Taliban reiterate vow to kill Pakistani girl if she survives

People hold candles and pictures of Malala Yousufzai, who was shot on Oct 9, 2012 by the Taliban for speaking out against the militants and promoting education for girls, at a school in Lahore October 12, 2012. (Reuters photo)

RAWALPINDI: The police said on Friday that they had made several arrests in connection with the Taliban’s shooting of Malala Yousafzai, a 14-year-old education activist who was critically injured, but militant commanders in northwestern Pakistan reiterated their intention to kill the schoolgirl or her father.

After Friday prayer, Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf visited Yousafzai’s family at a heavily guarded military hospital in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, where doctors were considering whether to send her abroad for treatment.

“The next 48 hours will be critical,” Ashraf told reporters. Extremists targeted Yousafzai, who was shot in the head while riding in a school bus on Tuesday in Mingora, because, he said, “they were scared of the power of her vision.”

“She is the true face of Pakistan,” he added.

The interior minister, Rehman Malik, said the authorities had  identified the two gunmen behind the shooting, but they had not been captured. Police officials in the Swat Valley, where the attack took place, said that they had rounded up about 70 people for questioning, including employees of Yousafzai’s school and the bus driver, and that some of them had been formally arrested.

Afzal Khan Afridi, the Mingora police chief, declined to specify the number of people arrested or what role they were suspected of playing in the shooting, saying he said he did not want to endanger the investigation.

A 15-year-old girl who was wounded alongside Yousafzai described how easily the Taliban had been able to attack the school bus. “A young man in his early 20s approached the bus and asked for Malala,” the girl, Kainat Riaz, said in an interview at her family’s home in Swat. “Then he started firing.”

The fate of Yousafzai, who has become a symbol of defiance of the Taliban’s extremist ideology, has gripped Pakistan. Television stations have provided intensive coverage of her medical treatment, and leaders from across the nation’s political and religious spectrums have united in condemning the attack.

A senior official from Jamaat-e-Islami, the country’s largest religious party, accompanied Ashraf to the hospital. So did the parliamentary leader of the secular Muttahida Qaumi Movement, which dominates Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi.

In an interview with CNN on Thursday, the foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, described the attack as a traumatic “wake-up call” that could prove to be a turning point in Pakistan’s war against extremism.

The army is directing efforts to save Yousafzai, who is on a ventilator. Government officials have estimated her chances of survival at 50 to 70 per cent.

Some analysts have speculated that the army could leverage the unusually strong criticism of the Taliban in this case to begin a new military operation in the tribal belt, but others said the uproar would not ultimately lead to a crackdown.

The shooting embarrassed the army because it had claimed to have largely eliminated the Taliban from the Swat Valley after a major military operation in 2009. Yet Riaz described how the gunmen stopped their bus, which was carrying about 16 students, in the center of Mingora, which is the valley’s main town and is near a military checkpoint.

Riaz, contradicting earlier reports, she said that the attackers were not masked and that the gunmen did not board the bus, but opened fire from outside after identifying Yousafzai.

A third student who was wounded, Shazia Ramzan, is at a hospital in Peshawar. Riaz said that her family had left the valley but returned after the 2009 military operation, and that she had been studying for two years.

“We were feeling good because there was no sign of the Taliban,” she said as two police officers stood guard outside her home.

Sirajuddin Ahmad, the spokesman for the Taliban in the Swat Valley, said that Yousafzai became a target because she had been “brainwashed” into making anti-Taliban statements by her father, Ziauddin Yousafzai.

“We warned him several times to stop his daughter from using dirty language against us, but he didn’t listen and forced us to take this extreme step,” he said.

Both father and daughter remain on the Taliban’s list of intended victims, he said.

©2011 The New York Times News Service

 

Afghanistan, the Taliban and the Bush Oil Team

 

SOURCE

According to Afghan, Iranian, and Turkish government sources, Hamid Karzai, the interim Prime Minister of Afghanistan, was a top adviser to the El Segundo, California-based UNOCAL Corporation which was negotiating with the Taliban to construct a Central Asia Gas (CentGas) pipeline from Turkmenistan through western Afghanistan to Pakistan.

Karzai, the leader of the southern Afghan Pashtun Durrani tribe, was a member of the mujaheddin that fought the Soviets during the 1980s. He was a top contact for the CIA and maintained close relations with CIA Director William Casey, Vice President George Bush, and their Pakistani Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) Service interlocutors. Later, Karzai and a number of his brothers moved to the United States under the auspices of the CIA. Karzai continued to serve the agency’s interests, as well as those of the Bush Family and their oil friends in negotiating the CentGas deal, according to Middle East and South Asian sources.

When one peers beyond all of the rhetoric of the White House and Pentagon concerning the Taliban, a clear pattern emerges showing that construction of the trans-Afghan pipeline was a top priority of the Bush administration from the outset. Although UNOCAL claims it abandoned the pipeline project in December 1998, the series of meetings held between U.S., Pakistani, and Taliban officials after 1998, indicates the project was never off the table.

Quite to the contrary, recent meetings between U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Wendy Chamberlain and that country’s oil minister Usman Aminuddin indicate the pipeline project is international Project Number One for the Bush administration. Chamberlain, who maintains close ties to the Saudi ambassador to Pakistan (a one-time chief money conduit for the Taliban), has been pushing Pakistan to begin work on its Arabian Sea oil terminus for the pipeline.

Meanwhile, President Bush says that U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan for the long haul. Far from being engaged in Afghan peacekeeping — the Europeans are doing much of that — our troops will effectively be guarding pipeline construction personnel that will soon be flooding into the country.

Karzai’s ties with UNOCAL and the Bush administration are the main reason why the CIA pushed him for Afghan leader over rival Abdul Haq, the assassinated former mujaheddin leader from Jalalabad, and the leadership of the Northern Alliance, seen by Langley as being too close to the Russians and Iranians. Haq had no apparent close ties to the U.S. oil industry and, as both a Pushtun and a northern Afghani, was popular with a wide cross-section of the Afghan people, including the Northern Alliance. Those credentials likely sealed his fate.

When Haq entered Afghanistan from Pakistan last October, his position was immediately known to Taliban forces, which subsequently pinned him and his small party down, captured, and executed them. Former Reagan National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, who worked with Haq, vainly attempted to get the CIA to help rescue Haq. The agency claimed it sent a remotely-piloted armed drone to attack the Taliban but its actions were too little and too late. Some observers in Pakistan claim the CIA tipped off the ISI about Haq’s journey and the Pakistanis, in turn, informed the Taliban. McFarlane, who runs a K Street oil consulting firm, did not comment on further questions about the circumstances leading to the death of Haq.

While Haq was not part of the Bush administration’s GOP (Grand Oil Plan) for South Asia, Karzai was a key player on the Bush Oil team. During the late 1990s, Karzai worked with an Afghani-American, Zalmay Khalilzad, on the CentGas project. Khalilzad is President Bush’s Special National Security Assistant and recently named presidential Special Envoy for Afghanistan. Interestingly, in the White House press release naming Khalilzad special envoy, no mention was made of his past work for UNOCAL. Khalilzad has worked on Afghan issues under National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, a former member of the board of Chevron, itself no innocent bystander in the future CentGas deal. Rice made an impression on her old colleagues at Chevron. The company has named one of their supertankers the SS Condoleezza Rice.

Khalilzad, a fellow Pashtun and the son of a former government official under King Mohammed Zahir Shah, was, in addition to being a consultant to the RAND Corporation, a special liaison between UNOCAL and the Taliban government. Khalilzad also worked on various risk analyses for the project.

Khalilzad’s efforts complemented those of the Enron Corporation, a major political contributor to the Bush campaign. Enron, which recently filed for bankruptcy in the single biggest corporate collapse in the nation’s history, conducted the feasibility study for the CentGas deal. Vice President Cheney held several secret meetings with top Enron officials, including its Chairman Kenneth Lay, earlier in 2001. These meetings were presumably part of Cheney’s non-public Energy Task Force sessions. A number of Enron stockholders, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, became officials in the Bush administration. In addition, Thomas White, a former Vice Chairman of Enron and a multimillionaire in Enron stock, currently serves as the Secretary of the Army.

A chief benefactor in the CentGas deal would have been Halliburton, the huge oil pipeline construction firm that also had its eye on the Central Asian oil reserves. At the time, Halliburton was headed by Dick Cheney. After Cheney’s selection as Bush’s Vice Presidential candidate, Halliburton also pumped a huge amount of cash into the Bush-Cheney campaign coffers. And like oil cash cow Enron, there were Wall Street rumors in late December that Halliburton, which suffered a forty per cent drop in share value, might follow Enron into bankruptcy court.

Assisting with the CentGas negotiations with the Taliban was Laili Helms, the niece-in-law of former CIA Director Richard Helms. Laili Helms, also a relative of King Zahir Shah, was the Taliban’s unofficial envoy to the United States and arranged for various Taliban officials to visit the United States. Laili Helms’ base of operations was in her home in Jersey City on the Hudson River. Ironically, most of her work on behalf of the Taliban was practically conducted in the shadows of the World Trade Center, just across the river.

Laili Helms’ liaison work for the Taliban paid off for Big Oil. In December 1997, the Taliban visited UNOCAL’s Houston refinery operations. Interestingly, the chief Taliban leader based in Kandahar, Mullah Mohammed Omar, now on America’s international Most Wanted List, was firmly in the UNOCAL camp. His rival Taliban leader in Kabul, Mullah Mohammed Rabbani (not to be confused with the head of the Northern Alliance Burhanuddin Rabbani), favored Bridas, an Argentine oil company, for the pipeline project. But Mullah Omar knew UNOCAL had pumped large sums of money to the Taliban hierarchy in Kandahar and its expatriate Afghan supporters in the United States. Some of those supporters were also close to the Bush campaign and administration. And Kandahar was the city near which the CentGas pipeline was to pass, a lucrative deal for the otherwise desert outpost.

While Clinton’s State Department omitted Afghanistan from the top foreign policy priority list, the Bush administration, beholden to the oil interests that pumped millions of dollars into the 2000 campaign, restored Afghanistan to the top of the list, but for all the wrong reasons. After Bush’s accession to the presidency, various Taliban envoys were received at the State Department, CIA, and National Security Council. The CIA, which appears, more than ever, to be a virtual extended family of the Bush oil interests, facilitated a renewed approach to the Taliban. The CIA agent who helped set up the Afghan mujaheddin, Milt Bearden, continued to defend the interests of the Taliban. He bemoaned the fact that the United States never really bothered to understand the Taliban when he told the Washington Post last October, “We never heard what they were trying to say… We had no common language. Ours was, ‘Give up bin Laden.’ They were saying, ‘Do something to help us give him up.’ ”

There were even reports that the CIA met with their old mujaheddin operative bin Laden in the months before September 11 attacks. The French newspaper Le Figaro quoted an Arab specialist named Antoine Sfeir who postulated that the CIA met with bin Laden in July in a failed attempt to bring him back under its fold. Sfeir said the CIA maintained links with bin Laden before the U.S. attacked his terrorist training camps in Afghanistan in 1998 and, more astonishingly, kept them going even after the attacks. Sfeir told the paper, “Until the last minute, CIA agents hoped bin Laden would return to U.S. command, as was the case before 1998.” Bin Laden actually officially broke with the US in 1991 when US troops began arriving in Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Storm. Bin Laden felt this was a violation of the Saudi regime’s responsibility to protect the Islamic Holy Shrines of Mecca and Medina from the infidels. Bin Laden’s anti-American and anti-House of Saud rhetoric soon reached a fever pitch.

The Clinton administration made numerous attempts to kill Bin Laden. In August 1998, Al Qaeda operatives blew up several U.S. embassies in Africa. In response, Bill Clinton ordered cruise missiles to be launched from US ships in the Persian Gulf into Afghanistan, which missed Bin Laden by a few hours. The Clinton administration also devised a plan with Pakistan’s ISI to send a team of assassins into Afghanistan to kill Bin Laden. But Pakistan’s government was overthrown by General Musharraf, who was viewed as particularly close to the Taliban. The CIA cancelled its plans, fearing Musharraf’s ISI would tip off the Taliban and Bin Laden. . The CIA’s connections to the ISI in the months before September 11 and the weeks after are also worthy of a full-blown investigation. The CIA continues to maintain an unhealthy alliance with the ISI, the organization that groomed bin Laden and the Taliban. Last September, the head of the ISI, General Mahmud Ahmed, was fired by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf for his pro-Taliban leanings and reportedly after the U.S. government presented Musharraf with disturbing intelligence linking the general to the terrorist hijackers.

General Ahmed was in Washington, DC on the morning of September 11 meeting with CIA and State Department officials as the hijacked planes slammed into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Later, both the Northern Alliance spokesman in Washington, Haron Amin, and Indian intelligence, in an apparent leak to The Times of India, confirmed that General Ahmed ordered a Pakistani-born British citizen and known terrorist named Ahmed Umar Sheik to wire $100,000 from Pakistan to the U.S. bank account of Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker.

When the FBI traced calls made between General Ahmed and Sheik’s cellular phone – the number having been supplied by Indian intelligence to the FBI – a pattern linking the general with Sheik clearly emerged. According to The Times of India, the revelation that General Ahmed was involved in the Sheik-Atta money transfer was more than enough for a nervous and embarrassed Bush administration. It pressed Musharraf to dump General Ahmed. Musharraf mealy-mouthed the announcement of his general’s dismissal by stating Ahmed “requested” early retirement.

Sheik was well known to the Indian police. He was arrested in New Delhi in 1994 for plotting to kidnap four foreigners, including an American citizen. Sheik was released by the Indians in 1999 in a swap for passengers on board New Delhi-bound Indian Airlines flight 814, hijacked by Islamic militants from Kathmandu, Nepal to Kandahar, Afghanistan. India continues to believe the ISI played a part in the hijacking since the hijackers were affiliated with the pro-bin Laden Kashmiri terrorist group, Harkat-ul-Mujaheddin, a group only recently and quite belatedly placed on the State Department’s terrorist list. The ISI and bin Laden’s Al Qaeda reportedly assists the group in its operations against Indian government targets in Kashmir.

The FBI, which assisted its Indian counterpart in the investigation of the Indian Airlines hijacking, says it wants information leading to the arrest of those involved in the terrorist attacks. Yet, no move has been made to question General Ahmed or those U.S. government officials, including Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who met with him in September. Clearly, General Ahmed was a major player in terrorist activities across South Asia, yet still had very close ties to the U.S. government. General Ahmed’s terrorist-supporting activities – and the U.S. government officials who tolerated those activities – need to be investigated.

The Taliban visits to Washington continued up to a few months prior to the September 11 attacks. The State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research’s South Asian Division maintained constant satellite telephone contact with the Taliban in Kandahar and Kabul. Washington permitted the Taliban to maintain a diplomatic office in Queens, New York headed by Taliban diplomat Abdul Hakim Mojahed. In addition, U.S. officials, including Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs Christina Rocca, who is also a former CIA officer, visited Taliban diplomatic officials in Islamabad. In the meantime, the Bush administration took a hostile attitude towards the Islamic State of Afghanistan, otherwise known as the Northern Alliance. Even though the United Nations recognized the alliance as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, the Bush administration, with oil at the forefront of its goals, decided to follow the lead of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and curry favor with the Taliban mullahs of Afghanistan. The visits of Islamist radicals did not end with the Taliban. In July 2001, the head of Pakistan’s pro-bin Laden Jamiaat-i-Islami Party, Qazi Hussein Ahmed, also reportedly was received at the George Bush Center for Intelligence (aka, CIA headquarters) in Langley, Virginia.

According to the Washington Post, the Special Envoy of Mullah Omar, Rahmatullah Hashami, even came to Washington bearing a gift carpet for President Bush from the one-eyed Taliban leader. The Village Voice reported that Hashami, on behalf of the Taliban, offered the Bush administration to hold on to bin Laden long enough for the United States to capture or kill him but, inexplicably, the administration refused. Meanwhile, Spozhmai Maiwandi, the director of the Voice of America’s Pashtun service, jokingly nicknamed “Kandahar Rose” by her colleagues, aired favorable reports on the Taliban, including a controversial interview with Mullah Omar.

The Bush administration’s dalliances with the Taliban may have even continued after the start of the bombing campaign against their country. According to European intelligence sources, a number of European governments were concerned that the CIA and Big Oil were pressuring the Bush administration not to engage in an initial serious ground war on behalf of the Northern Alliance in order to placate Pakistan and its Taliban compatriots. The early-on decision to stick with an incessant air bombardment, they reasoned, was causing too many civilian deaths and increasing the shakiness of the international coalition.

The obvious, and woefully underreported, interfaces between the Bush administration, UNOCAL, the CIA, the Taliban, Enron, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, the groundwork for which was laid when the Bush Oil team was on the sidelines during the Clinton administration, is making the Republicans worried. Vanquished vice presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman is in the ironic position of being the senator who will chair the Senate Government Affairs Committee hearings on the collapse of Enron. The roads from Enron also lead to Afghanistan and murky Bush oil politics.

UNOCAL was also clearly concerned about its past ties to the Taliban. On September 14, just three days after terrorists of the Afghan-base al Qaeda movement crashed their planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon, UNOCAL issued the following statement: “The company is not supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan in any way whatsoever. Nor do we have any project or involvement in Afghanistan. Beginning in late 1997, Unocal was a member of a multinational consortium that was evaluating construction of a Central Asia Gas pipeline between Turkmenistan and Pakistan [via western Afghanistan]. Our company has had no further role in developing or funding that project or any other project that might involve the Taliban.”

The Bush Oil Team, which can now rely on the support of the interim Prime Minister of Afghanistan, may think that war and oil profits mix. But there is simply too much evidence that the War in Afghanistan was primarily about building UNOCAL’s pipeline, not about fighting terrorism. The Democrats, who control the Senate and its investigation agenda, should investigate the secretive deals between Big Oil, Bush, and the Taliban.

 

Adnan Khashoggi Linked to 9/11

The  Blog begun looking into the Khashoggi deals and connections after the reference to the name in the  Opal File. 

Additional evidence have been revealed during the years

 

PRELUDE: THE COHEN GROUP AND HOWARD DEAN

Howard Dean: A Hawk in a Dove’s Cloak
By SEAN DONAHUE

“Soon we’ll find out who is the real revolutionary, I
don’t want my people to be tricked by mercenaries.” ­
Bob Marley

“Howard Dean wants the peace movement to believe that
he is its best hope for bringing change in Washington.
In television ads and presidential debates, Dean has
emphasized his opposition to Bush’s decision to launch
a unilateral invasion of Iraq. … Dean’s earliest
statements on foreign policy in the presidential
campaign were written with the help of one of the
architects of the war in Afghanistan, Danny Sebright,
who held the Orwellian title of Director of the
Executive Secretariat for Enduring Freedom at the
Pentagon under Donald Rumsfeld. … When Sebright left
the Pentagon in February of 2002 he went to work for
his old boss, former Secretary of Defense William
Cohen, at the Cohen Group, a Washingon-based
consulting company. The firm uses its political
connections to help companies obtain contracts with
the Pentagon and with foreign governments. …”
http://www.counterpunch.org/donahue10302003.html
————————–

>From the moment the towers erupted in flames, the
press has made a willful mess of it. The reporting on
accused 9/11 co-conspirator Omar Sheikh, a radical
Islamist from England, and the Pakistani court
decision to hang him for the 2002 murder of Daniel
Pearl, for example.

The Guardian reported in July 2002: “Both the US
government and Pearl’s wife have since acknowledged
that Sheikh was not responsible.”

But the Pakistani authorities refused to release Omar
Sheikh “for fear the evidence they produce in court
might acquit Sheikh and reveal too much…. Sheikh is
also the man who, on the instructions of General
Mahmoud Ahmed, the then head of Pakistan’s
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), wired $100,000
before the 9/11 attacks to Mohammed Atta, the lead
hijacker.”1 The story was more than a prejudicial shot
at Pakistan by the Indian government. Agence France
Press confirmed that a “highly-placed government
source” the “damning link” between “the General and
the transfer of funds to Atta was part of evidence
which India has officially sent to the US. `The
evidence we have supplied to the US is of a much wider
range and depth than just one piece of paper linking a
rogue general to some misplaced act of terrorism,’ the
source said.” The French report was quoted liberally
in the Wall Street Journal, and Mahmoud was forced to
step down as a result. The French report sank from
view with the resignation of Mahmoud. Of course – as
head of the ISI, he had standing covert ties to Al
Qaeda and the Taliban. Of course …

His closed conference with Mark Grossman has received
little mention, while attention has been slathered on
others who met with the general on or about September
11, because he lacks name recognition. The ISI
director’s meetings with Tenet, Armitage, killer pimp
in the State Department, and other ranking
administration officials have lit up the DarpaNet, but
Grossman’s name is scarcely mentioned.

FBI whistle-blower Sibel Edmonds “whispered
cryptically” to AntiWar.com reporter Christopher
Deliso concerning Grossman’s little-known role in the
Valerie Plame affair. Grossman, she said, “has not
been as high profile in the press” but “don’t overlook
him – he is very important.”2

No John Dean

His importance is multilateral. Mark Grossman is
considered a key figure in the Plame investigation,
but proescutor Fitzgerald has his own hidden
conflict-of-interests, and is not likely to make
substantive progress in the case against any ranking
official. A Wikipedia entry explains his appointment,
and when considered in context, why the investigation
has no legs: ” … Fitzgerald was named by Deputy
Attorney General James B. Comey after then-Attorney
General John Ashcroft recused himself from the case
due to conflicts of interest. …” Corney “appointed
the U.S. Attorney in Chicago, close friend and former
colleague Patrick Fitzgerald, as Special Counsel to
head the CIA leak grand jury investigation. … In
August 2005, Corney left the DOJ and he is now General
Counsel and Senior Vice President of LOCKHEED
MARTIN.”3 The deputy AG has been richly rewarded.
Fitzgerald can expect the same if he plays ball. Off
duty, Mark Grossman sits on the Cohen Group board of
directors – and Cohen interlocks neatly with
Lockheed’s board. As mentioned, James M. Loy, senior
counselor at the Cohen Group, directs Lockheed, and so
does Joseph W. Ralston, vice chairman the Cohen Group
– a Lockheed Martin sub-contractor.

Lockheed influence on the prosecution … Lockheed
influence on the defense … it wasn’t Ashcroft who
should have recused himself, but Fitzgerald, the
moment James Corney went to work for the aerospace
company, because Grossman represents the defense firm
and lobbies contractually on its behalf.

He entered the Plame picture when a memo written on
June 10, 2003 turned up in the files, written by a
staffer in the State Department’s Bureau of
Intelligence and Research (INR) on behalf of
Undersecretary of State Grossman. In the memo, he
requested a briefing on INR’s opposition to the
administration’s contention that Saddam Hussein had
sent out feelers toward securing uranium from Niger.
The Washington Post reported that Grossman – in the
role of acting secretary of state, “since Secretary of
State Colin L. Powell and Deputy Secretary Richard L.
Armitage were out of the country.” – wanted the letter
marked “secret” preceding “a meeting at the White
House where the discussion was focused on then growing
criticism of Bush’s inclusion in his January State of
the Union speech of the allegation that Hussein had
been seeking uranium. … Grossman has refused to
answer questions about the letter.”4

And he doesn’t own up about his meeting with General
Mahmoud, either. Michel Chossudovsky, a professor of
economics at the University of Ottawa, studied the
question and concludes: “In assessing the alleged
links between the terrorists and the ISI, it should be
understood that Lt. General Ahmed as head of the ISI
was a ‘US approved appointee.’ As head of the ISI
since 1999, he was in liaison with his US counterparts
in the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and
the Pentagon. Also bear in mind that Pakistan’s ISI
remained throughout the entire post Cold War era until
the present, the launch-pad for CIA covert operations
in the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Balkans. … The
Bush Administration had sought the ‘cooperation’ of
those who were directly supporting and abetting the
terrorists. Absurd, but at the same time consistent
with Washington’s broader STRATEGIC and ECONOMIC
objectives in Central Asia.”5

It is certain that those objectives were all that
preoccupied Grossman as he gazed across his polished
desk at Atta’s generous benefactor. But were these the
objectives of the State Department … or the Cohen
Group?

“Access, Insight and Intelligence” is the motto of the
Cohen Group.

Access: “In December 2000, shortly before Cohen left
office, the Pentagon awarded Iridium Satellite LLC a
$72 million contract , without competitive bidding,
that helped save the company’s communications
satellites from destruction. David R. Oliver Jr.
[current director of business development and
technology for Naval Systems, Northrop Grumann
Electronic Sensors and Systems Division], who was a
senior procurement official at the time, said that he
and Cohen were the Pentagon’s principal advocates for
the Iridium deal. Over the past two years, Iridium has
paid the Cohen Group about $400,000 to lobby the
House, Senate and Department of Defense, according to
lobbying disclosure statements.”6

Insight: “At the hub of the Cohen network, the former
secretary makes frequent appearances on CNN, where he
is a commentator on world affairs. He has served as a
director of several corporations, some of which made
arrangements to pay the Cohen Group for bringing in
business, according to documents filed with the SEC.7

Intelligence: “Nowadays, most of Cohen’s mornings
begin with an 8:30 staff meeting in the “Pentagon.”
That’s the Cohen Group’s name for the conference room
where the daily meeting is held. On any given day, the
gathering may include Joseph W. Ralston, a retired Air
Force general and former vice chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff; James M. Loy, who finished a long
public career as deputy secretary of homeland
security; and Marc Grossman, a former undersecretary
of state. Another prominent member of the firm, former
NATO secretary general and British minister of defense
George Robertson, is based overseas.
They form an elaborate network.”8

Postscript: “WASHINGTON — A top Clinton
administration official, former Defense Secretary
William Cohen, sits on the board of Global Crossing.
This is the telecom giant that went belly up Jan. 28
in the fourth largest bankruptcy in U.S. history,
leaving a trail of inflated revenues, top executives
enriching themselves, employees and shareholders
holding the bag, and Arthur Andersen acting as both
consultant and auditor.”9 GHW Bush addressed the
directors of Global Crossing start-up, and as payment
he received stock worth $13 million when the company
went public. Global Crossing employees contributed
another million for GW’s campaign.10 Source

Oil and Violence in Afghanistan: 1979-2004

July 3, 1979
President Carter signed a secret directive aiding opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul, calculated to induce a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. (See: Interview with former President Carter’s National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski)
Mid to Late 1980s

Sept. 1986: In response to apparent successes of the Soviet Hind-D helicopter-gunship in Afghanistan, President Reagan authorized the shipment of Stinger missiles via Pakistan to Afghanistan. Overwhelmingly successful use of the Stinger resulted in neutralization of the Hind-D, and three years later (1989) to full Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The US, wishing to increase its regional influence, worked with the Saudis to import an army of Saudis, Egyptians, and others into Afghanistan. The Saudis chose a member of a wealthy construction family with close royal family ties – Osama bin Laden – to lead the effort. Many of the men bin Laden recruited were connected to the Muslim Brotherhood, a regional fundamentalist group. bin Laden’s newly constructed army (shortly thereafter known as al Qaeda) successfully fought to settle Afghanistan in favor of an Afghan fundamentalist group, the Taliban. [See: Against All Enemies, Inside America’s War on Terror; Richard A. Clark, Free Press (Simon & Schuster), 2004]
Dec. 1991

Collapse of the Soviet Union, and the birth of Caspian Sea nations of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan (1).
1993

US Oil companies reached for the estimated 200 billion barrels of oil in the Caspian Sea area. (Also: 2 3 4 5 6)
1995

Unocal, seeking to build a pipeline across Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan (for delivery to energy hungry Asia via the Pakistani Arabian Sea coast), signed an agreement with Turkmenistan for natural gas purchasing rights for transport through a proposed pipeline (7). (See also 2) Unocal also signed an agreement with Turkmenistan for an oil pipeline (8) along the same route.
Aug. 13, 1996

Unocal and Delta Oil Co. of Saudi Arabia signed a memorandum of understanding (9) with Russia’s Gazprom and Turkmenistan’s Turkmenrusgaz to build a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan via Afghanistan.
Oct. 1997

Unocal and other oil companies formed Central Asia Gas Pipeline, Ltd. (CentGas) (10) in preparation for building the trans-Afghanistan pipeline.
1997
US Congress passed a resolution declaring the Caspian and Caucasus region to be a “zone of vital American interests”.
Dec. 1997

Unocal invited Taliban representatives to their corporate headquarters in Sugarland, TX. (11) to discuss the pipeline project. They were thereafter invited to Washington for meetings with Clinton Administration officials.
Jan. 1998

Unocal agreement signed between Pakistan, Turkmenistan, and the Taliban (12) to arrange funding of the gas pipeline project, with Unocal also considering a Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-Arabian Sea coast oil pipeline.
1998

VP Dick Cheney, then CEO of the giant oil services company, Halliburton, stated: “I cannot think of a time when we have had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian.” (13)
Feb. 28, 1998

Unocal VP International Relations addressed US House of Representatives(14) clearly stating that the Taliban government should be removed and replaced by a government acceptable to his company. He argued that creation of a 42 inch oil pipeline across Afghanistan would yield a Western profit increase of 500% by 2015.
March 1998

Unocal announced a delay in finalizing the pipeline project (15) due to Afghanistan’s continuing civil war
Aug. 7, 1998

Terrorists said to be linked to Osama bin Laden bombed two US embassies (16) in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
Aug. 20, 1998

Clinton ordered a 75-80 cruise missile attacks (17) on Afghanistan and Sudan targets.
Aug. 21, 1998

Unocal temporarily halted development of the pipeline(18) project following the US missile attack above.
Aug. 22, 1998

BBC reported that the US and al-Queda leader Osama bin Laden exchanged warnings (19) of things to come following the cruise missile attacks ordered two days earlier. (You may be required to copy and paste -> newsid_156000/156273.stmNov. 1998

The Trade and Development Agency commissioned Enron to perform a feasibility study (20) re: an east-to-west route, crossing the Caspian Mountains and terminating in Turkey along the Mediterranean. (The route was considered impractical as it would cost an estimated $1 billion more than a route through Afghanistan.)
Dec. 1998

Unocal issued a statement (21) that it had withdrawn from the pipeline project on 12/4/98, noting “business reasons.”
April 30, 1999

Excluding US interests, Afghanistan, Pakistan, & Turkmenistan reactivated the pipeline project (22 – cached copy via Google) (see also 22a)
July 4, 1999
An executive order (13129) was issued by Clinton, freezing US held Taliban assets (23), & prohibiting trade plus other transactions. (See also: 23a)
Oct. 15, 1999
UN Security Council Resolution 1267 imposed sanctions on the Taliban (24a), demanding that the Taliban “turn over the terrorist Usama Bin Laden without further delay…”
Oct. 12, 2000

The USS Cole was attacked (25) in the Yemeni port of Aden.
Dec. 19, 2000
UN Security Council Resolution 1333 (24b) demanded compliance with Resolution 1267, and imposed further sanctions on the Taliban (24b).
Jan. – Feb. 2001

Upon taking office, the Bush administration immediately engaged in active negotiations with Taliban representatives (27) with meetings in Washington, DC, Berlin, and Islamabad. During this time the Taliban government hired Laila Helms, niece of former CIA director Richard Helms (28), as their go-between in negotiations with the US government.

Bush (oil) administration (29) includes:

Dick Cheney, VP: Until 2000 – President of Halliburton (in position to build the Afghan pipeline).
Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor: 1991-2000 – Manager of Chevron Oil, and Kazakhstan go-between.
Donald Evans, Sec. Commerce: former CEO, Tom Brown, Inc. (a $1.2 billion oil company).
Gale Norton, Sec. Interior: former national chairwoman of the Coalition of Republican Environmental Advocates – funded by, among others, BP Amoco.
Spencer Abraham, Sec. Energy: Up through his failed bid for senatorial reelection in the 2000, he received more oil and gas industry money than all but three other senators (January 1997 through July 2000) (30).
Thomas White, Secretary of the Army: former Vice Chairman of Enron and a large shareholder of that company’s stock.

May 15, 2001
Regarding the placement of the Unocal Pipeline, a US Official delivered this ultimatum to the Taliban (via the Pakistani delegation acting as their interlocutors): “Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs.” (Ref: Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie in “Forbidden Truth” (31) (Book’s Preface online-pdf format (32) )
June 2001

US Ambassador to Yemen, Ms. Barbara Bodine forbade Deputy Director FBI John O’Neill (33) from entering Yemen in that group’s ongoing investigation into al-Qaeda and the USS Cole attack.
July 2001

Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, was told by senior American officials in mid-July (34a) that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October. (See also BBC report(34b))
Aug. 2, 2001

Last meeting with the Taliban (5 weeks before the 9/11/01 attack). (35) Christina Rocca, in charge of Central Asian affairs for US government, met with the Taliban Ambassador to Pakistan (Abdul Salam Zaeef) in Islamabad, at which time Taliban representatives were reminded that the US had provided monetary relief assistance. (The above referenced State Department report fails to mention that oil topics were also discussed.) (36).
Aug. 22, 2001

John O’Neill – Deputy director FBI, established national expert on the al-Qaeda network and in charge of that investigation, resigned in protest over the Bush Administration’s obstruction (37) of those investigations. (See also: New Yorker 1/14/02 (37a) )
Aug. 23, 2001

John O’Neill accepted position as chief of security, World Trade Center buildings (38). NOTE: Electronic security for the World Trade Center was provided by Securacom (now Stratesec), a company initially founded with Kuwaiti capital. Marvin P. Bush, President George W. Bush’s youngest brother served as a Securicom/Stratesec board member from 1993 through 2000. (38a)
Sept. 4-11, 2001

July – Sept. 2000 – Pakistani Intelligence Chief (ISI) Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad reportedly instructed British born Saeed Sheikh (alias: Ahmad Umar Sheikh, Mustafa Muhammad Ahmed, ….) in Pakistan to wire $100,000 (7/00-9/00) to two Florida bank accounts held by hijacker Mohammed Atta. (Washington Post 10-7-01 (39a), (Times of India 10-9-01 (30b), (Dawn News 10-9-01 (39c), (World Net Daily 1-30-02 (30d), (Times of India 08-1-03 (39e)

Sept. 4, 2001 – ISI’s Lt. General Ahmad entered the United States and subsequently met with many top officials within the Bush Administration. (Philadelphia City Paper 12-20-01 (39f), (Counterpunch 10-1-02 (39g)

Sept. 11, 2001 – Lt. General Ahmad concluded a breakfast meeting with Senator Bob Graham (D-FL), Representative Porter Goss (R-FL), and Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ). (Graham and Goss subsequently served as CO-Chairs of the Joint-Intelligence Committee investigating the 9/11 attacks.) (Counterpunch 10-1-02 (39h) (Online Journal 8-7-03 (39i), (S.A.Tribune 4-11-04 (39j)

During Ahmad’s brief stay in the US, he also met with: Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Marc Grossman, and the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE). (Dawn News 9-10-01 (39k), (Reuters 9/13/01 (39l), (Deutsche Presse-Agentur 9-12-01 (39m), Center for Cooperative Research – See: section: Sept. 11-16 (39n)
Sept. 9, 2001

Ahmed Shah Masood was assassinated in Afghanistan (40). His assassination severely weakened the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, which he had led.
Sept. 11, 2001

World Trade Center attacked by al Qaeda; fifteen of the nineteen were from Saudi Arabia [41a, 41b]. John O’Neill, WTC security chief, and former deputy director of the FBI, where he headed investigation of the al-Qaeda network, was killed in those buildings on that day. (41c)
Sept. 28, 2001
UN Security Council Resolution 1373 imposed further sanctions on the Taliban (26).
Oct. 7, 2001

Military operations with aerial bombardment began in Afghanistan (42)
Oct. 31, 2001

The Bush White House drafted an unprecedented executive order (43a) sealing presidential records including those of prior administrations. [See also: US House Committee on Governmental Reform analysis (43b)]
Dec. 22, 2001

The US-backed interim government headed by Hamid Karzai took office in Kabul, Afghanistan (44a). (Hamid Karzai had formerly functioned as a Unocal Corporation consultant (44b) )
Dec. 31, 2001

Bush appointed Zalmay Khalilzad, as his Special Envoy to Afghanistan (45a). Zhalilzad, like Karzai had earlier functioned as a Unocal consultant, participating in 1997 talks between Unocal and Taliban officials. (Regarding Zhalilzad’s “neocon” credentials, See: 45b).
Jan. 29, 2002

CNN reported: “President Bush personally asked Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle Tuesday to limit the congressional investigation into the events of 9/11/01” (46).
Feb 8, 2002

Afghanistan’s interim ruler Hamid Karzai and the Pakistan president agreed to revive plans (47a) for a trans-Afghanistan pipeline..
Feb 9, 2002

Turkmenistan officially stated that they hoped their trans-Afghanistan route would be soon built.
Feb. 2002

Proposal to deploy US Special Operations forces to the Caucasus state of Georgia (47b) (would help enforce a Washington pipeline policy – neutralizing Russian influence in Central Asia.)
May 13, 2002

Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai to hold talks with his Pakistani and Turkmenistan counterparts (47c) regarding a pipeline from Turkmenistan, through Afghanistan, and through Pakistan to the coast. Mohammad Alim Razim, Afghanistan’s minister for Mines and Industries, stated Unocal was considered “the lead company” to build the pipeline. (See also: 47d.)
May 30, 2002
Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkmenistan agreed to construct a gas pipeline to the subcontinent (48a) (See also: 48b.)
Nov. 2004
The annual US Government estimate for opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan was released Nov. 2004 (49): approximately 206,700 hectares of poppy were grown in 2004, representing a 239% increase in production over 2003 estimates.
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