The money trail story was now in full swing, yet trouble - perhaps traces of the brewing ISI revelation - now seemed to be lurking in the background. By October 3, 2001, things started to get unsettlingly murky. For on that day, British Prime Minister Tony Blair released his infamous report, summarizing - for a skeptical public - the "persuasive" case against bin Laden for involvement in the events of September 11. Yet amid all the innuendo that was employed in the report to nail down bin Laden's culpability, there was nary a mention of that key piece of evidence - the $100,000 pay-off to the hijackers.

Even more curiously, on that very day, New York Newsday reporters John Riley and Tom Brune provided an alternative suspect for the Mustafa Ahmad alias:
"Mustafa Ahmad is an alias used by Shaykh Sai-id, who has been identified as a high-ranking bin Laden financial lieutenant. In the wake of the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Tanzania in 1998, Tanzanian officials arrested and charged with murder an Egyptian named Mustafa Ahmed. After alleging that he had confessed to being a high-level al-Qaida operative, Tanzania then released him without explanation a few months later, according to news reports at the time."
Put simply, if Riley and Brune are correct, then "Shaykh Sai-id", alias Mustafa Ahmad, could not possibly be Omar Saeed, as Omar was nicely locked away in an Indian prison in 1998. Keep in mind, too, that this article appears to be one of the first American references to Mustafa Ahmad as being an alias for a "Shaykh Sai-id."

A follow-up article by The Guardian's Julian Borger, dated October 5, 2001, does not make matters any clearer. Critiquing Blair's definitive report on al-Qaida, he wrote:
"It omits mention of a key link in the evidential chain discovered by U.S. investigators: the money trail between a group of the hijackers and an al-Qaida operative in Dubai, known as Mustafa Ahmad. It is not clear whether it is Ahmad, an al-Qaida paymaster, that Mr. Blair has in mind when the document claims 'one of Bin Laden's closest and most senior associates was responsible for the detailed planning of the attacks.' He could instead have in mind someone higher up in the chain of command such as Mohamed Atef or Abu Zubeidah, both of whom are al-Qaida military commanders."
As to Borger's consideration of Mustafa Ahmad's status in the al-Qaida hierarchy: "A lower-level al-Qaida figure, known as Sheikh Saeed, alias Mustafa Mohamed Ahmad, organized money transfers from Dubai to the hijackers and received return transfers of unused money before leaving for Pakistan on September 11." By the end of the first week of October, various news correspondents had apparently provided alternative personas for the Mustafa Ahmad alias - and nobody seemed to notice.

That first week of October 2001 was indeed a busy one in the War Against Terror. It began with a high-profile terror attack in Kashmir, perpetrated, reportedly, by a group with links to the man tagged by CNN as paving the money trail to 9/11. Mid-week saw the release of Tony Blair's much-touted report on the evidence against bin Laden, conveniently timed for the invasion of Afghanistan by week's end. If, by late September, the smoking gun was shaping up to be the starting gun for the race into Afghanistan, at some point in that first week of October, there was enough smoke blowing in all directions to keep everyone well and thoroughly diverted.

On December 18, 2001, the Associated Press - acting as the mouthpiece for the mainstream press in absentia - would officially (and matter-of-factly) put on record for us the identity of the paymaster behind 9/11, unveiling him as:
"Shaihk Saiid, also known as Sa'd al-Sharif and Mustafa Ahmad al-Hisawi. A Saudi, Saiid, 33, is bin Laden's brother-in-law and financial chief. Saiid has been with bin Laden since his time in the Sudan. Saiid allegedly wired money to Atta in preparation for the Sept. 11 attacks, according to court documents."
The "court documents" in question are, presumably, the Zacarias Mossaoui indictments released earlier that week, listing "Mustafa Ahmad" as paymaster. With a deft sleight of hand, and seemingly from out of nowhere, the Associated Press had managed to replace a 28-year old Pakistani militant tied to the ISI (Omar Saeed) with a 33-year old Saudi (Shaihk Saiid) tied - by marriage- to Osama bin Laden himself.

The Associated Press had gradually edged toward its December 18 announcement, supported by a convenient paper trail - in particular, President Bush's Global Terrorist Executive Order, signed September 23, 2001, in which a "Shaykh Sai'id (aka Mustafa Muhammad Ahmad)" was mentioned as a financial operative in al-Qaida, among a list of 27 individuals and entities slated to have their assets frozen. On October 13, 2001 (four days after The Times of India bombshell), the Associated Press announced that "the government [had] widened its financial dragnet," including on a "new list": "Sa'd Al-Sharif, a brother-in-law of bin Laden and a senior associate believed to head bin Laden's complex financial network." Note that the October 13 piece made no mention of any aliases for Sa'd al-Sharif, nor did it connect him to the - by then - well-publicized money trail. It took a third list, announced on December 18, for the Associated Press to complete the syllogism: Sa'd al-Sharif = Shaykh Sai'id = Mustafa Ahmad = 9/11 bagman. By then, however, bin Laden's culpability was long settled, and any money trail long forgotten.

More conveniently, an alternative home could now be found for that $100,000 revelation, distancing it from The Times of India and CNN, circa Oct. 6-8. Now all that remained was to prepare alternative "lodgings" for Omar Saeed and the retired ISI general. Sometime in November 2001, the Justice Department complied by laying out the bedding, "secretly" indicting Omar Saeed for a 1994 kidnapping, and thus setting the stage for his later appearance in an entirely different performance - the murder of Daniel Pearl.

The Disinformation Thickens
If, by December 18, the money trail to 9/11 was now a settled fact, nobody seemed to take much notice. Earlier that week, on December 13, the Bush Administration had presented a new, more "sexy", smoking gun - the certified Osama bin Laden Videotape Confession. That would probably explain why, five days later, no headlines were screaming "Bin Laden Brother-In-Law Linked To 9/11!" And perhaps that would be for the better, as such a headline might have triggered a keen sense of deja vu in anyone who was able to recall another bin Laden brother-in-law who was linked to the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 - Mohammed Jamal Khalifa. Ramzi Yousef, the alleged terrorist bomber convicted of that crime, was "said to have received money from bin Laden's brother-in-law," according to Steve Macko in a July 25, 1997 item from ERRI.

Curiously, it was this particular brother-in-law who was first mentioned in connection with the events of September 11, as early as two days after. According to correspondent Jaime Laude of Philippine Headline News Online, "...the government announced it is stepping up efforts to hunt down Mohammad Jamal Khalifa, a brother-in-law of Bin Laden, the prime suspect in Tuesday's terrorist attacks on the U.S." A CNN article by Maria Ressa, dated September 28, 2001, linked Khalifa to the terrorist Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines, and, through Ramzi Yousef, to the 1993 WTC attack. As reported by Ressa in that article, "Part of the Osama bin Laden money trail [for September 11] may lead to the Philippines and the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group." In other words, if the money trail did lead to Abu Sayyaf, we would possibly be faced with the following syllogism: Abu Sayyaf = Mohammad Khalifa = Mustafa Ahmad = 9/11 bagman. As Ressa, by October, had explicitly tagged Omar Saeed as the alleged paymaster, we can safely assume that CNN was no longer pursuing the brother-in-law angle to the money trail.

And what of this other brother-in law -The "Shaihk" With The Many Aliases? It appears that with the authoritative - and shockingly brief - proclamation from the Associated Press on December 18, no further commentary on the Man Behind The Money Trail was needed. The Shaihk's disappearance from the world's headlines was as sudden as his appearance. In any case, the world was by then distracted by the December 13 attack by Kashmiri terrorists on the Indian Parliament in Delhi - an attack that once more placed India and Pakistan on the brink.

Coincidentally enough, Omar Saeed was linked to that attack by - another coincidence - Maria Ressa, in a CNN article dated June 7, 2002. If, by then, she had already forgotten her previous designation of Omar Saeed as the 9/11 bagman, her memory was now jogged by the revelation that "Al Qaeda funded the [1999 Indian Airlines] hijacking operation" that resulted in Omar Saeed's release from prison. Omar Saeed, through his purported membership in Jaish-e-Mohammed, would now find an alternative bin Laden link (and cover story), courtesy of Maria Ressa and colleagues. As the above-mentioned July 7 article reports: "Evidence is surfacing that al Qaeda is controlling key Kashmiri separatist groups and fueling tensions - something al Qaeda successfully did in Chechnya and Southeast Asia." In a June 12 report, Maria Ressa elaborated: "What Osama Bin Laden has done, intelligence officials say, is to hijack regional movements and exploit them for his purpose." The CIA must be green with envy.

One wonders if the October 9 Times of India article might have aroused bin Laden's wrath toward India, for it was a mere five days later - on October 14, 2001 - that The Times of India reported:
"Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda terrorist group has now formally and publicly adopted the Kashmir issue as one of their causes...In a new video-taped message released through Al-Jazeera television network, an unnamed Al-Qaeda spokesman added the Kashmir cause to their familiar list of grievances that include US presence in Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian issue, and the situation in Iraq."
Now that bin Laden's people had formally announced his updated business plan, he was free to plan some spectacular mischief in India - presumably while dodging all those "daisy cutter" bombs being hurled his way. And his "apparent" agent of choice - Omar Saeed, by way of the Jaish-e-Mohammed terror group.

End Part II