William Chirolas -- World News Trust
Nov. 18, 2006 -- The New York Times allowed its Media section to publish an article Oct. 2, 2006, that discussed a new book that was soon to be published by Basic Books called “Inside the Jihad: My Life with Al Qaeda, A Spy’s Story,” by Omar Nasiri.
This first-person narrative of Mr. Nasiri’s time in an Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan in the 1990s, followed by a stint as a spy for a Western intelligence service, included the bombshell information that al-Qaeda had planned to trick the United States into attacking Iraq so as to have a convenient battlefield and to have a cause that would increase recruitment.
The article said that this book (with this bombshell of course) was to be discussed by Mr. Nasiri on the BBC’s award-winning television program “Newsnight.” We were informed in the New York Times piece that the publisher had Michael Scheuer, the former head of the Osama bin Laden unit within the CIA, read the manuscript before publication, plus the publisher had the key facts in the book vetted by members of various European security agencies. Well, the BBC did run the interview -– and not one U.S. Media outlet discussed the bombshell thus revealed of Osama actually planning on tricking the United States into an attack on Iraq. (Full Newsnight program that aired on BBC TWO on this topic and a shorter 4-minutes version).
So how hard was it to trick the United States into moving against Iraq? Well, it seems al-Qaeda was unable to get the Democrat Clinton to fall for the con job, but that fact, of course, only made the Bush gang, wanting to prove they were the “not-Clinton” administration, an easy dupe for Osama’s plan. It also seems that a CIA head that wanted to please the new President allowed the CIA to be played by their caught al-Qaeda members so that the United States would attack a Muslim country.
So who was this Mr. Nasiri? One wonders if the informant discussed by Newsnight on Oct., “al-Libi,” provided information the CIA deemed credible enough to get them to see the value of an attack on Iraq (of course “al-Libi” was reportedly imprisoned in a coffin-dimensioned box (apparently by the CIA), taken out periodically to be torture-interrogated, and later became clinically insane, so who would take seriously any information he planted to get us into Iraq?).
Or was one of the sources for the CIA the fellow Jamal al-Fadl, who was presented by the CIA to the 9/11 Commission as a "senior employee" of al-Qaeda, who, after embezzling $110,000 from the organization, "defected" in 1996 to a life of being in a safe-house where he provided “a major breakthrough of intelligence on the creation, character, direction, and intentions of al Qaeda," selling the idea that Osama wanted weapons-grade uranium. Al-Fadl, was considered so credible by the Bush administration that he became a key witness in the U.S. v. bin Laden trial that began in February 2001. (Some sources: 9/11 Commission Report, chapter 2, p.62 http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch2.pdf
; (HTML version http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch2.htm
; idem, chapter 4 http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch4.pdf
, p.109 (HTML version http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch4.htm); Jack Cloonan interview, PBS, 13 July 2005 (edited online version) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline//////torture/interviews/cloonan.html
Steve Coll, Ghost Wars, Penguin, 2005 edn, pp.336, 367.)
The BBC does not discuss just how many informants were used to plant information that tried to get the United States to go to war with Iraq. The program does describe the interviewed informant and now book author and TV subject as an al Qaeda operative who also worked for European security agencies during the 1990s, infiltrating al-Qaeda both in the camps of Afghanistan and in terror cells in London. I wonder if anyone in the media will read the book to find out the details.
So, why did our media not tell us before the election that there was now evidence that Bush was played for the fool by Osama, making the 2004 Osama tape just before the election seem like an attempt to get Osama’s boy Bush re-elected?
Indeed, why does our media still play stenographer to GOP claims that our presence in Iraq is necessary for the war on terror to be won? Will I ever see a talking head on Fox Cable News discuss how Bush and the GOP that supported him were Osama’s favored U.S. politicians –- and how unhappy Osama must feel about the Democrats taking control of Congress?
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William Chirolas brings 40 years of real-world business experience in local, state, national, and international tax, pensions, and finance to the world of blogging. A graduate of MIT, he calls the Boston area home, except when visiting kids and grandkids. He can be reached at:
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