solution--a treaty he has signed with tribal elders.

Musharraf addressed criticism that he has made an accommodation with the Taliban in the region:

"This treaty is not to deal with the Taliban," Musharraf said. "It is actually to fight the Taliban."

The treaty with tribal leaders in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan has "three bottom lines," Musharraf said: "No Al Qaeda activity in our tribal agencies or across the border in Afghanistan. . . . No Taliban activity in our tribal agencies or across in Afghanistan. . . . No Talibanization."

Bush, standing alongside Musharraf in the East Room, endorsed this plan, and the two presidents promised a continuing relationship.

"When the president looks me in the eye and says, `The tribal deal is intended to reject the Talibanization of the people, and that there won't be a Taliban and won't be Al Qaeda,' I believe him," Bush said.

"A relationship is trust and confidence," Musharraf noted. "If we don't have that trust and confidence in each other, and we think that we are bluffing each other--I don't think that's a good way of moving forward."

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CIA paid money in exchange for terrorists: Pak

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/a...ow/2026517.cms

[ 25 Sep, 2006 1747hrs ISTPTI ]

LONDON: Pakistan was secretly paid millions of dollars by the US Central Intelligence Agency for handing over 369 Al Qaeda suspects, President Pervez Musharraf has claimed.

In his memoir serialized in The Times newspaper on Monday, the Pakistan President does not say how much the CIA gave in return for the Al Qaeda suspects that he ordered should be passed to the US. Among the suspects surrendered to the US was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged architect of the 9/11 operation and many terror plots in the UK, including a planned attack on Heathrow, the plot never came to fruition.

Reacting to it, the US Department of Justice said, "We didn't know about this. It should not happen. These bounty payments are for private individuals who help to trace terrorists on the FBI's most wanted list, not foreign governments."

The US Government has strict rules banning such reward payments to foreigners involved in the War on Terror. The CIA refused to divulge the size of its bounty payments, saying: "Our relationships with international leaders is not something we are prepared to talk about." One senior CIA figure added: "Nor do we expect these leaders to do so."

The Pakistan President's claim came a week after he said that the Bush Administration threatened to bomb Pakistan "back to the Stone Age" if it did not co-operate with the US after the 9/11 attacks.

In the memoirs, Musharraf does not explain why his intelligence chiefs questioned Al Qaeda's alleged operational mastermind for only three days before handing him over to the CIA when he was allegedly responsible for so many attacks inside Pakistan and he alone knew the identities of the key figures in Osama bin Laden's network.

Musharraf says that in the Heathrow plot in 2002 Mohammed planned to use flights leaving European airports belonging to the national airlines of the Czech Republic, Croatia, Poland, Romania, the Slovak Republic and Malta because of their lax security.

The signal for the hijackers to seize the plane was when the "Fasten seat belt" sign was turned on as the aircraft was coming into land at Heathrow. Al-Qaeda had picked European Muslims, including a number of white converts, to fly the aircraft into terminal buildings and fuel dumps at London's main airport.

In the light of the revelations, the report said Pakistani intelligence chiefs are concerned that Musharraf may jeopardize their relationship with British intelligence agencies after claiming that a convicted terrorist was once a Mi6, British external intelligence service, informer.

The President also outlines the role played by a former London public schoolboy, Omar Sheikh, in the kidnap and murder of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter, in February 2002.

Musharraf says that Sheikh, who orchestrated the abduction, was recruited by Mi6 while he was studying at the London School of Economics and sent to the Balkans to take part in 'jihad' operations there. He alleges that Sheikh later double-crossed British intelligence. "At some point he probably became a rogue or double agent".

Musharraf says that he decided to disclose details of covert operations and his country's capture of 689 suspects since 9/11 to counter claims that Pakistan has not done enough to combat al-Qaeda. A number of the men he handed to the Americans have been held in CIA-run secret detention centres.

While President George W Bush has tried to play down reports of rising tensions between Islamabad and Washington, relations will not be helped by Musharraf's disclosures, the report said. Musharraf also says in the book that he was so angered at US attempts to bully Pakistan into supporting the White House that he had his military commanders study "war games" to see if they could take on the American forces should they try to operate inside his borders without permission.

He insists that it was not intimidation that led him to back the US, but because it was in Pakistan's interest. Gen Musharraf scorns what he calls "the ludicrous demands" from Washington after 9/11, including one insisting that he should suppress protests inside Pakistan against the US.

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PAKISTANI PAYOFFS: Deceiving the Public for Fun, Profit, and Votes -- Cynical Manipulation Beyond Belief

by Michael C. Ruppert

September 25th 2006, 2:20PM [PST] - Caracas – It was a slap in the face of galactic proportions to the 9/11 research community and a cynical statement about just how stupid and gullible the Bush administration views the general public, as stories of Richard Armitage’s allegedly-relayed post-9/11 “bomb you back into the stone age” threat to Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf played across newspapers and TV screens around the world this week.

That threat was, according to Musharraf, delivered directly to his then-intelligence chief, General Mahmud Ahmad. Armitage, a lifelong weight lifter who bears striking resemblance to an armored car on legs, would have been the perfect messenger to deliver such a message. On 9/11 he was Colin Powell’s deputy Secretary of State. Armitage’s career shows a long and deep friendly record of collaboration with Pakistan and its leaders, especially during and after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Last week’s flap – in advance of a 60 MINUTES interview with Musharraf scheduled for September 24th – has put a lot of money in Musharraf’s pocket. It should ensure his continued silence on 9/11; a last big payoff before he leaves office. It has also given the Bush administration millions in free (and absolutely false) “tough on terrorism” publicity less than 50 days before the US midterm elections. All of this because of a never-before-revealed event that Musharraf recounts second-hand and Armitage now says he doesn’t remember. Not bad. Bush, Cheney, Musharraf and Armitage must have been laughing themselves silly when they cooked this one up.

According to the statements of both Armitage (an Iran-Contra criminal about whom FTW has written much) and the Pakistani President, on September 12th, 2001, Armitage met face-to-face with Ahmad in Washington, telling him that either Pakistan would cooperate fully with the post-9/11 US war on terror or be bombed back into the stone age.

That’s right, Ahmad was actually having a convenient breakfast meeting with Congressional leaders in Washington when the attacks took place. Just days earlier he had personally ordered $100,000 wired to lead hijacker, Mohammed Atta, in Florida. The FBI knew it and was later forced to admit that they knew it. Pakistan was already fully “on board” when the attacks took place. It was on board as a criminal co-conspirator with the United States government in perpetrating the attacks.

When excerpts of the 60 MINUTES interview where Musharraf recounted Armitage’s threat were “leaked” last week, news flashes scattered like shotgun pellets, headlines were re-written, and the subject dominated a subsequent presidential press conference where Bush and Musharraf cheerfully stood side-by-side just days before the conveniently-timed release of Musharraf’s memoirs by Simon and Schuster. Coyly (cha-ching, cha-ching), Musharraf said he couldn’t comment because of agreement with the publisher and Bush chimed in saying, “That means buy the book!”

If Noam Chomsky’s latest book got rocketed into the top ten after Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez touted it at the UN, what will Bush’s comments do for Musharraf’s book? Tit for tat?

The problem with these absolute fabrications is that, according to government sources and reporting from respected major publications, the US government knew full-well that General Ahmad had ordered al-Qaeda-linked Omar Said Sheikh1 to wire $100,000 directly to Mohammed Atta just days before the attacks. Armitage should have been arresting Ahmad instead of “pressuring” him to cooperate as an ally. The reason why Armitage did not arrest Ahmad is that Ahmad had been doing US bidding by helping to finance the hijackers so that the attacks could proceed in the first place.

Very shortly after 9/11, thanks to some uncensored reporting out of India, the FBI and ABC news were forced to confirm the fact of the wire transfer and could not deny or refute Ahmad’s role in it.

As I demonstrated in a series of articles including our famous “Oh Lucy” Timeline, both CIA Director George Tenet and Armitage had made urgent trips to Pakistan just before the attacks and the wire transfer. The head of US intelligence had surely met with the head of Pakistani intelligence while he was there, and so had Armitage.

The 9/11 community has not forgotten these revelations. Will the world remember? Does the world care?

[All of these events are described in blood-curdling detail with unimpeachable sourcing in Chapter 8 of Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil; “Setting up the War”.]

As Chossudovsky wrote on June 20, 2002 in Political Deception: the Missing Link behind 9-11:

The FBI confirmed in late September 2001, in an interview with ABC News (which went virtually unnoticed) that the 9/11 ring leader, Mohammed Atta, had been financed from unnamed sources in Pakistan.

“As to September 11th, federal authorities have told ABC News they have tracked more than $100,000 from banks in Florida, to accounts held by suspected hijack ringleader Mohammed Atta… 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…”

As Chossudovsky then brilliantly documented, it was disclosed that The Times of India had obtained cell phone records showing that Said Sheikh, who carried out the transfer, had received his instructions directly from Ahmad. To our knowledge, the US and Pakistani governments have never been able to or even tried to refute these charges.

So well did Chossudovsky prove the case that in a May 16, 2002 press conference, then National Security Adviser Condi Rice was forced to (not very convincingly) deny having any contact with Ahmad while he was in Washington, D.C. Matters got worse when Chossudovsky later obtained records showing that CNN and the White House News Service had lied in transcripts by saying that Ahmad’s name had been unintelligible when used in a question on the subject at the press conference.

A little over four years ago Ahmad’s name was unmentionable in Washington. In other words, four and half years later the Bush administration is so confident that it has gotten away with 9/11 that they can say Ahmad’s name with assumed and smug impunity. Both Musharraf and Armitage have used it in recent interviews.

Ahmad was replaced as Pakistani intelligence chief shortly after the attacks and the embarrassing revelations. His current whereabouts are not known to FTW, and apparently no one can find him to comment on Musharraf’s statements. In other words, there is no confirmation that the event ever took place.

There are many unresolved evidentiary threads that – without the need for scientific evaluation – demonstrate the US government’s guilt in creating, financing and executing the attacks of 9/11. Only time will tell if anyone will ever pick up those threads and start asking the questions that so many have waited for so long to have answered.

In the meantime, the perpetrators still insultingly mock all of us.