Al-Qaeda leader exposes Saudi-Pak-Osama nexus
ANI[ MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 01, 2003 12:50:49 PM ]
WASHINGTON: Startling revelations about secret connections linking
Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Osama bin Laden has been made by an
operational commander of the Al-Qaeda, Abu Zubaydah, claims a new book
by Gerald Posner.
The book, Why America Slept, reviewed exclusively in the current issue
of Time, goes on sale on September 2. According to a review by Times's
Johanna McGeary, the book is "a lean, lucid retelling of how the CIA,
FBI and US leaders missed a decade worth of clues and opportunities
that, if heeded, might have forestalled the 9/11 terrorist attacks".
Posner details how US interrogators used drugs - an unnamed "quick-on,
quick-off" painkiller and Sodium Pentothal, the old movie truth serum
- to make Zubaydah talk. When the questioning stalled, CIA men flew
Zubaydah to an Afghan complex fitted out as a fake Saudi jail chamber,
where "two Arab-Americans, now with Special Forces", pretending to be
Saudi inquisitors, used drugs and threats to scare him into more
confessions.
Yet confronted by the false Saudis, Zubaydah's reaction was
surprisingly one of utter relief. He reeled off telephone numbers of a
senior member of the royal family, that of Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin
Abdul Aziz, a Westernised nephew of King Fahd and a publisher better
known as a racehorse owner. To the amazement of the US, the numbers
proved valid.
However when accused of lying, Zubaydah responded with a 10-minute
monologue laying out the Saudi-Pakistani-Osama triangle. The Saudi
connection was through Prince Turki al-Faisal bin Abdul Aziz, the
kingdom's long-time intelligence chief. Bin Laden had personally told
him of a 1991 meeting at which Turki agreed to let Laden leave Saudi
Arabia and to provide him with secret funds as long as the Al-Qaeda
refrained from promoting jihad in the kingdom.
The Pakistani contact, Air Force Chief Mushaf Ali Mir, entered the
equation at a 1996 meeting in Pakistan attended by Zubaydah. Laden
struck a deal with Mir, who was also tied closely to Islamists in
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to get protection, arms
and supplies for Al-Qaeda. Also he attended a third meeting in
Kandahar in 1998 with Turki, senior ISI agents and Taliban officials.
Turki promised that more Saudi aid would flow to the Taliban, and the
Saudis would never ask for bin Laden's extradition, so long as
al-Qaeda kept its longstanding promise to direct fundamentalism away
from the kingdom. Since the start of the decade, Laden has been on
their payroll and regularly sent funds through three royal prince
intermediaries.
The last eight paragraphs of the book reveals how three of them
perished one after the other. On July 22, 2002, Prince Ahmed died of a
heart attack at age 43; a day later Prince Sultan bin Faisal bin Turki
al-Saud, 41, was killed in what was called a high-speed car accident.
The last member, Prince Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir, officially
died of thirst while travelling east of Riyadh one week later. And
seven months after that, Mir, perished in a plane crash in clear
weather over the North-West Frontier Province, along with his wife and
close confidants.
Posner notes that these deaths occurred after CIA officials passed
along Zubaydah's accusations to Riyadh and Islamabad. Zubaydah claimed
that 9/11 changed nothing about the clandestine marriage of Saudi and
Pakistani interests, because both Prince Ahmed and Mir knew that an
attack was scheduled for American soil on that day, but were helpless,
because they didn't know what or where the attack would be. And they
couldn't turn on bin Laden afterward because he could expose their
prior knowledge.
According to Posner, the Bush administration decided that creating an
international incident and straining relations with those regional
allies when they were critical to the war in Afghanistan and build-up
for possible war with Iraq, was out of question.
Posner's sources include a US official outside the CIA at a "very
senior executive branch level", a CIA official who gave what Posner
viewed as general confirmation of the story. However Prince Turki, now
Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Britain, did not respond to Posner's
letters and faxes. .....
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