PAKISTAN-BRIBED MEMBERS OF 9/11 COMMISSION-TO KILL NEG PAKISTANI INFO

[kpete]

PAKISTAN-BRIBED MEMBERS OF 9/11 COMMISSION TO KILL NEG INFO

Pakistan 'paid to lobby 9/11 report'
Pakistani weekly claims country hired lobbyists to kill negative references.


Pakistan weekly spills 9/11 beans
OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
New Delhi, March 12: 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.


http://www.telegraphindia.com/1060313/asp/nation/story_5962372.asp
via: Raw Story

[havocmom]

1. Is their ANYTHING the junta won't sell ?

What is the going rate for corrupting government reports anyway?

[Hutzpa]

21. Yup!!! ME, they will never take me down n/t

:hide: :hide:

[havocmom]

27. No, they can't BUY you

Nor can they buy me and a whole lotta folks who understand what America is about.

[AGENDA21]

2. Ive already posted this.

I hope you get more replies than myself....its to important to ignore!

[kpete]

5. Thanks

Sorry, I did not see your post - and I thought I got up early...

[leveymg]

6. Does anyone have a copy of the oringinal Pakistani report?

What we really need to see is independent confirmation of this. It looks like a major story, if true.

I hope RawStory has some sort of further confirmation for this. They've proven to have pretty good news judgment.

[soulcore]

3. wow. interesting.

Yet more fuel for the 911 truth fire.

k & r.

[Norquist Nemesis]

4. That shouldn't be too hard to verify

If money changed hands, there's got to be a paper trail. And if this is true, the Able Danger thingy will be back up top in the news.

[seemslikeadream]

11. That's correct BUDDY BUDDY

BUDDY BUDDY
http://www.gsnmagazine.com.nyud.net:8090/images/aug_05/atta.jpg
DO THE MATH

24 MINUTES

THERE MUST HAVE BEEN A MILITARY ORDER WATCH THIS VIDEO

http://www.bushflash.com/buddy.html

[leveymg]

7. BTW: Jack Abramoff was Pakistan's registered lobbyist.

If it turns out that he or his associates spiked the 9/11 Commission Report, this is BIG dynamite.

[rucky]

12. Doesn't surprise me one bit. VOTE THIS UP, FOLKS!

[myrna minx]

13. Done. n/t

[myrna minx]

14. Done. n/t

[leveymg]

16. According to the NYT (take it for what its worth) that was 1997

Here's an article based on old reports about the junket to Pakistan arranged by Abramoff. I don't see any new reporting here from stuff that was published six years ago, with the exception that Henry Kissinger and George Schultz's names appear, and that they issued denials of any role in the affair. Hmmm.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/08/politics/08abramoff.html?ei=5088&en=1eb2c76b3f436a96&ex=1273204800&adxnnl=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1142264206-MXoG0wf08CgBG6COgd197w
Lobbyist Paid by Pakistan Led U.S. Delegation There


By PHILIP SHENON and ANNE E. KORNBLUT
Published: May 8, 2005
WASHINGTON, May 7 - Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist at the center of a federal corruption investigation, led a Congressional delegation to Pakistan in 1997 but failed to tell the group's sponsor or the lawmakers that he was a registered lobbyist for the Pakistani government, according to the sponsor and the two House members on the trip.

"I wish I'd known that he had a bias that way," said Representative Michael R. McNulty, Democrat of New York, who was on the trip. Gregg Hilton, whose nonprofit organization, the National Security Caucus Foundation, sponsored the trip for Mr. McNulty and Representative Howard Coble, said he felt "deceived" by Mr. Abramoff. The trip to Pakistan and Mr. Abramoff's role in it came to light with the release of documents this week showing that he had also used his personal credit card to pay more than $350,000 in travel expenses for other Congressional trips, some of them sponsored by the National Security Caucus Foundation, which is now defunct.

SNIP

Mr. Abramoff did not pay for the group's trip to Pakistan, Mr. Hilton said, adding that his foundation had arranged the trip's financing. A spokesman for Mr. Abramoff had no immediate comment on the trip. Government filings show Mr. Abramoff's law firm was registered as Pakistan's lobbyist until April 1997, after his trip. The firm said on Saturday that it did its last work on the contract in 1996 and did not consider Pakistan a client by 1997. By not revealing his lobbying work for Pakistan while he served as a tour guide there for the nonprofit group, Mr. Abramoff might have served his own business practices, but he also deceived the people he had offered to help, the trip's participants said.

SNIP

Lobbyists for foreign governments are required to register with the Justice Department. Disclosure statements filed by Mr. Abramoff and his former firm, Preston Gates & Ellis, show that the firm was retained by Pakistan in May 1995 to lobby to overturn sanctions barring delivery of American weapons to Pakistan if its government continued to pursue a nuclear weapons program. The initial six-month lobbying contract paid the firm a retainer of $165,000, plus expenses. A spokesman for Preston Gates had no comment. Later disclosure forms show that Mr. Abramoff and the firm lobbied aggressively on Pakistan's behalf, including repeated contacts with the offices of Mr. DeLay, a close friend of Mr. Abramoff. Mr. DeLay, now the House majority leader, has asked the House ethics committee to resolve accusations involving his overseas travels with Mr. Abramoff.

Mr. Hilton provided a number of descriptions of Mr. Abramoff's role with the National Security Caucus Foundation, at one point denying that the lobbyist had a formal role and suggesting that the trip to Pakistan had never happened. Provided evidence to the contrary, he acknowledged that he had hoped Mr. Abramoff would donate money and join the board, but that he never did. Some of the dignitaries listed on the letterhead of the foundation, including Henry A. Kissinger, Elie Wiesel and George P. Shultz, said they had never heard of the group or agreed to have their names used by it. Mr. Hilton said they were actually affiliated with a sister organization. Preston Gates's disclosure statements with the Justice Department show that the firm largely ended its lobbying activity for Pakistan after Prime Minister Bhutto's government was ousted in 1996. The firm was on record as Pakistan's foreign agent, however, until April 1997.

[kpete]

17. excellant

[napi21]

8. What in the world kind of games go on in the background

in this world? Pakistan is always crying that the US doesn't send THEM enough money, and they're using money they claim not to have to bribe US?

I bet the same stuff goes on with Israel.

I suggest we STOP all the foreign aid and play isolationist if they have $$ to play these kind of games with already!

[file83]

38. Those "kinds of games" are called "conspiracies" and the people

that connect the dots BEFORE the MSM does are called "conspiracy theorists". This is just the tip of the iceberg too. But until it is discussed by a MSM source, this kind of discussion on the DU is relegated to the "September 11" topic forum.

These "kinds of games" go deeper than most people can even imagine.

[KansDem]

9. "Truth" for sale...

...or a reasonable facsimile thereof.

[FloridaPat]

10. I wonder how much Saudia Arabia paid?

[BR_Parkway]

15. And Sibel Edmonds fits into this too or they would let her speak

instead of hiding behind State Secrets. Wasn't she saying some of that same money was funneled to Hassert?

[Kansas Wyatt]

20. If I were Sibel Edmonds, I would defy the Powers That Be

And tell all what I knew about the current corrupt traitors.

Before they can make any argument that she has committed a crime and defied a court order, they would have to acknowledge what she said was true. Beat them at their own game, political opinion. By the time they got to placing her in custody, the American people would be outraged and demanding impeachment and arrest for the traitors and absolute protection for her.

[pberq]

23. I totally agree. That is what Daniel Ellsberg did.

[pberq]

18. doubt on the 9/11 inquiry commission

This just adds to the mountain of evidence that the 9/11 Commission was a fraud:

“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.


See "The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions And Distortions" by David Ray Griffin

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1566565847/104-9800366-5092719?v=glance&n=283155

[BlooInBloo]

19. I'd want confirmation on this....

....

(a) raw story is known to make shit up sometimes, and

(b) the headline and first sentence of the story contradict each other.


Is there any independent confirmation to be had?

[eomer]

28. Regarding making things up...

The only thing RawStory said was that there was a story and sure enough, if you click the link... there's the story.

So in this case RawStory was 100% correct.

Your allegation, on the other hand, that "raw story is known to make shit up sometimes" is totally without corroboration, specificity or references.

Also, the headline and first line of the story don't contradict each other. The Friday Times, which is a Pakistan weekly, spilled the beans that the Pakistan government paid to keep anti-Pakistani references out of the 9/11 Commission report.

What's the contradiction?

[BlooInBloo]

29. I'll dig around for the 'make shit up' part...

The contradiction I referred to was:

(a) The headline claimed that the COMMISSIONERS were bribed by Pakistan.

(b) The first line said that LOBBYISTS were paid by Pakistan.

Now I'm not sayin that it's *impossible* to make a bribery charge stick via the middleman route, but if you tell me X bribed Y, and then tell me that X gave money to SOMEONE OTHER THAN Y, I'm gonna generally feel cheated on the first claim.

When the dukestir went down on bribery, for example, a key component of it was that money/swag went straight to HIM. That's all I'm sayin...

[eomer]

32. That's not a contradiction -- it's two allegations that are compatible.

Here's where the article says that Commissioners were allegedly bribed:

It claimed that some of the commission members were bribed to prevent them from including damaging information about Pakistan.

And the first line of the article, as you point out, says that lobbyists were allegedly paid to influence Commissioners:

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.

So, the body of the article includes both of those allegations. The headline refers to just one of them. That's not a contradiction, it's a choice of which allegation to highlight in the headline.

I think they made the right choice. An allegation that lobbyists were paid to influence the Commission is big news but an allegation that 9/11 Commission members actually took money from them, if true, is nuclear.


On edit: did RawStory change its headline? I don't see a headline that says what you say it says. Maybe you and I got out of whack because we're talking about two different headlines?

[BlooInBloo]

33. I think the OP changed the link to "the story"....

IIRC, it originally was a link to the raw story, now it's a link to an indian outfit.

Which, to me at least, furthers my desire for independent corroboration - would you trust, without independent corroboration, a PLO member saying that Sharon was bribed on some matter? Indians claiming Pakistanis bribed someone should be taken with a similar grain of salt, imo.

Not sayin it isn't true (and if true, huge). Just sayin I'd welcome independent confirmation...

[eomer]

34. Gotcha.

Seems like we're on the same page.

[pberq]

22. Mahmood Ahmed - Director of Pakistani ISI (Intelligence Agency)

See this page on Ahmed from DUer Paul Thompson's "9/11 Timeline"

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?id=1521846767-267

<snip>
September 11, 2001: Intelligence Committee Chairs Meet with ISI Head and Possible 9/11 Attack Funder as the Attack Occurs

At the time of the attacks, ISI Director Mahmood is at a breakfast meeting at the Capitol with the chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, Senator Bob Graham (D) and Representative Porter Goss (R) (Goss is a 10-year veteran of the CIA's clandestine operations wing). The meeting is said to last at least until the second plane hits the WTC. Graham and Goss later co-head the joint House-Senate investigation into the 9/11 attacks, which has made headlines for saying there was no “smoking gun” of Bush knowledge before 9/11. Note that Senator Graham should have been aware of a report made to his staff the previous month (see Early August 2001) that one of Mahmood's subordinates had told a US undercover agent that the WTC would be destroyed. Evidence suggests that attendee Mahmood ordered that $100,000 be sent to hijacker Mohamed Atta. Also present at the meeting were Senator Jon Kyl (R) and the Pakistani ambassador to the US, Maleeha Lodhi. (All or virtually all of the people in this meeting had previously met in Pakistan just a few weeks earlier.) Senator Graham says of the meeting: “We were talking about terrorism, specifically terrorism generated from Afghanistan.” The New York Times reports that bin Laden was specifically discussed.
People and organizations involved: Mohamed Atta, Bob Graham, Jon Kyl, Mahmood Ahmed, Maleeha Lodhi, Porter J. Goss, Osama bin Laden

[mom cat]

30. Too many cowinkydinks.

[leveymg]

24. Here's more on the Abramoff connection report in the NYT

See this report in the NYT, posted upthread. On further thought, the Times article is most interesting for the denials of knowledge by Kissinger and Schultz of their association with the group that sponsored the junket to Pakistan organized by Abramoff. According to the Times, Abramoff's firm ceased representing Pakistan in 1997. Note that date, and see my Note 1, below.

All this suggests that in the late 1990s, Abramoff played a supporting role in the big-hitters efforts to help Pakistan with its nuclear program. Recall also that Kissinger was originally tapped to head the 9/11 Commission. Consider as well, the UBL cells were being treated as part of the Pakistani-Saudi network that had produced the "Islamic bomb" with very high level American support. The birds came back to roost, so to speak, if indeed sections of the 9/11 Commission report concerning Pakistan were removed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/08/politics/08abramoff.h ...
Lobbyist Paid by Pakistan Led U.S. Delegation There


By PHILIP SHENON and ANNE E. KORNBLUT
Published: May 8, 2005
WASHINGTON, May 7 - Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist at the center of a federal corruption investigation, led a Congressional delegation to Pakistan in 1997 but failed to tell the group's sponsor or the lawmakers that he was a registered lobbyist for the Pakistani government, according to the sponsor and the two House members on the trip.

SNIP

Mr. Hilton provided a number of descriptions of Mr. Abramoff's role with the National Security Caucus Foundation, at one point denying that the lobbyist had a formal role and suggesting that the trip to Pakistan had never happened. Provided evidence to the contrary, he acknowledged that he had hoped Mr. Abramoff would donate money and join the board, but that he never did. Some of the dignitaries listed on the letterhead of the foundation, including Henry A. Kissinger, Elie Wiesel and George P. Shultz, said they had never heard of the group or agreed to have their names used by it. Mr. Hilton said they were actually affiliated with a sister organization. Preston Gates's disclosure statements with the Justice Department show that the firm largely ended its lobbying activity for Pakistan after Prime Minister Bhutto's government was ousted in 1996. The firm was on record as Pakistan's foreign agent, however, until April 1997.

NOTE 1.
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/pakistan/nuke/chron.htm
Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons - A chronology
1997
04 July 1997 -- Pakistan confirms test-firing of new indigenous Hatf missile.

06 September 1997 -- Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif claims Pakistan possesses nuclear weapons, saying that: "Pakistan's nuclear capability is now an established fact. Whatever we have, we have a right to keep it...."

1998

28 May 1998: Pakistan detonates five nuclear devices. Pakistan claimed that the five nuclear tests measured up to 5.0 on the Richter scale, with a reported yield of up to 40 KT (equivalent TNT).

30 May 1998 Pakistan tested one more nuclear warheads, with a yield of 12 kilotons, bringing the total number of claimed tests to six.

(Cross-posted from another DU thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2163349

[KAT119]

25. THIS IS HUGE! SEE David Ray Griffin's brilliant epose' 9/11 COVERUP K/R

[mom cat]

31. I heard him this weekend. Very convincing and very knowledgeable.

[file83]

39. The thing that David Ray Griffin confirmed for me which bugged me

from the very first time on 9/11 I heard that the Pentagon was hit by that airplane, was that the Pentagon did at the time have an anti-aircraft missle defense shield in the surrounding area. For some mysterious reason, that shield was not in operation that morning of 9/11. Who made the order for that shield to stand down? The USG has NEVER addressed this question.

This sealed it for me: LIHOP at the very least. MIHOP at the very worst.

[newspeak]

26. and who remembers when

the US forgave Pakistan's debt? At the time, I thought what is the payback for?

[eomer]

35. Here's the original story from the Pakistan weekly (The Friday Times):

Go to this link

and do an Edit/Find on "Did Pakistan influence the 9/11 Commission Report?" (without the quotes).

This appears to be the text of the original article. Caveat: I used Google and AltaVista searches to find this and have no idea whatsoever whether it is accurate.

Here's as much as I can excerpt under DU rules:

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.

-snip-

[eomer]

37. A bit of confirmation that the above is a story from the Pakistan weekly.

A google search on: "Ahmed Rauf" "the friday times"

gives this hit:

http://www.thefridaytimes.com/main31.shtml">Welcome to The Friday Times

Ahmed Rauf. According to an FO official, "dramatic changes" were made in the ... Ahmed Rauf. Nationalist senators say the Balochistan CM was humiliated by ...
www.thefridaytimes.com/main31.shtml - 38k - Cached - Similar pages

(Red highlight added.)

Google search link

[donkeyotay]

36. I wonder if this is in any way related to *'s recent visit. nt