Ambassador Timothy Roeman and 9/11

Ambassador Timothy Roeman is doing yeoman service for the US government in trying to help bring business to the US from Indian government as well as from private companies. Nothing wrong in that, its his job and he is paving the ground for the visit of his boss – President Barack Hussein Obama.



However what is not reported in the press here in India is his dalliance with the 9/11 commission which got bribed and were put through other pressure to simply erase the role of Pakistan in the 9/11. In that I find Timothy Roeman guilty and we need to also see him in that light.

Yes, he is American and he will see his country’s interest first. But what was the interest in hiding the Pakistan’s ISI role in funding and executing the 9/11 attacks through al-Qaeda.

But guess what Ambassador Roeman: "Osama bin Laden living in comfort in Pakistan, says Nato official". You had a chance to nail Pakistan - you guys did not !!

The earlier article I wrote on this subject (Nov 21, 2008):

There was damning evidence linking ISI with Al Qaeda and 9-11. In fact, there has been serious evaluation and part of US Intelligence even stated that ISI masterminded 9-11, Al – Qaeda was a mere facilitator.

A few comments here, as I will deal with this in details in a later blog.

Arnaud de Borchgrave, editor of Washington Times stated: “ Former Pakistani intelligence officers knew beforehand all about Sept – 11 attacks. They even advised Osama bin Laden (OBL) and his cohorts how to attack key targets in the US with hijacked civilian aircraft. And bin Laden has been undergoing periodic dialysis treatment in a military hospital in Peshawar, Pakistan.”

CIA officer Gary Schroen who spearheaded US’ search for OBL in Afghanistan stated: “ISI officials – probably at the colonel level, are very well aware of OBL’s presence in Pakistan tribal areas. Musharraf was so afraid of the internal political consequences of finding OBL that he doesn’t want to know his whereabouts. I think the philosophy of the Taliban, this fundamentalist view , is popular there. So Bin Laden, I think, strikes them as heroic. He fought a jihad against the Russians, and he’s bloodied America’s nose time and again.”

THE MOST DIRECT LINK- WHICH FBI CONFIRMS: ISI wired money to 9-11 lead hijacker, through Omar Sheikh. Why then is Omar Sheikh not being dealt with when he is already under sentence of death? Astonishingly his appeal to a higher court against the sentence was adjourned for the 32nd time and has since been adjourned indefinitely. This is all the more remarkable when this is the same Omar Sheikh who, at the behest of General Mahmood Ahmed, head of the ISI, wired $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, the leading 9/11 hijacker, before the New York attacks, as confirmed by Dennis Lormel, director of FBI's financial crimes unit.


GEN. MAHMOOD AHMED

OMAR SHEIKH

When Mahmood Ahmed, head of ISI, was exposed by the Wall Street Journal as having sent the money to the hijackers, he was forced to "retire" by President Pervez Musharraf.

Bruce Reidel, the then National Security Council senior director for South Asia in the Bill Clinton administration stated: “If there was a state sponsor of al-Qaeda, it was the Pakistani army, acting through its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)".

The following report was received by the 9-11 commission from “the” anonymous well connected Pakistani source : “The core issue of instability and violence in South Asia is the character, activities and persistence of the militarized Islamist fundamentalist state in PAKISTAN. No cure for this canker can be arrived at through any strategy of negotiations, support and financial aid to the military regine, or by a regulated transition to democracy. The imprints of every major act of international Islamist terrorism invariably passes through Pakistan, right from September – 11 ( 9-11) – where virtually all the participants had trained, resided or met in, coordinated with, or received from or through Pakistan – to major acts of terrorism across South Asia and South East Asia, as well as major networks of terror that have been discovered in Europe.”

Given that the 9-11 commission had extra-ordinary proof to implicate ISI and Pakistan for 9-11 along with Al-Qaeda, the final report does not find any reference to either ISI, Pakistan or indeed Saudi Arabia.

What transpired?

It seems the Pakistan foreign office paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to lobbyists in USA to get the “anti-Pakistan” references dropped from the 9-11 inquiry commission report.

Pakistan weekly, THE FRIDAY TIMES claimed, its story is based on disclosures made by foreign service officials to the Public Accounts Committee at a secret meeting in Islamabad (March 2006).

The sensational claim was – “some of the 9-11 commission members were also BRIBED to prevent them from including DAMAGING information about PAKISTAN. The disclosure sheds doubt about 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.”

The report quoted an officer as saying that dramatic changes were made in the final draft of inquiry commission after the lobbyists got to work.

FRIDAY TIMES claimed, A LOT OF MONEY WAS USED TO SILENCE MEMBERS.

According to the report, the lobbyists also helped Pakistan win sympathy of 75 US Congressmen as part of its strategy to guard Islamabad’s interests in Washington.

This resulted in a complete U-Turn and Pakistan emerged as front runner in the fight against terrorism and US pumped in Billions of dollars to a doddering Pakistan economy on the brink of collapse.

Did not the 9-11 commission members have a patriotic duty to find the truth? The answer to that is NO. There were many skeletons in the closet.

Andrew Rice, chair of the 9-11 commission Committee of the Sept 11 Families For Peaceful Tomorrow organization is among millions of terribly frustrated Americans and he stated: “This official 9-11 commission was “fixed in” from the beginning.”

A senior EU Diplomat stated: “They (the 9-11 commission) seem to be interested in putting up a good show as a coverup; and of course they’re very worried about damage control.”

THE 9-11 INQUIRY COMMISSION – A FEW MEMBERS.

This commission comprised nine men and a woman, five Republicans and five Democrats.


Chairman Thomas Kean: His was the case of most devastating conflict of interest. The US $1 trillion lawsuit filed in August 2002 by the families of the victims of Sept 11 included TWO FORMER business partners of Kean – Saudi Billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz (brother in law of OBL) and Mohd. Hussein al-Almoudi. Mahfouz transferred millions of dollars from a Saudi Pension Fund to bank accounts in London and New York linked to Al-Qaeda. He is also the former director of BCCI – the Pakistani bank in the centre of $12 billion bankruptcy scandal and terrorist links.

KHALID BIN MAHFOUZ

A little digression to show the hand of Khalid Bin Mahfouz in India's terrorist funding too. See chart below. Click on it to view enlarged version.


(Note: Bush himself had business links with Mahfouz – various investments in Houston, TX).


Philip D Zelikow – ultimate Bush insider, who worked with Jim Baker. Co-wrote two books with Condolizza Rice. Mr Zelikow, a former academic, once tried to push through wording in a draft report that suggested a greater tie between Osama bin Laden and Iraq, in line with White House claims but not with the views of the commission's staff. Read this Telegraph UK article.


Jamie S Gorelick – very close to CIA director George Tenet. This means no chance for the commission to investigate dubious covert operations by the CIA which may forment terrorism instead of fighting it.


John Lehman – ex Navy secretary under Reagan and served alongside two of commissions’ key witnesses: Secretary of State Richard Armitage and former counterterrorism head Richard Clarke. Lehman is Kissinger’s man in the commission (de-facto Bilderberg group oversight).

It's unlikely fellow members at the 9-11 Commission will ask Kean to reveal to what extent he was aware of Mahfouz's links to al-Qaeda.

As to the 28 pages of the joint congressional committee detailing Saudi support to al-Qaeda, they also seem to have vanished into thin air.

The commission, for instance, also will not investigate the foreign policy that started it all in the late 1970s and early 1980s: the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA's) full support to the hardcore international Islamic brigades which joined the jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan - and then turned against the US after the first Gulf War in 1991. This would mean that the commission would have to seriously investigate Secretary of State Colin Powell and his number two, Richard Armitage, key players in those 1980s proceedings.

Former national security adviser to Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski, also one of the key members of the Council on Foreign Relations, was the mastermind behind the building of an Islamic network in Afghanistan - as part of a huge, covert CIA operation. To a large extent, the modern Islamic jihad exists thanks to Brzezinski. There are four members of the Council on Foreign Relations in the commission. There's hardly any chance of them investigating their fellow Brzezinski.

The commission report was anyway going to get whitewashed with or without Pakistan lobbyists pumping in money. Pakistan just helped itself get a clear name in the bargain. If the BIG BOYS were anyway going to play dirty, why not PAKISTAN?

The US always stated that the warlords in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal areas can be bought by the highest bidder. They forgot the mention that they too could be bought !

PAKSITAN – MONEY FLOW AFTER 9/11

The lobbyists not only got the name of Pakistan and ISI out of the final 9-11 commission report, it also helped Pakistan win sympathy of 75 US Congressmen as part of its strategy to guard Islamabad’s interests in Washington. It was a matter of time before the money came in.

Dr Farrukh Saleem, noted economist in Pakistan commented: “ The US Department of Defense has been depositing a cool $100 million a month in our treasury for the last four years. The US forgave $3 billion worth of bilateral debt, and then convinced the Paris Club lender nations to reschedule a large portion of $38 billion bilateral debt on easy terms. Add it all up – and thank OSAMA – for the total bonanza is going to be a colossal $40 BILLION.”

No wonder, in Pakistan, Al Qaeda is known as Al Faeda.
Faeda in Urdu means = BENEFIT.

Readers are free to draw their conclusions from this.

I only wonder, why Colin Powell is a friend of Pakistan (forget the military liking the military – is there a money trail, I wonder?)

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USA - SKELETONS IN THE CLOSET?

NOT AT ALL, IT WAS FOR A GOOD CAUSE - WHY SHY AWAY FROM THEM ?!!


Zbigniew Brzezinski: "What was more important in the world view of history? The Taliban or the fall of the Soviet empire? A few stirred up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?"


Senator Orrin Hatch: "It was worth it. Those were very important, pivotal matters that played an important role in the downfall of the Soviet Union."

Osama bin Laden was the creation of Saudi Intelligence (Prince Turki) and CIA.

Dr. Azzam and al-Zawahari had fought for the CIA in Lebanon and Palestine.

Moro Islamic Liberation Front (milf) was funded by Al Qaeda and trained by ISI. These were Islamists in southern Philippines. You would expect USA to take good care of this overwhelmingly Christian island. But its eyes were locked on to Soviet demise and so "anything went". CIA cover flights had flown 200 MILF mujahidden from Chittagong (BANGLADESH) to Karachi (PAKISTAN), in the garb of special flights for HAJ pilgrims to fight in Afghanistan.

Small contingent of US Special Forces helped ISI airlift Pakistani mujahidden to GEORGIA anad adjoining ARMENIA. Some jihadis were also transferred by boat from TURKMENISTAN to SOUTHERN DAGESTAN from where they traversed to CHECHNYA. These were also favourite arms supply routes for the ISI and the CIA.

While Pakistan and Al Qaeda were focussed on creating an Islamic Caliphate, the US need not have worried about as Brzezinski said " A FEW STIRRED UP MUSLIMS" !!

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Post 9/11 a radical Al Qaeda cleric lunched at the Pentagon - its interesting what we are fed in the name of what is right.

The chief sponsor of Al-Qaeda, the Saudis are getting a whopping US $ 60 BILLION arms deal from the US in what is being sold as another right - to counter IRAN. The House of Saud is responsible for funding and creating Taliban and setting up madrassas based on wahabbi doctrine (from where Taliban and al-Qaeda draw irs foot soldiers from) - and it gets rewarded. So does Pakistan get rewarded by the US. And we are told - IT'S RIGHT :).

PERSONAL OPINION:

Ambassador Roemer is guilty of letting Pakistan’s ISI scot free. However it is my personal opinion that he may perhaps have been a patriotic American and not necessarily a Pakistan sympathizer. Be that as it may, it did India (and the world) no good.

A few transcripts of Roemer’s views and you will understand what I am saying.

In Washington Post article (excerpts) - Transcript - Rice's testimony on 9/11 :

KEAN: Congressman Roemer?

ROEMER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Welcome, Dr. Rice. And I just want to say to you you've made it through 2 1/2 hours so far with only Governor Thompson to go. And if you'd like a break of five minutes, I'd be happy to yield you some of Governor Thompson's time.

(LAUGHTER)

Dr. Rice, you have said in your statement, which I find very interesting, "The terrorists were at war with us, but we were not at war with them."

Across several administrations of both parties, the response was insufficient. And tragically, for all the language of war spoken before September 11th, this country simply was not on a war footing.

You're the national security advisor to the president of the United States. The buck may stop with the president; the buck certainly goes directly through you as the principal advisor to the president on these issues.

And it really seems to me that there were failures and mistakes, structural problems, all kinds of issues here leading up to September 11th that could have and should have been done better.

Doesn't that beg that there should have been more accountability? That there should have been a resignation or two? That there should have been you or the president saying to the rest of the administration, somehow, somewhere, that this was not done well enough?

RICE: Mr. Roemer, by definition, we didn't have enough information, we didn't have enough protection, because the attack happened -- by definition. And I think we've all asked ourselves, what more could have been done?

I will tell you if we had known that an attack was coming against the United States, that an attack was coming against New York and Washington, we would have moved heaven and earth to stop it.

But you heard the character of the threat report we were getting: something very, very big is going to happen. How do you act on "something very, very big is going to happen" beyond trying to put people on alert? Most of the threat reporting was abroad.

I took an oath, as I've said, to protect...

ROEMER: I've heard it -- I've heard you say this....

RICE: And I take it very seriously. I know that those who attacked us that day -- and attacked us, by the way, because of who we are, no other reason, but for who we are -- that they are the responsible party for the war that they launched against us...

ROEMER: But Dr. Rice...

RICE: ... the attacks that they made, and that our responsibility...

ROEMER: You have said several times...

RICE: ... that our responsibility is to...

ROEMER: You have said several times that your responsibility, being in office for 230 days, was to defend and protect the United States.

RICE: Of course.

ROEMER: You had an opportunity, I think, with Mr. Clarke, who had served a number of presidents going back to the Reagan administration; who you'd decided to keep on in office; who was a pile driver, a bulldozer, so to speak -- but this person who you, in the Woodward interview -- he's the very first name out of your mouth when you suspect that terrorists have attacked us on September the 11th. You say, I think, immediately it was a terrorist attack; get Dick Clarke, the terrorist guy.

Even before you mentioned Tenet and Rumsfeld's names, "Get Dick Clarke."

Why don't you get Dick Clarke to brief the president before 9/11? Here is one of the consummate experts that never has the opportunity to brief the president of the United States on one of the most lethal, dynamic and agile threats to the United States of America.

Why don't you use this asset? Why doesn't the president ask to meet with Dick Clarke?

RICE: Well, the president was meeting with his director of central intelligence. And Dick Clarke is a very, very fine counterterrorism expert -- and that's why I kept him on.

And what I wanted Dick Clarke to do was to manage the crisis for us and help us develop a new strategy. And I can guarantee you, when we had that new strategy in place, the president -- who was asking for it and wondering what was happening to it -- was going to be in a position to engage it fully.

The fact is that what Dick Clarke recommended to us, as he has said, would not have prevented 9/11. I actually would say that not only would it have not prevented 9/11, but if we had done everything on that list, we would have actually been off in the wrong direction about the importance that we needed to attach to a new policy for Afghanistan and a new policy for Pakistan.

Because even though Dick is a very fine counterterrorism expert, he was not a specialist on Afghanistan. That's why I brought somebody in who really understood Afghanistan. He was not a specialist on Pakistan. That's why I brought somebody in to deal with Pakistan. He had some very good ideas. We acted on them.

Dick Clarke -- let me just step back for a second and say we had a very -- we had a very good relationship.

ROEMER: Yes. I'd appreciate it if you could be very concise here, so I can get to some more issues.

RICE: But all that he needed -- all that he needed to do was to say, "I need time to brief the president on something." But...

ROEMER: I think he did say that. Dr. Rice, in a private interview to us he said he asked to brief the president...

RICE: Well, I have to say -- I have to say, Mr. Roemer, to my recollection...

ROEMER: You say he didn't.

RICE: ... Dick Clarke never asked me to brief the president on counterterrorism. He did brief the president later on cybersecurity, in July, but he, to my recollection, never asked.

And my senior directors have an open door to come and say, "I think the president needs to do this. I think the president needs to do that. He needs to make this phone call. He needs to hear this briefing." It's not hard to get done.

But I just think that...

ROEMER: Let me ask you a question. You just said that the intelligence coming in indicated a big, big, big threat. Something was going to happen very soon and be potentially catastrophic.

I don't understand, given the big threat, why the big principals don't get together. The principals meet 33 times in seven months, on Iraq, on the Middle East, on missile defense, China, on Russia. Not once do the principals ever sit down -- you, in your job description as the national security advisor, the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, the president of the United States -- and meet solely on terrorism to discuss in the spring and the summer, when these threats are coming in, when you've known since the transition that al Qaeda cells are in the United States, when, as the PDB said on August, bin Laden determined to attack the United States.

Why don't the principals at that point say, "Let's all talk about this, let's get the biggest people together in our government and discuss what this threat is and try to get our bureaucracies responding to it"?

RICE: Once again, on the August 6th memorandum to the president, this was not threat-reporting about what was about to happen. This was an analytic piece that stood back and answered questions from the president.

But as to the principals meetings...

ROEMER: It has six or seven things in it, Dr. Rice, including the Ressam case when he attacked the United States in the millennium.

RICE: Yes, these are his...

ROEMER: Has the FBI saying that they think that there are conditions.

RICE: No, it does not have the FBI saying that they think that there are conditions. It has the FBI saying that they observed some suspicious activity. That was checked out with the FBI.

ROEMER: That is equal to what might be...

RICE: No.

ROEMER: ... conditions for an attack.

RICE: Mr. Roemer, Mr. Roemer, threat reporting...

ROEMER: Would you say, Dr. Rice, that we should make that PDB a public document...

RICE: Mr. Roemer...

ROEMER: ... so we can have this conversation?

RICE: Mr. Roemer, threat reporting is: "We believe that something is going to happen here and at this time, under these circumstances." This was not threat reporting.

ROEMER: Well, actionable intelligence, Dr. Rice, is when you have the place, time and date. The threat reporting saying the United States is going to be attacked should trigger the principals getting together to say we're going to do something about this, I would think.

RICE: Mr. Roemer, let's be very clear. The PDB does not say the United States is going to be attacked. It says bin Laden would like to attack the United States. I don't think you, frankly, had to have that report to know that bin Laden would like to attack the United States.

ROEMER: So why aren't you doing something about that earlier than August 6th?

(APPLAUSE)

RICE: The threat reporting to which we could respond was in June and July about threats abroad. What we tried to do for -- just because people said you cannot rule out an attack on the United States, was to have the domestic agencies and the FBI together to just pulse them and have them be on alert.

ROEMER: I agree with that.

RICE: But there was nothing that suggested there was going to be a threat...

ROEMER: I agree with that.

RICE: ... to the United States.

ROEMER: I agree with that.

So, Dr. Rice, let's say that the FBI is the key here. You say that the FBI was tasked with trying to find out what the domestic threat was.

We have done thousands of interviews here at the 9/11 Commission. We've gone through literally millions of pieces of paper. To date, we have found nobody -- nobody at the FBI who knows anything about a tasking of field offices.

We have talked to the director at the time of the FBI during this threat period, Mr. Pickard. He says he did not tell the field offices to do this.

And we have talked to the special agents in charge. They don't have any recollection of receiving a notice of threat.

Nothing went down the chain to the FBI field offices on spiking of information, on knowledge of al Qaeda in the country, and still, the FBI doesn't do anything.

Isn't that some of the responsibility of the national security advisor?

RICE: The responsibility for the FBI to do what it was asked was the FBI's responsibility. Now, I...

ROEMER: You don't think there's any responsibility back to the advisor to the president...

RICE: I believe that the responsibility -- again, the crisis management here was done by the CSG. They tasked these things. If there was any reason to believe that I needed to do something or that Andy Card needed to do something, I would have been expected to be asked to do it. We were not asked to do it. In fact, as I've...

ROEMER: But don't you ask somebody to do it? You're not asking somebody to do it. Why wouldn't you initiate that?

RICE: Mr. Roemer, I was responding to the threat spike and to where the information was. The information was about what might happen in the Persian Gulf, what might happen in Israel, what might happen in North Africa. We responded to that, and we responded vigorously.

Now, the structure...

ROEMER: Dr. Rice, let me ask you...

RICE: ... of the FBI, you will get into next week.

ROEMER: You've been helpful to us on that -- on your recommendation.

KEAN: Last question, Congressman.

ROEMER: Last question, Dr. Rice, talking about responses.

Mr. Clarke writes you a memo on September the 4th, where he lays out his frustration that the military is not doing enough, that the CIA is not pushing as hard enough in their agency. And he says we should not wait until the day that hundreds of Americans lay dead in the streets due to a terrorist attack and we think there could have been something more we could do.

Seven days prior to September the 11th, he writes this to you.

What's your reaction to that at the time, and what's your response to that at the time?

RICE: Just one final point I didn't quite complete. I, of course, did understand that the attorney general needed to know what was going on, and I asked that he take the briefing and then ask that he be briefed.

Because, again, there was nothing demonstrating or showing that something was coming in the United States. If there had been something, we would have acted on it.

ROEMER: I think we should make this document public, Dr. Rice. Would you support making the August 6th PDB public?

RICE: The August 6th PDB has been available to you. You are describing it. And the August 6th PDB was a response to questions asked by the president, not a warning document.

ROEMER: Why wouldn't it be made public then?

RICE: Now, as to -- I think you know the sensitivity of presidential decision memoranda. And I think you know the great lengths to which we have gone to make it possible for this commission to view documents that are not generally -- I don't know if they've ever been -- made available in quite this way.

Now, as to what Dick Clarke said on September 4th, that was not a premonition, nor a warning. What that memorandum was, as I was getting ready to go into the September 4th principals meeting to review the NSPD and to approve the new NSPD, what it was a warning to me that the bureaucracies would try to undermine it.

Dick goes into great and emotional detail about the long history of how DOD has never been responsive, how the CIA has never been responsive, about how the Predator has gotten hung up because the CIA doesn't really want to fly it.

And he says, if you don't fight through this bureaucracy -- he says, at one point, "They're going to all sign on to this NSPD because they won't want to be associated -- they won't want to say they don't want to eliminate the threat of al Qaeda." He says, "But, in effect, you have to go in there and push them, because we'll all wonder about the day when thousands of Americans" and so forth and so on.

So that's what this document is. It's not a warning document. It's not a -- all of us had this fear.

I think that the chairman mentioned that I said this in an interview, that we would hope not to get to that day. But it would not be appropriate or correct to characterize what Dick wrote to me on September 4th as a warning of an impending attack. What he was doing was, I think, trying to buck me up, so that when I went into this principals meeting, I was sufficiently on guard against the kind of bureaucratic inertia that he had fought all of his life.

ROEMER: What is a warning, if August 6th isn't and September 4th isn't, to you?

RICE: Well, August 6th is most certainly an historical document that says, "Here's how you might think about al Qaeda." A warning is when you have something that suggests that an attack is impending.

And we did not have, on the United States, threat information that was, in any way, specific enough to suggest that something was coming in the United States.

The September 4th memo, as I've said to you, was a warning to me not to get dragged down by the bureaucracy, not a warning about September 11th.

ROEMER: Thank you, Dr. Rice.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

KEAN: Thank you, Congressman, very, very much.

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In another discussion :

KWAME HOLMAN: Commissioner Tim Roemer said a good deal of information about Khalid sheik Mohammed was known months before the 9/11 attacks. Roemer asked the panel of FBI And CIA Witnesses how that information was shared.

TIMOTHY ROEMER: According to the staff report .KSM was widely known to be planning some kind of an operation against the United States. The staff statement says, quote, many were even aware that he had been preparing operatives to go to the United States as reported by a CIA source in June of 2001. What did the CIA specifically do with that type of threat coming in from KSM, who is at the top of the rendition list, who is widely known to have associated with these terrorists and been involved in different activities, and he's sending people to the United States to do an operation. How would you prioritize that? What happened to this?

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Be that as it may, the bottom line is this. US is plying Pakistan with Billions which it uses against India. And Timothy Roeman is urging India to pay Billions to the US for its planes, arms, nuclear plants.

To rub salt to wound, he was part of 9/11 commission that gave a clean chit to Pakistan and ISI. And also ensured US agent David Coleman Headley remains out of harm's way (de-facto Pakistan too remains out of harm's way).