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Pakistan and Saudi Arabia Aided Bin Laden, Say Panel Members
It shocked me too
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia helped set the stage for the Sept. 11 attacks by cutting deals with the Taliban and Osama bin Laden that allowed his Al Qaeda terrorist network to flourish, according to several senior members of the Sept. 11 commission and U.S. counter-terrorism officials. The financial aid to the Taliban and other assistance by two of the most important allies of the United States in its war on terrorism date at least to 1996, and appear to have shielded them from Al Qaeda attacks within their own borders until long after the 2001 strikes, those commission members and officials said in interviews. The officials said that by not cracking down on Bin Laden, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia significantly undermined efforts to combat terrorism worldwide, giving the Saudi exile the haven he needed to train tens of thousands of soldiers. They believe that the governments’ funding of his Taliban protectors enabled Bin Laden to withstand international pressure and expand his operation into a global network that could carry out the Sept. 11 attacks.

Saudi Arabia provided funds and equipment to the Taliban and probably directly to Bin Laden, and didn’t interfere with Al Qaeda’s efforts to raise money, recruit and train operatives, and establish cells throughout the kingdom, commission and U.S. officials said. Pakistan provided even more direct assistance, its military and intelligence agencies often coordinating efforts with the Taliban and Al Qaeda, they said. Only after Pakistan and Saudi Arabia launched comprehensive efforts to take out their domestic Al Qaeda cells — as late as last year, in the case of Saudi Arabia — did the two nations become victims of terrorist attacks. And officials in both countries acknowledge that Al Qaeda’s fundraising, recruiting and training structure is now so firmly rooted that it will be extremely difficult to eliminate.

For years, there have been unsubstantiated allegations that the governments of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia intentionally ignored Bin Laden’s efforts in their countries or even cut deals with him, either out of sympathy with his efforts or to protect themselves from attack. That claim is made in a lawsuit by the families of Sept. 11 victims against Saudi Arabia. Both governments have strenuously denied this, and did so again Saturday. But commission investigators have come to believe that these allegations are credible, based on their exhaustive review of all of the classified intelligence data known to the U.S. government. The commission’s 80 staffers also conducted thousands of interviews in the United States and abroad, and had access to the interrogations of Al Qaeda’s most senior operatives in U.S. custody, including accused Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. "There’s no question the Taliban was getting money from the Saudis 
 and there’s no question they got much more than that from the Pakistani government," said former Sen. Bob Kerrey, one of the congressionally appointed commission’s 10 members. "Their motive is a secondary issue for us." Kerrey said the commission officials believed that the Saudi government had a mutually beneficial relationship with the Taliban that bought Riyadh safety from attack. "Whether there was quid pro quo with the Saudis, we don’t know. But certainly the Pakistanis believed that there was. They benefited enormously from their relationship with the Taliban and Al Qaeda."

Now, the bipartisan commission is wrestling with how to characterize such politically sensitive information in its final report, and even whether to include it. Some commission members also believe that U.S. officials didn’t do enough to force Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to sever their ties with Bin Laden and the Taliban. "All we’re doing is looking at classified documents from our own government, not from some magical source," Kerrey said. "So we knew what was going on, but we did nothing." The commission staff alluded to its findings, but only briefly, in a report issued last week during a hearing on the origins of Al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 plot. That report said that it had no convincing evidence the Saudi government had directly supported the Sept. 11 attacks but that Riyadh had engaged in "very limited oversight" of the religious and charitable entities that have long been accused of being key financial backers of Al Qaeda. Pakistan, the report said, "significantly facilitated" the Taliban’s ability to provide Bin Laden a haven despite international sanctions against Al Qaeda, including the freezing of its assets and prohibitions on travel.

In interviews with The Times, the senior commission members said their investigation had uncovered more extensive evidence than the report suggested. In the case of Saudi Arabia, commission investigators believe that Riyadh made overtures to Bin Laden soon after his arrival in Afghanistan in May 1996. A formal delegation of Saudi officials met with top Taliban leaders, including Mullah Mohammed Omar, and asked that a message be conveyed to "their guest," Bin Laden. "They said, ’Don’t attack us. Make sure he’s not a problem for us and recognition will follow.’ And that’s just what they did," according to the senior commission staff member. More Saudi delegations followed, including several in 1998 led by Prince Turki at the request of the United States. U.S. officials wanted him to negotiate the surrender of Bin Laden. But Richard Clarke, the former Bush and Clinton counter-terrorism czar, and a second senior Clinton administration official said U.S. officials suspected that Turki merely ensured that Saudi Arabia would remain out of Al Qaeda’s crosshairs. Pakistanis, meanwhile, were in with the Taliban and Al Qaeda "up to their eyeballs," said the senior commission staff member. He said Bin Laden, for instance, negotiated his 1996 move to Afghanistan with Pakistan’s powerful military-intelligence leadership, which held considerable influence over the various warlords struggling for control of Afghanistan at the time. "He wouldn’t go back there without Pakistan’s approval and support, and had to comply with their rules and regulations," the official said. He said Pakistan opened its airspace to Bin Laden and his flying flotilla of operatives. Pakistani intelligence officers also allegedly brought Bin Laden to meet Mullah Omar soon after his arrival in Afghanistan, and then helped forge an alliance between the men that enabled the Taliban to trample competing factions and take over much of Afghanistan. Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, also was instrumental in helping Al Qaeda set up an infrastructure in its own country and in Afghanistan, and the two outfits jointly operated training camps along the border where militants were taught guerrilla warfare, the official said. "It started day one," the official said of Pakistan’s involvement. "They controlled the Taliban; they controlled the border."
Posted by: Paul Moloney 2004-06-21
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=36018