Michael Meacher is a British MP -- Member of Parliament -- who has written about what he believes to have been a cover-up in the US.
Meacher writes:
Omar Sheikh, a British-born Islamist militant, is waiting to be hanged in Pakistan for a murder he almost certainly didn't commit - of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002. Both the US government and Pearl's wife have since acknowledged that Sheikh was not responsible. Yet the Pakistani government is refusing to try other suspects newly implicated in Pearl's kidnap and murder for fear the evidence they produce in court might acquit Sheikh and reveal too much.
Significantly, Sheikh is also the man who, on the instructions of General Mahmoud Ahmed, the then head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), wired $100,000 before the 9/11 attacks to Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker. It is extraordinary that neither Ahmed nor Sheikh have been charged and brought to trial on this count. Why not?
Even the slothful, timorous New York Times has, as Meacher acknowledges, at least hinted at the problem:
...the New York Times has since noted that "American officials said that KSM, once al-Qaida's top operational commander, personally executed Daniel Pearl ... but he was unlikely to be accused of the crime in an American criminal court because of the risk of divulging classified information". Indeed, he may never be brought to trial.
And look at who else has information, according to Meacher:
A fourth witness is Sibel Edmonds. She is a 33-year-old Turkish-American former FBI translator of intelligence, fluent in Farsi, the language spoken mainly in Iran and Afghanistan, who had top-secret security clearance. She tried to blow the whistle on the cover-up of intelligence that names some of the culprits who orchestrated the 9/11 attacks, but is now under two gagging orders that forbid her from testifying in court or mentioning the names of the people or the countries involved
And Daniel Pearl:
It has been rumoured that Pearl was especially interested in any role played by the US in training or backing the ISI. Daniel Ellsberg, the former US defence department whistleblower who has accompanied Edmonds in court, has stated: "It seems to me quite plausible that Pakistan was quite involved in this ... To say Pakistan is, to me, to say CIA because ... it's hard to say that the ISI knew something that the CIA had no knowledge of."
Again:
Senator Bob Graham, chairman of the Senate select committee on intelligence, has raised the issue, saying " I think there is very compelling evidence that at least some of the terrorists were assisted, not just in financing ... by a sovereign foreign government."
Finally, in that context [Meacher adds]:
Horst Ehmke, former coordinator of the West German secret services, observed: "Terrorists could not have carried out such an operation with four hijacked planes without the support of a secret service." That might give meaning to the reaction on 9/11 of Richard Clarke, the White House counter-terrorism chief, when he saw the passenger lists later on the day itself: "I was stunned ... that there were al-Qaida operatives on board using names that the FBI knew were al-Qaida." It was just that, as Dale Watson, head of counter-terrorism at the FBI told him, the "CIA forgot to tell us about them".
For the whole story, go to the Guardian.
As stuff like this surfaces, one reaction is to write it off as yet another "conspiracy theory." My reason for posting it comes from having suffered since 9/11 from an incurable itch caused by reading about Pakistan's relationship(s) with our administration(s) and the growing number of unanswered questions which have Pakistan at their core. I'd like to see a Richard Clarke or "Mike" the anonymous CIA official and author of Imperial Hubris throw some light on our dealings with Pakistan from the Carter administration onward.