Of course everyone knows that politics did turn very "topsy-turvy" one day after the Karachi News article on September 10. But what many don't know is that on the morning of September 11, Lt. Gen. Mahmood was at a breakfast meeting at the Capitol with the chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, Senator Bob Graham (D) and Representative Porter Goss (R). The meeting was said to have lasted at least until the second plane hit the World Trade Center. Goss is a self-admitted 10-year veteran of the CIA's clandestine operations wing. [Washington Post, 5/18/02] Goss and Graham were later the heads of the joint House-Senate investigation into the September 11 attacks, and Goss in particular made headlines for saying there was no "smoking gun" indicating that the government had sufficient foreknowledge to prevent the September 11 attacks. [Washington Post, 7/11/02] Also present at the meeting were Senator John Kyl (R) and the Pakistani ambassador to the US, Maleeha Lodhi (note that all or virtually all of the people in this meeting also met Lt. Gen. Mahmood in Pakistan a few weeks earlier [Salon, 9/14/01]). Senator Graham later said of the meeting: "We were talking about terrorism, specifically terrorism generated from Afghanistan," and the New York Times mentioned that bin Laden was specifically being discussed. [Vero Beach Press Journal, 9/12/01, Salon, 9/14/01, New York Times, 6/3/02] The fact that these people were meeting at the time of the attacks is a strange coincidence at the very least, not to mention the topic of their conversation!

~~ Saeed at a party in November 2001

On September 12 and 13, Lt. Gen. Mahmood met with Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, Senator Joseph Biden, the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Secretary of State Colin Powell. An agreement on Pakistan's collaboration in the new "war on terror" was negotiated between Mahmood and Armitage. [Miami Herald, 9/16/01] All these meetings coordinated Pakistan's response to September 11. [New York Times, 9/13/01, Reuters, 9/13/01, Associated Press, 9/13/01] Isn't it strange that the terms of Pakistan's commitment to fight al-Qaeda were negotiated with the man who may have given orders to send $100,000 to the September 11 hijackers? 

What would happen if Saeed told all that he knew?

Saeed Still Lives Openly in Pakistan
In the days right before September 11, a flurry of money transfers occurred between the 9/11 paymaster in the UAE - presumably Saeed - and the hijackers. Between September 6 and 10, $26,315 was wired from the hijackers back to the UAE - leftover money from the September 11 plot. [MSNBC, 12/11/01, Guardian, 10/1/01] On September 11, in the hours before the attacks, the paymaster transferred $40,871 from his UAE bank accounts to his Visa card, and caught a plane flight from the UAE to Pakistan. There are records of him making six ATM withdrawals in Karachi on September 13, and then his trail goes cold. [MSNBC, 12/11/01] Saeed later claims to have met with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan a few days after September 11 (but has said nothing about a 9/11 role). [Washington Post, 2/18/02, London Times, 2/25/02]

Saeed then continued to live openly in his ISI house in Lahore, Pakistan. He was "frequently seen" at local parties hosted by government leaders and "made no secret" of his whereabouts. In January 2002, he celebrated the birth of his baby at a party he hosted in the city. [USA Today, 2/25/02] It has been suggested that after September 11 he acted as a "go-between" for bin Laden and the ISI, which makes perfect sense given his involvement in both groups. [Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 3/3/02]  Furthermore, "It is believed he helped produce bin Laden's latest taped interview" in early 2002. [Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 3/3/02]

~~ Bob Graham, John Kyl, and Porter Goss What were they discussing with Gen.Mahmood?

Meanwhile, the partnership between Saeed and the ISI on one hand and Ansari and his Indian criminal underground on the other, continued to prove profitable and productive. On October 1, 2001, a suicide truck-bomb attack on the provincial parliamentary assembly in Indian-controlled Kashmir killed 36 people. On December 13, 2001, the Indian Parliament building in New Delhi was attacked by terrorists. Fourteen people, including the five attackers, were killed. On January 22, 2002, a crowd of mostly unarmed Indian police near the US Information Service building in Calcutta, India, were attacked by gunmen; four policemen were killed and 21 people injured. It appears that Saeed and Ansari were behind all of these attacks. [Vanity Fair, 8/02, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 3/3/02] Ansari even called from Dubai to take credit for the Calcutta attack. [Telegraph, 1/24/02] Jaish-e-Mohammad, Maulana Masood Azhar's group, is also involved in these attacks. [Vanity Fair, 8/02]