The Guantanamo files recently released by WikiLeaks to the New York Times offer a Dossier that Shows A Push for More Terror Attacks after 9/11. This is ground we have been over before, and whose Muslim participants ended up in Guantanamo Bay or other prisons. The focus this time is on Sailfullah Paracha, “a successful businessman and for years a New York travel agent, [who] appears to be the oldest of the 172 prisoners still held at the Bay Prison. His dossier is among the most chilling [itals mine].” I wonder if he’ll ever get to collect his Social Security.
Lest I sound flippant, the Times’ “the most chilling” sounds tinny to my ear, given the fact of the small circle of “Al Qaeda” (Copyright © 2001 CIA) “operatives who explored ways to follow up on the hijackings with new attacks, including those discussed with other operatives, none ever acted upon, included plans for a new wave of aircraft attacks on the west Coast, filling an apartment with leaked natural gas and detonating it, blowing up gas stations and even [if you can imagine] cutting the cables holding up the Brooklyn Bridge.” So you can get it cheap.
There’s more. It seems the small band of Qaeda operatives from the 2008 assessment was a “family affair.” But the top plotter was none other than Khalid Sheik Mohammed himself, “waterboarded 83, times in 2002, 123 times in 2003, 183 times in 2003, and barraged more than 100 times with harsh interrogations methods, causing C.I.A. officers to worry that they might have crossed legal limits and to halt his questioning . . .” Source, 04/20/2009, NY Times, Waterboarding Used 266 Times on 2 Suspects. The other suspect was Abu Zubayadah, according to the DOJ memo. So, really, consider what any forthcoming information is worth?
Nevertheless, let’s follow our C.I.A. scripted-scenario. Second down, the plotting ladder was the Sheiks’ nephew, Mr. Baluchi, married to a militant, no less than an American-trained neuroscientist, Aafia Siddiqui; Mr. Paracha, and his son Uzair. The so-called “newly revealed assessments” obtained last year from WikiLeaks, came from another Times source, over the dispute whether mistreatment of prisoners and the prison’s operation “outside the criminal justice system invalidate the government’s conclusions about the detainees. That seems a fair assumption. Particularly, since Mohammed, chief squealer would have confessed to the sinking of the Maine.
Here’s a brief description of waterboarding, updated May 15, 2009: “Waterboarding is a centuries-old practice used to coerce prisoners during interrogations by using water to cut off oxygen and to create both the feeling and fear of drowning. It was approved by the Justice Department under President George W. Bush for use by the Central Intelligence Agency on so-called ‘high value’’ terrorism suspects, then barred by President Bush on his second day in office.” In other words, it even disgusted Bush. No mean feat. And he called for “clean confessions.” Would you say this invalidated previous confessions?
The direction of the national security project at the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), said the assessments “are rife with uncorroborated evidence, information obtained through torture, speculation, errors and allegations that have been proven false.”
Likewise, David H. Remes, the lawyer representing the elder Mr. Paracha, said in a Monday interview that while he had not seen the assessment, its conclusion that Mr. Paracha posed a “high risk to American interests was without foundation.” He added, “The notion that he [Paracha] ever did anything that justified his detention, or ever was or is any kind of threat to the United States, is preposterous. He is a 63-year-old-man with a serious heart condition and severe diabetes, and has been nothing but cooperative with the authorities. What Mr. Paracha wants,” Remes said, “is either a transfer back to his native country, Pakistan, or a ‘definitive adjudication of his case.’” Reasonable enough!
White House spokesman Jay Carney condemned on Monday publication of what he called “documents obtained illegally” and highlighted that the military’s findings about some detainees had been changed by a new review under President Obama. Those details remain secret in the house of secrets.
The president, Carney noted, was still committed to closing Guantanamo prison some day, maybe Monday, maybe Tuesday as the song goes. Obama’s review pinpointed about 50 detainees his advisers said could not be tried yet and were too dangerous to release. Congress has also imposed restrictions on bringing prisoners to the United States, even though they are our prisoners.
Mr. Paracha is one of the more striking victims to emerge from the files. He attended Institute of Technology in the early 1970’s [a trade school], and worked as a travel agent for 13 years in New York. Yet he was arrested in Bangkok in July 2003 after his son Uzair, already in F.B.I. custody in New York, “acknowledged” his father was a militant. So says the assessment. Uzair Paracha was convicted in a 2005 kangaroo trial on charges of material support for terrorism and is serving a 30-year sentence in federal prison.
According to the assessment, Saifullah Paracha “provided useful information concerning senior Al Qaeda members” but “attempted to deceive and misinform intelligence and law enforcement personnel about his own activities.” Ergo, the assessment draws heavily on statements by others, notably Mohammed, who was waterboarded and brutally treated by his C.I.A. interrogators. So, after all is said and done, what are these confessions taken by torture really worth to other professionals? Zippo.
But Mr. Paracha’s assessment implies he didn’t deny militant connections at the highest level. “Detainee claimed he met UBL (Osama bin Laden) on a trip to Afghanistan in December 1999 or January 2000,” the documents say. They also say he offered to let Mr. Bin laden use his broadcasting business in Pakistan to generate agit prop films for Al Qaeda. A little show biz goes a long way.
After 9/11, Paracha’s discussion focused on new plots, the files claim. A Casio digital diary he was carrying when arrested “contained references to military chemical warfare agents and their effects on humans,” according to classified assessment in the WikiLeaks docs made available to the NYT.
Working with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the so-called “9/11 planner,” who in early 2002 gave Paracha between $500,000 and $600,000 “for safekeeping,” Paracha offered his experience in the shipping business for a scheme to move plastic explosives into the U.S. inside containers of women’s and children’s clothing, the files assert. And for toys in Santa’s sled.
“The detainee desired to help Al Qaeda ‘do something big against the U.S.’” one of his co-conspirators, Ammar al-Baluchi, said to Guantanamo interrogators, say the files. Paracha discussed obtaining biological or nuclear weapons as well, though he was concerned that detectors at ports “would make it difficult to smuggle radioactive materials in the country,” the file says. What smarts.
Mr. Paracha’s assessment is among more than 700 classified documents that fill in new details of Al Qaeda’s efforts to make 9/11 just the first in a series of attacks to cripple the United states, intentions ‘thwarted as the Central Intelligence Agency’ (let’s hear it, folks), captured Mr. Mohammed and other leaders of the terrorist network.
What’s more, the document says Mr. Paracha told interrogators he had worked with Abdul Qadeer Khan, “considered to be the father of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program and a major proliferation of nuclear technology, just like Israel worked with the French, sitting with 200–300 nuclear warheads at Diimona in the Negev desert.
Lawyer Edward D. Wilders, representing the son at his 2005 trial, claimed his client played no “witting” role in his father’s arrest. “He was not a part of it in any way. He didn’t make any calls. He didn’t make any contact. In fact, he was being held incommunicado. He didn’t have any way of knowing what was going on.” The son was jailed in Manhattan on a material-witness warrant after F.B.I questioning in March 2003, and charged criminally after his father’s arrest.
A prosecutor asking whether Uzair Paracha told F.B.I agents that his father admired Mr. bin Laden, he testified, “I don’t remember if my father actually said that he admired bin Laden. He said that bin laden was a humble person and he had a simple way of life.” And so goes the big breakthrough whose revelations were driven by waterboarding and torture.
Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer and life-long resident of New York City. An EBook version of his book of poems “State Of Shock,” on 9/11 and its after effects is now available at Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com. He has also written hundreds of articles on politics and government as Associate Editor of Intrepid Report (formerly Online Journal). Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net.
