How Pakistani Intelligence may have bribed US Establishment into Betrayal of America

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An interesting news broke out yesterday.  Two ethnic Pakistanis have been indicted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on charges that they failed to register with the Justice Department as agents of Pakistan, as required by law.  There is strong evidence and records of calls between these two gentlemen and their handlers from Pakistani establishment, specifically the Intelligence Agency – the ISI.

It is said that they were the front using which the ISI spent $4 million over two decades in a covert attempt to tilt American policy against India’s control of much of Kashmir – including funneling campaign donations to members of Congress and presidential candidates.

This may seem like indictment of two individuals, but it is really an indictment of the Pakisani establishment – specifically the ISI – and a lot more!

With this Obama may have actually taken on a group within his own country that not just looked the other way but often betrayed US to the benefit of Pakistan.

Here are some interesting passages from a very well researched book on how Pakistan obtained its Nuclear weapons titled “Deception: Pakistan, the United States, and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons”

Betrayal of US by the State Department in favor of Pakistan

Burrowing through the cables and files on Pakistan and A.Q. Khan, Barlow made his first startling discovery, a pattern of behavior that greatly disturbed him.  “There was a serious case of “clientitis” going on.”, he recalled.  Barlow discovered that the State Department was sitting on intelligence about the Pakistan nuclear program, preventing other agencies like the Commerce Department (which approved export licenses) and US Customs (which enforced them) from doing their job.

Up until this time, in Richard Barlow’s (an awarded CIA analyst) mind, it was a case of incompetence at best and being enamored by your client at worst.  Things changed as he discovered more and more damning material.

Then Barlow made a second, unsettling discovery.  In addition to keeping back intelligence, he later discovered that the State Department had been facilitating back-door procurement, issuing scores of approvals for the Pakistan Embassy in Washington to export hi-tech equipment for its bomb that the Commerce Department had refused to license for proliferation reasons.

So, it was not just incompetence but the State Department was in fact facilitating the transfers for the Nuke Bomb to Pakistan.  As Barlow was soon to discover, this was not the end of the mess.  It ran deeper than that.

Barlow dug deeper.  Analyzing US cable traffic in and out of Pakistan, he realized critical details about CIA or US Customs operations were somehow always discovered by Pakistan before the trap was sprung.  “We would learn that the Paks, for example, were using a company in Oklahoma and we would get there to raid it and find everyone had already flown.”  Matching incidents with cables, Barlow discovered that the State Department had been sending detailed demarches tipping off contacts in the Pakistan government.  “This was treachery”.

Richard Barlow had won the CIA’s Exceptional Accomplishment Award in 1988 and a senior member of the counter-proliferation desk at the Central Intelligence Agency.  He lost his job when he became a whistleblower against the George H. W. Bush administration for misleading the Congress over Pakistan’s nuclear programme.

He complained in 1989 that top officials in the administration of President George H.W. Bush — including the deputy assistant secretary of defense — were misleading Congress about the Pakistani program. He was fired and stripped of his security clearances. His intelligence career was destroyed; his marriage collapsed.

Influence on Republicans

Now, in this case of two Pakistanis, the main beneficiaries happen to be – well, Republicans.

a search in Federal Elections Commission databases for contributions by Mr. Fai showed that he has made more than $20,000 in campaign contributions over the past two decades. The bulk of his donations went to two recipients: the National Republican Senatorial Committee and Representative Dan Burton, a Republican from Indiana.

Now let us look at the Criminal Complaint filed in the United States DIstrict Court for Eastern DIstrict of Virginia by USA vs Syed Ghulam NAbi Fai and Zaheer Ahmad.  Please see the embedded document below.  One of the point that the complaint mentions is an interesting one:

In April and May 2008, Khan sent Fai three e-mails asking Fai to highlight the issue of mass graves recently discovered in Indian-controlled Kashmir.  Fai then raised the topic at his Ninth International Kashmir Peace Conference, held on Capitol Hill in July 2008, and send a letter to UN Secretary General Ban-ki-Moon that mentioned mass graves.

Why is this important?  Because not only was Fai sending the emails, people like Dan Burton were using it to put India in the dock!  The propaganda that originated from the ISI and funneled through their front person – Fai – were given the voice of Dan Burton to legitimize it since a Congressman asserted it in Washington DC itself.

Congressman Dan Burton on the occasion said that Kashmir’s political status had been disputed since the partition of subcontinent in 1947. He added that the 1949 UN cease-fire agreement declared that the people of Jammu and Kashmir would be given an opportunity to determine their future through a free and impartial plebiscite, but no plebiscite had ever been held. He urged the US administration to get involved in the Kashmir dispute and settle the conflict to the satisfaction of the people of Jammu and Kashmir.
The Congressman said that 700,000 Indian military and paramilitary forces were still present in the occupied territory and keeping everything under wraps, adding that they were patrolling the streets and there were still some horrible tragedies taking place there. “I heard of the discovery of more than 4,000 mass graves in Kashmir,” he maintained.
Dan Burton pledged that he would once again go to the floor of the Congress to make sure that the Americans and the people across the world would have more information about the horrible things that the people of Kashmir were going through.

Note the words “I have heard of”, while refering to the mass graves.

Indian “Liberals” join in the “fun”

Not only were these ISI front men buying out and influencing the Congressmen, but also Indian students and “intellectuals” to gain extra-ordinary propaganda advantage.  Anil Choudhary, an LLM student writes in Harvard Law Record, a Harvard Law School newspaper:

Nearly 2,600 bodies have been discovered in single, unmarked graves and in mass graves throughout mountainous Indian-controlled Kashmir. The International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice (IPTHJ), an Indian Kashmir-based human rights organization, claimed that they found the graves in 55 villages during a three-year survey that concluded in November. Out of the 2,600 graves discovered by IPTHJ, they claim that 177 graves held more than one body. This report is one of the most damning pieces of evidence of the ‘crime against humanity’ perpetrated by the Indian armed forces in their occupation of the disputed territory of Kashmir.

This is followed by:

The latest report, if accurate, only goes to prove the brutalities encountered by the Kashmiris at the hands of the Indian armed forces. (emphasis added)

So, the entire article hinges on the critical “discovery” of mass graves of the Kashmiris, but the writer is not sure of its accuracy.  Note the words, “if accurate” while refering to the “mass graves”.

The Times of India article clearly points to the treachery of the Indian “liberals” who thronged the meetings sponsored by Fai and financed by ISI.

Another group which has come under the lens is Indian liberals and so-called bleeding hearts who accepted Fai’s and KAC’s hospitality to attend conferences and seminars in US on the Kashmir issue where US authorities say Fai and his ISI handlers plied the Pakistani agenda. Indian hypernationalists and right-wingers have identified journalist-activists Kuldip Nayar, Rajinder Sachar, and Gautam Navlakha among those who attended KAC events organized by Fai which turns out were funded by ISI.
US authorities have bluntly stated that Fai and KAC pushed the Pakistan agenda on Kashmir with illicit money, and the hardline nationalist crowd say — mainly on social networking sites — that the Indian liberals should have been aware of that. “Many desi Left-libbers will be sleepless tonight…thinking of ways to defend their association with Fai and KAC,” one right-wing commentator tweeted on Tuesday.
The so-called Left-lib crowd has been put in a further bind by the blunt U.S stand on how the Kashmir conferences were manipulated. ”Mr. Fai is accused of a decades-long scheme with one purpose – to hide Pakistan’s involvement behind his efforts to influence the US government’s position on Kashmir,” US Attorney Neil MacBride said on Monday. ”His handlers in Pakistan allegedly funneled millions through the Kashmir Center to contribute to US elected officials, fund high-profile conferences, and pay for other efforts that promoted the Kashmiri cause to decision-makers in Washington.”

First of all, the writing style of the article should provide some indication of the editorial bias of the paper.  While euphemistically addressed “Bleeding Hearts” and Left-Liberals are called “so-called” by the writer, their critics are well clearly “right-wing”.  The prejudice shouts out so much it is easy to miss the main point.  Which is that there are intellectuals who were busy compromising national integrity by accepting hospitality of a terrorist organization like the ISI.

Questions and Concerns

1. What is extent of Pakistani penetration into US Governance?

If Dan Burton’s conduct is a tip of the iceberg, then the discoveries of Richard Barlow and his treatment on whistle-blowing are pointing to a large and stinking iceberg!  If small time Congressmen were being financed via these small time frontmen, is it possible that Presidents and State Department were getting much bigger pay offs via the ISI directly?

Otherwise, why would the State Government not only facilitate the Nuclear transfer but block every move of other agencies to catch and stop the clandestine transfers?

Contrary to the concerns over the indictment of these two Pakistani guys, it is the magnitude of perfidy by Republican and other US administrations that should give sleepless nights to all!

2. Modus Operandi of the Anti-Indian forces

The modus operandi seems very clear – float rumors and provide them legitimacy via utterances of paid Congressmen and publishing of articles in reputed journals of top rated schools in the US and speeches by those who have taken up teaching jobs in those elite schools.  Once a lie is shouted out from the halls of Washington DC and the likes of Harvard, MIT and Yale, the job is complete.

A lie has received legitimacy and the entire machinery of Pakistani establishment is ready to promote it in its press and over the internet.  For example, please do a search on “4000 mass graves Kashmir”.  You will see articles in various Pakistani promoted sites where the rumor of 4000 mass graves promoted by ISI in 2008 has been mentioned in definitive terms all over the place.

Mind you, there is no word from any authentic Indian Government agency or a word from the Government Ministries itself.

And that is the challenge India faces today.

An enemy who is sophisticated enough to harness the top schools and foreign Governments to put its word out and the Government within which is either incompetent or complicit!

Criminal Complaint against the Pakistani Front-men

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