Role of Alleged CIA Asset in Mumbai Attacks Being Downplayed
Recent press reports on developments with regard to last months attacks in
Mumbai, India indicate the role of Dawood Ibrahim, a wanted crime boss,
terrorist, and drug trafficker, is being downplayed, possibly the result of a
deal taking place behind the scenes between the governments of the US,
Pakistan, and India, to have others involved in the Mumbai attacks turned over
while quietly diverting attention from a man who some say could reveal
embarrassing secrets about the CIAs involvement in criminal enterprises.
December 10, 2008
by Jeremy R. Hammond
The role in the terrorist attacks in Mumbai last month of an underworld kingpin
that heads an organization known as D-Company, has known ties to Pakistans
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and who is alleged to have ties with the CIA
is apparently being whitewashed, suggesting that his capture and handover to
India might prove inconvenient for either the ISI or the CIA, or both.
It was Dawood Ibrahim who was initially characterized by press reports as being
the mastermind behind the attacks. Now, that title of mastermind is being
given to Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi by numerous media accounts reporting that
Pakistan security forces have raided a training camp of the group
Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which evidence has indicated was behind the attacks.
Lakhvi was reportedly captured in the raid and is now in custody.
At the same time Ibrahims role is being downplayed, Lakhvis known role is
being exaggerated. Initial reports described him as the training specialist for
LeT, but the major media outlets like the New York Times and the London Times,
citing government sources, have since promoted his status to that of commander
of operations for the group.
The only terrorist from the Mumbai attacks to be captured alive, Azam Amir
Kasab, characterized Ibrahim, not Lakhvi, as the mastermind of those attacks,
according to earlier press accounts.
Kasab reportedly told his interrogators that he and his fellow terrorists were
trained under Lakhvi, also known as Chacha, at a camp in Pakistan. Indian
officials also traced calls from a satellite phone used by the terrorists to
Lakhvi.
But the phone had also been used to call Yusuf Muzammil, also known as Abu
Yusuf, Abu Hurrera, and Yahah. And it has been Muzammil, not Lakhvi, who has
previously been described as the military commander of LeT. It was an
intercepted call to Muzammil on November 18 that put the Indian Navy and Coast
Guard on high alert to be on the lookout for any foreign vessels from Pakistan
entering Indian waters.
Kasab told his interrogators that his team had set out from Karachi, Pakistan,
on a ship belonging to Dawood Ibrahim, the MV Alpha. They then hijacked an
Indian fishing trawler, the Kuber, to pass through Indian territorial waters to
elude the Navy and Coast Guard that were boarding and searching suspect ships.
Although the MV Alpha was subsequently found and seized by the Indian Navy,
there have been few, if any, developments about this aspect of the
investigation in press accounts, such as whether it has been confirmed or not
that the ship was owned by Ibrahim.
Upon arriving off the coast near the city, they were received by inflatable
rubber dinghies that had been arranged by an associate of Ibrahims in Mumbai.
The planning and execution of the attacks are indicative of the mastermind role
not of either Lakhvi or Muzammil, but of Ibrahim, an Indian who is intimately
familiar with the city. It was in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) that Ibrahim rose
through the ranks of the underworld to become a major organized crime boss.
At least two other Indians were also connected to the attacks, Mukhtar Ahmed
and Tausef Rahman. They were arrested for their role in obtaining SIM cards
used in the cell phones of the terrorists. Ahmed, according to Indian
officials, had in fact been recruited by a special counter-insurgency police
task force as an undercover operative. His exact role is still being
investigated.
One of the SIM cards used was possibly purchased from New Jersey. Investigators
are looking into this potential link to the US, as well.
Dawood Ibrahim went from underworld kingpin to terrorist in 1993, when he was
connected to a series of bombings in Bombay that resulted in 250 deaths. He is
wanted by Interpol and was designated by the US as a global terrorist in 2003.
Its believed Ibrahim has been residing in Karachi, and Indian officials have
accused Pakistans ISI of protecting him.
Ibrahim is known to be a major drug trafficker responsible for shipping
narcotics into the United Kingdom and Western Europe.
According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), most Afghan
opium (or its derivative, heroin, which is increasingly being produced in the
country before export) is smuggled through Iran and Turkey en route by land to
Europe; but the percentage that goes to Pakistan seems to mostly find its way
directly to the UK, either by plane or by ship.
Afghanistan is the worlds leading producer of opium, a trend that developed
during the CIA-backed mujahedeen effort to oust the Soviet Union from the
country, with the drug trade serving to help finance the war.
The principle recipient of CIA-ISI funding was Gulbaddin Hekmatyar, one of the
major drug lords. Hekmatyar has since joined with the Taliban in the insurgency
effort to expel foreign forces from the country not the Soviet Union, this
time, but the US.
A Taliban ban on the cultivation of opium poppies in 2000 resulted in the near
total eradication of the crop. But since the US overthrow of the regime in
2001, Afghanistan has once again become the worlds leading producer of opium,
surpassing all previous records.
While Hekmatyar chose to side with anti-government forces, a number of other
warlords involved in the drug trade were members of the Northern Alliance to
whom the CIA doled out cash in the US effort to overthrow the Taliban following
the 9/11 attacks.
One such warlord is Abdul Rashid Dostum, who was appointed Chief of Staff of
the army under the government of Hamid Karzai, and who has been described in US
intelligences own files as a Tier One Warlord.
That list includes a number of other high ranking officials within the
Afghanistan government, including former defense minister and parliament member
Marshal Mohammad Fahim, Interior Minister for Counter-Narcotics General
Mohammad Daoud, and former governor of Helmand province (now by far the largest
producer of opium) Sher Mohammed Akhundzada.
Although government officials parroted by the mainstream media tend to
characterize the Afghan opium trade as being controlled by the Taliban, in fact
the estimated drug profits of all anti-government elements (AGEs) is a mere
fraction of the trades total estimated export value. The UNODC estimated the
export value this year at $3.4 billion. Of that, AGEs profited between $250-470
million, less than 14% of the total trade. Moreover, what fraction of that
percentage has gone specifically to the Taliban as opposed to other AGEs is
unknown.
Furthermore, while the Taliban profits from the production of opium through
ushr, a 10% tax on all agricultural products, and possibly through a protection
racket in which it receives compensation for providing security along smuggling
routes, the UNODC has acknowledged that there is little indication that the
Taliban itself is responsible for either the actual production or trafficking
of the drug.
This is an inconvenient truth for the US, which has so far managed through its
propaganda efforts to successfully obfuscate the truth about the Afghan drug
trade and portray the Taliban as being almost wholly responsible.
A known drug trafficker, Dawood Ibrahim is naturally also involved in money
laundering, which is perhaps where the role of gambling operations in Nepal
comes into the picture.
Yoichi Shimatsu, former editor of the Japan Times, wrote last month after the
Mumbai attacks that Ibrahim had worked with the US to help finance the
mujahedeen during the 1980s and that because he knows too much about the USs
darker secrets in the region, he could never be allowed to be turned over to
India.
The recent promotion of Lakhvi to mastermind of the attacks while Ibrahims
name disappears from media reports would seem to lend credence to Shimatsus
assertion.
Investigative journalist Wayne Madsen similarly reported that according to
intelligence sources, Dawood Ibrahim is a CIA asset, both as a veteran of the
mujahedeen war and in a continuing connection with his casino and drug trade
operations in Kathmandu, Nepal. A deal had been made earlier this year to have
Pakistan hand Ibrahim over to India, but the CIA was fearful that this would
lead to too many of its dirty secrets coming to light, including the criminal
activities of high level personnel within the agency.
One theory on the Mumbai attacks is that it was backlash for this double-cross
that was among other things intended to serve as a warning that any such
arrangement could have further serious consequences.
Although designated as a major international terrorist by the US, media reports
in India have characterized the USs past interest in seeing Ibrahim handed
over as less than enthusiastic. Former Indian Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani
wrote in his memoir, My Country My Life, that he made a great effort to get
Pakistan to hand over Ibrahim, and met with then US Secretary of State Colin
Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice (now Secretary of State)
to pressure Pakistan to do so. But he was informed by Powell that Pakistan
would hand over Ibrahim only with some strings attached and that then
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf would need more time before doing so.
The handover, needless to say, never occurred. The Pakistan government has also
publicly denied that Ibrahim is even in the country; a denial that was repeated
following the recent Mumbai attacks.
Others suspected of involvement in the attacks and named among the 20
individuals India wants Pakistan to turn over also have possible connections to
the CIA, including Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the founder of LeT, and Maulana Masood
Azhar, both veterans of the CIA-backed mujahedeen effort.
Azhar had been captured in 1994 and imprisoned in India for his role as leader
of the Pakistani-based terrorist group Karkut-ul-Mujahidee n. He was released,
however, in 1999 in exchange for hostages from the takeover of Indian Airlines
Flight 814, which was hijacked during its flight from Kathmandu, Nepal to
Delhi, India and redirected to Afghanistan. After Azhars release, he formed
Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), which was responsible for an attack on the Indian
parliament in 2001 that led Pakistan and India to the brink of war. LeT was
also blamed for the attack alongside JeM.
Both LeT and JeM have links to the ISI, which has used the groups as proxies in
the conflict with India over the territory of Kashmir.
Hafiz Saeed travelled to Peshawar to join the mujahedeen cause during the
Soviet-Afghan war. Peshawar served as the base of operations for the CIA, which
worked closely with the ISI to finance, arm, and train the mujahedeen. It was
in Peshawar that Saeed became the protégé of Abdullah Azzam, who founded an
organization called Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK) along with a Saudi individual
named Osama bin Laden.
MAK worked alongside the CIA-ISI operations to recruit Arabs to the ranks of
the mujahedeen. The ISI, acting as proxy for the CIA, chose mainly to channel
its support to Afghans, such as Gulbaddin Hekmatyar. The U.S. claims the CIA
had no relationship with MAK, but bin Ladens operation, which later evolved
into al-Qaeda, must certainly have been known to, and approved by, the CIA.
But there are indications that the CIAs relationship with MAK and al-Qaeda go
well beyond having shared a common enemy and mutual interests in the
Soviet-Afghan war. A number of al-Qaeda associates appear to have been
protected individuals.
Branches of MAK existed elsewhere, including in the United States. The US
Treasury Department lists one of MAKs aliases as Al-Kifah. The Al-Kifah
Refugee Center in Brooklyn, New York, served as a recruitment center during the
1980s, but its operations did not end after the end of the Soviet occupation of
Afghanistan. Al-Kifah was also a recruitment center for efforts by extremist
groups in the Balkans.
Just as in Afghanistan, the US also had mutual interests with Bosnian Muslims
and extremist groups acting in the Balkans. MAK had since evolved into al-Qaeda
under Osama bin Laden, which had links to groups operating in Bosnia. Despite
an arms embargo against such groups, they managed to obtain weapons and supply
shipments in which the US at best looked the other way and at worst played an
active role.
The operations to arm al-Qaeda linked groups in Bosnia were carried under the
watch of then director of the US European Command Intelligence Directorate Gen.
Michael V. Hayden. Hayden subsequently served as the director of the National
Security Agency from 1999 to 2005 and is currently the Director of Central
Intelligence, or DCI, which is the head of the CIA.
A former official at the US consular office in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Michael
Springman went public after 9/11 to explain how his office was used by the CIA
to bring recruits to the US for training during the 1980s.
The Jeddah office is where most of the 9/11 hijackers obtained their visas to
enter the US.
Two other of the hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, were in fact
known to the CIA and were being monitored. Despite being known al-Qaeda
operatives, they were allowed to enter the US under their real names and
neither the FBI nor the State Department were notified.
The US explains this as the result of the CIA losing the terrorists trail when
they travelled to Thailand after an al-Qaeda meeting in Kuala Lumpur. But this
explanation does not stand up to scrutiny since it was known that they had
obtained visas to enter the US. Thus, even if the CIA did in fact lose track of
the terrorists, standard procedure should have dictated that the FBI and State
Department be alerted.
The 9/11 Joint Inquiry and subsequent 9/11 Commission were apparently satisfied
with the CIAs explanation that it lost al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar, and nobody was
ever held accountable for the mistake of knowingly allowing two known
al-Qaeda operatives on the terrorist watchlist to enter the United States
unhindered.
Upon arriving in the US, al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar were assisted by an individual
under FBI surveillance for his possible connections to terrorist groups and,
furthermore, even lived in a house rented from an FBI informant. But the FBI
claims that it didnt know anything about the men, despite them using their
real names and being listed in the phone book, because the CIA hadnt informed
them the two were in the country. The Joint Inquiry report described this as
perhaps the single greatest missed opportunity to break up the 9/11 operation
and prevent the attacks.
Additionally, it was in fact the CIA who not once, but at least on six separate
occasions, approved a visa, including from the office in Jeddah, for or the
entry of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, a.k.a. the Blind Sheikh, into the US,
despite his known connection to terrorist acts in Egypt, including the
assassination of Anwar Sadat, and despite having been on the State Departments
terrorist watchlist. This, too, was described as a series of mistakes after
the government was forced to admit that it had occurred an explanation that
the New York Times, which reported this information in a series of articles,
seemed to find perfectly satisfactory.
Many, however, find such incompetency and coincidence theories to be simply not
credible, preferring instead alternative, oftentimes much more plausible,
conspiracy theories.
The Blind Sheikh had also travelled to Peshawar during the mujahedeen effort,
and was good friends with Gulbaddin Hekmatyar, the CIAs top asset during the
Soviet-Afghan war. He later became the spiritual head of the terrorist group
that carried out the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, a plot which the
FBI had known about in advance through two or more informants.
One of the informants served as a bodyguard for the Blind Sheikh and was made
responsible for obtaining materials to make the bomb with. Tape recordings he
secretly made of conversations with his FBI handlers reveal that the original
sting operation involved a plan to replace a chemical used in making the bomb
with an inert simulant that would render it inoperative. But this plan was
withdrawn by a supervisor at the FBI and the terrorist cell was allowed to go
ahead and make a real bomb which was then used to blow up the World Trade
Center.
Another notable character connected to Al-Kifah training and recruitment
efforts for al-Qaeda is Ali Mohammed. He also happened to be an in FBI
informant, a CIA asset, and a member of the special forces in the US Army. It
is Ali Mohammed whom some suspect of actually being the mastermind of the 1993
WTC bombing. He was later charged in connection to the 1998 bombings of the US
embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, but has since seemingly disappeared off the
map.
After the 9/11 attacks, the investigation into the financing of the attacks led
to Omar Saeed Sheikh, a British national of Pakistani origin. According to
Indian officials, a joint investigation with the FBI revealed evidence that it
was at the direction of the head of the ISI, Lt. Gen. Mahmud Ahmed, that Omar
Sheikh transferred $100,000 to lead hijacker Mohammed Atta in Florida.
Omar Sheikh, a known associate of Osama bin Laden, was captured and imprisoned
in India for his role in the kidnapping of American and British nationals in
1994. He was released in 1999 along with Maulana Massod Azhar in exchange for
the hostages from Flight 814. According to former Pakistan president Pervez
Musharraf, Omar Sheikh was also an agent of Britains spy agency, MI6, for whom
he served in operations in the Balkans.
Omar Sheikhs role in the 9/11 attacks has also been downplayed. Mention of him
in the media instead focus on his role as the man responsible for the murder of
Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. He is currently being held in
Pakistan on charges relating to Pearls murder.
After Mahmud Ahmeds alleged role in the 9/11 attacks became known publicly,
Musharraf quietly replaced him and the whole affair was hushed up in the US.
When a reporter from a foreign news agency asked then National Security Advisor
Condoleezza Rice whether she was aware of the reports that the ISI chief had
financed the hijackers and was in Washington meeting with high level officials
at the time of the attacks, she denied having seen that report and protested
that, he was certainly not meeting with me.
Interestingly, the White House website transcript of the press briefing
censored the words ISI chief from the reporters question, despite the words
clearly being audible in the video of the briefing.
The 9/11 Commission also acted to whitewash Mahmud Ahmeds alleged role in the
attacks. Despite the question of the ISI chiefs involvement being included on
a list of items for the Commission to investigate from families of the victims
of the attacks, the Commissions report made no mention of it, either to
confirm or deny the information, which, despite having received zero coverage
in the US major media (with the one exception of a citation of a report from
the Times of India in a blog on the Wall Street Journals opinion website), was
widely reported internationally (as well as in US alternative media).
Rather, the 9/11 Commission simply acted as though such reports didnt exist.
Despite Bob Graham, one of the chairs of the earlier Congressional Joint
Inquiry, publicly stating that he was surprised by the evidence of foreign
government involvement (he added that this information would not be made public
for another twenty or thirty years when it would be due for release to the
national archives), the 9/11 Commission report arrived at the opposite
conclusion, saying there was no evidence of any such involvement and, moreover,
that the question of who financed the attacks was of little practical
significance.
Another former head of the ISI is now being privately accused by the US of
involvement with the group responsible for the Mumbai attacks, according to
reports citing a document listing former ISI chief Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul and four
other former heads of Pakistans intelligence agency as being involved in
supporting terrorist networks. The individuals named have been recommended to
the UN Security Council to be named as international terrorists, according to
Pakistans The News.
The document has been provided to the Pakistan government and also accuses Gul,
who was head of the ISI from 1987-1989, of providing assistance to criminal
groups in Kabul, as well as to groups responsible for recruiting and training
militants to attack US-led forces in Afghanistan, including the Taliban.
Hamid Gul responded to the reports by calling the allegations hilarious. The US
denied that it had made any such recommendations to the UN.
But the US has similarly accused the ISI of involvement in the bombing of
Indias embassy in Kabul last July. This was unusual not because of the
allegation of an ISI connection to terrorism but because it was in such stark
contrast with US attempts to publicly portray Pakistan as a staunch ally in its
war on terrorism when the country was under the dictatorship of Pervez
Musharraf.
The US attitude toward Pakistan shifted once an elected government came to
power that has been more willing to side with the overwhelming belief among the
public that it is the war on terrorism itself that has exacerbated the
problem of extremist militant groups and led to further terrorist attacks
within the country, such as the assassination of former prime minister Benazir
Bhutto last year or the bombing of the Marriot Hotel in September. While the
worlds attention has been focused on the attacks in Mumbai, a bomb blast in
Peshawar last week killed 21 and injured 90.
While the purported US document names Gul and others as terrorist supporters,
another report, from Indian intelligence, indicates that the terrorists who
carried out the attacks in Mumbai were among 500 trained by instructors from
the Pakistan military, according to the Sunday edition of The Times. This
training of the 10 known Mumbai terrorists would have taken place prior to
their recent preparation for these specific attacks by the LeT training
specialist Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi.
But while Lakhvi, Muzammil, and Hafiz Saeed have continued to be named in
connection with last months attacks in Mumbai, the name of Dawood Ibrahim
seems to be either disappearing altogether or his originally designated role as
the accused mastermind of the attacks being credited now instead to Lakhvi in
media accounts.
Whether this is a deliberate effort to downplay Ibrahims role in the attacks
so as not to have to force Pakistan to turn him over because of embarrassing
revelations pertaining to the CIAs involvement with known terrorists and drug
traffickers that development could possibly produce isnt certain. But what is
certain is that the CIA has had a long history of involvement with such
characters and that the US has a track record of attempting to keep information
about the nature of such involvement in the dark or to cover it up once it
reaches the light of public scrutiny.
Related: The Mumbai Attacks: More than Meets the Eye
Jeremy R. Hammond is the editor of Foreign Policy Journal, a website dedicated
to providing news, critical analysis, and opinion commentary on U.S. foreign
policy from outside of the standard framework offered by government officials
and the mainstream corporate media, particularly with regard to the "war on
terrorism" and events in the Middle East. He has also written for numerous
other online publications. You can contact him by clicking here.
© 2008 Foreign Policy Journal
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