Elements of an Inside Job in Mumbai Attacks

Indian police last week arrested Hassan Ali Khan, who was wanted for investigations into money laundering and other illicit activities, and who is also said to have ties to Dawood Ibrahim, the underworld kingpin who evidence indicates was the mastermind behind the terrorist attacks in Mumbai last month.

Ibrahim is also alleged to have close ties with both Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) agency and the CIA.

Another character linked to the CIA whose name is now beginning to figure into the web of connections between the Mumbai attacks, criminal organizations, and intelligence agencies is Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, of Iran-Contra infamy. Khashoggi has been implicated in arms deals with drug traffickers and terrorist groups, including within India.

Dawood Ibrahim is a known major drug trafficker whom India claims is being protected by Pakistan. As Foreign Policy Journal previously reported, there are also some indications that the CIA has a similar interest in preventing Ibrahim from being handed over to India. Ibrahim is wanted by India for the recent Mumbai attacks as well as for bombings that occurred there in 1993.

Ibrahim is a native of India who rose through the ranks of the criminal underworld in Bombay (now Mumbai). According to media reports in India, he got his start as an undercover informant for the police at a young age and thus has an intimate knowledge of Indian law enforcement and intelligence, and is alleged to have fostered close ties with individuals within the political system.

Another known associate of Ibrahim’s in Mumbai, Mohammed Ali, is suspected of assisting the terrorists, who were met by an individual in Uran before continuing on to Mumbai, where inflatable rubber dinghies had been arranged to take them ashore by the same individual. Numerous earlier press accounts indicated that the dinghies, along with other logistical assistance, were provided by an associate of Ibrahim’s.

The Times of India, for instance, reported on November 28 that according to police sources the Mumbai attack “was enabled by the Dawood Ibrahim gang”, and that “It would not have been possible to carry out a terror operation on this scale without a collaborative local network and this was provided by the D Gang. As the terrorists had entered via the sea, the needle of suspicion is clearly pointing at Mohammed Ali, the new poinstman of Dawood.”

Yet Indian news reports indicate that officials have been slow to act against Hassan Ali Khan, and Mohammed Ali continues smuggling operations out of Mumbai for Ibrahim’s crime syndicate, D-Company, completely unmolested by Indian investigators and law enforcement.

As the November 28 Times of India article observed, Ali “is known to indulge in smuggling of diesel, petroleum, naptha, drugs and arms with impunity and it appears that the terrorists had used his networks to enter the city by the sea route…. Despite having a detailed dossier on him, the authorities have not taken any action against him. What is more worrying is that Ali is believed to have also penetrated naval intelligence.”

A further report from the Times of India on December 4 noted that Dawood Ibrahim is “sitting pretty in Karachi” under the protection of Pakistan and his “hawala channel between Mumbai and Karachi remains busy”. “But central agencies question why the Maharashtra government has not taken any action against the D-company here.”

“‘What’s the point of asking Islamabad to hand over Dawood when we’re not doing anything to destroy his empire in Mumbai and other places in India?’ a senior official asked.”

The article observed that Mohammed Ali “continues to operate with impunity.

Again, on December 11, Times of India reported that “Mumbai police has still not called Ali for questioning”, adding that “Ali is also known to have the backing of two powerful politicians of south Mumbai and that could be the reason why he is still untouched.”

In addition to links to Ibrahim, both men are also alleged, like Ibrahim himself, to have ties to political officials in India, and there are numerous other indications emerging that the attacks were assisted by elements within India being protected by the political establishment.



Elements of an Inside Job in Mumbai Attacks

Shock Doctrine: Could our economic crisis echo long-secret brush with fascism?

President George W. Bush proposes a massive bailout for Wall Street, of what was to be $700 billion, but already it turns out — not surprisingly, somehow — that the administration underestimated exactly how much, and who else needs to be bailed out. According to Bloomberg News:

The Bush administration widened the scope of its $700 billion plan to avert a financial meltdown by including assets other than mortgage-related securities. The U.S. Treasury submitted revised guidance to Congress on its plan a day after first submitting it, as lawmakers and lobbyists push their own ideas. Officials now propose buying what they term troubled assets, without specifying the type, according to a document obtained by Bloomberg News and confirmed by a congressional aide.

The change suggests the inclusion of instruments such as car and student loans, credit-card debt and any other troubled asset. That may force an eventual increase in the size of the package as Democrats and Republicans in Congress negotiate the final legislation with the Bush administration, analysts said.

“The costs of the bailout will be significantly higher than originally considered or acknowledged,” said Josh Rosner, an analyst with independent research firm Graham Fisher & Co. in New York. “How, given these changes, can the administration and Federal Reserve believe they are being forthright in their unrevised expectation of future losses?”

In another change today, the Treasury said it would limit its $50 billion plan for insuring money-market funds to those held by investors as of Sept. 19, excluding any subsequent contributions.

November 1934:

Federal investigators uncover an incredible plot involving about two dozen senior businessmen, many of them Wall Street financiers, to topple the government of the United States and install a fascist dictatorship. An alert President Franklin D. Roosevelt shut it down.

A key element of the plot involved a retired general who was to have raised a private army of 500,000 ex-soldiers; the general turned whistle-blower when he learned just what the plot really entailed. The plot was heavily funded and well developed and had strong links with fascist forces abroad. A special congressional committee was created to conduct an investigation. The records of this committee were scrubbed and sealed away in the National Archives, where they were not made available until just last year.

The committee kept the names of many of the participants under wraps, and no criminal action was ever brought against them. But a few names have leaked out. Among them was Prescott Bush, the grandfather of President George W. Bush.

Prescott Bush was deep into the business of the shipping firm Hamburg-America Line and had close relations throughout this time with the new government that came to power in Germany a year earlier under Adolph Hitler.

Prescott Bush later went on to become a U.S. senator from Connecticut. His son, George H.W. Bush, emerged from World War II as a hero, later becoming CIA director, vice president and president, and his son George W. Bush went on to become president, also known as ‘Bush 43.’

The plot against America portrayed in this episode of the weekly BBC series “Document” from July 2007 gives fascinating insight into a little known piece of American history in which the nation stood on the very brink of betrayal. The role of one of the most powerful political families in our nation’s history in this whole affair is shocking.

From the BBC, on what it called “the biggest ever peacetime threat to American democracy”:

The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D. Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America [known as the American Liberty League], (owners of Heinz, Birdseye, Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, Maxwell House Coffee & George Bush’s grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the Great Depression.

Now here we are yet again, in the midst of a recession or depression depending upon whom you ask, with our tax dollars for generations to come about to be handed over to wealthy Wall Street corporations, with a Bush family member balking at any attempts at restrictions or conditions.

Will Republicans finally stop making jokes about welfare recipients and “government hand-outs”?

Will the government (or the Wall Street financiers) help our friends and neighbors get their repossessed homes back?

It’s often felt to me as if we’ve had a fascist dictatorship in power these last seven-plus years with George W. Bush in the White House, so it makes me wonder if this bailout will throw democracy under the bus and bring Prescott Bush’s deferred dream of corporate-run fascism to fruition.
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