Ahmad Massoud: the Lion in the Path of Understanding 9/11

With the assassination of this great Afghan guerrilla leader, went the key to unlocking the mystery of his alleged warning about 9/11.

Photo of Ahmed Massoud - the "Lion of Panjshir" in Mazur-e-Sharif, Afghanistan. Photo by Tim King Salem-News.com

(SALEM, Ore.) - (This article is part two in a series, if you would like to read part one first, please visit this link:(Gearing Up for 911) Never in my wildest dreams could I have guessed that my greatest questions about the 9/11 tragedy- would come from a Lion.

Indeed, the real story behind the death of Afghan civil war Mujaheddin leader Ahmad Massoud, the "Lion of Panjshir", at his base in northern Afghanistan, two days before the attacks on the United States of America on 9 Septemper 2001, tosses a complicated twist into the story.

Many believe that the key to understanding the real components of 9/11 died with this well known and eternally martyred guerrilla leader, yet there are no solid theories beyond the widely accepted version; that his death was carried out to keep him from blowing the whistle on the so-called terrorist attacks.

I'll never forget learning about Ahmad Massoud in Afghanistan, during the very cold winter of 2006/2007, and I've never escaped the numerous impressions the story left with me. An Afghan major that I spent a small amount of time with while covering the war, surprised me one day by saying the scarf I wore, which I had purchased from a vendor in Kabul, was the same one Massoud had worn. The remark was enough to lock my interest in the legacy of this man into place, for good.

His image is everywhere in Afghanistan; on billboards, painted on the back of jingle trucks, always reminding those who see it that there have been level minds in Afghanistan's recent past who truly wanted liberty and would not have tied strings to it like his opponents, the religious zealots we know as Taliban.

From all accounts he is the most rightful hero that country knows in the current time, and because he wasn't a religious fanatic, or as far as we know, any kind of U.S. stooge, his role as leader would have been opposed and likely compromised from all sides. Massoud is one of the men who led the Afghan people to victory during the long civil war that began with the 1979 Soviet invasion and occupation lasting ten years. It is the operation at the center of the popular film starring Tom Hanks titled: Charlie Wilson's War.

In that long terrible conflict, like the one today, the Afghan government sided with the occupier, and fought the populace who were aided by sympathetic Islamic militants from other nations who came to help, like today... Jobs were held by Russian-speaking Afghan 'terps. Today Afghan interpreters who speak English do the exact same thing, and in all cases they have to keep their faces covered when approaching a U.S. base to avoid having people discover what they do for a living. This is one small part of the environment occupational forces create.

Had Massoud received the U.S. backing to ascend to power, and if he had been able to hold on, everything might have been very different. However the U.S. government has a history of cutting off its nose to spite its face. To the democratic mind, Massoud had to have been a tempting; a good bet. But the Americans didn't take the opportunity and thus failed to make their costly Afghan investment during the 80's count. The U.S. was able to provide weapons to men like bin Laden and Massoud, but then its leaders left everyone hanging and Afghanistan in tribal turmoil, which in many respects persists, in addition to the U.S. led war.

A great description of Massoud is found in National Geographic's Sebastian Junger on Afghanistan's Slain Rebel Leader:

Massoud—who loathed the extremism of the Taliban as much as he did the totalitarianism of the Soviet Union—once told me he was fighting not only for a free Afghanistan but for a free world. There was something about him—the slow nod of his head as he listened to a question, the exhaustion and curiosity engraved on his handsome, haggard face—that made it clear we were in the presence of an extraordinary man.

The word in Afghanistan, and I heard this repeatedly from Afghan people and from Americans and allied forces serving there: is that Ahmed Massoud 'knew about 9/11' and was going to talk, to blow the whistle, and that is why two people posing as a TV news crew claiming to be from an Arab news network, blew this man up with a bomb packed inside of their otherwise normal-appearing, television camera.

Everything about the mainstream/government version of the events of 9/11, centers around the idea that Muslims working under bin Laden, a hero of the Mujaheddin like Massoud, only a Saudi foreigner who adopted the dress of an Afghan from Jalalabad while living there, carried out the operation under the name Al-Qaeda.

Wikipedia states:

Al-Qaeda (Arabic: القاعدة‎, al-qāʿidah, Arabic: [ælˈqɑːʕɪdɐ], English: /ælˈkaɪdə/ al-ky-də, translation: "The Base" and alternatively spelled al-Qaida and sometimes al-Qa'ida) is a global Sunni Islamist militant group founded by Osama bin Laden sometime between August 1988 and late 1989

First of all, bin Laden and his family are specifically of the Wahhabi faith which is a radical Muslim sect prominent in Saudi Arabia's government. This is the school of thought that removes the rights of women, not allowing them to drive, forcing them to wear burqas that might as well be called 'human tents', etc. Lest we forget that one key ally of the United States is Saudi Arabia and another is Karzai's Afghanistan where the rights of women are only marginally improved from past years. For the record, there is a big huge difference between the burqa and hijab, which is a reference for Muslim women covering their hair with a scarf. The name doesn't carry over, but this is a practice common in aspects of Christianity and Judaism also.

It is also important to note that the reported date of the beginning of al-Qaeda, "between August 1988 and late 1989", is a time that the Soviets were all but gone from Afghanistan. I've heard the first-hand accounts about how Russians were suffering from hepatitis and those that weren't dying from that disease, were being killed by angry Afghans, as their mission to maintain a Communist Afghanistan evaporated in defeat.

This is when the United States and the west in general, suddenly faced the end of the Cold War. Having befriended China under former President Richard M. Nixon, the U.S. would obviously soon need a new enemy, which the country had managed to have for years under Soviet Communism. Suddenly 'terrorist' became the operative word and it is a description in most cases, of resistance fighters. Most people who are deemed terrorists are those who stand up to marauding western-funded governments. Not all, but most. At any rate, the George W. Bush wars needed a poster boy, and Mr. bin Laden was it. Of course Saddam Hussein, who was keeping his country alive and intact, was number two.

There is a great deal to say about bin Laden, but in the end this is a man who was very sick with kidney failure more than a decade ago, and the odds of his survival in a dirt poor region with a several million dollar price tag on his head and U.S. troops at firebases only a hundred miles away, surviving, receiving kidney dialysis regularly, in allied Pakistan, living in a cave part of the time, seems virtually impossible.

The problem with al Qaeda, is that nobody that I met or interviewed in Afghanistan or Iraq where I covered operations in the summer of 2008, knew anything about this group. The soldiers and Marines I spent time with didn't battle 'al Qaeda' but the forces in Afghanistan sure tangled with the Taliban, and the soldiers and Marines in Iraq had their share of battles with forces often formed by local militias. In both cases nobody knows who is who; the desertion rate from the Afghan military is horrendous and the insurgency in Iraq paid well in 2008 to any Iraqi who would fire a missile or rocket at a base I visited, Balad, AKA 'Mortaritaville'. These wars we are engaged in today have no aim, no goal, they are wars of attrition, and of course most of the human depletion is absorbed by the proclaimed (read 'invented') enemies of the west. What they really amount to as most people know in their hearts, are a renewal of the bloody crusades that along with the Spanish Inquisition and the Witch Trials, are like skid marks on the boxer shorts of Christianity.

What we have come to know as the military industrial complex, is the most well-funded, well oiled machine in this world. No other areas of government draw so much money, all for the sake of creating ways to kill more people. The proponents of the many corporations that profit from war are also very frequently the same who rally against the poor, decrying public benefits while billions are spent on dirty munitions that leave war zones deadly long after the battle is over, things like depleted uranium (DU) contaminate many places in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine, in particular. We know from a study conducted by Israeli doctors, that male members of the Israeli Defence Forces leave the military with greatly reduced sperm counts. Experts say this is a direct tie to DU.

The Voice of War Profiteers

Within that industry is the ability to harness a propaganda machine of epic proportions. The point about al-Qaeda, is that like Saddam's 'human meat grinder' and the stories about Iraqi soldiers tossing Kuwaiti babies into incinerators in 1990, there was probably never a shred of truth to it, and the only saving grace for today's Uncle Sam is the fact that the illusion draws in actual terrorists here and there who use the name 'al-Qaeda' because the too believe it is the umbrella over a huge movement.

I know the two stories referenced above; the Baghdad meat grinder and the one regarding dead Kuwaiti babies, were created in ad agencies and both were highly effective and both have been officially outed. The fact that these two particular propaganda tools were used at all, tells us what we need to know about the capabilities of the U.S. government to lie to the public without hesitation with the express purpose of justifying a world-scale military conflict claiming hundreds of thousands of lives, many innocent civilians casualties among them. I had an army officer in Iraq tell me the 'meat grinder' used by Saddam Hussein for you-know-what... was "just out of sight" from where I stood in Baghdad one day. I can only imagine how many people were told the same thing, "you can't quite see it but it's there" - including that officer. It's all a great big sucker punch to our souls.

These are the problems that we face when the media is asleep, as it has mostly been over the real facts of 9/11 and the existence of a group called al-Qaeda. The news anchors loyally parrot the words all day and night 'al-Qaeda' this 'al-Qaeda' that... but has any group without a leadership or structure ever received such coverage?

Regarding al Qaeda, Wikipedia also carries a paragraph that I believe, greatly substantiates my point:

Many terrorism experts do not believe that the global jihadist movement is driven at every level by bin Laden and his followers. Although bin Laden still had huge ideological sway over some Muslim extremists, experts argue that al-Qaeda has fragmented over the years into a variety of disconnected regional movements that have little connection with each other. Marc Sageman, a psychiatrist and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer, said that al-Qaeda would now just be a "loose label for a movement that seems to target the West". "There is no umbrella organisation. We like to create a mythical entity called [al-Qaeda] in our minds, but that is not the reality we are dealing with."

The confusion tied to Massoud centers around a few things actually, and I should clarify for those who aren't familiar, that due to research and a lot of investigative time, I am one of the writers in the world who clearly does not believe that Usama bin Laden was killed recently in Pakistan, I believe he died in the intense U.S. attacks at Torra Bora in 2001.

This is nothing new, long before the startling recent proclamation from Obama, I wrote at length about the way bin Laden always popped up with his 'messages' that ramped up our 'terror alert' level and how we Americans shuffled about in a pathetic manor so heavily influenced by a government and its lapdog TV networks that were primed and ready to rewrite the way business is done by the United States. The results from both of the Bush presidencies are still evolving, and not so good to say the least...

Why the 'official' 911 Story Stinks

In April 2006 I wrote the article, Huge Contradictions in Official Theories on 9/11 Crash at Pentagon which is structured in a way to absolutely defeat any validity the article could ever have had. It sports what has to be one of the largest contradictions ever published. I find it comical that the link I originally listed for their article, (http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1227842.html?page=6)has now been removed, but don't worry, thousands of us have the article in our hot hands.

I reasoned in 2006 that the story is enough to make a person question what crashed into the Pentagon all by itself.

The following two statements are from that article in Popular Mechanics: It was a March 2005 cover story that was written with the clear and obvious intent of dispelling questions about the lack of wreckage, with the title `9/11: Debunking The Myths."

As a news reporter for well more than twenty years, I don`t remember ever being sent out to do a story that specifically argued the point of view of a government agency, but this article's sole intent is to claim that every word from the Bush administration was essentially the Gospel.

The first statement is from a professor at Purdue, a university that received enormous amounts of federal money under G.W. Bush. A professor named Mete Sozen explained in the article, that there was no wreckage because, "the plane flowed into the structure in a state closer to a liquid than a solid mass." The statement is actually written by the author, and sandwiched between quotes from the professor, but it is clearly attributed to him.

Sozen and a team from the university were also selected to create the computer `simulation" of the 757 crash for the federal government, which is supposed to demonstrate "what really happened".

Then there is the Blast expert in the PM article, Allyn E. Kilsheimer, who said "I held parts of uniforms from crew members in my hands, including body parts. Okay?"

One says the plane turned to liquid, that`s why there is no wreckage, and the other held parts of the crew`s uniform and body parts in his hand?

Liquid?

These guys needed to get on the same page before being interviewed for Popular Mechanics.

The author of that PM article by the way is not named, at least on the published Web story.

Finally, if Kilsheimer did hold parts of uniforms, then they easily could have come from the poor unfortunate people inside the building, I mean we are talking about the Pentagon.

<

Everyone watching the news that day remembers that the grass in front of the Pentagon showed no burn marks, no wreckage, many of the windows where the wings would have struck the building are unbroken. They were made of special glass, but a 757 going 500 MPH into a building is a force that one could hardly imagine. Like most airplanes, the 757 carries its fuel in its wings, and the plane`s wingspan is 125 feet, so why was the fire and damage at the Pentagon confined to such a small area?

I have gone over this at length in the same story previously referenced, Huge Contradictions in Official Theories on 9/11 Crash at Pentagon, and the links to my previous reports are listed below. There is also new footage that is considered 'unconfirmed' that shows what appears to be a missile striking the Pentagon. We know that cameras from the Virgina Highway Dept., a Chevron gas station and a Howard Johnson hotel all had their videotapes seized by federal agents on Sept. 11, 2001 and that the government only had released a four frame clip, claiming that the Pentagon video cameras were low quality low frame-rate models, when convenience stores at the time had been using inexpensive full color standard video cameras for years.

There is so much more. Two recent features published first by Salem-News.com, by writers Anthony Lawson and Anthony Hall, are among the freshest and most complete articles online at this point regarding this catastrophic day that touched off so many years of death and hardship.

Possibly the best full-length documentary ever produced about all of this is 911 Loose Change which examines aspects of this story that are chilling. It isn't funny, and it certainly is not unpatriotic to look at an event that affects a country so profoundly, with an extremely critical eye.

A Missing Link

Many people will argue over the reality of the existence of al-Qaeda outside of the U.S. government and western media channels, and I grant that to some extent, as I described above, there are those who have taken on the group's name to represent themselves; in essence responding to the same programming, but ties to a specific umbrella network remains more theory than fact.

"Lion of Panjshir"

Ahmad Massoud, the "Lion of Panjshir", was the kind of leadership figure Afghanistan needed, but this violent place lacked the security to usher him into a better position. The Taliban opposed this man and those who sympathize with these groups do his legacy a great injustice.

He was a Kabul University engineering student and the son of a police commander. As a military leader he was a large operator in the defeat and ousting of the Soviet army in 1989. An ethnic Tajik, Ahmad Massoud became known as the "Lion of Panjshir" and his face is posted on everything in Afghanistan from billboards and buildings, to the back of "jingle trucks" moving down the country's highways.

Massoud was a leader in the "Northern Alliance" as it became known, and one of many leaders in this country who wrestled with political control while trying to bring a moderate type of government to his people. He was the Afghan government's Defense Minister when he finally ordered a retreat from Kabul on September 26, 1996. He had little choice, as Taliban forces had encircled the capital.

It is a popular belief in Afghanistan and beyond, that Massoud's assassination, two days before the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, was an act of the rival Taliban. I believed in 2006 and after that, that bin Laden was not dead, and I see my words from that time do not exactly sync up with my current understandings.

As mentioned above, this great Afghan leader was killed by a pair posing as a television news camera operator and reporter with a TV camera rigged with explosives. One of the assassins fled and was killed, of the other- only his legs remained. Ahmad Massoud lived for about fifteen minutes and died in the back of a car as it raced through the rugged Afghan mountains. There are different theories as to who the killers were, or what country they came from. It also was reported that they were recommended by someone within Massoud's own government.

It is believed that Massoud was murdered to prevent his blowing the whistle on the upcoming attacks on the United States. I believed this when it was conveyed to me in Afghanistan, but today it creates many questions, as even my far-stretched imagination has a hard time really connecting Afghanistan to 9/11.

Even if Usama bin Laden, or Osama bin Laden as the western media prefers to call him, was the mastermind of the attacks on the U.S. which he denied having committed, it fails to make no sense as he or anyone in his shoes would have known the severe reprisal any such terrorist attack on the U.S. would bring to the Middle east

This terrorist poster boy only lived in Afghanistan because of the war against the Soviets, and in that case he was basically on the side of the west, effectively helping create a domino effect that toppled the U.S.S.R. The Taliban didn't have anything to do with 9/11 and regardless of how much it bothers people, as covered in part one of this series, Gearing Up for 911, Usama bin Laden flatly denied any involvement in the terror attacks on the U.S. This is a fact, and in my last article I cite a mainstream source for bin Laden's quote.

Still, there is the widely circulated information, about Massoud knowing that the attacks would take place against the United States on September 11th 2001. It was easy in 2006 to believe that his death just two days prior to 9/11 was indeed an act to silence him.

But a close examination quickly brings the question: Why, if he held the safety of 3,000 or more people in his hand, with sensitive terrorist information about an act about to take place against the United States, would this man or anyone else be sitting down for an interview at a somewhat remote base with an Arab news team, instead of heading for the nearest U.S. embassy to send out the alert?

Arab news is important, in the Middle east, but it means very little to Americans, particularly in that timeframe, and something therefore fails to make sense about the reported pending revelation from this leader in Afghanistan. I would like to know why he wasn't heading for an interview with CNN or The BBC, that would have reached people far more quickly.

There are many reports about Americans being warned not to fly on Sept. 11th. Condi Rice allegedly called the mayor of San Francisco to tell him to delay plans. The U.S. Air Force was essentially re-routed from the Washington D.C. region on this day, and the stock market saw record financial transactions in the days leading up to the attack that suggest certain individuals used foreknowledge of the attack to reap huge profits.

Evidence of insider trading relating to 9/11 is widespread, unlike the eyes of the American public. The evidence includes large surges in purchases of put options involving stocks of the airlines used in the attack, United Airlines and American Airlines; surges in purchases of put options on stocks of reinsurance companies that were expected to pay out billions covering the losses from the 9/11 attack, Munich Re and the AXA Group, and surges in purchases of put options on stocks of financial services companies hurt by the attack. Those groups are Merrill Lynch & Co., and Morgan Stanley and Bank of America.

This is just a part of it, there are endless pieces to this puzzle of deceit and betrayal. I am puzzled by the Massoud connection and the worst case scenario could be that he knew something, but not what we are told; perhaps something quite opposite.

Sources

9-11 Research

Al-Qaeda - Wikipedia

Articles by Dr. Anthony Hall

Sep-0702911: When War is Promoted as a Remedy for Terror: Reflections on the Tenth Anniversary Of 9/11[i] Dr. Anthony Hall for Salem-News.com

May-29-2011: Waging The Battle for Reality - Dr. Anthony J. Hall for Salem-News.com

Articles by Anthony Lawson

Aug-01-2011: 9/11: The Absurdity of the No-Planes-in-New York Theory - Anthony Lawson Salem-News.com

Mar-18-2010: A Little Known Fact About the 9/11 Planes - Anthony Lawson for Salem-News.com

Articles by Tim King

Sep-03-2011: Gearing Up for 911 Tim King Salem-News.com

Mar-09-2010: Makers of 9/11 Documentary 'Loose Change' Fight Back During ABC News Interview - Tim King Salem-News.com

Mar-02-2010: Salem-News.com's Tim King Appears Live on Russia TV America Over 9/11 Controversy - Salem-News.com Staff

Sep-10-2006: Documentary is an Indictment of the Current U.S. Administration

Apr-16-2006: U.S. Air Force Hackers Caught in Their Tracks by Salem-News.com - Tim King Salem-News.com

Apr-15-2006: Scholars and New York Firefighters Demanding Truth on 9/11 Events - Tim King Salem-News.com

Apr-07-2006: Huge Contradictions in Official Theories on 9/11 Crash at Pentagon

Mar-21-2006: What Really Hit The Pentagon?

_________________________________________________________

Tim King: Salem-News.com Editor and Writer Tim King is a former U.S. Marine with twenty years of experience on the west coast as a television news producer, photojournalist, reporter and assignment editor. In addition to his role as a war correspondent, this Los Angeles native serves as Salem-News.com's Executive News Editor. Tim spent the winter of 2006/07 covering the war in Afghanistan, and he was in Iraq over the summer of 2008, reporting from the war while embedded with both the U.S. Army and the Marines. Tim holds awards for reporting, photography, writing and editing, including the Silver Spoke Award by the National Coalition of Motorcyclists (2011), Excellence in Journalism Award by the Oregon Confederation of Motorcycle Clubs (2010), Oregon AP Award for Spot News Photographer of the Year (2004), First-place Electronic Media Award in Spot News, Las Vegas, (1998), Oregon AP Cooperation Award (1991); and several others including the 2005 Red Cross Good Neighborhood Award for reporting. Tim has several years of experience in network affiliate news TV stations, having worked as a reporter and photographer at NBC, ABC and FOX stations in Arizona, Nevada and Oregon. Tim was a member of the National Press Photographer's Association for several years and is a current member of the Orange County Press Club. Serving the community in very real terms, Salem-News.com is the nation's only truly independent high traffic news Website. As News Editor, Tim among other things, is responsible for publishing the original content of 82 Salem-News.com writers. He reminds viewers that emails are easily missed and urges those trying to reach him, to please send a second email if the first goes unanswered. You can write to Tim at this address: newsroom@salem-news.com