publicity-seeker.
After all, it had also helped him save his life from the many attempts on it by
CIA covert operations.
Already,
by that time, they were trying to figure out the message in another piece of
information that had come a week earlier: Laden had named Jumma Mamangani, a
Uzbeki commander of the Muslim Army for the Liberation of Kyrgyzstan, as the
operations chief for all activities of Al Qaeda.
That
was a position always reserved for Laden¿s closest allies, the Egyptian Islamic
Jihad¿s al-Zawahar family. So, why did Laden give it to Mamangani? In fact,
Laden went to a great extent to seal a pact with Ayaman Al Zawahar to keep the
operations chief¿s post open for Mamangani for more than a year - Laden married
his son off to Ayaman Al Zawahar¿s daughter and even appointed Al Zawahar his
first deputy and heir.
Western,
Russian and Israeli intelligence experts put their heads together and came up
with an answer as to why Mamangani had suddenly risen in Laden¿s scheme: Laden
and his friends were about to strike in Central Asia - may be Krgyzstan, may be
Chechnya.
Indeed,
in the weeks before September 11, Russian President Vladimir Putin (ironically,
the man is an ex-KGB spook) discussed the dangers that Central Asia and Russia
faced from Laden¿s plans with US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld less than
two weeks before the attack; it came up in his talks with Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon too when the latter went to Kremlin just days before the
attack on the US.
Putin
even sent an aide to meet CIA director George Tenet to tell him about the
dangers to Central Asia and northern China arising out of Mamangani¿s new
appointment. New York and Washington DC was in no one¿s view - a situation that
prevailed until the second aircraft hit Tower 1 of the WTC.
All
it took Laden to send the world¿s greatest intelligence agencies to look in the
wrong places were two ¿news¿ leaks to the Press.
S
Raghotham is Associate Editor of DeveloperIQ, a magazine for software
developers. Contact: raghotham@zeeaccess.com
Not
only did the media not press the demand for evidence against Bin Laden, US TV
networks went to some lengths to manufacture consent for the war
Then
started the American media blitzkrieg.
The
Evidence Against Bin Laden
Less
than an hour after the second plane was rammed into the WTC, the American
government and media had already decided who had done it - Bin Laden, who else?
To date, nobody has seen the evidence against Bin Laden. On Sept 13, just two days after the attacks, Colin Powell said at a Meet the Press that he was "absolutely convinced" that the Al Qaeda network headed by Bin Laden was responsible for the attacks. Powell also said the US "will be able to publish a report linking Bin Laden to the attacks." Powell was already talking of war too. On Sept 13, he said "Laden and Al Qaeda must be targeted…" (CNN). No such report as promised by Powell has been made available to the media publicly. In fact, not even the anti-terror coalition partners have seen any such report - Tony Blair said he had seen "irrefutable evidence," Musharaff said he had seen the evidence and was satisfied - Blair is America¿s