Who's really responsible for Mumbai? Dick Cheney doesn't want you to know.

[robertpaulsen]

As the news trickles in regarding the one terrorist captured alive in the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks, the finger of suspicion continues to be pointed at two prime suspects: the organization Lashkar-e-Toiba and international criminal Dawood Ibrahim.


Police: Mumbai suspect admits Pakistan link

Maria identified the suspect as Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, 21, from the Faridkot village in the Okara district of Pakistan's Punjab province. He is the son of Mohammed Amir Kasab, the police commissioner said.

snip

Maria said Kasab spent the past 18 months training at various camps run by Lashkar-e-Tayyiba -- a Pakistan-based terror group allied with al Qaeda. Kasab told police he joined the group, known by its acronym LeT, six months before he began training.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/12/03/india.attacks/index.html

Is 'the most dangerous man in the world' behind the Mumbai attacks?

Security officials in India believe that an Indian citizen once called 'the most dangerous man in the world' masterminded the well orchestrated string of terror attacks that left at least 174 people dead in India's financial capital of Mumbai last week.

The man, Dawood Ibrahim, is believed to be hiding in Pakistan. Ibrahim is wanted in India for his suspected role in the 1993 bombings in Mumbai, in which more than 250 people died in a string of 13 coordinated bombings.

snip

The connection to Ibrahim was established during the questioning of one of the attackers,
Amir Kasab, 21, who told the Indian authorities that he had been sent to Mumbai by Ibrahim after having undergone training in Pakistan.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1042197.html



I'm not sure if Mumbai Joint Police Commissioner of Crime Rakesh Maria is being short-sighted, if MSM is being oblivious, or both, but one inconvenient truth being ignored is that both LeT and Dawood Ibrahim have used various means of receiving financing through the same method: A.Q. Khan's nuclear proliferation network. The connections between Khan and LeT is something I discovered four years ago in the 1st edition of American Judas:



Lashkar-e-Toiba - or LET is a terrorist group of Pakistan, consisting of Pakistani, Afghan and Arab cadres, headed by Pakistani office-bearers, with its headquarters at Muridke near Lahore. Its annual conventions at Muridke are attended, amongst others, by serving and retired officers of the Pakistani military and intelligence establishment, by serving and retired scientists of the Pakistani nuclear and missile establishment and by political leaders.

Amongst those, who regularly attend its annual conventions, are Lt. Gen. (retd) Hamid Gul and Lt.Gen.(retd) Javed Nasir, both former Directors-General of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI),Dr. Abdul Qadir Khan, the self-styled father of the Pakistani atom bomb, Dr.Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, the former scientist of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission who was recently detained by the Pakistani authorities under US pressure for being in contact with bin Laden and Mohd.Rafique Tarar, former President of Pakistan.(http://www.saag.org/papers4/paper381.html)

To finance its day-to-day activities, the LeT leverages its contacts in Saudi Arabia as well as launches donation campaigns with overseas Pakistanis, especially middle class and wealthy Punjabis in Britain, Australia and the Middle East. According to Jane's Terrorism & Insurgency Centre, Osama bin Laden has also financed LeT activities until recently. The LeT, under its new name JuD, uses its outreach networks including schools, social service groups and religious publications to attract and brainwash recruits for jihad in Kashmir and other places.(http://www.crikey.com.au/politics/2004/05/18-0003.html)

Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) has been showing increasing interest in taking jihad to the Muslims of the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka. The LET is very close to the ISI and it would not have taken its initial moves to explore the possibility of using Sri Lanka as a clandestine base for its activties and for creating sleeper cells there without the knowledge and prior clearance of the ISI.(http://www.saag.org/papers11/paper1026.html)

http://americanjudas.blogspot.com/2007/01/american-judas-1st-edition.html


Then there's Dawood Ibrahim. His connection with A.Q. Khan starts with a little organization that might be familiar to John Kerry fans called BCCI:

Right from its inception, the clandestine nuclear and missile projects in Pakistan were treated as a top secret intel op of the ISI to ensure deniability. All payments to the foreign suppliers were made not from the accounts of the Govt of Pakistan, but from private accounts in the BCCI, which collapsed in 1991, and other Dubai and Geneva based banks. These accounts were opened by the Gokul brothers of Geneva, one of whom was jailed for cheating in the UK after the collapse of the BCCI; Shaukat Aziz, Pakistan’s present Finance Minister, who was working in the Gulf for the Citibank in the 1990s; Dawood Ibrahim, the mafia leader who was designated by the US as an intl terrorist in Oct; Dubai-based Pakistani smugglers, and AQ Khan and other trusted Pakistani scientists.(http://www.kashmirherald.com/featuredarticle/nuclearjihad.html)

Ibrahim is also connected to the network through B.S.A. Tahir:

B.S.A. Tahir - The recent investigations into the clandestine nuclear proliferation activities of A.Q.Khan, the so-called father of the Pakistan atom bomb, have revealed that Bukhary Seyed Abu Tahir, a Sri Lankan Tamil Muslim of Indian origin, married in Malysia and with business interests in Kuala Lumpur and Dubai, was one of the external kingpins of Pakistan's clandestine nuclear procurement network. In a speech at the National Defence University of Washington DC in February last, President Bush had described this Sri Lankan Tamil-speaking Muslim as the "chief financial officer and money-launderer" of A.Q.Khan's clandestine operations.

http://americanjudas.blogspot.com/2007/01/american-judas-1st-edition.html

* Tahir's family was closely connected with Dawood Ibrahim, the Indian mafia leader living in Pakistan, who had helped the nuclear and missile establishments of Pakistan in their clandestine procurement and shipping activities. The Dawood group is well-entrenched in Singapore and Malaysia. Its activities in Singapore include: Investment in real estate; a shipping company (name not known) and hawala operations to South India. Among the hawala operators of Singapore allegedly associated with Dawood is a company called the Abdul Gafoor and Company. Before Musharraf visited India in 2001 for the Agra summit, the ISI secretly sent away Dawood to Malaysia through Singapore with the help of one Rakesh Tulshiyan and Shahid Sohail. He stayed in Malaysia as a guest of Tahir's family. He returned to Karachi later. Dawood is believed to have extensive mining interests in Malaysia from where he and his group indulge in the smuggling of silver into India via Nepal.

http://www.saag.org/common/uploaded_files/paper931.html



There is one other area where I feel Mumbai Joint Police Commissioner of Crime Rakesh Maria is being short-sighted: his focus doesn't seem to extend beyond Pakistanis.

Maria said all 10 attackers were Pakistanis, something that Pakistani officials have denied, blaming instead "stateless actors."

The band of gunmen attacked 10 targets in Mumbai last Wednesday night, sparking three days of battles with police and Indian troops in the heart of the city that is the hub of India's financial and entertainment industries. Most of the 179 deaths occurred at the city's top two hotels, the Oberoi and the Taj Mahal.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/12/03/india.attacks/index.html


There is evidence suggesting otherwise. Here are two eyewitness accounts:

Then, the "foreign looking, fair skinned" men, as Mr Mishra remembers them, simply carried on killing.

snip

Gaffar Abdul Amir, an Iraqi tourist from Baghdad, says he saw at least two men who started the firing outside the Leopold Cafe.

He was returning to his hotel from the seaside with a friend when he saw two men carrying bags and brandishing AK-47s walking in front of them, shooting.

"They did not look Indian, they looked foreign. One of them, I thought, had blonde hair. The other had a punkish hairstyle. They were neatly dressed," says Mr Amir.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7752625.stm


Perhaps Pakistanis, perhaps not. There is more evidence of Russian, perhaps Chechen fingerprints on this operation:

Mumbai terrorists used Chechen tactics
The terrorists in the Indian city of Mumbai, who killed more than 150 people and injured over 300, used the same tactics that Chechen field militants employed in the Northern Caucasus, says Russian counter terrorism presidential envoy Anatoly Safonov.

In towns of the Northern Cauasus in 1990s, terrorists seized homes and hospitals and took numerous hostages.

"These tactics were used during raids by militant Chechen field commanders Shamil Basayev and Salman Raduyev against the towns of Buddyonnovsk and Pervomaiskoye. For the first time in history the entire towns were terrorized, with homes and hospitals seized. The Mumbai terrorists have learned these tactics well," Safonov told Russian news agency Interfax on Thursday.

http://www.russiatoday.com/news/news/33921

Terror mail routed through Pakistan's Lahore
2 Dec 2008, 0407 hrs IST, TNN

NEW DELHI: Indian agencies tracing the source of the email sent by an outfit calling itself Deccan Mujahideen to a TV channel claiming
responsibility for the terror attacks on Mumbai have found that the text was routed through Lahore in Pakistan before travelling to different locations through anonymous "remailer" service.

Though other locations are yet to be traced, the experts — who took help of different foreign agencies — found that the terrorists used a Russian server to avail the remailer service which is the most secure and least traceable way to send emails.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Terror_mail_routed_through_Pakistans_Lahore/rssarticleshow/3781555.cms



The purpose of examining this possibility is not to set up a false dichotomy of either Blame Pakistan or Blame Chechnya. It is to understand that we are dealing with a network that is global in its outreach to a degree that our intelligence agencies have yet to completely comprehend:


BLACK MARKET BUSINESS

Khan, an admired figure in Pakistan, was arrested in January 2004 for his central role in the black market that sold Pakistani nuclear weapons technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya and offered technology to Iraq and perhaps other countries.

Although officially pardoned by President Pervez Musharraf, Khan remains under house arrest.
After Pakistan acted against Khan, President George W. Bush declared that the network had been shut down.
But the IISS report said that "at least some of Khan's associates appear to have escaped law enforcement attention and could, after a period of lying low, resume their black market business."

It also concluded that "the few prosecutions and light sentences that have been imposed to date (on Khan and his accomplices) are not commensurate with the scale of the proliferation that the Khan network abetted."

http://www.iiss.org/whats-new/iiss-in-the-press/press-coverage-2007/may-2007/cia-did-not-focus-enough-on-khan-network/


This is where Dick Cheney comes in. To quote directly from the 2nd edition of American Judas:

In the two and a half years since the research from “The Plame Indictment Threads” inspired me to write American Judas, much has happened regarding the investigation of the outing of Valerie Plame that has validated our findings. Though some were wary of the source reporting that one aspect of Plame’s work involved tracking the nuclear smuggling network of A.Q. Khan, this fact was corroborated by the research of Larisa Alexandrovna in 2006 that while Plame’s team was focused on Iran, they “would have come in contact with A.Q. Khan’s network”. http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Outed_CIA_officer_was_working_on_0213.html Her research was confirmed in a report on MSNBC. http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/MSNBC_confirms_Raw_Story_report_Outed_0501.html The OUTING THE CIA papers by Mark G. Levey thoroughly document how and when Plame was tracking the Khan network. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/2/1/183411/6866, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/2/7/112015/2282 Through the ongoing trial of Lewis “Scooter” Libby, we have seen evidence presented that Cheney was deeply involved in the leak of Plame, even going so far as to write out what his former Chief of Staff Libby should say to Time reporter Matt Cooper. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16771573/ Libby learned about Plame from Cheney http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003540604 and even told an FBI agent that he may have talked of outing Plame with Cheney. http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2007/02/02/agent_libby_may_have_talked_of_outing_operative_with_cheney/ In addition to this criminal trial, there is the upcoming civil suit by Joseph and Valerie Wilson against Dick Cheney, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Karl Rove, Dick Armitage and John Does 1-9. http://www.wilsonsupport.org/ Much has been publicized in the mainstream media about Armitage being the first to leak the identity of Valerie Plame to a reporter, Bob Woodward. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14533384/site/newsweek/ Whether Armitage engaged in malicious or oblivious gossip is almost of secondary importance; our research proves Cheney was the ringleader who helped to instigate such a poisonous environment against the Ambassador, who publicly contradicted the WMD intelligence that helped mislead the nation into war, and his wife, who secretly tracked WMD proliferation, that by the time the dust settled, the leak of a CIA operative and her Counter-Proliferation Division (CPD) cover company could be reduced to such a trivial and tawdry affair that someone as high up the ladder as a Deputy Chief of Staff to the President, Karl Rove, could feel comfortable saying to MSNBC reporter Chris Matthews that Wilson’s wife is “fair game”. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8445696/site/newsweek/ This poisonous environment was created initially through the machinations of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) and the Office of Special Plans (OSP).

http://americanjudas.blogspot.com/2007/03/american-judas-2nd-edition-investigate.html


Let me clear: I'm not saying Dick Cheney orchestrated the Mumbai attacks. It's not that simple. By destroying the cover of Valerie Plame and Brewster Jennings and Associates, Cheney destroyed one of the few sources through which the CIA was able to monitor Khan's proliferation network, impairing their capacity for up to ten years. So whenever this hydra-headed monster strikes, Cheney and the rest of the Vulcans get to have their cake and eat it too: they maintain plausible deniability while ensuring that future generations will continue to fight the Frankenstein they created, cementing "the war that will not end in our lifetime". But never forget, they are responsible.

[blm]

1. Yes, but some of us familiar with BCCI believe that Khan worked WITH BushInc and never stopped

because he didn't HAVE to. BCCI matters were conveniently deep-sixed throughout the 90s so the fascist agenda could continue....as planned. Creating a world cowed by terrorism and nuclear threat certainly was a huge benefit to the fascists - and AQ Khan's nuclear threat always pops up just in time for another round of warmongering.

BTW, you may already be familiar with this, but Petraeus has said that the best way to deal with their problems in Pakistan is to go THROUGH India. Sounds a bit like PNAC's wish for a Pearl Harbor, eh?

Times(UK) article at this link:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=4572475&mesg_id=4572537

[robertpaulsen]

3. Exactly. The organizations change names, but the neocon nucleus remains the same.

So when Dubya declares the network has been shut down, it is safe to conclude the exact opposite.

Yes, I did read that Petraeus quote. Reminiscent of PNAC and Brzezinski's Grand Chessboard. We're not even close to getting out of the woods until we relinquish the "global primacy" that American neo-cons and neo-libs cling to.

I've read a lot about BCCI online, but I still have yet to find any books on the subject. The only one I've heard of is False Profits. Have you read that?

[blm]

4. Outlaw Bank is fairly comprehensive....

http://www.amazon.com/Outlaw-Bank-Wild-Secret-Heart/dp/0679413847

Scroll down to some of the reviews - and note the ones made AFTER 9-11. There are people who GET it. Just not enough.

What is obvious is that BCCI had still TOO MANY unanswered questions that needed diligent and detailed scrutiny. It was the Holy Grail for the economic and global security pursuits of the fascists - a blueprint of how they would reach their New World Order.

[robertpaulsen]

11. That looks good.

I couldn't tell from the reviews but I hope it has plenty of info on the Bush family ties.

[blm]

32. You have to understand that at the time it was written reporters had already been 'suicided'

and 'accidented' and it was expected that MORE scrutiny after the release of the BCCI report would put more crucial pieces in place for those reporters who still worked on the story.

What happened after the release of the Dec 1992 BCCI report handed to the incoming Clinton administration? DEEP-SIXED......even the serious matters listed as OUTSTANDING and in need of further investigation and examination of documents that had been previously withheld.....ignored....deep-sixed....throughout the 90s.

[arcadian]

7. I still don't think I know exactly what BCCI was.

Was it an intelligence racket? Definitely a shadow institution but who was pulling the strings? Oil rich arabs? Bush family types? Transnational billionaires?

[robertpaulsen]

17. I put a section on BCCI in the 1st edition of American Judas.

3. B.C.C.I. - BCCI was the largest criminal corporate enterprise ever, the biggest Ponzi scheme, the most pervasive money-laundering operation in history, the only bank - so far as anyone knows - that ran a brisk sideline business in both conventional and nuclear weapons, gold, drugs, turnkey mercenary armies, intelligence and counterintelligence, shipping, and commodities from cement in the Middle East to Honduran coffee to Vietnamese beans.

Though it was fundamentally a financial fraud, BCCI itself was not a bank in any conventional sense. Or, more precisely, banking was only a part of the global organism, the ingeniously constructed platform from which its other lines of business were launched....

This "bank" possessed its very own diplomatic corps, intelligence network, and private army, its own shipping and commodities trading companies. And BCCI itself was so thoroughly enmeshed in the official affairs of Pakistan that it was often impossible to separate the two.

BCCI was bigger even than that: It was the unsettling next-stage evolution of the multinational corporation, the one the theorists had been predicting for years but which never seemed to be able to shed its sovereign boundaries. (General Motors and Mitsubishi are both good examples of this - huge companies with holdings and operations all over the world that nonetheless persist in being fundamentally American and Japanese entities.) In taking that step, BCCI became truly stateless and very nearly invisible to the authorities in each country where it did business.

{BCCI founder} Abedi had money to spare to underwrite the protocol department: In 1981 Ghulam Ishaq Khan granted BCCI a special tax-free status allowing Abedi to avoid tens of millions of dollars in taxes and to pour his huge Pakistan profits into one of his front companies and into Pakistan's atomic bomb project. Most of the millions that flowed through the foundation went to two uses: first, to investments - patently noncharitable - in a company called Attock Cement, owned by Abedi's associate and U.S. front man Ghaith Pharaon. The second beneficiary was something called the Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology. According to its brochures, the Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute trains young scientists and engineers. The reality is a little more ominous . . .

The director of the institute is Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the man most closely linked with Pakistan's efforts to develop nuclear weapons. Khan, a German-trained metallurgist, once worked as a classified enrichment plant in the Netherlands, where he gained access to key plans. So important is he to the Pakistani national interest that even his whereabouts are considered a national secret.(http://www.the-catbird-seat.net/BCCI.htm)

Right from its inception, the clandestine nuclear and missile projects in Pakistan were treated as a top secret intel op of the ISI to ensure deniability. All payments to the foreign suppliers were made not from the accounts of the Govt of Pakistan, but from private accounts in the BCCI, which collapsed in 1991, and other Dubai and Geneva based banks. These accounts were opened by the Gokul brothers of Geneva, one of whom was jailed for cheating in the UK after the collapse of the BCCI; Shaukat Aziz, Pakistan’s present Finance Minister, who was working in the Gulf for the Citibank in the 1990s; Dawood Ibrahim, the mafia leader who was designated by the US as an intl terrorist in Oct; Dubai-based Pakistani smugglers, and AQ Khan and other trusted Pakistani scientists.(http://www.kashmirherald.com/featuredarticle/nuclearjihad.html) Given that A.Q. Khan began his network from such sinister and corrupt beginnings, this next relationship should come as no surprise.

4. Osama bin Laden – The following is an excerpt from an investigation by the Kashmir Herald into several of A.Q. Khan’s travels to Africa.

He had kept the Pakistani Foreign Office informed of his travels. The Foreign Office had instructed the Pakistani diplomatic missions in the countries visited by him to accord the due honours of protocol to him.
In all the countries, he was received by officers of the Pakistani diplomatic missions and entertained by the heads of missions.
In Sudan, he was accorded the honours of protocol generally given to a member of the Cabinet and called on the President of the country.
He was accompanied by senior serving scientists of Pakistan's nuclear establishment, who were among those responsible for Pakistan's military nuclear development. They could not have gone abroad and remained absent for days without the knowledge and clearance of the Government.
At least one Lt.Gen. belonging to the Pakistan Army's Medical Corps, who had headed it, and two Brigadiers had accompanied him. They could not have gone and remained away from the country without the knowledge and clearance of the Military Headquarters.
The uranium enriched at KRL, Kahuta, used to come from Africa, mainly Niger. This partly explains the frequent travels of A.Q.Khan to Africa. From the accounts given by the Pakistani author, two intriguing questions arise:

Why did Khan consider it necessary to visit the site of a factory in Sudan, which became the target of US Cruise missile attacks after the explosions outside the US Embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam by Al Qaeda in August 1998? The Americans had alleged at that time that this factory belonged to Osama bin Laden and was producing chemicals for weaponisation purposes. Denying this, the Sudanese authorities had claimed that it was producing anti-malaria drugs.
Why was he visiting frequently Timbuktu, which has apparently no importance from the nuclear point of view? Pakistani officials have alleged that he had illegally constructed a hotel there ( Hotel La Colombe?) in the name of his wife. If he was going there to supervise the construction of the hotel, he should have been accompanied by experts in building construction and the hotel industry. No such person accompanied him. He was always accompanied by scientists and Army officers associated with KRL and Tahir Mian, who was helping him in the procurement of centrifuges.

It is reliably learnt from well-placed observers that it also came out during the recent interrogation of the associates of Khan in Pakistan's nuclear establishment that after Osama bin Laden shifted from Khartoum to Afghanistan in 1996, Dr.Khan was also looking after bin Laden's extensive investments in the mining industry in many African countries and that the money invested in the Timbuktu hotel had come from these investments of bin Laden. The Pakistani authorities have reportedly suppressed this information and not shared it with the US.(http://www.kashmirherald.com/featuredarticle/khanandbinladen.html)

This investigation has yielded some amazing information. In addition to widespread government cooperation with the network that has not been reported to the US, A.Q. Khan obtained uranium from Africa, mainly from Niger, where Valerie Plame’s husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, discovered the evidence that Iraq was trying to obtain uranium there was a forgery. Most frightening is the extent of Khan’s relationship with bin Laden, apparently trusted enough to look after bin Laden’s investments in Africa. Only time will tell how much bin Laden profited, both in monetary terms and in expanding al Qaeda’s WMD potential, from the generosity of Khan’s nuclear Walmart.

http://americanjudas.blogspot.com/2007/01/american-judas-1st-edition.html

[Demeter]

51. 'The past isn't dead. It isn't even past.' — William Faulkner

[PufPuf23]

20. Read Kerry's BCCI Report --link

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/

[blm]

33. That BCCI Report is still the most important read ANY American citizen can undertake.

I wish journalists were FORCED to read it before they were allowed anywhere near DC. Same for ALL our lawmakers.

[patriotvoice]

58. And a harbinger of things to come: Price Waterhouse was the "auditor" for BCCI.

Guess who also "audited" Enron, et. al.

On edit, just a little taste from the BCCI Executive Summary:
"6. BCCI'S ACCOUNTANTS FAILED TO PROTECT BCCI'S INNOCENT DEPOSITORS AND CREDITORS FROM THE CONSEQUENCES OF POOR PRACTICES AT THE BANK OF WHICH THE AUDITORS WERE AWARE FOR YEARS.

<snip>

"There are serious questions concerning the acceptance of payments and possibly housing from BCCI or its affiliates by Price Waterhouse partners in the Grand Caymans, and possible acceptance of sexual favors provided by BCCI officials to certain persons affiliated with the firm.

[blm]

60. And Enron's 'investment' arm was quickly bought by UBS BEFORE Ashcroft would proceed

and all the files rushed overseas and exempt from examination.

And let's not forget that Phil Gramm resigned his seat quickly right before the Enron story hit, and was QUICKLY dispatched to work for UBS.

More of them thar 'coincidences' that the coincidence theorists like to hide behind.

[blm]

2. oops...forgot to K&R....

heh....and...thanks for your commitment to the accuracy of the historic record, robertpaulsen. It matters.

[robertpaulsen]

6. Thanks!

And right back at you. I always bookmark your posts as they reflect the reality behind whatever MSM is putting a shiny gloss over.

[Hannah Bell]

5. dawood ibrahim = habib family?

[robertpaulsen]

9. Interesting question. I don't have a definite answer.

But I did find this little nugget googling Ibrahim and Habib:


Aug 22, 2008

'Don Dawood Ibrahim under ISI protection'
MUMBAI: India's most wanted mafia don Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar is under the protection of Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence in Karachi, according to revelations to police by Karimullah Osan Habib Khan

http://www.topix.com/pk/karachi/2008/08/don-dawood-ibrahim-under-isi-protection


How about that? Just 4 months ago.

[Hannah Bell]

12. I was researching the habib family (habib bank, largest in pakistan,

founded 1941 by family of originally lebanese maronite xians who went to india in 19th century, connections with the whole british east india co. nexus.)

Habib bank connected to bcci through the person of agha hasan abedi, who founded bcci & started with habib.

sons of habib ismail (d. 1931) = ahmed, dawood, muhammed ali, ghulan ali.

but checking wikipedia, dawood ibrahim = policeman's son, so maybe no relation.



Habib Khan...??

Re Lashkar-e-taiba:

http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:EGmk8bmVsgIJ:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lascar+lAscAr&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us

http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:Gp-5-1XiK98J:mariners.records.nsw.gov.au/1881/04/084ros.htm+gardner+ebrahim+cassum&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us

[leftchick]

8. no shock here cheney needs to maitain worldwide

destabilization in order to continue to enrich himself and fellow criminals. It seems he is doing extremely well.


K&R

[barbtries]

10. thank you for all the work

you did - bookmarking. heads need to roll over the plame affair - starting at the top, in the white house.

[ooglymoogly]

34. Ditto on that and bookmarking I am....nt

[nashville_brook]

13. it's been a long time since i've seen one of these threads! bookmarking this...

what a giant bunch of work. thank you. wow.

[KamaAina]

14. Dawood Ibrahim discovered the joys of Dubai long before Cheney and Halliburton

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawood_Ibrahim#Background

He soon moved his residence to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates where he has business interests alongside India and Pakistan. His career developed in the Persian Gulf states...

I'll bet. Most of the underclass that builds Dubai's shiny new skyscrapers comes from India. Somebody has to fleece them out of their meager wages, right? :sarcasm:

[robertpaulsen]

15. Oh yeah. The Cayman Islands of the Eastern Hemisphere.

Good catch there. There's a whole slew of BCCI alumni doing business in Dubai.

[blm]

22. Yep - and some people want to FORGIVE and FORGET that Bill Clinton deep-sixed BCCI matters

throughout the 90s for Poppy Bush, Jackson Stephens, Dubai and Saudi royals, and their many operatives like AQ Khan, Bin Laden, Marc Rich, et al.

[mod mom]

24. Marc Rich...funny his name is again in the news (Eric Holder) with so little attention

given too it. :mad:

[blm]

28. That pardon was rushed past Holder....and I am certain Clinton was deliberate about that rush.

You never hear in the media that Rich was a named figure in IranContra and BCCI do you? Clinton misled on his reasons for why Rich needed to be pardoned - Democrats wouldn't be happy knowing he pardoned another Bush Family crime member, now, would they? Especially since they were planning Hillary's run in 2008.

[mod mom]

38. This NYT article

Pardon Is Back in Focus for the Justice Nominee
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and DAVID JOHNSTON
Published: December 1, 2008
WASHINGTON — In the much praised career of Eric H. Holder Jr., President-elect Barack Obama’s choice to be attorney general, there is one notable blemish: Mr. Holder’s complicated role in the 2001 pardon of Marc Rich, a billionaire financier who had fled the country rather than face federal tax evasion charges.


Mr. Holder’s supporters portray him as having been a relatively uninvolved bystander caught in a Clinton-era controversy, the remarkable granting of a last-minute pardon by President Bill Clinton to a fugitive from justice. But interviews and an examination of Congressional records show that Mr. Holder, who at the time of the pardon was the deputy attorney general, was more deeply involved in the Rich pardon than his supporters acknowledge.

Mr. Holder had more than a half-dozen contacts with Mr. Rich’s lawyers over 15 months, including phone calls, e-mail and memorandums that helped keep alive Mr. Rich’s prospects for a legal resolution to his case. And Mr. Holder’s final opinion on the matter — a recommendation to the White House on the eve of the pardon that he was “neutral, leaning toward” favorable — helped ensure that Mr. Clinton signed the pardon despite objections from other senior staff members, participants said.

-snip

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/02/us/politics/02holder.html?_r=1&hp

This article seems to point that Mr Holder was more involved than at first suggested-don't you think?

[blm]

42. Yes....but...given Bill's consistent protection to Poppy Bush throughout the 90s, wouldn't it be

more likely that he was STILL operating in SERVICE to his president?

Highly unlikely to me that Holder would be as privy to how deep Rich was involved with Poppy Bush's criminal operations, as Clinton certainly wasn't facilitating access to that information.

[mod mom]

44. I'm certainly not defending Clinton, but also hold Holder to foot some of the blame.

He had enough time/info on hand to denounce the pardon. I'll put it this way...if my boss asked me to do something I thought was unethical, I have the option of doing it or not. Holder had the option to denounce the pardon. If , as the article states he had 15 months contact, then certainly he had time to form an opinion. Seems to me he was just another appeasing yes man-EXACTLY THE WRONG TYPE OF PERSON TO BE AG IN THESE TRYING TIMES!

Believe me, blm, I stand in opposition to much of what the Clintons have done to this country-MF trade w China, Free trade, Telecom Act of '96 and repeal of Glass-Steagall that lead to banking de-regulation, to mention a few malevolent contributions that lead to the 2000 coup, followed by the 2004. I am not happy w HRC as SOS but I hold the folks who went along (such as Holder) also to blame.

[blm]

49. To that extent, I agree. My point was that I wonder how much real information he had.

My guess is the info he WAS given was as cherry-picked as Cheney's Iraq intel.

[bonito]

16. Kicking for further investigation n/t

[Danascot]

18. Thanks, great summary - very enlightening

K&R

[starroute]

19. I've done some looking into Dawood Ibrahim here and there

Most of my poking around was immediately following the Plame threads in 2004, and you've clearly pursued the matter a lot further than I ever did, but I may have a few additional snippets.

Perhaps the most important thing about Dawood is that, as a US News story on him from 2005 makes clear, he's first and foremost a Mafiosi who only secondarily developed terrorist connections:

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/051205/5terror.b.htm

Dawood started off as a petty crook but soon formed his own gang and gradually eliminated his rivals among the city's traditional crime bosses, say Bombay police. By the 1980s, his gang, D Company, had become Bombay's most powerful, drawing its strength from the city's minority Muslims. The syndicate grew rich smuggling black-market gold and consumer goods into India's closed economy and forced its way into the country's sizzling Bollywood film industry.

In 1985, beset by gang wars and prosecutions, Dawood fled to Dubai, the freewheeling financial center of the United Arab Emirates. From there, he continued to expand his operations across Asia. In the U.A.E., Dawood's men ran high-stakes gambling rings, fixed cricket matches, and threw lavish parties where Indian actors and sports stars mixed with Arab emirs. Dawood pushed his syndicate into narcotics and arms trafficking, construction, real estate, and hawala, the underground bankers who move millions of dollars around the world each day with barely a trace. "It's like a corporation of the underworld," says Dhananjay Kamalakar, who oversees the Bombay police's organized-crime unit. "There are monthly salaries for foot soldiers, legal defenses for those arrested, and extra pay for contract killers."

Revenge. The shift from gangster to terrorist came in 1993, after rioting targeted Bombay's Muslims. Bent on revenge, Dawood engineered the smuggling into India of tons of explosives provided by Pakistan's spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, say U.S. and Indian law enforcement. The bombings that followed made Dawood India's most wanted man. The ISI then made Dawood an offer: If he relocated to Pakistan's port city of Karachi and kept working with the ISI, it would guarantee him control of the nation's coastal smuggling routes. For 12 years now, Dawood has called Pakistan home, where he is believed to own shopping malls, luxury homes, and shipping and trucking lines that smuggle arms into India and heroin into Europe. India's FBI, the Central Bureau of Investigation, puts D Company's annual income in the hundreds of millions of dollars and says it has up to 5,000 members.

There's also a possible Daniel Pearl connection, for whatever that's worth:

http://www.historycommons.org/essay.jsp?article=essaysaeed

The ever-busy Saeed meanwhile was taking part in another kidnapping. The target was Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Pearl had become fascinated in a number of stories involving the ISI. On December 24, 2001, he reported about ties between the ISI and a Pakistani organization that was working on giving bin Laden nuclear secrets before 9/11. A few days later, he reported that Jaish-e-Mohammad still had its office running and bank accounts working, even after President Musharraf claimed to have banned the group. {Vanity Fair, 8/02, Guardian, 7/16/02} He began investigating links between shoe bomber Richard Reid and Pakistani militants connected to the ISI {Washington Post, 2/23/02}, investigating Dawood Ibrahim, a powerful terrorist and gangster protected by the ISI {Newsweek, 2/4/02, Vanity Fair, 8/02}, and may also have been investigating the US training and backing of the ISI. {Gulf News, 3/25/02} Former CIA agent Robert Baer later claimed he was working with Pearl on investigating 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. {UPI, 9/30/02} It is later suggested that Mohammed masterminded Reid’s shoe bomb attempt and has connections to both Pakistani gangsters and the ISI, so some of these explanations could fit together. {UPI, 9/30/02, Asia Times, 10/30/02, CNN, 1/30/03} Kidnapper Saeed later said of Pearl, “because of his hyperactivity he caught our interest.” {The News, 2/15/02}

In my own files, Dawood fits into a category I have labeled as "heirs of the Enterprise." The Enterprise were the former CIA guys who in the late 70's and 80's privatized the traditional CIA business of drug-smuggling, arms-running, and money-laundering. They were, of course, extremely tight with George H.W. Bush, starting when he was running the CIA in 1976 and then during the Carter administration, when they and he became a sort of CIA-in-exile.

Richard Armitage became part of the same nexus in the early 70's, when he was a naval officer in Saigon and then an embassy employee in Thailand. By 1975, he was doing off-the-books stuff in Iran for Enterprise leader Ted Shackley, which is one thing that makes it hard to believe he was acting innocently in the Plame affair.

And BCCI, of course, was used extensively by the Enterprise for its operations in the 80's -- as well as by practically everybody else doing covert business of one sort of another. But BCCI is important in another way, since, unlike earlier money-laundering banks used by the CIA, it was not US based -- it was Pakistani with strong Saudi involvement -- and the CIA only represented a small part of its business.

By the 90's, BCCI had collapsed, the original Enterprise guys had gotten old and retired, and the locals that they had been dealing with slipped the leash and set up on their own. They were doing the same dirty business in the same locations with the same connections, but the US was not controlling things any more. The Israeli Mafia, the Russian Mafia, and Dawood's Indian Mafia are all working in that tradition -- and not only Chechens but also supposed Islamic terrorist groups in a number of the 'stans get most of their working capital from drug smuggling along the route between Afghanistan and the West.

It's really hard to put your finger on the motivations here -- but my best guess is that the Mafiosi/quasi-terrorists are mainly looking to create chaos and failed states because it's good for business. And it also seems as though the US is behind a lot of these same groups as part of an effort to keep both Russian and Chinese influence out of Central Asia.

In fact, al Qaeda seems to be the only group of that sort that the US isn't backing in some way. Everywhere else, from the 'stans to Chechnya to the Balkans, the US is allied with the drug-smuggling terrorists -- which leaves al Qaeda as kind of a strange anomaly in itself.

At any rate, what I'm trying to say in a perhaps overly long-winded way, is that your post suggests very strongly to me that the proper context in which to see these attacks is not "Islamic terrorism" but "post-Enterprise international criminals with CIA associations but not CIA control." And that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish.

[robertpaulsen]

37. You're on the right track, starroute. Excellent post!

Great links and analysis. Dawood Ibrahim is a Mafiosi in league with ISI, much like Sam Giancana was in league with the CIA in the 60's. Your analogy with The Enterprise is very apt; I recently finished reading The Iran Contra Connection, which had a chapter dealing with that history and how the underworld of former Bay of Pigs veterans metastasized into the drug-dealing, arms-dealing cesspool in Central America in the 80's.

You make an important point about "post-Enterprise international criminals with CIA associations but not CIA control". That ties in with the point I was making about the Vulcans having their cake and eating it too: they have plausible deniability when terror attacks occur, but because they have set so many of the dominoes in place through their associations (like the CIA-ISI-Saeed Sheikh links brilliantly illuminated by Thompson) they reap the benefits through the military-industrial complex. Bottom-line, the motivation is because these acts are, as you say, "good for business".

[starroute]

41. The Enterprise is more than just an analogy

When George H.W. Bush went off to a conference at Bibi Netanyahu's Jonathan Institute in July 1979 to help invent the War on Terror, he brought with him an entourage that included both Enterprise guys like Ted Shackley and Neocons who had been associated with Bush's Team B, like Richard Pipes.

Michael Ledeen didn't attend that conference in person, but he should also be considered part of the group, since he'd been working with Shackley in Italy around that time and his close associate Claire Sterling did attend.

(I started a thread on all this three years ago -- there's still good stuff there from robertpaulsen, seemslikeadream, and octafish, among others. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x118064)

Ever since then, much of the Neocon agenda could equally well be regarded as a latter-day Enterprise agenda -- particularly in its focus on the Middle East. Ledeen, for example, has continued to associate with Iran-Contra figure Manucher Ghorbanifar, he may have been involved in the Niger forgeries, and he was also a member of the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya, along with Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams (one of the Iran-Contra conspirators given a last-minute pardon by George H.W.Bush), and James Woolsey.

Neil Livingstone is another figure out of the Iran-Contra days whose name continues to pop up in a variety of dubious contexts, ranging from his membership in the Iran Policy Committee (the chief US backers of the infamous MEK) to his ties with James Woolsey (and the role they both played in 2001 trying to push the idea of a link between Saddam, Qaeda, and the anthrax attacks) to his connection with the Admiral William Crowe (a minor Iran-Contra figure who until his death last year was a principal in the leading anthrax vaccine manufacturer.)

Almost every major scandal that has erupted during the last eight years has some sort of tie to the Enterprise/Neocon nexus of the late 70's and/or the Iran-Contra/BCCI nexus of the 80's. Brent Wilkes and Dusty Foggo fit in there. So do the eager young right-wingers of 25 years ago, like Jack Abramoff, who studied at the feet of Ollie North (another Enterprise alumnus with close ties to Neil Livingstone.)

[robertpaulsen]

48. Wow! I was not aware of American Committee for Peace in Chechnya.

It wouldn't surprised me if an organization like this was contributing to Iran-Contraesque subterfuge in the region:


The American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (ACPC) describes itself as "the only private, nongovernmental organization in North America exclusively dedicated to promoting the peaceful resolution of the Russo-Chechen war(1)

ACPC's activities include organizing public education programs, developing policy recommendations for lawmakers, and collaborating with activists, journalists, and scholars. It also works closely with a range of nongovernmental policy groups and think tanks, including the American Enterprise Institute and the Jamestown Foundation. The committee distributes Chechnya Today, a daily email news service, and Chechnya Weekly, an online news magazine produced by the Jamestown Foundation. ACPC's web site contains a news archive; policy papers relating to the U.S. role in Chechnya; and academic papers, maps, and photos of the conflict. Similar to Jamestown Foundation's founding objective of working with Soviet defectors, ACPC also plans events that feature Chechnyan dissidents. (2)

snip

ACPC's board of directors is cochaired by Zbigniew Brzezinski, Alexander M. Haig, Jr., Steven J. Solarz, and Max Kampelman; and the committee's more than one hundred members reflect a wide range of political tendencies, including such figures as Richard Gere, Morton Ambramowitz, and Geraldine Ferraro. On its membership rolls are many high-profile neoconservatives, including Richard Perle, Frank Gaffney, Elliott Abrams, Midge Decter, William Kristol, Michael Ledeen, and James Woolsey. (5)

snip

ACPC says that the rebel forces don't have links to al-Qaida, and that the U.S. should support their efforts to create an independent Chechnya. Whatever the facts about connections between the Chechen rebels and the al-Qaida terrorist network, the rebels certainly include Islamist fundamentalists, including those affiliated with Wahhabism. Nevertheless, ACPC supports the Chechen rebel movement, apparently as a strategy to weaken Russia and establish better U.S. ties in the region-one of increasing geopolitical value and which has vast, unexploited natural resource reserves-including rich oil, gas, and hard mineral deposits.

http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1429.html

[blm]

50. It's always the same core group of fascists, isn't it?

.

[robertpaulsen]

59. Always. Looks like ACPC has a link with the Sibel Edmonds case too.

Sibel Edmonds Case

Solarz's photograph was listed in Sibel Edmonds' State Secrets Privilege Gallery <1> alongside photos of seventeen other prominent US officials including Brent Scowcroft, Richard Perle, Dennis Hastert, Marc Grossman, and Douglas Feith. Sibel Edmonds is a former FBI translator and whistleblower who uncovered serious criminality by leading US officials, involving the nuclear black market, narcotics trafficking, terrorism and money laundering. The details of Edmonds' case have been buried using the State Secrets Privilege. Sibel Edmonds circumvented the State Secrets Privilege gag by simply publishing the photographs of these public officials on her website <2>. Other websites <3> put names to those photographs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Solarz

Just shows how any investigation into the truth of this matter would be compromised.

[trungpa ricochet]

21. To know all the players, one needs a scorecard...

or a drawing by Mark Lombardi.

When one of his pieces was on display at the Drawing Center in New York, a couple of FBI agents came to study it. Lombardi's drawings by now would have to be twice as big and would resemble a DNA sequence. :mad: :puke:

[mod mom]

23. Having a Lombardi book handy does help put the connections together.

My husband gave me one for X-Mas last year (recommended by Octafish) and it started me delving into many of the connections. None troubled me so much as this connection to the Clintons (ie infilitrated our party):

Jackson Stephens rivals Bath in his role as conduit between high-level factions. A Little Rock, Arkansas tycoon who attended the U.S. Naval Academy with Jimmy Carter and staked Sam Walton to found Wal-Mart in 1970, Stephens was owner of the notoriously toxic WTI Incinerator in East Liverpool, OH, and a munificent contributor to the campaign warchests of both Bill Clinton and George Bush, Sr. He was also embroiled in the BCCI affair through his association with BCCI satellite Union Bank of Switzerland—UBS, in turn, contributed $25 million to the moribund Harken Energy Corp.

http://www.wburg.com/0202/arts/lombardi.html

Mark Lombardi's final chapter before his suicide was about the connections to the Clintons. I wish others would review his work and spend the time on the ole 'google" looking into these connections.

[blm]

31. Poppy Bush and Jackson Stephens NEEDED Clinton in office - it was the only way to escape

further scrutiny of their past and oversight of their more recent criminal global dealings.

[robertpaulsen]

39. Wow, now THAT'S a hydra-headed monster! Thanks for the link, mod mom.

I've heard of Lombardi, but have not read any books. I'm always fascinated by the multiplicity of connections and how it ties into the history of shadow government in this country. Sibel Edmonds was right, you can pick any point to start with, then keep digging and find out everything is connected. I started with Plame, which lead me back to the Niger forgeries, which lead me back to Iran-Contra, which lead me back to the Bay of Pigs. And that's just one straight line out of the many connections that revolve around TPTB.

[trungpa ricochet]

55. Lombardi

Lombardi was a close friend of mine. I'm from Texas. When he first started his little project, he did his research and kept note on cards in a shoe box. It got too hard to manage, and he started making graphic descriptions on long sheets of paper, like a diagram of the last sentence in James Joyce's Ulysses....around the block. We used to laugh about the fact that he had the goods on all these people, but nobody cared. Nobody. I thought somebody would try to kill him if he ever got close to publishing a book, but he always laughed, saying nobody cares enough to make him feel threatened.

He was bipolar, I have no doubt. He was not murdered. I wish he had found some help, but in New York, everybody's too busy to help. Had he lived, he would have had a lifetime's worth of material from the freaking Bush administration.

[blm]

61. Thank you for posting about that.

It has been my mission to keep BCCI and all its sordid characters in the pubic internet eye. A few of us here stay on the corruption and the decades of criminal operations that have been allowed to continue. Lombardi is one of our revered figures - what he undertook was extremely dangerous, and that couldn't have helped his mental state at the time.

Most Americans still believe that RW went after Whitewater to harass Clinton - BCCI observers saw BFEE's legal fixers using cover of Whitewater to get into Rose Law Firm for as long as it took to scrub the hell out of Jackson Stephens' files.

[rucognizant]

56. Thank you thank you....

that one escaped me and I am an artist!
Bookmarked!

[trungpa ricochet]

57. Wrong museum

It was the Whitney, not that it matters.

[SammyWinstonJack]

25. K&R!

[BrklynLiberal]

26. K&R Read again later.

[KrazyinKS]

27. Your research is appreciated

I just want to say your meticulous research is appreciated and is doing some good. I read DU every day, and I have learned a LOT. I work at home online and I do get sidetracked reading it. I have to quit so I can get some work done. When you look around and see all the ignorance it seems like it is all in vain. But even my right wing sister reads it now, and has changed some opinions on some things. it is slow going. I will have to get back and read this article later, looks VERY INTERESTING. Thanks.

[blm]

29. BCCI matters usually gives RWers a much clearer picture of what's actually going on

and that Bushes couldn't have gotten away with it without the protection of some powerful Democrats over the last few decades.

[Richard Steele]

30. K&R

[ooglymoogly]

35. Thank you for this much needed and too often misunderstood enlightenment

This is required reading and in depth study if one intends to understand the money and power; The often internecine madness that controls the workings of evil; The wheel underneath we and all people of good will are struggling and enslaved by. Bookmarked for in depth study.

[ooglymoogly]

36. Ps KR

[HCE SuiGeneris]

40. The depth of the duplicity is astounding.

If only the truth garnered as much attention as Anna Nicole...

*sigh*

DU really has some incredible researchers and brilliant minds -- you definitely belong to that group. Great post.

[Truth2Tell]

43. Thank you RP! K&R

This is why I come to DU.

[loudsue]

45. Has anybody seen Seemslikeadream?

She's been on top of this from the git-go.

Thanks for this thread, robertpaulsen! Cheney needs to be put UNDER the Hague.
A rec & a :kick:

[lala_rawraw]

46. brilliant post!!!

per usual!!!

[BeHereNow]

47. K!&R!

It's so nice to see an intelligent thread on DU.
They are so far and few between these days...
BHN

[stillcool]

52. I would like to know why this angle...

is not discussed..

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JK22Df03.html
South Asia
Nov 22, 2008

Faith in India's army shaken by blasts
By Sudha Ramachandran

BANGALORE
- Investigations into recent bomb blasts in India have led to the arrest of several Hindus and for the first time ever, a serving officer of the Indian army.

The arrests have triggered heated debate on whether the arrests indicate the existence of "Hindu terrorism". More worryingly, the probes point to the possibility of the hitherto secular and apolitical Indian army being infected by the communal virus.

Six people were killed and over 80 injured in blasts on September 29 in the Muslim-dominated town of Malegaon, about 260 kilometers from Mumbai. A few hours later, a bomb went off near a mosque in Modasa town in Gujarat, where Muslims were offering special Ramadan prayers, killing two people.

Investigations have led to the arrest of about 10 people, including Ajay Rahirkar, Sameer Kulkarni, Rakesh Dhawade (all members of the Hindu extremist organization, the Abhinav Bharat), Dayanand Pandey (a self-styled Hindu "guru") Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur (an "ascetic" who is a member of the Durga Vahini - the women's wing of the Vishva Hindu Parishad - and the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad - the students' wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party - BJP).
---------
But even as Indians are heatedly debating whether "Hindu terrorism" exists, another worrying issue has been thrown up by the investigations. Three men arrested in connection with the Malegaon blasts are from the armed forces. They include one serving officer, Lieutenant Colonel Prasad Shrikant Purohit, and two retired officers, Major Ramesh Upadhyay and Colonel Shailesh Raikar.

[blm]

53. Because the first group to establish a storyline is ALWAYS the 'WH officials'

And that includes the US representatives that work out of India and Pakistan.

[mod mom]

54. Fresh Air w Terry Gross (NPR) did a program on Dawood Ibrahim. Found here:

Behind The Terror: The Role Of Organized Crime

Listen Now <39 min 18 sec> add to playlist
Fresh Air from WHYY, December 4, 2008 · Investigative journalist David Kaplan says that terrorists often use organized crime tactics — and profits — to execute their activities. He discusses the link between terrorism and criminal syndicates, and how that relationship may have played out in the recent attacks on Mumbai.

Kaplan is the editorial director for the Center for Public Integrity. Throughout his 30-year career, he has investigated various criminal groups, including terrorists, corporate polluters, corrupt law enforcement officials and neo-Nazis.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97792722

Analyst: Pakistani Group Behind Mumbai Attacks


Daniel Markey's research and analysis centers on India, Pakistan and South Asia. Council on Foreign Relations


Morning Edition, December 4, 2008 · A radical Islamic group from Pakistan has emerged as the prime suspect in last week's deadly attacks in Mumbai, India. The group known as Lashkar-e-Taiba — or Army of the Righteous — was thought to have mainly local ambitions, but it shares the jihadi philosophy of al-Qaida.

And it's been blamed for attacks outside Pakistan before.

Daniel Markey, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, tells Renee Montagne that the group "has been traditionally focused on the Kashmir struggle, but its ideology is more globally oriented even than that."

Lashkar-e-Taiba "shares an ideology with the most extreme versions of Wahhabi Islam followers, including al-Qaida — anti-Western, anti-Indian, anti-Jewish," says Markey, who was formerly a policy expert for the State Department.
-snip
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97776680