"Did the United States not indict Saeed Sheikh because he was a British informant? Did the agency [CIA] receive information provided by Saeed Sheikh from British or Pakistani intelligence?" asked Newman rhetorically at a 2005 Congressional briefing on the findings of the 9/11 Commission Report.
"This would help explain why Saeed Sheikh was not indicted and escaped justice for his crimes and traveled freely around England" If the foregoing analysis has any merit, Western intelligence agencies were receiving reports from a senior al-Qaeda source. Once again, however, al-Qaeda had used Western intelligence to accomplish its own mission. Saeed Sheikh was probably a triple agent."
Ahmed Omar Sheikh Saeed's role in the 9/11 attacks on behalf of the head of the ISI, Newman noted, was completely ignored by the 9/11 Commission Report. But the revelation that Sheikh Saeed was likely a triple agent of the ISI, CIA and MI6, also raises questions about bin Laden's protection by the ISI after 9/11. The failure of US authorities to out Sheikh Saeed's 9/11 role suggests that his freedom of movement before 9/11 was very much enabled by what Newman describes as his "triple agent" status.
In other words, bin Laden and Sheikh Saeed"--"apparently a CIA and MI6 asset"--"shared the same ISI handler, Brig. Ijaz Shah.
Newman argues, essentially, that the Sheikh Saeed story shows how US and British determination to maintain an intelligence asset in the heart of bin Laden's operations, gave him and his associates an extraordinary freedom of impunity that blew up in our faces on 9/11.
The Saudi-Pakistani arrangement at Abbottabad provided bin Laden with significant freedom of movement, and an ability to continue maintaining direct contact with al-Qaeda militants. Yet it also coincided with the acceleration of a covert US strategy launched to empower Sunni jihadists.
Around the middle of the last decade, the Bush administration decided to use Saudi Arabia to funnel millions of dollars to al-Qaeda affiliated jihadists, Salafi militants, and Muslim Brotherhood Islamists. The idea was to empower these groups across the Middle East and Central Asia, with a view to counter and rollback the geopolitical influence of Shi'ite Iran and Syria.
The thrust of Hersh's 2007 report has been widely confirmed elsewhere, including by several former senior government officials speaking on-the-record.
The existence of a US covert programme of this nature was corroborated by ABC News that very year.
Then in 2008, a US Presidential Finding disclosed that Bush had authorised an "unprecedented" covert offensive against Iran and Syria, across a huge geographical area from Lebanon to Afghanistan, permitting funding to anti-Shi'a groups including Sunni militant terrorists like the pro-al-Qaeda Jundullah, Iranian Kurdish nationalists, Baluchi Sunni fundamentalists, and the Ahwazi Arabs of southwest Iran. The CIA operation would receive an initial influx of $3--400 million.
Although spearheaded under Bush, the strategy escalated under the Obama administration.
Alastair Crooke, a retired 30-year MI6 officer and Middle East advisor to EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, explained that the US-Saudi alliance would generate a resurgence of al-Qaeda jihadists:
"US officials speculated as to what might be done to block this vital corridor [from Iran to Syria], but it was Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia who surprised them by saying that the solution was to harness Islamic forces. The Americans were intrigued, but could not deal with such people. Leave that to me, Bandar retorted."
This regional strategy, Crooke said, involved the sponsorship of extremist Salafis in Syria, Libya, Egypt, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq "to disrupt and emasculate the [Arab Spring] awakenings that threaten absolute monarchism."
The continuation of the strategy under Obama was also confirmed by John Hannah, former national security advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney, who remarked that:
"Bandar working as a partner with Washington against a common Iranian enemy is a major strategic asset."
Mobilising extremist Sunnis "across the region" under "Saudi resources and prestige," wrote Hannah, can "reinforce US policy and interests" weaken the Iranian mullahs; undermine the Assad regime; support a successful transition in Egypt; facilitate Qaddafi's departure; reintegrate Iraq into the Arab fold; and encourage a negotiated solution in Yemen."
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