Reply #49: Some intriguing additional information

[paulthompson]

Here is a new entry I made the other day, but it hasn't been posted yet:

June 14, 2002 and Shortly After: Al Jazeera Leak Leads US Intelligence to KSM and Bin Al-Shibh
Al Jazeera reporter Yosri Fouda had recently interviewed 9/11 figures Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM), though there are conflicting accounts if the interview took place before or after KSM was publicly identified as the 9/11 mastermind (see April, June, or August 2002). Author Ron Suskind will later claim in the book The One Percent Doctrine that on June 14, 2002, Fouda went to his superiors at Al Jazeera’s headquarters in Qatar and told them about the interview. He speaks to Sheikh Hamad bin Thamer al-Thani, the chairman of Al Jazeera and the cousin of the emir of Qatar, and a few others. At the time, the US has been intensely pressuring the Qatari government to get Al Jazeera to tone down what the US perceives as anti-American news coverage. In fact, it was widely believed in Qatar that the US deliberately bombed the Al Jazeera office in Kabul, Afghanistan, in November 2001 to send a message. Perhaps as a result of this pressure, a few days after Fouda reveals his interview, the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, tells the CIA all about it. Fouda described some of al-Qaeda’s operational plans and even had a good idea where the apartment was in Karachi, Pakistan, where the interview took place, and what floor he had been on. Suskind claims that “No one, not even Al Jazeera management, knew the emir was making the call” to the CIA. US intelligence begins an intense surveillance of Karachi in an attempt to find KSM and bin al-Shibh. Mostly because of this lead, bin al-Shibh will be arrested in Karachi in September 2002, around the time when Fouda’s interview is finally aired in public (see September 11, 2002). (Suskind, 2006, pp. 134-140) Interestingly, in early September 2002, it will be reported that KSM was arrested in an apartment in Karachi on June 16, 2002, which would be right about when the CIA was given this information (see June 16, 2002).

And here's one that has been posted but I've just updated to factor in the above entry (the update hasn't been posted yet):

June 16, 2002: 9/11 Mastermind KSM Reported Captured
In September 2002, articles appear in the Pakistani and Indian press suggesting that 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) is actually captured on this day in an apartment in Karachi. Supposedly he has been sent to the US, though the US and Pakistan deny the story and say Mohammed has not been captured at all. (Daily Times (Lahore), 9/9/2002; Times of India, 9/9/2002; Economic Times (Gurgaon, India), 9/10/2002) Interestingly, it will later be reported that in mid-June 2002 the CIA learned about an Al Jazeera interview with KSM and Ramzi bin al-Shibh (see April, June, or August 2002), and the information passed to the CIA included the apartment building and floor in Karachi where the Al Jazeera reporter believed the interview took place (see June 14, 2002 and Shortly After).

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I have no idea way really happened, but it certainly seems that one possibility is KSM was captured in June 2002, esp. since Ron Suskind appears not to know about the news reports of his capture then, and obviously those news reporters didn't know about Suskind's scoop, and they both talk about apartments in Karachi. Imagine that Yorsi Fouda interviews him in June, goes back to Al Jazeera headquarters to immediately tell them about this big scoop (the idea that the interview really happened in April but Fouda took two months off to introspect and didn't tell anyone about it is hard to believe), the CIA determines within a day or two what apartment KSM was in from what Fouda said, and then arrests him. Fouda didn't know about the arrest at first, so he said the interview took place in June. Later, he finds out that he was pretty much responsible for KSM's capture within days of his interview, which could make him a marked man in the Arab world, so he backpedals and says it happened in April as a CYA (cover your ass) measure. The CIA hides news of KSM's capture for months while they interrogate him and try to round up his associates. Only after they've exhausted all those leads do they then (badly) stage a fake arrest of a KSM lookalike. And it seems pretty obvious to me that his 2003 arrest was faked. Check out these entries:

March 1, 2003: KSM Reportedly Arrested in Pakistan, But Doubts Persist
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) is reportedly arrested in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Officials claim that he is arrested in a late-night joint Pakistani and FBI raid, in which they also arrest Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, the purported main financer of the 9/11 attacks. However, some journalists immediately cast serious doubts about this arrest. For instance, MSNBC reports, “Some analysts questioned whether Mohammed was actually arrested Saturday, speculating that he may have been held for some time and that the news was made public when it was in the interests of the United States and Pakistan.” There are numerous problems surrounding the US-alleged arrest of KSM:
Witnesses say KSM is not present when the raid occurs.
There are differing accounts about which house he is arrested in.
There are differing accounts about where he was before the arrest and how authorities found him.
Some accounts have him sleeping when the arrest occurs, some don't.
Accounts differ on who arrests him—Pakistanis, Americans, or both.
There are previously published accounts that KSM may have been killed in September 2002.
There are accounts that he was captured in June 2002. These are just some of the difficulties with the arrest story. There are so many problems with it that one Guardian reporter says, “The story appears to be almost entirely fictional.” In addition, 9/11 Commission Chairman Tom Kean and Vice-chairman Lee Hamilton will write in a 2006 book that the arrest is made in an apartment in Karachi and carried out by a joint CIA, FBI, and Pakistani team (see Early 2003).

March 10, 2003: Dubious Arrest Video Raises Question of KSM-ISI Connection
One week after the purported arrest of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) in Pakistan, the ISI show what they claim is a video of the capture. It is openly mocked as a bad forgery by the few reporters allowed to see it. For instance, a Fox News reporter says, “Foreign journalists looking at it laughed and said this is baloney, this is a reconstruction.” Other information about the arrest also raises questions about his relationship with the ISI. At the time of Mohammed’s alleged arrest, he was staying in a neighborhood filled with ISI officials, just a short distance from ISI headquarters, leading to suspicions that he’d been doing so with ISI approval. One expert notes that after his arrest, “Those who think they have ISI protection will stop feeling that comfort level.” Journalist Robert Fisk reports, “Mohammed was an ISI asset; indeed, anyone who is ‘handed over’ by the ISI these days is almost certainly a former (or present) employee of the Pakistani agency whose control of Taliban operatives amazed even the Pakistani government during the years before 2001.”

Early 2003: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed Arrested in Karachi?
In a book published in 2006, 9/11 Commission Chairman Tom Kean and Vice-Chairman Lee Hamilton will say that 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) is captured “in an early 2003 raid on a Karachi apartment orchestrated by the CIA, the FBI, and Pakistani security services.” (Kean and Hamilton, 2006, pp. 115) Pakistan and the US will announce the arrest at the beginning of March (see March 1, 2003). In contrast to the version put forward later by Kean and Hamilton, the Pakistani government initially states he is captured in a house in Rawalpindi, solely by Pakistani security forces. The US agrees on the date and place, but says it was a joint operation.

Let me repeat that quote from MSNBC: “Some analysts questioned whether Mohammed was actually arrested Saturday, speculating that he may have been held for some time and that the news was made public when it was in the interests of the United States and Pakistan.”


In fact, let me put my tin foil hat on and throw out a wild speculative idea: what if both KSM and bin al-Shibh were arrested or killed in June 2002, and AFTER that Fouda colluded with the CIA to fake an interview? Dead and/or captured men in secret CIA prisons can't refute it, and it would be a great way to squeeze more value out of an unannounced take down of someone like KSM. The problem is, everything is speculation since there's so much spin and intrigue about all this. You'd have to be a fool to believe the official account (which is that the capture of Abu Zubaida leads to the capture of KSM and bin al-Shibh, and Fouda had nothing to do with it), but beyond that it's anyone's guess.