The Washington Post’s Style section is their arts and entertainment section.
They have stories on personalities; movie, music, TV and theater reviews, comics and
the regular puff piece on some powerful figure. I am partial to
Zippy the Pinhead myself.
On May 18, the Washington Post ran a story in their Style section
called “A Cloak but No Dagger (The Washington Post, 5/18/2002). It concerned
Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla), the Chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
At the time the article was written Goss was said to be helping to “steer” a House-Senate
investigation into the 9/11/01 attacks. The puff piece proceeds normally until deep
inside, when it reads:
On the morning of Sept. 11, Goss and [Bob Graham (D-Fla)] were having breakfast with a
Pakistani general named Mahmud Ahmed [sic] – the soon-to-be sacked head of Pakistan’s
intelligence service. Ahmed ran a spy agency notoriously close to Osama bin Laden and
the Taliban...the discussion that morning touched on Taliban links to terrorism, but
Goss says his greatest worry was the dispute in Kashmir…
One thing that is curious about these three sentences is apparently the Pakistani man’s
name is misspelled. He’s known on the internet as Mahmoud Ahmad.
Even more interesting about this breakfast meeting is that the Times of India has
reported that Gen. Ahmad is alleged to have been the individual who had $100,000 wired to
alleged hijacker Mohammed Atta. (The Times of India, Delhi, 9 October 2001). Canadian
professor Michel Chossudovsky is affiliated with a
website
that mentions this unusual connection.
Chossudovsky, writing for the Philadelphia City Paper, quotes the
Agence France-Presse as confirming that the evidence the government of India
has supplied to the U.S. [regarding Gen. Ahmad’s connection to hijacker Atta] 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 Philadelphia City Paper, December 20-27, 2001).
So, if Ahmad did send money to Mohammed Atta, and Atta was indeed, the mastermind of
the WTC attacks, what was Ahmad doing talking to leaders of Congress in the weeks
before 9/11/01? And, why is the Washington Post using their Style section
to mention that this unusual breakfast meeting took place on 9/11/01? If they were
representing the interests of the general public (who want to know as much as possible
what happened on 9/11) they’d be reporting these matters more conspicuously.
Another thought-provoking commentary which you can find at the Centre for Research on
Globalization website is an
article by Patrick Martin (World Socialist Web Site, 9/12/2002). Martin points out that a
year has passed since the 9/11/01 attacks and still the Bush administration has not released:
- The passenger lists maintained by the airlines;
- The information from the two data recorders recovered from the doomed planes;
- The transcripts of communications between the pilots and air traffic controllers on the ground;
- Any evidence that there were 19 Arab hijackers on board, and what their real names and
nationalities were.
So, while the media and Congressional leaders continue to investigate the “intelligence failures”
surrounding 9/11/01, neither the general public (or any Congressional representatives) have
had the opportunity to examine these artifacts of our nation’s worst day of terrorism.
Now, there has to be a reasonable explanation as to why the Bush administration hasn’t
released those items. And, certainly there can be another reasonable explanation for why the
Congressmen were meeting the Pakistani intelligence officer on 9/11/01.
However, it is not very comforting to note that there is not a mainstream newspaper in
our country that is calling for the Bush administration to release the hijack clues to
the public. And, it is disturbing how the Washington Post has used its Style
section to hint very quietly at the meetings that took place between powerful officials and
the Pakistani general alleged to have been the 9/11/01 money man.
There has never been a greater time for people to read and disseminate what’s in the
alternative media. We must find ways to inform ourselves and organize a resistance to
what’s taking place in our country while we still can.
Scott Loughrey
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