From the Telegraph (India):
The Pakistan foreign office had paid tens of thousands of dollars to lobbyists in the US to get anti-Pakistan references dropped from the 9/11 inquiry commission report, The Friday Times has claimed.
The Pakistani weekly said its story is based on disclosures made by foreign service officials to the Public Accounts Committee at a secret meeting in Islamabad on Tuesday.
It claimed that some of the commission members were also bribed to prevent them from including damaging information about Pakistan.
The magazine said the PAC grilled officials in the presence of foreign secretary Riaz Mohammad Khan and special secretary Sher Afghan on the money paid to lobbyists.
“The disclosure sheds doubt on 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,†it said.
The report quoted an officer as saying that dramatic changes were made in the final draft of the inquiry commission after the lobbyists got to work. The panel was formed to probe the September 11 terror attack and make suggestions to fight terrorism.After the commission tipped the lobbyists about the damaging revelations on Pakistan’s role in 9/11, they contacted the panel members and asked them to go soft on the country. The Friday Times claimed that a lot of money was used to silence these members.
(via Allah)
Pakistan was an ally we desperately needed after 911, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the 911 Commission Report, as a thank you to Musharraf for his stalwart support (and his ability to clamp down on extremists) soft-peddled Pakistan’s involvement with al Qaeda, its madrassahs, and its internal intelligence services’ complicity in terror activity (we knew Pakistan’s intelligence services were rife with al Qaeda sympathizers) in the final draft.
I would, however, be quite suprised to learn that 911 Commission members took money to do so.
At any rate, we’ll see what kind of legs this story has.
to be clear- the story says money was paid to lobbyists to have those references dropped…which to me doesn’t mean that,say, there was any pre-breifings of Pakistani officials of the contents of the 9/11 report by the panel who then held out their hand in a “whatever is in my hand when I open my eyes must have floated down from the sky” sort of thing. The note that the lobbyists were tipped at the end of the story seems dubious at best…
On the one hand, the money could have been paid as a sort of general “be pro-Pakistan” lobbying effort. On the other, it’s possible Pakistani officials knew that there were some connections between Pakistan and Al-Queda (I’m not saying Pakistan the Government, just the country in general), and knew that highlighting those connections in the 9/11 commision report would only serve to distance the US from Pakistan and ensure Al-Queda’s influence in Pakistan grew.
In both those possible narratives, I don’t think this is huge. And since this story is coming from an Indian paper- who may not be so kind in interpreting the events and actions surrounding Pakistan- I’m going to wait for more info before tossing grenades.
Pakistan is diverging greatly from India in terms of relationship with the US. Pakistan is desending further and further into chaos.
Plus, the Pakistani public is hostile to America.
I can only assume that the reason I am repeatedly singled out for the super security line at the airport is because I bounced that fucking check to Dick Thornburgh. I swear to God I didn’t know my wife bought that dinette until I got home. I travel a LOT Dick, now leave me the hell ALONE!
No way, “lost”, Dick Thornburgh couldn’t fix a parking ticket.
Some Guy:
I agree with your reluctance to accept the initial premise of the story; there is too much information missing to consider otherwise.
However, one can hardly say that the truthfulness of any story can be realistically accepted based upon the Paper of origin. That is, unless, we’re talking of the NYT, because they rock in that department.
Words that cause me to pause about this story:
1. Indian
2. Newspaper
The link is to an Indian paper; the original story comes from a Pakistani paper.
I call shenanigans. True, the Bush admin probably would have acted to shield the Pakis if the Admin had been able to exercise any control/influence over the Commission, but they had no such control. Jamie Gorelick? Tom Kean? Get real. If there’s anything at all to this story, it probably will prove to be cash plain and simple.
I went to try and look up the original article, and sadly it seems The Friday Times is a pure subscription service online…so maybe they’re like the NYT of Pakistan?
But I’ll avoid being obstinante for a moment and assume the Telegraph article is not mis-representing the Times piece and the Times piece is also correct…the question then becomes, to what end was such a redaction made?
If the US Government removed the findings from the public report to avoid anti-Pakistan blowback, but we have remained operationally honest to the findings (in that we have established further intelligence connections with Pakistan and inside Pakistan and we are preforming effective military operations in Pakistan), this seems that it should be a non-story…but I can see how it could blow up ala the Dubai Ports World deal.
Why would I have no problem with the redaction in the above senario? Just because 9/11 opened new problems for American foreign policy to deal with, it didn’t necessarily antiqute previous problems…like, say, the incredible amount of security and diplomatic power leveraged by the US in keeping the Pakistan/India conflict from becoming what it could one day be (a nuclear conflict). While Musharif is by no means a reformer (indeed it’s easy to make the case he’s as odious as some of the leaders we would like to take out), Pakistan sits on too many power seams of globalization for America to simply “reverse course” and imagine that some outcome of worth would be the result for standing on the moral highground.
Now, if the redaction also resulted in the US continuing to turn a blind eye to a number of issues inside Pakistan (both in terms of Al Queda operations in Pakistan and possible links between the Pakistani government and Islamisist in general)…then we have a real problem.
It means, that u.s. officials accepts money. Hopefully, they might have got money with different countries, like india-US Nuclear Agreement March 2006 outside NPT treaty.
Which leaves it, at best, at TWO layers of newspapers this story is coming from, and, frankly, I do not know if we can be sure that the Indian newspaper is not misrepresenting the story as it was originally printed, much less how accurate it was in the original printing.
I did wade through the modifiers and antecedents to come to that understanding, but where I was, I wasn’t 100% sure the story they quoted came part, in whole, or at all from the Pakistani paper. Thanks for at least confirming my conclusion after getting through the antecedent maze, I wasn’t sure.
Turing word: ‘under’ as in “Now I understand what they meant.”
quiggs may be on to something though, but I lack the knowledge of the politics to really be sure. Did the members of the 9/11 commission have foreign policy pragmatism (“They know it, we know it, let’s save the confrontational rhetoric for another time.”) at their hearts in leaving Pakistani connections on the cutting room floor? Or was it, as Some Guy hinted as a possibility, willfully turning a blind eye to Pakistan’s problems for any number of reasons?
Correction: I should say “for any number of less admirable reasons.”
I linked from 911 Commission Bribed? I dunno about this one. I know I’ve been in a mean mood lately but I don’t think there’s much of anything I’d put past the commission or the Pakistanis.
The text of what was printed in the Pakistani newspaper, The Friday Times, is as follows below.
Quote :
Did Pakistan influence the 9/11 Commission Report?
Ahmed Rauf
According to an FO official, “dramatic changes” were made in the final draft of the 9/11 Commission Report after Pakistani lobbyists convinced the commission’s members to remove anti-Pakistan findings
Pakistan gave tens of thousands of dollars through its lobbyists in the United States to members of the 9/11 inquiry commission to convince them to drop some anti-Pakistan findings in the report. This was disclosed by Foreign Office officials to the Public Accounts Committee at a secret meeting held last Tuesday. Even more interesting was the revelation that Pakistan embassy officials in Washington did indeed manage to convince the commission to drop the information.
The 9/11 inquiry commission was constituted to look into the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States and make proposals to fight terrorism in the long run. A lengthy report of the commission has since been published in book form. This book, say FO sources, left out some information relating to Pakistan because the commission s members were paid by Pakistan to prevent them from including damaging information. The disclosure sheds doubt on the integrity and honesty of the members of the 9/11 Inquiry Commission and above all on the authenticity of the information in their final report, said an insider.
Foreign Secretary Riaz Mohammad Khan and Special Secretary Sher Afgan were present at the meeting when an FO official, Sadiq, who was part of the secret negotiations with members of the US inquiry team and has just returned from Washington after completing a three-year tenure at the Pakistan embassy, revealed that a lot of money had been spent to silence the members of the inquiry commission and induce them to go soft on Pakistan.
According to the FO official, dramatic changes were made in the final draft of the inquiry commission report after Pakistani lobbyists arranged meetings with members of the Commission and convinced them to remove anti-Pakistan findings. This information is also given in the PAC records available with TFT and reveals that Pakistan won over the sympathies of 75 US Congressmen as part of its strategy to guard the interests of Pakistan in the United States. India, on the other hand, has its own influence in the US Congress through the 150-member India Caucus.
The information given to PAC by FO reveals the effectiveness of lobbyists from Pakistan and India and how both spend millions of dollars to protect their interests, an insider told TFT. If this information is correct, then it is not only damaging for Pakistan but also for the US where some people publicly degraded Pakistan by saying that Pakistanis will sell their mothers for a dollar .
The remark was made by the US attorney general about Pakistani officials who had allegedly played an important role in capturing Aimal Kasi, wanted in the USA for killing two CIA officials just outside the Agency s headquarters in Langley, Virginia. It seems that money can play an important role in buying powerful people everywhere, including the US. This is not something peculiar to Pakistan, said an observer. Insiders, however, say the US Congress does not know about the fact that money was paid to the inquiry commission to silence it.
This information about Pakistani lobbyists influencing the inquiry commission was revealed when PAC member MNA Rai Mansab Ali started grilling FO officials about millions of dollars paid out to lobbyists around the world and the assignments they were given. He said the FO could not waste the hard-earned money of Pakistan by hiding behind the slogan of national interests .
Upon this, one FO official explained how the Pakistani embassy was working closely with lobbyists to achieve important targets, one of which had been the task of getting anti-Pakistan information out of the 9/11 Commission Report.
According to Sadiq, a few days before the completion of the inquiry report, US lobbyists told embassy officials that they had inside information that the inquiry commission had damaging findings on Pakistan s role in 9/11. Meetings were hence arranged with commission members who were convinced to drop this information.
The report that was finally published is sans the damaging information about Pakistan, Sadiq told PAC members. The US softened towards Pakistan only because of the efforts of the FO.
FO Secretary Riaz Mohammad Khan said hiring lobbyists was an established practice and all countries had their own lobbyists in the US. However, he had no answers about the specific targets and goals set for these lobbyists.
Our embassy in Washington says they need lobbyists so we hired some for them, Riaz told the PAC. At this, MNAs present at the meeting complained that the FO had made a practice out of something whose utility and goals it could not explain. Riaz then admitted that the FO had no specific goals but that lobbyists were hired to improve Pakistan s image.
Influential people help Pakistani embassy officials approach politicians, Congressmen, journalists and top policy makers in the US. Contacts in that country are crucial, he explained.
Sadiq also said that lobbyists inform the Pakistani embassy whenever there are any negative developments about Pakistan or any damaging issues raised against Pakistan in the US Congress. With the help of this inside information, embassy officials are much better prepared to deal with such issues, if and when they arise.
You need to understand that we have to spend a lot of money on influential people in the US in order to protect our interests, Secretary FO Riaz told PAC members.
Critics, however, have a different angle on the money that is thus spent. There have been reports in the past about shady lobby firms hired by Pakistan. How do we know, on the authority of Mr Sadiq, that the lobbyists were indeed right about the damaging information in the report? says a former senior official. Another source TFT spoke with said that it did not make any sense for Pakistan to spend millions after being told that the report contained some anti-Pakistan material. Did anyone except the lobbyist see it? Did the embassy corroborate the information before dishing out the money? There are many questions here and I don t think the FO is answering them, he said.
Unquote.
Let me add I am Indian ………
Indian-
thank you for posting the whole story.
To me, the TFT story sounds mainly like an inquiry into the spending habits of Pakistani embassies and ambassadors…but that could simply be me bringing my newfound AP-inspired tendancy to focus on the last paragraphs of a story as opposed to the first.
If this story is followed up upon by either American or International press, I would hope the following could be addressed:
-what in particular was removed from the commision report? Was it operational ties between Pakistan’s government and Al-Queda? Was it simply an Al-Queda presence in northern Pakistan? Or perhaps was the evidence not damning in term of connections between Al-Queda and Pakistan, but of connections between America and Pakistan (connections that could further spur support for another Pakistani-Nationalism military coup)? What is the “smoking gun” as those media types like to call it?
-What evidence can be found (if any) to support a claim that significant changes to foreign policy have been made due to the influence? And was that that change made because money was spent, or did the lobbyists actually present a compelling arguement that the policy should be different?
Some Guy in Chicago,
I would also hope that the press asks those questions, though I somehow doubt that will happen.
If true, too embarrasing, if not true, unimportant, as under that circumstance it is quite likely this is nothing more than a cover story spun by a Pakistani official to help himself to some Pakistani Government funds.
Having said that here is an extract from another article, with a link I am happy to state, that is some what related to the Friday Times articles as it also suggests a coverup on behalf of Pakistan.
Sam Karmilowicz who reportedly had “a 21-year career as an officer in the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security†:
“What I think this story reveals is that the 9-11 Commission and the U.S. government deliberately withheld information from the U.S. public (and everyone else for that matter) that linked Al Qaeda operatives to persons who had close ties to Pakistani government officials, including members of Pakistan’s ISI. One can only guess whether that was to save embarrassment or to hide illegal conduct.â€Â
From here :
Ex-State Department Security Officer Charges Pre-9/11 Cover-Up
According to http://www.dawn.com/2006/03/16/top2.htm
Musharraf is going to establish a government “writ” (whatever the hell that is supposed to mean) over the Tribal Areas in the North West Frontier Province.
Right. Sure. Uh huh.
WHy now? And whatahell has he been doing for the last five years or so?
He’s known what everyone else knows, that bin Ladin and his sympathizers have been hiding out in the NW Frontier ever since he was thrown out of Afganistan, yet Musharraf hasn’t done a damn thing about it.
We should have gone into the tribal areas with force years ago. Tell Musharraf we are going to send troops into the tribal areas with or without his consent.
Dick Thornburg just called and told me I should’ve sent the check to Tom Kean. Had my governors mixed up. But since the bank charged him 30 bucks when he went to deposit it, he was sending me a bill for that plus a 60 dollar “processing fee”.
He also asked me if I could send him a couple bottles of Noah’s Mill since his local State Store won’t carry it.
Goss, let’s see, you’ve often posted incoherent screeds objecting to the Iraq War, now you want the US to declare war against Pakistan – a nation which is cooperating with the United States albeit with some limitations.
Brilliant.
Go ahead, Carl.
Lead the way, buddy. We’re all right behind you. We’ll be there, oh, any minute now.
Seriously now, go play with the guys with rusty knives.
[Jeff is] gonna get pissed
Yeah. The author of the “Bush Kultist” meme is really going to hurt my feelings.
Greenwald is like the L. Ron Hubbard of anti-war, anti-Bush sheep. Just make sure you remember to tithe, or he may start writing posts filled with less idiotic assertions, filled with less idiotic characterizations—and then you’d have to go back to Atrios and his “Open Thread” genius for your talking points.
when you side with those who say you shouldn’t reference international law in dealing with cases, you are only siding with extremists like…Andrew Sullivan.
But I like Greenwald’s tying of the term extremists to those suggesting impeachment as a recourse against government officials who, they feel, are mis-using their office or acting in a manner that they assess to be unconstitutional. That right there- that screams extremism to me. Republicans should learn how to engage in proper “civil disobedience”…fire bomb a few buildings and storm the streets declaring death to Democrats.
tw: it seemed a measured response.
Jeff is gonna get pissed
Greenwald is like the L. Ron Hubbard of anti-war, anti-Bush sheep.
That is a quality insult.
Greenwald is like the L. Ron Hubbard of anti-war, anti-Bush sheep.
also, does that mean he’s going to go into the desert with the Anton Levey and Jack Parsons of the anti-war, anti-Bush sheep and try to open a portal to hell?
And who are the Anton Levey and Jack Parsons of the anti-war, anti-Bush sheep?